Letting go and giving up

I believe the universe talks to us – we just have to listen.  Sometimes it’s incredibly clear – someone gives you the message you need right here and now; you turn on the radio and the lyrics of a song jump out at you and smack you in the chops.  Sometimes it’s more subtle – signs, symbols, associations.  Okay, I can hear you – is it really the universe or just our subconscious finding links, meaning? Are we filtering out the bits that don’t fit the puzzle and focusing in on the bits that do?  I dunno.  And, really does it matter, anyhow? 

This is the ethos behind medicine walking – that when you go out in the world you watch what wanders across your path. You take notice of the signs, you follow the flirts. 

Lately I’ve felt like I’ve been wading through mud. Whatever I do, nothing seems to make any difference.  I’m just fighting, fighting, wrestling with the world and with myself… shadow boxing.  And my path through the woods echoes that – the Cauldron has been deep in mud lately, hard going.

Once again, I met the dentists this morning – sliding down as I was climbing up.  ‘You always go the hard way,’ they said. Again. 

‘Honestly, it’s easier going up than coming down,’ I said. Again.  And we smiled and passed.

I take my phone with me on my walks with the SP – not because I can use it (no signal) but for taking photographs.  Only today, as I came to the hill-fort and paused to watch sunlight filtering through trees and glancing on the field beyond, it suddenly beeped at me.  How strange.  I checked but no messages – no surprise there as nobody has my number.  But it snagged me so I checked on Twitter and there it was – a message.  A sad message.

‘It never ends.’ 

meanart.deviantart.com 

And I came down along the path through the woods and found someone had built a circle and someone had covered the hut with bracken.  I looked down and I looked up – from earth to sky.  A circle in the woods.  A place of safety in the woods.  And I thought about the weary despair in that tweet.  What never ends? Torment. Anguish. Misery?  And no, it doesn’t – if you let it claim you; if you clasp it close to your heart and dance with it, a tango of obsession.  But if you release it, if you let it go…

It’s interesting, this idea of letting go.  A couple of days ago I was looking for a heart opening meditation on YouTube for a friend. And I found one but figured I’d better try it out myself first and it was pretty amazing – and the words were spookily, scarily accurate – like it had been written just for me.  And, maybe for that reason, I didn’t send it.  Then yesterday I played it again and – I swear to God – the words were different.  There was a whole passage missing.  Weird huh?  But anyway, I stood by the circle and felt my own sense of ‘It never ends’ and did a bit of heart opening and – wham! – back I went again, to Jerusalem and that unconditional Love that sweeps absolutely everything aside.  It’s the One Thing that will sort anything, everything.  That makes everything alright. Truly.

So, after I recovered my equilibrium, we went on, the SP and I, and we chose to go the long way.  And, as we came to the fork in the path, down by the river, there was a piece of red tape fluttering in the breeze, like a crime scene. 

Path Closed

What?  Except, this being Exmoor, someone had pulled it aside.  We went on.  And climbed the steep hill to our bench, to our vantage point and…and… there was no path.  A huge tree had given up and slid down the near-vertical bank towards the river far below. 

Landslide.  Land Sidle.  Lands Lied. Island Led. Sin Ladled. I’ll Sadden.  I’ll shut up now, yeah? 

Turn back?  Hell no. You can let go but don’t give up.  Never give up.  If the path disappears, you find a new one.  If something blocks your path, you find a different way; you go around it.  You don’t fight it; you don’t smash it; you dance it.  The SP danced the lands lied with a flourish, a flamenco of a dance. Mine was more of a wobbly waltz.  And there was a moment where I thought, okay, this is it, I’m going to tumble down like the tree and smash my skull on the rocks and float off down the river, a lumpen log (wearing James’ new coat, for which he would never forgive me).  But no.

We descended and joined the big wide easy path by the river.  And met a couple of exceedingly elderly women walking exceedingly slowly leaning on their sticks.  I said hello and went to move on, then thought I’d better warn them that the path had gone.  ‘Maybe best to take the Middle Path,’ I said.

They looked at once another and then back to me. ‘That’s very sweet of you, dear, but we’ll be alright.  We’ll just take it very slowly and very carefully.’

Messages eh?  What you reckon?  I’m thinking this…take it slowly, take it carefully...

Let go but don’t give up  

No, it's not an oxymoron.  Hmmm...oxymoron eh?  Moon oryx.. Moor onyx... Om or Onyx?  The onyx is a stone of - well, well, letting go; of centring oneself with the Higher Power. How about that then? And the oryx?  I dunno, what comes to my mind is Margaret Atwood's novel, Oryx and Crake.  In which Oryx was a prostitute, a teacher, a lover, a guardian of the animals. 

'It's not even her real name, which he'd never known anyway; it's only a word.  It's a mantra.'

Hmm.  

Limping



The Pact by deZane (http://www.dezane.com/)

Right. Now then. What was I going to say before I was so rudely interrupted by entities? Oh yes. The Journey. The Pact.

Where are we going? Well.... I have a rough idea of the final destination (Okay, let’s be honest here, I’ve been given my coordinates in no uncertain terms and in a very bossy voice) but I’ve set the cosmic SatNav to ‘interesting route’ rather than ‘most direct’. Let’s take that eh? Let’s see what happens and where we go along the way.

What I can tell you is this. There will be music. There will be art. There will be storytelling. There will be magic.

There will be joy and surprises. There may well be sadness and disappointment. Journeys, and life, rarely go exactly the way we plan, the way we desire.

We are gathering together a fine band of...what? Pilgrims? Way too dour. Let's say travelling troubadours, maybe. Some will fall by the wayside of course. Some already have and that is beyond sad. But, hey, we face choices every moment in life: yes? No? Whatever. Ego gets in the way of soul, so many times. I, I, I. Me, me, me.

I (yeah, I know!) was going to talk about other stuff today but me twisted me ankle last night. I know, I know (except of course I don't, really) – it sounds mad but I do feel there are messages in everything so I pay attention to this stuff. Ankles, apparently, are about mobility and direction. The affirmation to counter  this affliction is, apparently, ‘I move forward easily in life'. Ease? That would be good. Why does everything have to be so damn hard?  Maybe because we learn through the tough parts?  The swamplands of the soul.

Anyhow. So many ideas flying through my head right now. So much I want to show you; so much I want to ask you all. But, for now, I’m limping. So hey, today I was going to invite you to come plunging willingly down rabbit holes, landing with a bump in the gutter and bouncing up to the stars. Instead, how’s about you join me and the SP, as we go (slowly, carefully) on our morning walk?

Up into the woods...green on green with pinpoints of campion and bluebells and wild garlic.  Bracken unfurling, giving up secrets. May bursting out crazy like it couldn't give a toss.  No music in my ears for once, just birdsong - guttural croak of pheasant; pure poignancy of blackbird.  More honest sounds maybe.

We stop at my thinking spot, so high now, and look down at the river far below.  You can barely hear the babble/Babel from here.  I scribble furiously in my notebook.  Breathe. Scribble. Breathe.

Going uphill is alright but coming down is hard, so hard.  The SP watches me; he looks worried, my little dog angel.  'S'okay,' I tell him. 'I'll take it easy. Sometimes you have to take it one step at a time.'  Place each foot carefully; pick the path cautiously. 

 And we get down just fine.  And we walk through town, where everyone smiles and says 'hello' and yet I don't feel at home (but that's another post).  And come in and make coffee and a CD pokes its nose out, without a cover, begging to be played. Dido - Life for Rent.  Well, well.  I haven't listened to this for years.  So I do. 

 

And then I start thinking more about this limping thing.  And remember the wondrous Dr House (Hugh Laurie), the arch limper.  And so, let's leave this post with the good physician.

 

Dr. House: Nothing matters. We're all just cockroaches, wildebeests dying on the river bank. Nothing we do has any lasting meaning.

Evan Greer: And you think I'm miserable?
Dr. House: If you're unhappy on the plane, jump out of it.
Evan Greer: I want to, but I can't.
Dr. House: That's the problem with metaphors. They need interpretation. Jumping out of the plane is stupid.
Evan Greer: But what if I'm not in a plane? What if I'm just in a place I don't want to be?
Dr. House: That's the other problem with metaphors. Yes, what if you're actually in an ice cream truck, and outside are candy and flowers and virgins? You're on a plane! We're all on planes. Life is dangerous and complicated, and it's a long way down.

Ain't it just?  :)

We have a pit (literally and metaphorically)

They say that your house is a metaphor for your life. At present the Bonkers House has a very large hole. A yawning pit in fact. This bothers me. Mainly, it must be said, because it’s only a matter of time before someone falls into it, but also because my rather fecund imagination is worrying (terrier style) at the metaphor bit.
What does the pit signify? What am I lacking, what is the gaping hole of my psyche? The pit of despond? Maybe it’s more like a grave? The graveyard of my hopes and ambitions? Or a black hole... The black hole of school fees and, indeed, the paying for all this pit-digging?

Oh for pity’s sake, Jane, get a grip.

Actually, turning it around in a revoltingly positive Louise Hay sort of way, the pit is really the solution. There is something rotten in the House of Bonkers, you see – as in literally rotten, as in smelling distinctly bad (not quite as foul as the stench of fox poo on wet dog, but getting up there). Drains. Not to mention Damp.

We have tried, for the last three years, to pretend it simply isn’t there; to forget we have a front door and a bottom level of the house (home of the Haunted Cellar, the Loo of Doom and the Ludicrously Grand Staircase). If someone does venture to the front entrance, we huff and puff and moan before stomping down the stairs and heaving open the door, accompanied by impressively gothic creaking and groaning (from the door, not me). But the mould has also been bothering me. I watch enough House (as in Hugh Laurie playing grumpy US doctor and - worryingly - being incredibly fanciable) to know that mould can cause any number of seriously weird medical conditions. I am now quite convinced that the mould is to blame for Adrian’s hayfever, James’ cough and my being fat and not getting a book contract. So, long story short, we called in the builders to Fix It – hence the hole.

Thus it is back to making tea and sticking earplugs in so I can’t hear Asbo throwing himself against the window in blind fury at the trespass. It’s back to piles of ‘stuff’ everywhere. It’s back to drills going off the moment the phone rings and I need to have a reasonably professional discussion with someone.

And, of course, it would be this week that I get not one but two bouquets of flowers. Absolutely stunningly gorgeous but (wails quietly) nobody will see them apart from me (Adrian doesn’t count – he simply doesn’t see flowers).  So I will (in my best therapy speak) share them with you.  Now then, interesting this, one was from Paula Pryke and the other was from good old Interflora. Wonder if you can tell which is which?

let's call this one bouquet A (so original)

and let's call this one Bouquet B (because to call it anything else would be simply way too random)