So so so...

You have to laugh right?  I go to Italy to become all cleansed and pure and I find myself mired in shit. Again.

I should have known.  Everything moves in cycles and I had been feeling buoyant for quite some time. Buoyant despite the disasters surrounding me on a material level.  Buoyant yet…maybe a little negligent of my spiritual thingy.

And when that happens, something always tends to come along and stir things up.  As someone once said: ‘Alchemy makes a mess of the kitchen. It’s embarrassing.’  Damn right.

So I find myself, in this smart spa, in a beautiful part of Italy, just empty, totally blank. And cold. And, above all, lonely. So lonely. And, you know me, I don’t do lonely.  I usually relish being on my own, having my own time to think and meditate and be.  Not here. Not now. I can’t meditate. I can’t ground myself.  So, at first, I just keep busy.  I walk; I do all the classes, the qigong and wotnot; I listen to the lectures and take notes; I dowse myself in water and dry myself with heat.  But then, because avoidance clearly isn’t on the cards, I manage to injure my knee – doing qigong. Doing qigong???  For feck’s sake, nobody injures themselves doing qigong.

life-number-9.deviantart.com

So I can’t walk, can’t exercise.  And so I feel sorry for myself.  ‘Are you okay?’ someone asks and I say, petulantly. ‘Not really.’ But she doesn’t rise to it.  In fact I try the trick on several people. What am I hoping for? That one of them, any of them will say, ‘Oh poor you. You poor love.  Come cry on my shoulder. Come sit and tell me all about it.’?  Yeah, I guess so really.  But nobody did, and thank feck for that.  For, really, nobody can save you.  And where’s the point in pity?  I’m responsible for how I feel; nobody else. And this is just another part of the process.

So I go to my room and cry.  Sob for hours. And then, when I’m all cried out, I basically hide away and rot for a few days. Feeling worthless. Feeling old and wrecked and dried up and hopeless.  And then I cry again.  And I start to recognize where I am. Fermentation. ‘The dark night of the soul’. Again.  Because that’s what we do – we go through the same cycles over and over again, every time (hopefully) getting just a little more sussed.

I guess you think, oh for pity’s sake, you spoiled bitch. You’re staying free in this posh spa and you’re…fed up?  But, really, we all know (truthfully) that it’s not where you are or what you have that matters but how you feel.

And, to prove the point, I came back home and it was…pretty much the same really.  Just colder. J

'There will be no miracles here'

And so I hear you say, well, why on earth not just watch TV or read a trashy book or get blind drunk?  But those old distractions don’t work any more. And what is more unsettling is that the new distractions don’t work either. I used to escape into the inner world, losing myself down astral pathways, journeying into strange states of unbeing. Yet if I try now – the doorways are firmly shut in my face.

It’s classic stuff – I’m nothing special. Just feeling like another human alien.  Or alien human.  Or whatever. 

Anyhow, life just goes on, the way it does. The tide will turn again, the wheel will rise once more.  Presumably. And, in the meantime, I just...breathe. 

I wrote this a while back but haven’t posted it before because it’s not a call for sympathy. I’m fine, really. It’s not depression either. It’s just…something to work through. Writing things down, putting it in black and white, somehow is useful.  And, who knows, maybe in some funny way this might be useful to someone else. So… 

I don't have a clue, I really don't...(Part 7,562)

Gorey understands... 

There are some days when I really truly don’t have a clue. I seriously wonder what on earth I’m doing.  I look in the mirror and wince.  I think about the rest of my life and wonder…why?  Why?  It’s not depression.  At least I don’t think so.  It’s simply a total complete lack of comprehension.  Nothing makes any sense. 

In Greece I had reached a sort of peace.  Before that, I’d tried pushing; tried again and again to make things happen; to prod and poke the universe into some semblance of (what seemed to me to be) order. It hadn’t worked. Just left me exhausted and sad at my failure.  I couldn’t figure out what it was all about.  But in Greece, watching the waves, I kinda got the Zen thing. I was content just to let go, to allow what would be to be. To let life unfold whichever way it so wished.  I decided that there were no choices to be made.  And that was fine.

Yet some days it isn’t fine.  I guess it’s allowable to have bad days.  I just freaking wish I didn’t think so much. Wish I didn't feel so much. 

‘I don’t get it,’ says Adrian frequently.  Not now, exactly (sort of), because he’s not here (he’s in a five star hotel in St Petersburg with a butler…actually this does make me smile). ‘I mean, why d’you think about these things?’ he has said, frequently (and doubtless will say again).   And, come to think of it, given I wrote this some time back but didn't post it until now (?), he isn’t even there now – he’s on his way to Norwich.  Possibly.  Depending on when you read this, of course.

But that’s it, isn’t it?  What?  Where? When?  As everything we think of as real is just energy converted into signals converted into a mental representation of experience?  As time is purely created in the temporal lobe of the brain and is not really objective in any way, shape or…time?  As infinity is about everything happening all at once?  And love?  Simply a response created in the mind by chemical reactions in the brain?  Based on what?  What do we mean by love?  Is it simply a crutch?  A panacea? A story we tell ourselves?

Adrian’s right of course.  Thinking, puzzling, probing…just makes us unhappy. 

‘Why do you put yourself through it?’ he says. 

‘Don’t you ever think about this stuff?’ I say. In wonderment.

‘Nope,’ he says.

I need a head transplant.

Anyhow. Today I walked the dogs up to the hill fort.  And for a few minutes the sun was shining and the world looked very beautiful.  I sat down on a log and drank in green.  And I believed in the moment, in just being, in being conscious, present, connected, in this precise second.  And thought, why wait until I get home to meditate – why not do it here and now?  So I did.  Breathing in green.  Trying not to think about how the world is really colourless and odourless and tasteless.  And it was fine.  Just fine.

And then Asbo bit me.  J

Conversations with God as a teabag

‘Only he who knows the destination knows the way,’ the teabag told me solemnly.  

Okay, don’t look at me funny. You know I have this ‘thing’ about oracles?  Well, my iPod is now full and, while it still constantly surprises me with the relevance of its random choices, I felt the need for a new source.  All hail the teabag oracle.  I’ve developed a taste (okay an addiction) for Yogi Tea’s liquorice and mint tea.  Don’t go ‘eeeugh’ if you haven’t tried it. I know it sounds strange but it’s the perfect combination of warmth and cold, total contrast in a mug. 

Anyhow, Yogi teabags have little quotes attached to them – but you don't know what you're getting until you break open the bag (much like most things in life).  Anyhow, I rather liked the destination message because, well, it makes sense right?  If you don’t know where you’re going, how the heck are you going to end up in the right place? You just wander around in aimless circles. Lost. Except, hmm, I quite like lost. But where has it got me? See, I think I need a bit more focus. Just a bit. Maybe.

And then, later on, when I cracked open another I got:

As long as there is a doubt, you cannot find the way.

Hmm.  I’ve recently read the Conversations with God series of books by Neale Donald Walsch.  I inherited them from my mother who loved them.  But I always crinkled my nose and sneered  – cos I've always been a bit sceptical about channelled stuff on the whole.  But my quasi-guru talked about them in his books so I figured I’d just poke my nose into the first one…cautiously.  And, you know what?  Gobbled it up from start to finish, nodding pretty much all of the way through.  Well I never…Who’d a thought?

And what does it say, in a nutshell?

‘The Laws are very simple.

1.       Thought is creative.

2.       Fear attracts like energy.

3.       Love is all there is.

Love is the ultimate reality.  It is the only. The all. The feeling of love is your experience of God.’

And yes. I do believe all three of those. 

And then it started talking about oracles. Okay, it didn’t use the exact word but still…

‘Watch. Listen. The words to the next song you hear. The information in the next article you read. The story line of the next movie you watch. The chance utterance of the next person you meet. Or the whisper of the next river, the next ocean, the next breeze that caresses your ear…’

Or the conversation of the next cup of tea you drink.  God is a teabag?  Well, of course. *smile* 

And recently I’ve been thinking a lot about the next chapter of my life, pondering directions, musing on destinations, looking for The Way.  And things are starting to become a little clearer.  Maybe. 

It’s a dance, it really is.  The mind alone won’t do it.  You need to be totally congruent at the deepest level in order to manifest change.  Like God the teabag says, ‘As long as there is a doubt, you cannot find the way.’ And those doubts might be subconscious.  Tricksy huh? 

To be continued… 

Middle-aged lust (a sad thing)

It’s wrong. I know it’s wrong. I really should not fall passionately in love with a 20-something. But seriously, I’d challenge you not to – because he is absolutely totally drop-dead gorgeous. Tall, lean, longish blond hair – looks like a younger version of Sawyer from Lost. Same storm-grey eyes and sardonic smile. He rides a Norton Commando and can play the fiddle better than the devil. He’s a bit moody, bit of a bad boy (never shies from a fight) and goes off in a right strop sometimes. Oh, and when he strips off to go surfing, he shows off a killer six-pack.
I tell you, my thought processes are criminal.

Okay, fear not, he’s not real. I’m not going to dump the Beer God and ride off into the sunset, wrapping my arms round his waist (did I mention the leather jacket?) and clinging tight as tight can be to his muscled thighs as we career round the bends. Phew, sorry, went into a reverie there.

Nope, he’s a character in my WIP, a YA Dark Romance. His name is Samael and he, um, happens to be a demon. Well, hey, every guy has to have a downside.

Then there’s Zeke and he’s pretty damn cute too. He’s nineteen, skin the colour of a good strong cup of tea, hair in dreads, tattoos up his arms. I am so envious of my MC, I could murder her. But seems other people have already got that in hand.

I love, love, love writing this book. I put on Seth Lakeman’s Kitty Jay (which is my muse of a soundtrack) and light up an Aromatherapy Associations Relax candle (which is my muse of a scent) and write and write and write. Actually, I’m now seriously worried – I’ve just heard that the Relax candle is discontinued and so I’m reduced to sniffing the little bit left at the end.

But this falling in lust with your characters...is it normal? Is it okay? Or is it some kind of weird adultery? Some variant of cyber-salaciousness? Or, let’s be brutally honest, more than a little sad for a woman old enough to be his mother?

If you’d like to read the first few (very rough and unedited) chapters of the book, click here

Oh, and (huge excitement) this little blog has been shortlisted for the Author Blog Awards. It’s up against the might of some HUGE name authors so I’m feeling a little David v Goliath right now. If you fancy casting a vote for the small guy (girl), I’d be well chuffed. Click here