A partial hand massage and a shared dressing gown

So Adrian won an award from the Czech Tourist Board, in thanks for his tireless and perfectly selfless tasting and promoting of Czech lager (well, that’s the way I see it).  ‘It’s a three night stay for two people,’ he said. ‘I thought it would be good to show you Prague.’

‘Hmm,’ I said. I had a fair idea of what “showing me Prague” would entail  - I could probably recite a list of all the apparently incredible bars along with their signature beers in my sleep.

‘No,’ he said, all hurt. ‘I wouldn’t just drag you round bars. I could show you…’ He paused. ‘Umm…the river!  I could show you the river.  And the castle. And there’s a great bridge.’  Hmm. But I’ve got a river and a bridge here…and a hillfort. But then again, everyone says Prague is lovely so...

Anyhow.  A few weeks later he appeared at my office door with a piece of paper and a puzzled look on his face.

‘What’s that?’  Suspecting a bill or a court summons.

‘Er, it’s confirmation of our trip.’  He did look very odd indeed. Perfectly perplexed.

‘Is everything alright?’

‘Er, yes.  It’s just…we’re not staying in Prague.  They’ve booked us into this place in Podebrady.  It’s…a spa hotel.’

Kerching!  I suppressed the little victory dance that was playing out in my head and snatched the letter.  And laughed my tits off.  Not only were they sending us to a spa, they were sending us for a ‘Wine Relaxation Stay’.  Given Adrian writes about beer and generally turns his exceedingly sensitive nose up at wine, there was a blissful irony to it.

I read on. 

Not only do we get a “welcome drink of 2dcl of delicious wine with you first dinner” (sic), we also get “grapes in the room on arrival.”  Followed by “1 x relaxation wine bath with wrap, 1 x classic partial Hand massage with grape oil, 1 x HydroJet (massage water bed)” (sic).  By now I was wheezing with amusement.

‘A partial hand massage?' I said. 'What the hell’s that?  Are they only going to massage part of our hands?’

‘Sounds like…’

‘No. Don’t go there.’

‘Fair enough.  I’m not having a wine bath though.  And I’m not too sure about the massage either.’

‘That's okay. I’ll have yours.  You can go out and find bars.’

His face brightened.

And then it dawned on me. This will be the first time I have ever been to a spa with someone. Ever.  I always go alone.  And then I thought again.  And breathed a deep sigh of relief that there’s no detoxing involved. 

“We wish you a nice stay and a lot of unforgettable memories!” trilled the letter, before adding: “A dressing gown is available during the stay.”

So, there you have it.  Adrian and I flying off to the Czech Republic tomorrow for a regime of wine and bathing.  A partial hand massage. And a shared dressing gown. Bottoms up! 

What I'd do come the Zombie Apocalypse...maybe

So. Where was I?  Ah yes, Caz’s questions.  These were they:

“Who are you?

What are your values?

Where do you want to be in the growth of your being?

Where or who do you want to be in five years time?”

And then she added:  “Short and honest answers only.”

And I sat and stared at the screen for a long, long time.  And then I slowly typed:

“I don’t know.

I don’t know.

I don’t know.

I don’t know.”

Which was certainly short and, to be honest, very honest. But those questions stayed with me, and are still with me.  A few years ago, I would have answered them very differently. I would have said that my values were these: to be honest, to be kind, to be brave.

But, you know, the more I live, the more I feel there is always another side. If you are always honest, you might not be kind, for example. And if you are always kind, is that always the best thing for people? I mean, I have learned the most from the people who have been (ostensibly) very unkind. And brave? Surely that’s always good?  Well, not necessarily. Sometimes one’s bravery could hurt others.  It’s not so simple.

Five years ago I would have said that in five years’ time I would like to be a best-selling fiction author, travelling the world for the price of the odd talk or book signing.  Now? 

Who am I?  What is this thing people call Jane Alexander?  Am I my body?  My mind? My emotions? My elusive ‘soul’?  All? Or none? So I meditated on it (while rowing at the gym as it happens) and went further and further inwards and arrived at…a tiny glowing spark, a shimmer – one tiny oh so tiny part of creation. 

And I felt that was cool. But then, really, if I am at root, just one of gazillions of sparky little sparks, where is the need for this ‘growth of my being’?  I am.  I just am. Not particularly good (I mistyped god there – made me smile), not particularly bad.  But really, once again, I found myself wondering (wandering) ‘What is the point?’

And then I got off the rower and switched to the bike and, because I thought I’d pull myself back to the here and now (cos I really had gone off a long, long, long way while moving backwards and forwards and going nowhere) I opened a book and read the story of a wise Indian king who once dreamed that his people were going to be poisoned by evil rain which would drive them crazy.  He tried to warn the people but they didn’t listen. So, when the rain came, everyone drank and everyone went crazy.

What did the king do?  Well, he drank the water and went crazy too.  

You have to wonder about that story.  He knew what would happen but he still drank. Was he empathetic? Did he dread separation from his people?  Was he cowardly? Did he fear being alone amongst mad people (I've often thought, when people talk about the zombie apocalypse thing that I'd probably just run out and go 'Oh just bite me, for pity's sake, and let's get it over and done with')?  Or did he realize that his "wisdom" was one-sided and that he needed to go back to ordinary, mad, crazy, everyday life (the same life everyone lives) in order to become enlightened there too? 

www.jimbenton.com 

It’s easy to step aside from the world; to watch the ‘crazy’ people on their hamster wheels being busy and striving to achieve, to win, to make money, to gain prestige.  It’s much harder, I figure, to dance through the everyday madness. Or stumble, with bits dropping off here and there, if we follow the zombie line.

It may be tempting to leave your body, to leave your mind, to leave the planet – because although the world is very beautiful, it can equally be very depressing – but maybe that’s a cop-out.  Maybe enlightenment is insanity? 

  

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.