i made a wish earlier this year. my wish was to learn to thrive.
thrive. a word i cannot translate into any other language i speak. one that articulates an intense longing, to find the treasure hidden under the roots of this very life of mine.
i made this wish and sent it off into the world, on the wings of birds and breezes, in the dark moist earth beneath the roots of my garden, among the screeching of seagulls and rustling of shells on the beach.
and then i became quiet, as quiet as i could, and i listened. for an answer.
... it has been coming, finding its way to me, in dreams, in whisperings, in shards, in threads, in shimmerings...
at times it is like peeling an onion, at other times like reconstructing the skeleton of a strange old-forgotten creature, or laying a mosaic, or darning socks.
here are some bits i have collected so far:
Rest and play, all of life nothing but rest and play, wrapped in each other, as a figure-eight, the sign for infinity, a snake eating its own tail. two times rest to one times play. those are the right proportions.
Safety. 'Our sense of comfort and safety arise directly from our experience of our body's ability to regulate its own energy,' says Peter Levine. A revelation...
Enough.... is not as comfortable as one might have hoped (at least at first). and it keeps moving (annoyingly). it's a constantly shifting place between the too little i would give myself and the too much i constantly crave.
Time. Decompressed. Stretched out. Allowed to breathe. I do not understand time. I only know it is not as i was taught. it is not what i was taught.
Fresh water, fresh food, dance, cuddles. Always... but this i already knew.
so much to explore. i think i might write a post about each of these. and whatever else arises. as it does.
but not today.
today the sun beckons...
today time warms up and slows down...
today this can wait...
Friday, 10 March 2017
Friday, 3 March 2017
jumbled ode to the night
For three months now, i have been going to sleep every night at 7 pm and getting up at 7 am, spending twelve hours out of every twenty-four lying in bed, in the dark. You can read about how this came about here and here. Along the way i was joined in this adventure by P. and all four children. A month ago, we took it one step further and decided to make do without electric light after dusk. Without electric bulbs and screens of any kind, our evenings have become gentle candle-lit affairs, of a rather brief kind. Turns out candle-light makes people sleepy...
This adventure, born of necessity (as all real adventures are...), has been a complete life-changer. So much so that i hardly know where to start in sharing with you what this lifestyle tweak has meant for me.
So while i'm collecting my thoughts, indulge me for a moment and let me take you on a tiny excursion through time, back-tracking a little (or way way back), to when the world was young, and we were...
... fishes, crawlies, tree-climbers, four-paw wonders, monkeys, our ancestors... Long before and all the way through the history of our planet, we have all had a profound, indestructible and inalienable relationship with the night.
How could it be otherwise? Night held our lives lovingly cupped in her hands, like parentheses around our beginning and end (Who was not born in and of Night? Who did not return to her in the end?).
And as if that were not enough, Night fell. Every night.
And every night again, she carried us away. Every night she restored, repaired, refashioned us, at her will. There was nothing we could do about it. Nothing but give ourselves over to the mystery, surrender to the waves, and trust that our little boat would make it to see the rising sun. So we huddled together, for warmth, for comfort, we huddled together in the night because the dark can be frightening.
We did not understand the night (who does?), but we knew her. We knew she was dark, rich, moist, mysterious, unknowable. We knew her as our alpha, and our omega, our past and our future, and the shaper of our now. As the dark soil we grew out of and were replenished by. She could steal us away, and miraculously return us to ourselves, seemingly unchanged, but ultimately undone and redone.
We understood her as the great shape-shifting power that ruled over our lives.
For the longest, longest time, our relationship with the Night was like our relationship to gravity. Utterly unavoidable. Utterly dependable. Utterly necessary.
...
But then things went a bit awry... (they often do, have you noticed?) (in fact, you might argue that human history is one long series of things gone awry, for better or for worse...)
Books on the history of sleep disagree (as books do) on exactly when, how and why this happened, but they could have all saved themselves a lot of bother, and just asked me. it happens i know.
It was in 1791. With Mozart's Die Zauberflöte.
This fantastic tale recounts how Prince Tamino and bird-catcher Papageno are sent on a mission to save Princess Pamina, daughter of the Queen of the Night, from the clutches of the evil Sorcerer Sarastro, only to find out.... that Sarastro is in fact Pamina's father (the original Star Wars plot...), who only abducted her in the first place to save her from the clutches of her evil and murderous mother, the Night. At which point, all male protagonists join forces, the Night is destroyed and the beautiful Princess saved to be married to Prince Tamino and live forever in the light of day in her Father's Kingdom.
It was not called the age of Enlightenment for nothing. European cities acquired street lighting, rich people began to throw balls and parties in the dark (imagine!), and our rational logical anthropocentric world view began to actively encroach on and slowly conquer the dark.
In the Magic Flute, Sarastro stands for the male principle, the day, the light, the sun, ratio, logical thinking and life itself, versus the Queen of the Night, who represents the female principle, the moon, murkiness, death, intuition, superstition and magic.
(and of course, if we are to believe Amadeus, Mozart wrote most of his stuff late at night... while fleeing the dark, running for his life from the terrible nightmares that haunted him......)
We all know how the rest of this story goes. Bit by bit, we collectively reduced the night to its bare minimum, and then took a bit off that too... (figures on the current sleep crisis in the western world suggest that very few people you or i know spend the bare minimum of 7-8 hours in the dark every night).
The night became associated with laziness, wasted time, lack of productivity, an unnecessary death-like disconnection, an anachronism, the last problem to be solved before we can finally take off and soar free (to Mars?).
I remember how it happened for me as a child. When i was little, the night was a massive experience, but as I grew, it slowly shrank back, its wings clipped at both ends. I remember I couldn't wait to be allowed to join the grown-ups in the coveted sanctum of the evening. I knew that was where all the fun and important stuff was happening. So i leaned forward, towards the time when i would be allowed to stay up, until 7, 8, 9, 10, midnight...
On the other end, too, the night was forced to give way: by age 7 my alarm-clock had become chiselled into my life and body, ensuring that i did not lie in bed a minute longer than the system allowed.
In this way, chip by chip, i lost most of it...
...until all that was left was a solid block of uninterrupted deep sleep. Because when you chip enough away from the night, in the end all you are left with is the physiological imperative. The dog-body that must, that will claim its due, whether you like it or not.
Somewhere along the way, i too came to the conclusion that the night was a bit of a sad waste of time. necessary, maybe, but no fun. No significance, no meaning, no treasure.
Fun and treasure and meaning were elsewhere: in the day, and as i grew into an adult and later a mother, increasingly concentrated in the last bit of it: the holy evening.
(...with motherhood, the night itself had been forced into even tighter quarters, and had turned into a hellish struggle for survival as my exhausted body battled with my confused mind for its most basic needs...)
As a mother of babies and young children, my entire life became focused on the evening, my holy of holies, me-time. Time for social contacts, for rest, for creativity, for growth, for learning, for relationship. I filled my evenings (when i could catch one) with interesting watching and reading, yoga, knitting, sewing, writing, painting, sculpting, meetings with friends, games, sex, conversation, meditation, prayer and work.
All activities ultimately intended to help me find that which i longed for and found increasingly and incredibly elusive:
Inner peace, well-being, emotional resilience, joy, equanimity, creativity, deep connection with myself, others and god, purpose, meaning, and magic.
My efforts and iron self-discipline were rewarded to some extent, but i often (often) (too often) felt that i was somehow stuck playing with god's fingers, while missing the moon altogether.
Little did i know (how could i? it was lost so long ago...) that the moon in that metaphor ain't no metaphor...
...
Here then, in the disorder, is everything i have discovered in the past three months about the Night:
- The night is not for sleeping only. Although absolutely essential, sleep is but the tip of the iceberg of what the night has to offer. Once this primal physical imperative is satisfied, the night can have its magical way with me.
- During the day i may 'do life', but at night, there is no doubt that 'life does me'. Agency and control are cancelled. Night is the ultimate surrender.
- I remember how proud i used to be when i remembered a bit of my dream upon waking. I would hungrily write the broken bits and pieces down in my journal, and chew on them during the day, trying like a drunken archaeologist, to reassemble the bones ('the foot bone's connected to the shin bone, the shin bone's connected to the thigh bone, the thigh bone's connected to the hip bone...'). It rarely made sense, but i always felt as if i had stumbled on some jumbled treasure, a rare exotic bird briefly glimpsed through the foliage, its shape indistinguishable, but still, the pride in having 'caught it by the tail...'
Now i know that these sightings were nothing. As i spend three sometimes four hours every night with the exotic bird sitting quietly on my shoulder, whispering long stories into my ear, I understand at last that dreams are not meant to be remembered or interpreted in the light of day. They make no sense there, because their language, their meaning is other, and they can only be grasped processed understood incorporated integrated in the night that has borne them and that offers them to me, on a silver platter, night after faithful night. For nourishment.
- A living relation with the night is essential for a living relation with the day. The night, with its timeless expansion and contraction, fuels the day. The two cannot exist without one another. When i skip the night (as i have done for decades) the day slowly loses its colour, its texture, its yumminess, and becomes grey, dull, painful and meaningless. I have found no better (and no other) antidote to this existential malaise than re-entering into a primal living relationship with the night.
- Meditation, therapy, yoga, tai-chi, and all the other amazing techniques i have learnt along the way, when practised regularly and assiduously for a long period of time, all point to the same state I enter effortlessly every single night once my need for sleep is satisfied. They just take a lot more effort, and a lot more time. (Remember the guru asked by one of his students: 'Teacher, what do you think about meditation?'. The guru answered: 'It can't hurt.')
- The Dalai Lama goes to bed at 7 pm every night. Need i say more?
(actually, i do. Need to say more: he was also quoted saying that 'sleep is the best meditation'. And if there is anyone in the world i trust to know the difference between the essential and the superfluous, it's the Dalai Lama...)
(of course, i now understand that the secret behind his (the Dalai Lama's) ability to know the difference between the essential and the superfluous is that he goes to bed at 7 pm every night)
(this is not as circular as it looks...)
- The night repairs and nourishes my body, awakens my sensuality, restores my social relationships, heals my wounds, injects my entire system with magic and creativity, connects me with god, restores my faith, my hope, and my ability to act and be in the world, regulates my emotions, and greatly enhances my ability to shine my light.
- Also, and relatedly, giving the night back its due has allowed me to cancel two thirds of my to-do list. For one thing, anything to do with solitude, me-time, introspection, reflection, writing, creativity, self-development, etc. can now be safely left to the effortless dark. The day has been returned to its original purpose: to jot down the night's harvest (done in a jiffy), and engage in and with the world. For another thing, the night is teaching me to distinguish between the essential and the superfluous (remember those fairy-tales in which the heroine is given the impossible task to sort a pile of dirt and poppy seeds. she always has to do it at night. and the night always sends a helper), and to make a long story short, a lot of stuff on my to-do list, when seen in the light of night, turns out to be more dirt than poppy.
- Relatedly, again, i have experienced an incredible decompression of time. There is now always enough time for everything, seas and seas of it in fact. A strange experience after decades of feeling constantly rushed and late for something (the rabbit in Alice in Wonderland, that's my calmer twin brother...), especially since technically speaking, there is a lot less time in my day now.
- All you need to wake up is go to bed.
- Oh, did i mention bliss?
...
this post really wanted to be entitled: How I Cancelled the Evening, Discovered the Night, and Received the Gifts of the Day. but that would have made the above bit of writing redundant, so i didn't let it have its way.
* for some of the science behind the what and why of night magic, see here and here. these are just my first dippings into the incredible wealth of literature and science on the subject. i'll add more links here as i read more.
This adventure, born of necessity (as all real adventures are...), has been a complete life-changer. So much so that i hardly know where to start in sharing with you what this lifestyle tweak has meant for me.
So while i'm collecting my thoughts, indulge me for a moment and let me take you on a tiny excursion through time, back-tracking a little (or way way back), to when the world was young, and we were...
... fishes, crawlies, tree-climbers, four-paw wonders, monkeys, our ancestors... Long before and all the way through the history of our planet, we have all had a profound, indestructible and inalienable relationship with the night.
How could it be otherwise? Night held our lives lovingly cupped in her hands, like parentheses around our beginning and end (Who was not born in and of Night? Who did not return to her in the end?).
And as if that were not enough, Night fell. Every night.
And every night again, she carried us away. Every night she restored, repaired, refashioned us, at her will. There was nothing we could do about it. Nothing but give ourselves over to the mystery, surrender to the waves, and trust that our little boat would make it to see the rising sun. So we huddled together, for warmth, for comfort, we huddled together in the night because the dark can be frightening.
We did not understand the night (who does?), but we knew her. We knew she was dark, rich, moist, mysterious, unknowable. We knew her as our alpha, and our omega, our past and our future, and the shaper of our now. As the dark soil we grew out of and were replenished by. She could steal us away, and miraculously return us to ourselves, seemingly unchanged, but ultimately undone and redone.
We understood her as the great shape-shifting power that ruled over our lives.
For the longest, longest time, our relationship with the Night was like our relationship to gravity. Utterly unavoidable. Utterly dependable. Utterly necessary.
...
But then things went a bit awry... (they often do, have you noticed?) (in fact, you might argue that human history is one long series of things gone awry, for better or for worse...)
Books on the history of sleep disagree (as books do) on exactly when, how and why this happened, but they could have all saved themselves a lot of bother, and just asked me. it happens i know.
It was in 1791. With Mozart's Die Zauberflöte.
This fantastic tale recounts how Prince Tamino and bird-catcher Papageno are sent on a mission to save Princess Pamina, daughter of the Queen of the Night, from the clutches of the evil Sorcerer Sarastro, only to find out.... that Sarastro is in fact Pamina's father (the original Star Wars plot...), who only abducted her in the first place to save her from the clutches of her evil and murderous mother, the Night. At which point, all male protagonists join forces, the Night is destroyed and the beautiful Princess saved to be married to Prince Tamino and live forever in the light of day in her Father's Kingdom.
It was not called the age of Enlightenment for nothing. European cities acquired street lighting, rich people began to throw balls and parties in the dark (imagine!), and our rational logical anthropocentric world view began to actively encroach on and slowly conquer the dark.
In the Magic Flute, Sarastro stands for the male principle, the day, the light, the sun, ratio, logical thinking and life itself, versus the Queen of the Night, who represents the female principle, the moon, murkiness, death, intuition, superstition and magic.
(and of course, if we are to believe Amadeus, Mozart wrote most of his stuff late at night... while fleeing the dark, running for his life from the terrible nightmares that haunted him......)
We all know how the rest of this story goes. Bit by bit, we collectively reduced the night to its bare minimum, and then took a bit off that too... (figures on the current sleep crisis in the western world suggest that very few people you or i know spend the bare minimum of 7-8 hours in the dark every night).
The night became associated with laziness, wasted time, lack of productivity, an unnecessary death-like disconnection, an anachronism, the last problem to be solved before we can finally take off and soar free (to Mars?).
I remember how it happened for me as a child. When i was little, the night was a massive experience, but as I grew, it slowly shrank back, its wings clipped at both ends. I remember I couldn't wait to be allowed to join the grown-ups in the coveted sanctum of the evening. I knew that was where all the fun and important stuff was happening. So i leaned forward, towards the time when i would be allowed to stay up, until 7, 8, 9, 10, midnight...
On the other end, too, the night was forced to give way: by age 7 my alarm-clock had become chiselled into my life and body, ensuring that i did not lie in bed a minute longer than the system allowed.
In this way, chip by chip, i lost most of it...
...until all that was left was a solid block of uninterrupted deep sleep. Because when you chip enough away from the night, in the end all you are left with is the physiological imperative. The dog-body that must, that will claim its due, whether you like it or not.
Somewhere along the way, i too came to the conclusion that the night was a bit of a sad waste of time. necessary, maybe, but no fun. No significance, no meaning, no treasure.
Fun and treasure and meaning were elsewhere: in the day, and as i grew into an adult and later a mother, increasingly concentrated in the last bit of it: the holy evening.
(...with motherhood, the night itself had been forced into even tighter quarters, and had turned into a hellish struggle for survival as my exhausted body battled with my confused mind for its most basic needs...)
As a mother of babies and young children, my entire life became focused on the evening, my holy of holies, me-time. Time for social contacts, for rest, for creativity, for growth, for learning, for relationship. I filled my evenings (when i could catch one) with interesting watching and reading, yoga, knitting, sewing, writing, painting, sculpting, meetings with friends, games, sex, conversation, meditation, prayer and work.
All activities ultimately intended to help me find that which i longed for and found increasingly and incredibly elusive:
Inner peace, well-being, emotional resilience, joy, equanimity, creativity, deep connection with myself, others and god, purpose, meaning, and magic.
My efforts and iron self-discipline were rewarded to some extent, but i often (often) (too often) felt that i was somehow stuck playing with god's fingers, while missing the moon altogether.
Little did i know (how could i? it was lost so long ago...) that the moon in that metaphor ain't no metaphor...
...
Here then, in the disorder, is everything i have discovered in the past three months about the Night:
- The night is not for sleeping only. Although absolutely essential, sleep is but the tip of the iceberg of what the night has to offer. Once this primal physical imperative is satisfied, the night can have its magical way with me.
- During the day i may 'do life', but at night, there is no doubt that 'life does me'. Agency and control are cancelled. Night is the ultimate surrender.
- I remember how proud i used to be when i remembered a bit of my dream upon waking. I would hungrily write the broken bits and pieces down in my journal, and chew on them during the day, trying like a drunken archaeologist, to reassemble the bones ('the foot bone's connected to the shin bone, the shin bone's connected to the thigh bone, the thigh bone's connected to the hip bone...'). It rarely made sense, but i always felt as if i had stumbled on some jumbled treasure, a rare exotic bird briefly glimpsed through the foliage, its shape indistinguishable, but still, the pride in having 'caught it by the tail...'
Now i know that these sightings were nothing. As i spend three sometimes four hours every night with the exotic bird sitting quietly on my shoulder, whispering long stories into my ear, I understand at last that dreams are not meant to be remembered or interpreted in the light of day. They make no sense there, because their language, their meaning is other, and they can only be grasped processed understood incorporated integrated in the night that has borne them and that offers them to me, on a silver platter, night after faithful night. For nourishment.
- A living relation with the night is essential for a living relation with the day. The night, with its timeless expansion and contraction, fuels the day. The two cannot exist without one another. When i skip the night (as i have done for decades) the day slowly loses its colour, its texture, its yumminess, and becomes grey, dull, painful and meaningless. I have found no better (and no other) antidote to this existential malaise than re-entering into a primal living relationship with the night.
- Meditation, therapy, yoga, tai-chi, and all the other amazing techniques i have learnt along the way, when practised regularly and assiduously for a long period of time, all point to the same state I enter effortlessly every single night once my need for sleep is satisfied. They just take a lot more effort, and a lot more time. (Remember the guru asked by one of his students: 'Teacher, what do you think about meditation?'. The guru answered: 'It can't hurt.')
- The Dalai Lama goes to bed at 7 pm every night. Need i say more?
(actually, i do. Need to say more: he was also quoted saying that 'sleep is the best meditation'. And if there is anyone in the world i trust to know the difference between the essential and the superfluous, it's the Dalai Lama...)
(of course, i now understand that the secret behind his (the Dalai Lama's) ability to know the difference between the essential and the superfluous is that he goes to bed at 7 pm every night)
(this is not as circular as it looks...)
- The night repairs and nourishes my body, awakens my sensuality, restores my social relationships, heals my wounds, injects my entire system with magic and creativity, connects me with god, restores my faith, my hope, and my ability to act and be in the world, regulates my emotions, and greatly enhances my ability to shine my light.
- Also, and relatedly, giving the night back its due has allowed me to cancel two thirds of my to-do list. For one thing, anything to do with solitude, me-time, introspection, reflection, writing, creativity, self-development, etc. can now be safely left to the effortless dark. The day has been returned to its original purpose: to jot down the night's harvest (done in a jiffy), and engage in and with the world. For another thing, the night is teaching me to distinguish between the essential and the superfluous (remember those fairy-tales in which the heroine is given the impossible task to sort a pile of dirt and poppy seeds. she always has to do it at night. and the night always sends a helper), and to make a long story short, a lot of stuff on my to-do list, when seen in the light of night, turns out to be more dirt than poppy.
- Relatedly, again, i have experienced an incredible decompression of time. There is now always enough time for everything, seas and seas of it in fact. A strange experience after decades of feeling constantly rushed and late for something (the rabbit in Alice in Wonderland, that's my calmer twin brother...), especially since technically speaking, there is a lot less time in my day now.
- All you need to wake up is go to bed.
- Oh, did i mention bliss?
...
this post really wanted to be entitled: How I Cancelled the Evening, Discovered the Night, and Received the Gifts of the Day. but that would have made the above bit of writing redundant, so i didn't let it have its way.
* for some of the science behind the what and why of night magic, see here and here. these are just my first dippings into the incredible wealth of literature and science on the subject. i'll add more links here as i read more.
Tuesday, 28 February 2017
40 days
Every year around this time, my teacher sends out an invitation to join her in something she calls '40 Days of Sobriety'.
Inspired by Christian, Buddhist, Jewish, and Hindu traditions, it is a beautiful modern take on the traditional fasting intended to move us from winter slumber into Easter celebration, a kind of modern-day lifestyle detox.
It involves ten guidelines to be followed as faithfully as possible for 40 days (from Ash Wednesday to Good Friday):
1. Do something for another person (in deed or financially)
2. Spend at least fifteen minutes meditating, reciting a mantra, or praying.
3. Listen with full attention to a beautiful piece of music (such as an excerpt from Bach's Mattheus Passion)
4. Refrain from killing any living creature (including flies and mosquitoes), and therefore eat vegetarian
5. Refrain from lying, gossiping, saying unkind things about another person, and cursing
6. Refrain from eating sweets, snacking, mindless eating, alcohol, cigarettes and drugs
7. Do not take anything that is not given to you
8. Refrain from watching TV
9. Limit interactions with internet to that which is strictly necessary for work and other obligations
10. Limit spending to the strictly necessary
...
For the last seven years or so (as long as i've been getting the invitation), i have done my darned best to take part every year.
I say 'my best' not because i failed (how can you fail a series of intentions?), but because taking part has required an unusual dose of will-power and inner bullying. While my degree of compliance has varied with the years, as you would expect, my basic resistance to the entire procedure has remained constant, aka MASSIVE.
The thing is that somewhere along the way, it has dawned on me that huge amounts of will-power and inner bullying are not, despite what it says in the advert, the best way to move through life... And that maybe resistance of such magnitude is to be kindly acknowledged and explored, not squashed under foot...
In the wake of which discoveries, i had kind of made up my mind to not even attempt the lifestyle fast this year.
But then something happened, something a big magical, that made me change my mind.
A few days ago, the usual invitation arrived in my mailbox. Except, it wasn't the usual invitation at all. To be specific, two words had been added to it:
It was now called '40 Days of Sobriety and Sustainability'.
and that, believe it or not, has made all the difference.
What can i say, i am a language person... words mean the wor(l)d to me.
And i find 'sobriety' remarkably unmotivating. at the risk of misusing my lapsed catholic identity here, the very word 'sobriety' has always sounded a bit too sinfully calvinistic to my ears...
Mostly, though, i find sobriety unsustainable. Something i can achieve, with the above-mentioned dose of will-power and inner bullying, for a very short period of time, before relapsing straight into all my former 'bad unconscious habits' with a vengeance (a process referred to as 'backlash').
....
But this, this made me think. What if these 40 days were an invitation to sustainability? Now that had my inner ears pricked...
What if this was an invitation to create something truly sustainable? First and foremost sustainable for 40 days. But above and beyond that, a template for a sustainable life. A life that will sustain me, and a life that i can sustain. A life that will sustain my family and one that my family can sustain. And even further beyond, what if this was an invitation to a template for a sustainable world?
What if by taking the time to precisely define and then implement this sustainable lifestyle, i would be making a real contribution (possibly the only one within my power) to a more sustainable world?
Wow.
...
So i sat with it for a while. Under a tree.
...
And considered the ten guidelines. What they point to. How they meet my life where my life is at. What sustainable means, for me, for us, in each of these. And i have come up with a template for the next 40 days, that feels sustainable to me.
i am so excited...
(very mild levels of resistance being registered on the local Richter scale)
Here it is, for inspiration, for sharing, mostly so that i remember ;-).
40 Days of Sustainability Guidelines
1. Refrain from shouting at people (children, husbands, friends, family, cashiers, etc.)
(this requires extremely high and consistent levels of self-love, for i have discovered that i only (ever) shout at people when i am being shouted at, by the bully inside)
2. Eating sort of vegetarian
(i.e. vegetarian with the exception of fatty fish once a week and bone broths whenever needed for strength and nursing)
3. Dance to, hula hoop to, or attentively listen to a beautiful song every day
Inspired by Christian, Buddhist, Jewish, and Hindu traditions, it is a beautiful modern take on the traditional fasting intended to move us from winter slumber into Easter celebration, a kind of modern-day lifestyle detox.
It involves ten guidelines to be followed as faithfully as possible for 40 days (from Ash Wednesday to Good Friday):
1. Do something for another person (in deed or financially)
2. Spend at least fifteen minutes meditating, reciting a mantra, or praying.
3. Listen with full attention to a beautiful piece of music (such as an excerpt from Bach's Mattheus Passion)
4. Refrain from killing any living creature (including flies and mosquitoes), and therefore eat vegetarian
5. Refrain from lying, gossiping, saying unkind things about another person, and cursing
6. Refrain from eating sweets, snacking, mindless eating, alcohol, cigarettes and drugs
7. Do not take anything that is not given to you
8. Refrain from watching TV
9. Limit interactions with internet to that which is strictly necessary for work and other obligations
10. Limit spending to the strictly necessary
...
For the last seven years or so (as long as i've been getting the invitation), i have done my darned best to take part every year.
I say 'my best' not because i failed (how can you fail a series of intentions?), but because taking part has required an unusual dose of will-power and inner bullying. While my degree of compliance has varied with the years, as you would expect, my basic resistance to the entire procedure has remained constant, aka MASSIVE.
The thing is that somewhere along the way, it has dawned on me that huge amounts of will-power and inner bullying are not, despite what it says in the advert, the best way to move through life... And that maybe resistance of such magnitude is to be kindly acknowledged and explored, not squashed under foot...
In the wake of which discoveries, i had kind of made up my mind to not even attempt the lifestyle fast this year.
But then something happened, something a big magical, that made me change my mind.
A few days ago, the usual invitation arrived in my mailbox. Except, it wasn't the usual invitation at all. To be specific, two words had been added to it:
It was now called '40 Days of Sobriety and Sustainability'.
and that, believe it or not, has made all the difference.
What can i say, i am a language person... words mean the wor(l)d to me.
And i find 'sobriety' remarkably unmotivating. at the risk of misusing my lapsed catholic identity here, the very word 'sobriety' has always sounded a bit too sinfully calvinistic to my ears...
Mostly, though, i find sobriety unsustainable. Something i can achieve, with the above-mentioned dose of will-power and inner bullying, for a very short period of time, before relapsing straight into all my former 'bad unconscious habits' with a vengeance (a process referred to as 'backlash').
....
But this, this made me think. What if these 40 days were an invitation to sustainability? Now that had my inner ears pricked...
What if this was an invitation to create something truly sustainable? First and foremost sustainable for 40 days. But above and beyond that, a template for a sustainable life. A life that will sustain me, and a life that i can sustain. A life that will sustain my family and one that my family can sustain. And even further beyond, what if this was an invitation to a template for a sustainable world?
What if by taking the time to precisely define and then implement this sustainable lifestyle, i would be making a real contribution (possibly the only one within my power) to a more sustainable world?
Wow.
...
So i sat with it for a while. Under a tree.
...
And considered the ten guidelines. What they point to. How they meet my life where my life is at. What sustainable means, for me, for us, in each of these. And i have come up with a template for the next 40 days, that feels sustainable to me.
i am so excited...
(very mild levels of resistance being registered on the local Richter scale)
Here it is, for inspiration, for sharing, mostly so that i remember ;-).
40 Days of Sustainability Guidelines
1. Refrain from shouting at people (children, husbands, friends, family, cashiers, etc.)
(this requires extremely high and consistent levels of self-love, for i have discovered that i only (ever) shout at people when i am being shouted at, by the bully inside)
2. Eating sort of vegetarian
(i.e. vegetarian with the exception of fatty fish once a week and bone broths whenever needed for strength and nursing)
3. Dance to, hula hoop to, or attentively listen to a beautiful song every day
4. Meditate or pray for at least 15 minutes a day
(adding a compulsory fifteen minutes of meditation to my to-do day is not sustainable. however, i do spend an inordinate amount of time in bed, from 7 pm to 7 am, and if i let go of the idea that one must 'sit' to meditate, the time in which i could potentially meditate without having to squash time goes from 'noppes/nada/niente' to two hours or so. i think i can fit in fifteen minutes...)
(adding a compulsory fifteen minutes of meditation to my to-do day is not sustainable. however, i do spend an inordinate amount of time in bed, from 7 pm to 7 am, and if i let go of the idea that one must 'sit' to meditate, the time in which i could potentially meditate without having to squash time goes from 'noppes/nada/niente' to two hours or so. i think i can fit in fifteen minutes...)
5. Limit media
This requires some detailed explanation: TV and Internet are easy enough (none, and limited to work and this blog, respectively), but then there are books. And books, i have noticed, can be a great thing or not such a great thing, depending on how you use them. here are some of the not very good ways i have been known to use books: to beat myself over the head and try to bully myself into changing (my life, my body, my relationship, my kids, etc...), to escape from reality, to binge, and to generally overwhelm and hurry myself.
Sustainable reading probably means limiting my reading to the following categories of books: world literature, poetry, biographies and auto-biographies of interesting people, educational books (history, anthropology, sociology, etc.) and stuff written by holy people.
Specifically, in the next forty days, i plan to keep the following on my night-table (to be read from at will): The Book of Joy (Dalai Lama and Desmond Tutu), One Hundred Years of Solitude (Garcia Marquez), On the move (autobiography of Oliver Sacks) and a wonderful historical book on the peoples of Europe in Roman times, with Asterix and Obelix as guides.
(Can't wait!)
This requires some detailed explanation: TV and Internet are easy enough (none, and limited to work and this blog, respectively), but then there are books. And books, i have noticed, can be a great thing or not such a great thing, depending on how you use them. here are some of the not very good ways i have been known to use books: to beat myself over the head and try to bully myself into changing (my life, my body, my relationship, my kids, etc...), to escape from reality, to binge, and to generally overwhelm and hurry myself.
Sustainable reading probably means limiting my reading to the following categories of books: world literature, poetry, biographies and auto-biographies of interesting people, educational books (history, anthropology, sociology, etc.) and stuff written by holy people.
Specifically, in the next forty days, i plan to keep the following on my night-table (to be read from at will): The Book of Joy (Dalai Lama and Desmond Tutu), One Hundred Years of Solitude (Garcia Marquez), On the move (autobiography of Oliver Sacks) and a wonderful historical book on the peoples of Europe in Roman times, with Asterix and Obelix as guides.
(Can't wait!)
6. Doing something for another person consciously
As a mother of four i spend most of my days doing things for other people. however, i often feel a martyr of this phenomenon, rather than a grateful partaker. for the next 40 days, i want to bring my attention to how i do things for others. how do i feel when i am asked to do something? when doing something for another person spontaneously? when do i say yes to requests, when do i say no? what would it take for me to be truly grateful for the fact that i can do so much for so many (little) people?
7. Turn my tongue in my mouth ten times before speaking (i expect this will greatly reduce any lying, gossiping, and other unpleasantness that makes its way into the world through my mouth)
8. No sugar and mindless snacking, but eating enough at meals instead
(i tend to eat too little at mealtimes because it's so busy, or i'm serving others or i just don't take the time to eat quietly, and then have to binge/snack to compensate for the two litres of milk i produce on a daily basis)
(i tend to eat too little at mealtimes because it's so busy, or i'm serving others or i just don't take the time to eat quietly, and then have to binge/snack to compensate for the two litres of milk i produce on a daily basis)
9. Do not take anything that is not given to you
(i think i only steal movies via pirate bay, but this is something i might have to look at in more detail...)
(i think i only steal movies via pirate bay, but this is something i might have to look at in more detail...)
10. Breathe deeply and do a body check-in before any monetary transaction
(this is more interesting and far more sustainable in the long run than simply closing my wallet for 40 days, only to re-open it, unexamined, afterwards)
(this is more interesting and far more sustainable in the long run than simply closing my wallet for 40 days, only to re-open it, unexamined, afterwards)
The 40 days start on Ash Wednesday, 1 March.
Who is joining me?
Who is joining me?
feetnote
(strange how my posts recently seem to have a
tail (or in this case a pair of feet) that slowly raises to the surface after a day or
two…)
Speaking of
unconscious money patterns, here is another one i discovered (with data to back it up):
The budgetary
body-mind rift.
aka: although I unhesitatingly spend
thousands a year on my mind/spirit, my body has to make do with ten bucks or so.
Do you
think this may be a fossilised remnant from my Catholic upbringing? The glorious mind, endlessly reaching up to its Creator, the lowly body, trying to dig itself into a
premature grave through sin and depravation, and therefore better ignored or done away with altogether...
Sounds
extreme? Let’s look at some figures.
As you may remember from my last post, last year i spent in excess of €5000 on personal self-development (none of which had much to do with
creature comforts), plus another €200 or so on books and literature. So
much for my mind.
What about
my body? Total clothing and grooming expenses for 2016: €82 (unless you count the dentist).
hmm.
As it happens, for some time now, my feet have been dreaming of shoes. And not
just any shoes, but new shoes, and not just
any new shoes, but these beauties…
*i know, i know... taste is a matter of... well, taste, i guess... 'But mum....you will look like a gorilla!', said my eldest in an exasperated tone
i don't care. i want them anyway. because i spend
most summers walking around barefoot, and my feet love it, because
with every passing year these same said feet are more and more reluctant at the end of summer to
re-enter their leather prison, because happy feet make a happy woman, because i tried them on in the store around the corner from my house and never ever ever wanted to take them off
again, because… damn it, because i want them.
The price
tag: €130 (on sale).
i swear to
you, if these were not shoes, but an online course on how to create a fantastic website for my new business while high on a combination of ayahuasca and transcendental meditation, or an illustrated leather hand-bound medieval
treatise on the relation between human gut flora and the secret life of gorillas and flowers, I
wouldn’t even blink. Not. Even. Blink.
But these
are shoes.
So it’s been four months.
Four months
in which i sold former shoes of mine to ‘save’ money for these,
ploughed the internet relentlessly for a better deal, explored second-hand
alternatives, hesitated, hesitated some more, decided it was much too expensive
‘for our family’, poured over extensive and detailed studies of exactly how
long these shoes are supposed to last before they have to be replaced...
(by all
accounts, the answer to the latter question is ‘one year or so’)
(WHAT?!!!?????!!!!!??? ONLY ONE YEAR!!! WHAT A RIP-OFF!!! You mean I’ll have to buy a new pair EVERY YEAR??!!!! Do you realise that means €100-150 A YEAR? For shoes??? What madness is this? I have been managing just fine on my €15 shoe budget!)
(WHAT?!!!?????!!!!!??? ONLY ONE YEAR!!! WHAT A RIP-OFF!!! You mean I’ll have to buy a new pair EVERY YEAR??!!!! Do you realise that means €100-150 A YEAR? For shoes??? What madness is this? I have been managing just fine on my €15 shoe budget!)
(plus, that online course i recently took on how to create a fantastic website while high on gut flora and gorilla flowers offered LIFE-LONG access to all materials...!).
Four
months, people, and still no shoes…
This makes
me a bit sad… Because feet are a bit like a dog, aren't they? Unconditionally faithful, loving, forgiving, joyful. And always up for long walks... no matter the weather.
i always say i love my feet. But if ‘love’ was a verb,
where would this loving of mine be showing?
…
Maybe I’ll be brave, and loving. Maybe i'll redirect some of my as-yet-unspent personal development budget for
this year to get my feet a lovely shell for all those long free hours in the forest.
…
Sunday, 26 February 2017
uncoiled
a friend invited me to a fun course on Shamanism. it looked great. i said i wasn't going to do it, seeing as it was my new year's resolution to do fewer fun things...
well, that seemed like a pretty awful new year's resolution, so i tried to explain...
'i mean fewer fun things that still end up costing time, energy and money, and for which i don't actually have time, energy or money, but of which i hope they will dispel my persistent feeling that i don't have enough time, energy and money for the fun things in my life.'
it sounded like an interesting flippant thing to say, but the more i thought about it, the bigger it grew. until this morning when i finally understood how HUGE it actually is.
for those of you who don't know me, i work as a freelancer. which means that every single day i receive e-mails from people offering me assignments, and every single day i have to decide how many of these assignments i take on.
now, don't these sound like absolutely bloody fantastic working conditions? that's because they are! (and i won't even brag about the fringe benefits, such as the fact that i do most of my work lounging on my bed in my pyjamas, and get to stop often for naps, snacks and cuddles, not to mention forest walks...) (seriously, don't know of a single company that offers their employees such a good deal)
and yet... over the past seven years (which is how long i've had this business), i managed to give myself one full and three mini burn-outs.
HOW?
you may well ask... it stumped me too... for a long long time... i could sense the iceberg of it, but couldn't see it for the life of me...
until...
until the HUGE insight hidden in my flippancy to my friend revealed itself as a detailed map of the devilish circle i'd been dancing in.
this vicious circle looks like this (yes, you get to see more of my lovely scribbles...)
it begins with a (subconscious) decision to overwork. Now, by overworking i don't mean working a sixty-hour week, or at 3 am, or on Sunday afternoon. luckily i am saved from such lethal practices by motherhood and husbandry. no, overwork in my case is more subtle. it basically consists in taking on more work than i strictly speaking need and/or is good for me.
having pondered this for some time, i reached the conclusion that my overworking is always driven by a subtle form of greed (as in 'i could use just a little bit more cash today/this week/this month') and a subtle form of fear (as in 'there may be enough for us all today, but what if the source dries up tomorrow? i have to make sure we have enough for tomorrow (and the day after, and the day after, and the day after...)').
this overworking of mine always (always, ALWAYS) leads to stage two of the circle, which is overwhelm. Although the experience varies greatly in intensity, its quality is quite consistent: this is the feeling that there is no room (no time, no energy) in my life for me. if i dig a little deeper, it invariably turns into 'i cannot feel my body' and/or 'i cannot hear my inner voice'. it's a dry, uninspired, grey, busy, tense, time-obsessed, empty place.
to escape from the misery of overwhelm, i use a strategy that seems promising, and happens to be advertised all over my Facebook feed, which is overspending. this brings us back to my conversation with my friend, because my specific overspending habit consists of splurging money on lovely profound, in-depth, high-value and amazing retreats, workshops, and online courses, paying wise, lovely, profound, amazing, in-depth people to help me reconnect with my body and hear my inner voice again.
every time i do this, however, the price tag on my life goes up. After all, this soul work (the therapy sessions, the retreats, the workshops, the yoga classes, the online courses) is so essential to my life, and really when you think about it, you might say it's the most essential thing of all: that which makes it possible for me to feel my body and hear my inner voice.... Wow! Clearly, this has to be included in our family budget. In fact, put like that, it should be right up there with food and water as far as our family priorities are concerned.
but hey, that's not a problem. i'm lucky. i'm a freelancer. i get to decide how much i work. i will just add a few hours to my working week, and i'll be able to afford this therapy, retreat, workshop or course every single year (trimester, month, week...) and bob's your uncle.
phew... saved by the bell...
hmph.....
did i mention that this is HUGE???!!!???
because... i could also... let's see.... well, maybe not immediately take on that one extra work assignment, but instead go spend an hour in the forest, leaning with my back against an old old tree, sitting with my fear, sitting with my greed, sitting with the general discomfort arising from both. there, in the quiet, i might, no, i know i would, i will, feel my body, and hear my inner wisdom (for free and without the help of a wise, amazing workshop facilitator), and my body and inner wisdom will sit with me and my greed and fear until the greed and the fear abate. then i would know, because i would, i will know, and hear, that maybe i don't need the cash from the extra work assignment (because there is enough, because the source has always been plentiful), so i wouldn't take it. as a result of which, i guess, maybe, i would have more time, to spend in the forest...
like this:
how about that...
* far from me any intention of crapping on amazing workshops, therapies, retreats and online courses, but i have been wondering for some time, in a quietly-nagging-at-the-back-of-my-mind kind of way, how it is possible that we all seem to need all of this therapy, yoga, retreating and workshopping so badly, so badly... like water and bread... how did our mothers, grand-mothers, great-grand-mothers and all previous generations survive without all this stuff... how did they do spirituality, well-being, inspiration, body, inner wisdom? How did they dance? because they did, didn't they, they sure did, they left novels, paintings, poems, recipes, and dance steps, and the blood running hot in my veins, and the tilt of my hip, they left evidence in my kisses, in my children's dreamy eyes, that they too, they knew, about inner hearing, about wisdom, about the body...
** you know where they went, don't you, for wisdom, for inspiration, for the body, and the dance... to the forest, to the sea, to church, to synagogue, in the early morning, to public libraries, museums and art galleries, to their garden, to their kitchen, to their women, their men, their children... and all of it unmediated and for free...
*** in the interest of science and credibility, i did some data research. in 2004, the year i first started therapy, our family budget for the first time featured a fixed cost category 'V mental health and well-being' of 420 euro in additional healthcare costs to cover bi-monthly therapy sessions. it has grown every year since. and not a bit either. the projected budget for this category in 2017, a financial year officially labelled by P. and me as 'lean', amounts to 3860 euro. talk about inflation! and this is a projected budget, which means that it does not include any 'impulse purchases'. the actual costs of this category for 2016 were well over 5000 euro. That's almost two months of 'full-time' work .... wow! that got me quiet right there...
**** the fact that i can easily retrieve such data, and look at them without flinching or occupational apneu is all owing to Bari Tessler's wonderful year-long Art of Money program, which P. and i are gratefully following for the second time this year.
***** no, the irony has not escaped me. what can i say? the human condition is a complex thing.
well, that seemed like a pretty awful new year's resolution, so i tried to explain...
'i mean fewer fun things that still end up costing time, energy and money, and for which i don't actually have time, energy or money, but of which i hope they will dispel my persistent feeling that i don't have enough time, energy and money for the fun things in my life.'
it sounded like an interesting flippant thing to say, but the more i thought about it, the bigger it grew. until this morning when i finally understood how HUGE it actually is.
for those of you who don't know me, i work as a freelancer. which means that every single day i receive e-mails from people offering me assignments, and every single day i have to decide how many of these assignments i take on.
now, don't these sound like absolutely bloody fantastic working conditions? that's because they are! (and i won't even brag about the fringe benefits, such as the fact that i do most of my work lounging on my bed in my pyjamas, and get to stop often for naps, snacks and cuddles, not to mention forest walks...) (seriously, don't know of a single company that offers their employees such a good deal)
and yet... over the past seven years (which is how long i've had this business), i managed to give myself one full and three mini burn-outs.
HOW?
you may well ask... it stumped me too... for a long long time... i could sense the iceberg of it, but couldn't see it for the life of me...
until...
until the HUGE insight hidden in my flippancy to my friend revealed itself as a detailed map of the devilish circle i'd been dancing in.
this vicious circle looks like this (yes, you get to see more of my lovely scribbles...)
it begins with a (subconscious) decision to overwork. Now, by overworking i don't mean working a sixty-hour week, or at 3 am, or on Sunday afternoon. luckily i am saved from such lethal practices by motherhood and husbandry. no, overwork in my case is more subtle. it basically consists in taking on more work than i strictly speaking need and/or is good for me.
having pondered this for some time, i reached the conclusion that my overworking is always driven by a subtle form of greed (as in 'i could use just a little bit more cash today/this week/this month') and a subtle form of fear (as in 'there may be enough for us all today, but what if the source dries up tomorrow? i have to make sure we have enough for tomorrow (and the day after, and the day after, and the day after...)').
this overworking of mine always (always, ALWAYS) leads to stage two of the circle, which is overwhelm. Although the experience varies greatly in intensity, its quality is quite consistent: this is the feeling that there is no room (no time, no energy) in my life for me. if i dig a little deeper, it invariably turns into 'i cannot feel my body' and/or 'i cannot hear my inner voice'. it's a dry, uninspired, grey, busy, tense, time-obsessed, empty place.
to escape from the misery of overwhelm, i use a strategy that seems promising, and happens to be advertised all over my Facebook feed, which is overspending. this brings us back to my conversation with my friend, because my specific overspending habit consists of splurging money on lovely profound, in-depth, high-value and amazing retreats, workshops, and online courses, paying wise, lovely, profound, amazing, in-depth people to help me reconnect with my body and hear my inner voice again.
every time i do this, however, the price tag on my life goes up. After all, this soul work (the therapy sessions, the retreats, the workshops, the yoga classes, the online courses) is so essential to my life, and really when you think about it, you might say it's the most essential thing of all: that which makes it possible for me to feel my body and hear my inner voice.... Wow! Clearly, this has to be included in our family budget. In fact, put like that, it should be right up there with food and water as far as our family priorities are concerned.
but hey, that's not a problem. i'm lucky. i'm a freelancer. i get to decide how much i work. i will just add a few hours to my working week, and i'll be able to afford this therapy, retreat, workshop or course every single year (trimester, month, week...) and bob's your uncle.
phew... saved by the bell...
hmph.....
did i mention that this is HUGE???!!!???
because... i could also... let's see.... well, maybe not immediately take on that one extra work assignment, but instead go spend an hour in the forest, leaning with my back against an old old tree, sitting with my fear, sitting with my greed, sitting with the general discomfort arising from both. there, in the quiet, i might, no, i know i would, i will, feel my body, and hear my inner wisdom (for free and without the help of a wise, amazing workshop facilitator), and my body and inner wisdom will sit with me and my greed and fear until the greed and the fear abate. then i would know, because i would, i will know, and hear, that maybe i don't need the cash from the extra work assignment (because there is enough, because the source has always been plentiful), so i wouldn't take it. as a result of which, i guess, maybe, i would have more time, to spend in the forest...
like this:
how about that...
* far from me any intention of crapping on amazing workshops, therapies, retreats and online courses, but i have been wondering for some time, in a quietly-nagging-at-the-back-of-my-mind kind of way, how it is possible that we all seem to need all of this therapy, yoga, retreating and workshopping so badly, so badly... like water and bread... how did our mothers, grand-mothers, great-grand-mothers and all previous generations survive without all this stuff... how did they do spirituality, well-being, inspiration, body, inner wisdom? How did they dance? because they did, didn't they, they sure did, they left novels, paintings, poems, recipes, and dance steps, and the blood running hot in my veins, and the tilt of my hip, they left evidence in my kisses, in my children's dreamy eyes, that they too, they knew, about inner hearing, about wisdom, about the body...
** you know where they went, don't you, for wisdom, for inspiration, for the body, and the dance... to the forest, to the sea, to church, to synagogue, in the early morning, to public libraries, museums and art galleries, to their garden, to their kitchen, to their women, their men, their children... and all of it unmediated and for free...
*** in the interest of science and credibility, i did some data research. in 2004, the year i first started therapy, our family budget for the first time featured a fixed cost category 'V mental health and well-being' of 420 euro in additional healthcare costs to cover bi-monthly therapy sessions. it has grown every year since. and not a bit either. the projected budget for this category in 2017, a financial year officially labelled by P. and me as 'lean', amounts to 3860 euro. talk about inflation! and this is a projected budget, which means that it does not include any 'impulse purchases'. the actual costs of this category for 2016 were well over 5000 euro. That's almost two months of 'full-time' work .... wow! that got me quiet right there...
**** the fact that i can easily retrieve such data, and look at them without flinching or occupational apneu is all owing to Bari Tessler's wonderful year-long Art of Money program, which P. and i are gratefully following for the second time this year.
***** no, the irony has not escaped me. what can i say? the human condition is a complex thing.
Sunday, 19 February 2017
footnote and reference
how do you write a footnote to a blog post?
a few hours after publishing the 'February' post, i received a book in the mail. i want to say this was a magical intervention, because i've ordered this book four times since late October, and four times it failed to arrive, and then it did (arrive), with perfect halleluja timing...
here is an excerpt from page 9:
"This is uncharted territory. It's dark, moist, bloody, and lonely. I see no allies, no comfort, no signs out. I feel scraped open and raw. I look for the dismembered parts of myself - something recognizable - but there are only fragments, and I don't know how to put them together. This is unlike any struggle I've had before. It's not the conquest of the other, it's coming face to face with myself. I walk naked looking for the Mother. Looking to reclaim the parts of myself that have not seen the light of day. They must be here in the darkness. They wait for me to find them because they no longer trust. I have disowned them before. They are my treasures but I have to dig for them. This journey is not about some fairy god-mother showing me the way out. I dig... for patience, for the courage to endure the dark, for the perseverance not to rise to the light prematurely, cutting short my meeting with the Mother."
That.
Reading it i realised this is not just the best description of February ever . It's where i am, have been, still am, will remain for a while. At least two years now, of moving down, down, down, deeper into the darkness. and although i am tired, and bruised, and lonely, it's too soon, too soon to rise towards air and light.
so i dig... here too, in these virtual pages, in your deeply reassuring presence, i dig. for patience, for courage, for perseverance.
a few hours after publishing the 'February' post, i received a book in the mail. i want to say this was a magical intervention, because i've ordered this book four times since late October, and four times it failed to arrive, and then it did (arrive), with perfect halleluja timing...
here is an excerpt from page 9:
"This is uncharted territory. It's dark, moist, bloody, and lonely. I see no allies, no comfort, no signs out. I feel scraped open and raw. I look for the dismembered parts of myself - something recognizable - but there are only fragments, and I don't know how to put them together. This is unlike any struggle I've had before. It's not the conquest of the other, it's coming face to face with myself. I walk naked looking for the Mother. Looking to reclaim the parts of myself that have not seen the light of day. They must be here in the darkness. They wait for me to find them because they no longer trust. I have disowned them before. They are my treasures but I have to dig for them. This journey is not about some fairy god-mother showing me the way out. I dig... for patience, for the courage to endure the dark, for the perseverance not to rise to the light prematurely, cutting short my meeting with the Mother."
That.
Reading it i realised this is not just the best description of February ever . It's where i am, have been, still am, will remain for a while. At least two years now, of moving down, down, down, deeper into the darkness. and although i am tired, and bruised, and lonely, it's too soon, too soon to rise towards air and light.
so i dig... here too, in these virtual pages, in your deeply reassuring presence, i dig. for patience, for courage, for perseverance.
Friday, 17 February 2017
up close and personal
i have a confession to make: try as i may i just can't seem to figure out a way to enjoy February.
and now we are on the subject, one of the things i really (REALLY) don't enjoy about February is how it sticks in my face my inability to enjoy things i don't enjoy.
hmmm....
seriously, i have done everything i could: i've read all the right chirpy sounding books that tell me exactly what to do to be happy, i've applied all the ancient Eastern techniques (both gloomy and chirpy) to find and securely attach myself to the bliss of the present moment, i've tried to sink my teeth into my kids' necks and draw from their young blood all the joy of life so sadly lacking from my old brittle bones, i've tried gratitude journalling, standing on my head, eating less sugar, eating more sugar, exercise, fresh air, taking on less things, taking on more things, listening to inspiring people, dancing, artistic endeavours, a media fast, and a media feast... oh, and of course sleeping right through the whole thing (see earlier posts).
i stopped short of recreational and other drugs (unless you count a few weeks of daily paracetamol to reduce the effects of dental surgery (old and brittle my teeth are too...)), but only because a) i am too chicken and b) i am too chicken.
but no... i still hate February. Or rather, i hate myself, my children, my husband, my work, my friends, my house, my city, my century, and life in general... and it just happens to be February?
Nah.... long, long (old and brittle i am...) experience tells me that this too shall pass, right around mid-March.
here is something: i told you that i go to the forest nearly every day, right? and how amazing it is, to see the forest, and hear it, every day anew. what an incredible, time-dissolving experience it is, and the magical encounters i have with the forest creatures, and how just being there, immersing myself in this living flow day after day after day heals me to the core of my being, and makes my soul sing.
right?
well, this morning i sat on the forest floor, leaning against the usual tree, under a vague drizzle of a rain, ruminating for what could easily have been half a century on some dark train of thought, when i became distracted by a terrible racket. seven or eight tits had flown in out of nowhere and settled in a bush right next to me. believe it or not, those bloody birds just sat there chirping like there was no tomorrow, being so f...ing noisy... Unbelievable! i tried to concentrate on what i was doing (which was?...), but there was no way i could, not with that racket, they were making so much noise, i swear, i could feel white hot rage rising in my throat... in the end i just stood up, and shooed the little bastards away.
seriously, stupid birds, can't they leave me alone???!!! like ever???!!! can't the world ever ever just leave me alone for a f....ing minute???!!!!!
there. that's February. discontent, rage, despair, hopelessness, lack of meaning and purpose, feeling lost, martyrdom, sadness, more sadness. February.
and it stubbornly (stubbornly) refuses to get fixed.
a wise woman came to visit this morning. i was annoyed with her because of how inconsiderate she was, dropping by like that when the baby has such a cold, and the teenager is still sick, and none of us got any sleep at all all night, and i have so much to do, and....
(i was the one to invite her) (i was so glad she came)
she said there is no need to fix February. or me.
she said (or rather i heard her say) (so maybe she did...): maybe this is always there, underneath things, and it's only in February that you get to be with it.
only in February, only after the very last leaf, and even the snow, has come and gone, only then, just then, can you feel and see what you spend the rest of the year trying to cover up.
only in February do i get to sing over these bones.
hmmmm.....
let's just say it's not a chirpy song.
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