Moscow Drug Club

‘You need to get out more,’ said Caz.

‘I’m fine.’

‘Sure. But you’re living in your weird fantasy world. It’s not real. You need to see people, do things. You know…in the real world.’

‘What’s real?’

‘Oh for God’s sake.’

‘It’s just distraction.’

‘Then be distracted.’

And I thought, fair enough. Why not? So I went to the pub.  So I went to see Cloud Atlas (at the local cinema where the audience totalled about ten, which is just fine and dandy as far as I’m concerned).  So I went out for lunch. So I stayed in for lunch with an old friend. And I was…yes…distracted. A bit. 

And then I wandered down to the village hall to see Moscow Drug Club, cos Caz had insisted I had to go. And it was…nice.  I bought a bottle of wine cos Caz had said a couple of her friends were going to share a table with us.  But none of them was drinking red so I quietly glugged it myself.  And I ate too - seriously good roast vegetable lasagne and salad followed by lemon tart.

And they played a bit of Tom Waits, a bit of Jacques Brel, a bit of this, a bit of that. They were a good troupe. I pricked up my ears when they announced Leonard Cohen’s Dance Me to the End of Love - a song I love - but they sort of wrecked that, as far as my ears felt. But generally, it was…fine. Nice.

And afterwards I helped Caz hump tables around and she came back for a cup of herbal tea and we sat by the fire and talked a bit. 

And the next day I got an email from her.  And she said: 'It was lovely to see you out enjoying the frivolities of socialising with your community. People were so pleased to see you.'  At which I gave the screen a quizzical look. 

And then she asked me four questions…

Something had to change...

Anyhow. Back in the ‘real’ world I realized something had to change. As in…me.  I had become a bit lardy over the winter, piled on a few pounds…oh, okay, let’s be frank, a stonking ten pounds.  And I didn’t like it. I didn’t like the way I looked and I didn’t like the way I felt.  But hey, it happens.  We backslide from time to time, right?  And it doesn’t mean you just give up and let it all slide back to where it was – you just…regroup.

And when it comes to bodies, they’re clever buggers.  They will adjust to pretty well any regime.  So you have to be a bit sneaky, change it round a bit, confuse those muscles and all that.

Hence. I have rejigged my exercise programme.  I’m still doing my kettlebells (by the river, in the church) cos I love ‘em and it’s a feelgood class where we have a lot of laughs.  And I’m still doing my two-hour Zumba and Step class, when I can. But I’ve now added in a workout blast pretty much each morning at the gym.

I know, I know – I can hear you saying that you could never do that cos it’s too time-consuming, or you don’t have a gym near you or whatever…but…but.  My workout takes about half an hour and, tbh, you could just as easily do it at home.  I’ve been playing with HIIT (High Intensity Interval Training) where you go like crazy (ie you sprint or crank up the bike to the max or go hell for leather on the stepper or rower) for short bursts of time interspersed with recovery periods where you sink back to ‘normal’ levels.  To begin with you only need to do bursts of around eleven seconds – so, honest guv, it’s doable.  If you weren’t using a gym you could get the same effect with running or power walking; or by running up and down the stairs. In fact, if you Google HIIT you will find all kinds of suggestions for circuits and running/stepping schedules - just find one that suits you. 

And then, when it comes to weights, I’ve been trying out Slow lifting – where you do just a very few reps but seriously slowly and incredibly smoothly – so it becomes almost meditation.  In fact, I now do nearly all my workout with my eyes shut – because I find it helps me focus on the part of my body that I’m using – and also, of course, it saves time on meditation (and how I love multi-tasking). 

So. So far, so good. I’m coming to the end of my second week and I’ve shed about five pounds and already my jeans are looser and I can feel my muscles returning to form. 

So how about you?  Did you come through winter with all your intentions intact?  Or do you feel the need for a little regrouping with me?  J

In which prudish Pinterest slaps me on the wrist

So I got an email from Pinterest.

“Hi eJane Alexander,
We removed a pin from your account because it contained nudity. It was originally pinned from the following address: http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_macfecS6W41qjuse9o1_500.jpg.
We don't allow nudity—photos that show breasts, buttocks or genitalia—on Pinterest. This applies to pins on both public and secret boards.
Please remove any other pins you've added that contain nudity. If you don't follow our policies, your account could be suspended.
On behalf of the Pinterest community, we thank you for understanding.
The Pinterest Team”

Ouch. I felt like I’d been called into the headteacher’s office and chastised for, I dunno, smoking behind the bike sheds or locking a teacher in the music cupboard (guilty as charged for the latter; perfectly innocent on the former).

Actually I felt a bit embarrassed as, let’s be frank, some of my pins are in pretty poor taste. Like, er...the puddle people or those poor guys with stomachs that dangle on the floor. Why do they fascinate me so?  I dunno.  I know they shouldn’t but they do. However, when I plucked up courage to look at the offensive image, I found…this…

And, er...this is offensive?  In what way?  What exactly is wrong with nudity? With the human body devoid of clothes? I don’t pin porn (a sentence, come to think of it, that I could not have used until a year or so ago) - and I think this is rather beautiful.  For pity's sake, if you're being picky you can't even see any buttocks or breasts, and any genitalia present are deeply...shadowed.
And, see, what I don’t get is that it’s fine to pin stuff that (IMO) is pretty tasteless and tacky (and some might say offensive) as long as any erogenous zones are clothed.

So... this is fine...

Why? I mean, WHY?

But this isn't...

by Brad Miller...

This is perfectly acceptable...

He looks a bit familiar actually...from Authonomy maybe?

As is this...

I will never EVER complain about my boobs again.

But this, presumably, is not?

Put a furry thong on it for heaven's sake! 

Do you get it?  Cos I don't.  I really don't.  btw, for the sake of your eyes I restrained from posting more extreme examples.  If you want to see the really eye-popping stuff you'll have to do your own research.  

One man, three witches and a hell of a lot of sex, magic and…steak.

Remember my anti-guru?  The guy whose book Symphonic Bridges kickstarted my ‘rejuvenation’ –y’know, the whole weight loss/exercise/meditation/spirituality malarkey?  Well, he’s written another one.  The Cave.  To be fair, he wrote it a while back but, up until now, it was only available in Polish. And now – it’s been translated into English. 

Here’s what I had to say about it…but don't take my word for it - check it out yourself.  

The Cave by Marek Stefanowicz

I’ve been waiting impatiently for The Cave to be translated into English for some considerable time. It’s a novel that’s also a guidebook on how to live consciously. But it’s not remotely dour and worthy – it’s packed with sex and has lashings of humour. So, really, what’s not to like?

Maste has vanished. His wife Margarita (yes, Bulgakov’s The Master and Margarita inevitably comes to mind) begs her friend Natasha to help. Natasha is a psychologist and a fortune-teller but, most importantly of all, she’s a witch. Her sisters, Olga and Irene, also highly intelligent (and beautiful) witches, agree to join Natasha on a wildcap quest across the world (each part of the book is set on a different continent) to find out what happened to the missing ‘madman’. 

It’s an unusual book, quite different from Marek’s previous titles, the semi-autobiographical Symphonic Bridges and the elliptical Pro-vocation (written in ‘real time’ on the website Authonomy). 

The Cave is a Rabelaisian, almost Milesian, romp, using humour to offset the deep spiritual and philosophical deliberations of the novel. Its language veers from the pedantically anal to the rhetorically extravagant (or, as it has been described, ‘grotesquely flamboyant’), playful, humorous and sometimes joyfully crude - as wild as a broomstick ride across the skyline of Manhattan (in lieu of Moscow) by night. It enjoys the same love of language as Symphonic Bridges but is, I suspect, more accessible by dint of its strong characterisation and surprising shifts in location and pace.

What’s it about? Really? Well, everyone sees something different in a book, of course, but to my mind it’s about life, about conscious living, about the stormy search for Self. Each sister undergoes a profound personal journey in the course of the book, changing into…something else? Olga takes the slow ‘baby steps’ route to enlightenment, becoming the Mistress of Breath while Natasha metamorphoses into the miraculous Mistress of Light. But perhaps the most appealing character is the bawdy, hard-living, tough-talking, no-nonsense Irene who scoffs at her sisters’ increasing spirituality and sticks firmly to her regime of whiskey-swigging, fag-smoking, steak-eating and casual sex (with the strict proviso that one night is always enough). She’s an every(wo)man, a modern-day pilgrim navigating the world in black leather and high heels. A head-turning heartbreaker, she is undoubtedly a Mistress of Sex who may eventually become the Mistress of Love. 

Ah, love. Love. It’s the bottom line, of course. And I love (Love) that The Cave makes us ask questions. Who are we? What are our limits? Do we actually have limits? What is consciousness? How far can science or gurus provide us with answers? What is the purpose of life? What is the one question? Is Love the answer? The reason?

Then, just when your head starts spinning (or turning into a pumpkin) there’s another shift and you’re eavesdropping on Friends in New York or sharing a group hug with the cast of Lost, diving into bed with an animagus or getting high with a snorkel in the bath. 

Which (witch?) is just as it should be. For I don’t believe spirituality needs to be po-faced and dour, worthy and hairshirtish. Far from it. The Cave is a total delight, a metaphysical masterpiece. There’s even a cat – called Behemoth of course.

Marek is an extraordinary writer and, as the world latches onto the need for a spirituality grounded in everyday unreality, I strongly suspect his books will become cult classics. 

The Cave is available in paperback or as an ebook for Kindle. Click the links.  

I am water.

So. I got told I was water.  I stuck out my lip and pouted, feeling somewhat offended. Watery? Not terribly exciting, is it? I mean, it’s a bit like being told you’re a pig in the Chinese year thingy – when really you wanna be a dragon or a snake or a tiger or…anything really but just not a solid old pig.  And, well, water is so...wet.  

Water? WATER? I mean, I’m a Capricorn, for heaven’s sake. Well, not so heavenly. Cardinal Earth. Okay, so the Capricorn goat is a sea goat. Okay okay, it’s half a fish. But I can just about handle that.  Believe it or not, I can keep my feet on the ground. Sometimes.  And an astrologer once stared at my chart in amazement and said it was “unusual”.

Apparently I have five planets in Sagittarius.  Which could explain my wanderlust (wonderlust?) I suppose – and the odd impulsive ‘slash and burn’ feelings that rise up from time to time.  But then again, my moon is in Pisces.  And they (the infamous They) often say that one's moon sign is more telling than one’s sun sign.  And Pisces, of course, is very very watery. Downright fishy.

And then, I pondered, in the I Ching, I appear always as Tui, the Lake, the youngest daughter (as indeed I am). And “many strange things can push up from the depth of the lake, whose surface lies so quiet” (Diana ffarington Hook).

Dead Moon I Ching...

And, the more I thought about it, the more I thought it was probably true. This water thingy.  Cos, really, I’m more than fluid.  My ego boundaries are so rubbish, so pathetically permeable, that I can become almost anyone, anything. Like the robots in Terminator – but without the knife-hand things.  I talk to someone and I pick up their intonation, their speech patterns. I read a book and the author’s voice often infects my own writing.  I can nearly always see the other point of view – no matter how strange or odd it might seem. I can put myself into nearly anyone’s shoes and not just walk in them but do a marathon.  I’m rubbish in debates as I can always play devil’s advocate.  And other people are all so certain, so sure, so knowing of who they are and for what they stand and in what they believe. And that makes me feel...if not watery, then at least amorphous.   

Do I really have no shape of my own?  Do I just spread out, filling the container into which I’m placed? Do I exist only to show other people their reflection in my glassy surface? 

Sometimes I feel so very unreal.  J

And you? Which element describes you? Summons you? Truthfully. In(tui)tively. 

Thieves cured my belly button

So, going back to my navel.  It got cured.  Just like that.  By thieves.  Or should I say, Thieves.

No, really.  See, I went to see this wisewoman.  A true witch, a healer, someone quite out of the ordinary, actually.  But that’s another story.  Anyhow, by the by, in passing, I told her about my infected omphalos.  

Actually I showed her.

‘Ooh,’ she said.

‘I know,’ I said. ‘Isn’t it awful?’

‘Well, it’s…not good.’

The Fortune Teller by Georges de la Tour

By this point, I should add, it was really very unpleasant indeed.  Flaming hot, with a bright red rash spreading out all over my stomach. It did cross my mind that it might start eating itself and that I’d just sort of reverse the birth process, imploding into my centre-point until nothing remained. Which would be…disconcerting for those watching.  Spontaneous implosion in slow-motion.  Is that an oxymoron?  Probably.

Anyhow.

‘I’ll  bung some Thieves in it,’ she said.

‘You what?’ I said.

‘Thieves,’ she said. ‘Haven’t you heard of it?’

And she went on to explain that, back in the mists of time, when the Black Death was doing its Grip Reaper act, there were four clever thieves.  They were opportunistic - some might say foolhardily so – as they robbed people dead or dying of the plague.  They keep themselves safe by rubbing their bodies with a secret blend of oils.  All well and good – except one got himself caught and, faced with the choice of swinging for his crimes or giving up the recipe – he spilled the beans.  And Thieves aromatherapy blend became known to the wider, non-thieving world. 

So she poured some in my belly button and I lay there, listening to Lynyrd Skynyrd, as you do when you’re being treated by a witch.  And after a bit, I got up and off I went and that was that.

The next day my navel turned an alarming shade of yellow but it had stopped throbbing and itching and burning. The day after, all the old skin just sloughed off, snake-like, and there it was, all shiny and new.  Serious. Unbelievable.  So now I have a new navel.  A fresh start?  A rebirth? Who the hell knows but it’s clever stuff, that’s all I know (cos I’d been dousing it with all sorts – both natural and unnatural and not a thing had touched it).

You can buy it.  Or you can make your own.  There are various recipes but here’s one. 

Thieves Oil Recipe

200 drops of Clove Oil (Syzgium aromaticum)
175 drops of Lemon Oil (Citrus Limon)
100 drops of Cinnamon Bark (Cinnamomum verum)
75 drops of Eucalyptus Oil (Eucalyptus radiata)
50 drops of Rosemary Oil (Rosmarinus officinalis)

Store in a dark glass container away from heat and sunlight.

Obviously you will need to dilute it before use.  Either use a carrier oil (jojoba is good) or shake it up with water and use to spritz people, places or pets.  How much? Well, as a spray, use one part Thieves to about twenty parts distilled water. Shake well and spray.  It can kill 99% of airborne bacteria apparently. 

25:1 with jojoba for a massage blend.  Or pop five drops into a teaspoon of milk and add to your bath. 

Loki steals Sif's golden hair...

But of course I didn’t leave it there.  I got to thinking about thieves; about robbers. They are outlaws, disruptive forces that break and enter, that slide through our defences.  Is that a bad thing? Sometimes, yes, of course… but not always.  Think about the divine, the mythic, the heroic burglars – Hermes, Krishna, Loki, Eve.  Creativity can be considered theft.  Think about fairy stories, where sometimes you need to steal the treasure. Sometimes you simply have to use guile to gain the prize. It’s almost alchemical – you have to break things down before you can build them back up. And you can apply that to almost anything in life – personal, political, philosophical.  Or am I thinking too much again?  J

  

On undyeing

I decided to undye my hair. I didn’t even know you could do that until I had not lunch with my friend Rachel (font of all hairdressing knowledge) and she told me you can get this stuff that just take out all the fake colour from your hair leaving it…virgin. 

So why did I want to do it? Why now?  Well I’m not entirely sure but maybe it’s because I’ve been looking through old photographs again and I just sort of wondered what the hell colour my hair is now – cos, seriously, it’s been thirty years since I looked.  And when I was very young it was…this colour…  

Well, actually, that looks a bit light. Could be the film. But, if not, wasn't it nice of my parents to design a whole room around my hair? Or maybe they just wanted me to blend in. 

This is a bit more accurate (at least according to my memory which is, as we know, not too good).  Yes, that's my foot (bad habits start young). No, those weren't my glasses.  

Anyhow. I bought a box of stuff called Decolour Remover. Nice, no-nonsense name there.  ‘Safely removes all types of artificial colour pigments’ it said. So there are unsafe types?  ‘Ultra kind,’ it said.  Hmm, does that mean it proffers tissues and pats you on the back when your original hair colour proves to be solid grey?  ‘Precision “non-drip” cream’ it said.  Well, fine. Whatever.

So it sat on my bathroom shelf for…weeks.  Cos, really, I kinda got a bit scared.  And then, one day, I just thought, sod it. It’s only hair. I can always cut it off or dye it if it’s ghastly. 

Except. No instructions and no plastic gloves. Now the gloves weren’t a problem (I have a whole box of surgical gloves – don’t ask) but the instructions were kinda vital.  So I told the guys from Decolour and a nice chap sent me another box, no questions asked.  So now I had two boxes. But hey, I also have a helluva lot of hair.

First up. The “non drip” thing – might be great once it’s on the hair but the bloody stuff wouldn’t come out the bottle.  Second up. It stinks. Really stinks. ‘No ammonia, bleach or peroxide’ it says. So they must have used extract of cat piss instead. 

But hey.  It sort of worked.  Okay, I missed a few bits and the ends are still suspiciously dark but…yeah.

And I was quite pleased.  Except…

‘What have you done to your hair?’ said James.

‘I’ve undyed it,’ I said.

‘Huh?’

‘This is the real me.’

‘I’m not sure I like the real you.’

‘What?’  Cue hurt look.

‘Nah. I mean, I do like the real you. Of course I do. It’s just I hadn’t realized what the real you was.’

‘Huh?’

‘You said your natural hair colour was red.’

‘It is.’

‘Nah. It’s ginger.’

What?  After all these years of teaching my boy to know that racism, sexism, homophobia and so on are all totally risible – and I’ve brought up a gingist?  Holy smoke.

‘It’s okay, Mum. I love you. Even though you’re a ginger.’

‘Unconditional love, huh?’

‘You bet.’

PS. Apologies if you thought this was going to be a post on rejuvenation or immortality. It's all in the e.  :-)