Resuming Normal Service.

I said the blessings bestowed by the Angel in the Shoe Shop might be short-lived, didn’t I? Well, Dame Fortune came a-calling again today and demonstrated her ever-capricious nature by replacing her smile with a deep scowl which might have long term consequences.

Back down the rabbit hole.

Hello darkness, my old friend. (Copyright infringement intended.)

And the dream I had last night didn’t help. A very precious person gave me an affectionate hug while nobody was looking, by way of saying goodbye.

*  *  *

One of those self-styled YouTube gurus was giving me the lecture last night about how we create our own reality and can change it at will. I’ve heard it so many times before and I admit that it does have a whiff of the seemingly genuine about it, but they can’t know it, can they? They’re only saying it because somebody has said it to them or they’ve read it in a book, so I wish they’d stop telling me that all my difficulties are all my fault. Having switched it off and gone back to Home, I was suddenly inundated by a veritable horde of other self-styled gurus telling me that every time I see the numbers 11.11 I must not only take note, but take action. I assume I’m somehow attracting them to my reality (the self-styled gurus, that is, not the numbers.)

I’m mostly watching clips from the Lucy movie at the moment. The sight of a badass and highly attractive woman taking the bad guys down (and learning the secrets of life, the universe and everything in the process) is rather more tolerable than real people claiming to know the unknowable.

The Angel in a Shoe Shop.

Mel tells me that in the western Buddhist tradition, the one to which she subscribes, it is taught that the various realms of existence are not places but states of consciousness. Well, it would appear that for some time now my consciousness has been languishing in the Hell Realm, and it’s been getting worse. But something interesting happened today when I went into a shoe shop on a retail park to change some boots which I realised were a size too small.

The woman assistant, who I judged to be around 30, dealt with my request in an unusually friendly and efficient manner. You might assume that it was down to nothing but experience, but I know my people and I felt it was more than that. ‘You have an air about you,’ I said. ‘Do I?’ ‘Yes, an air of competence and control which suggests more than just experience. Have you been to university?’

‘Yes,’ she said. And then she told me how she had considered going back there to do her doctorate but had changed her mind because she was tired of the work and exams, and why she had chosen to work in a shoe emporium on a retail park because she thought it pointless spending her life being stressed.

Here was a woman talking my language, a woman of evidently substantial intelligence who had spurned the usual success imperative conditioned into us by the culture and gone her own way. I gave her my standard reply:

As I see it, a job is a job. It doesn’t matter whether you’re a brain surgeon or a bus driver. As long as the job pays sufficient for your needs and you’re comfortable doing it, it’s right for you.

I sensed an energy flow complimentary to my own, which is most unusual. In fact, it’s almost unheard of. It’s no exaggeration to say that I felt lifted out of the Hell Realm and placed back on the Human Realm. I went on my way much bolstered in spirit, and even the troublesome physical sensations which have been evident lately were greatly relieved.

Maybe it won’t last. We were, after all, merely ship passing in the night. I shall probably never see her again and I probably don’t need to, but I won’t forget the little splash of something magically uplifting which she threw my way without even realising it. And that, as I’ve mentioned before on this blog, is how dear old Rabbi Lionel Blue defined an angel. I’m content with that.

On a Life Less Noble.

I’m coming to the final part of Thérèse Raquin and I’m finding it so depressing that I’m reluctant to carry on.

The two lovers/murderers are now married – the freedom to enter such a union having been the reason for killing the husband in the first place – but they’re hideously unhappy. The weight of their murderous machinations has left them emotionally disfigured, and all the intense passion they once felt for one another has shrivelled to nothing.

This is uncomfortably close to a couple of episodes in my own life. I never killed anybody physically, but I might as well have done for all the scars I must have left on the lives of the innocent. And both resultant relationships failed miserably, crushed by the weight of remorse and neurosis.

So why am I admitting this on a public blog? It isn’t about some notion of cathartic confession; what’s done is done and cannot be undone. I suppose it’s because this blog is all about me, both the outer and the inner versions. And because reading about Thérèse and Laurent’s descent into the pit has left me with the uncomfortable perception that I have never done anything good during my time on this earth, only bad. It isn’t quite true, but it’s still left me with an awful sense that I am ashamed of my life. That’s an unpleasant feeling. And of course, there is too little time left now to wholly redress the balance.

Maybe this is all about learning lessons over a much longer timescale than a mere single life. For now, I expect I’ll get over it.

Shame About Russia.

I was brought up during the Cold War when all arms of the western Establishment steered us to the view that Russia was a dark and brutish place, and that Russians were mostly a dark and brutish people. And then Mikhail Gorbochev set about reforming the situation. The USSR released its captive states, the Berlin Wall came down, and gradually we got used to the idea that Russians were normal people like the rest of us and we could start regarding them as friends.

But then Mr Putin came along. Dissidents were imprisoned, abused, kidnapped from international flights, and even chased across the world to be dispatched with poisonous chemicals. Russia was barred from flying its flag at the Olympics because of the doping scandals, and now we have Ukraine filling the news and fuelling fear of the unthinkable: another European war.

Suddenly, Russia is our enemy again and we have to dig deep to maintain the notion that Russians can be our friends. And that’s a shame because it isn’t the Russian people who are generating the hostility, is it? Whatever spurious arguments Mr Putin might offer to justify Russia’s aggression, it’s basically about feeding his ego. A whole nation tarred with the stigma of one man’s egomania. Should I care? For some reason, it seems I do.

Genesis.

The row of benches which face the front of the Sainsbury’s store in Ashbourne are permanently in shadow during the dark days of late autumn and winter. I came out of there today to see them bathed in sunshine for the first time this year, and it was a welcome sight to see the first hint that spring was on its way. It seemed apposite that a woman was sitting on one of the benches, taking the sun and cradling a half grown puppy with long, floppy ears. It clambered up her chest and nestled its head into her neck, a young year and a young life in perfect harmony.

And when I walked across the town I passed another woman walking slowly, clasping the hand of a little boy of maybe fifteen months. I turned briefly as I passed to watch the stiff and slightly faltering steps of a fledgling human just setting out on the road of life, and I thought of all that future still to come. The dramas, the excitement, the fear, the disappointments, the laughter, the tears, the pains, the pleasures, the achievements, the setbacks, and all there will be to learn for as long as his life shall last.

And it all starts here while the burgeoning and benevolent sun shines on a wooden bench in a little English market town, just as the world beyond seems set for chaos.

Questioning the Motives.

I decided to brave the storm that was still raging this morning and took the old car to the big city for its annual test. While I was there somebody thrust five £10 notes into my hand by way of recompense for some work I did for him last summer. I’d quite forgotten the matter so I chose to regard the money as an unexpected windfall.

On the way back I called into Uttoxeter to get a few things I needed from one of the discount stores, and as I walked across the high street I saw a young man wrapped in a blanket with a sign which read: I am homeless and need your help. God bless you. Since I’d just received a windfall, I felt it would be a good thing to share it and so I gave him one of the £10 notes. My still, small voice went into inquisitorial mode and asked me three questions:

1. Did you give him that money entirely for his sake or to make yourself feel worthy? I answered: ‘Both.’

2. That man didn’t have the look of a beggar. Does it trouble you that he might be lying and is simply trying to cheat people into giving him money under false pretences? I considered the question at some length and eventually answered: ‘No. His motives are his responsibility; I can’t be held accountable for them. If I’m right in my suspicion that karma is a fact of life, then his dishonesty – if such it be – is for his karma to deal with. Mine is secure.’

3. If the money you had in your pocket was a windfall – something you didn’t expect to receive today – and you chose to accept his assertion that he was homeless, why didn’t you give him all of it? I struggled with that one, and eventually had to accept that I still retain a degree of selfishness.

The third was the real lesson because it demonstrated that I still have some way to go before I can truly be what I would like to be. And since I so dislike sanctimony, I chose to be content with the fact.

Seeking a Volunteer.

It occurred to me tonight that if I made a mug of strong coffee, laced it with a little rum and then topped it with a head of thick Cornish clotted cream, it would make an excellent, if slightly expensive, hot drink. I might even call it The Caribbean Cornish

I would be tempted to try it if only I didn’t have a vascular issue of the type exacerbated by cholesterol. It seems I need an honoured guest who doesn’t have any need to be wary of cholesterol. Somebody young and carefree, obviously. I wonder where I might find one.

A Change in Response.

I’m watching the animated version of The Last Airbender again, and tonight’s episode contained a line which I found amusing. Two young men are travelling in an airship and heading off to do something brave and honourable. They’re reminiscing about old loves:

‘My first girlfriend became the moon spirit,’ says one. (She did, too. She had to ‘die’ and become the moon spirit so as to maintain the balance between day and night. Typical anime stuff.)

‘Gee, buddy,’ says the other with a modicum of sympathy, ‘that’s rough.’

Well, I thought it was funny. I never noticed it the first time around, and I do admit to being odd.

*  *  *

I might also mention that I’m re-reading Emile Zola’s ‘classic’ Thérèse Raquin. I first read it in my twenties and thought it quite splendid. That was back in the day when I couldn’t write fictional prose to save my life, but now my response is very different. Now I’m being driven half mad by the sloppy and naïve writing style, especially when he attempts the lyrical stuff which is utterly lame. I do realise that this might be more the fault of the translator, but I can’t know that. All I can know is that it’s irritating me.

What I will say in its favour, however, is that the plot is excellent – two lovers so blinded by passion that they lose all their normal sense of decency, humanity and propriety, and proceed to drown the woman’s weak and sickly husband in the cold River Seine. And thereafter follow the difficulties: the grinding fear of discovery, the guilt, the mental torment of an imagined haunting, and ultimately the utter destruction of their relationship and hence the futility of the crime. Right up my street; I understand all aspects completely. I even sympathise with the guilty pair (up to a point.)

On Storms and My Oddness.

All my life I’ve been afflicted with a condition which, as far as I know, has no clinical name. It’s all to do with being keenly aware of every little nuance of my environment. It might be the look in a person’s eyes, or the shadows of moving clouds on a landscape, or a particular smell, or the grey skies of winter. It’s why I took to photography, and then writing, and achieved a modicum of success in both. I seem to see and feel nuances more than most people do. I’m aware that it makes me an odd one, but I assume I’m not entirely alone in my oddness.

But it comes with a problem: people so afflicted are bound to be subjected to a range of neuroses, some minor and some not so minor. I can attest to the fact, for example, that I’ve had something of a neurosis around loud noises since I was a child (nobody ever noticed because I always seemed to be alone when it manifested. And if they had noticed, I would probably have received a slap and been told to pull myself together. I was a boy after all, and that’s how boys were brought up back then.) And therein lies part of the problem with storms.

Storms are very noisy, and so they disturb my peace for that reason alone. But they’re also violent and uncontrollable, and as such might be said to be the epitome of mindless violence. (I find all non-consensual violence distressing, and the mindless sort particularly so.) There’s nothing you can do about storms except protect your interests as best you can, which often isn’t very much. You have to sit them out and wait for them to leave in their own time. You can’t banish them, and hiding from them is injurious to self-esteem. (And such is true of all destructive natural phenomena, of course, so thank heaven I don’t live in a place affected by hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquakes, tsunamis or volcanic eruptions. I do so pity any highly aware person who lives in Japan, for example.)

So that, in a nutshell, is my difficulty with storms. They sharpen my nerve ends while turning my brain to sludge. There’s no relaxing or working out problems when there’s a storm raging. I sit it out and steel myself so as not to succumb to the psychological pressure. And I’m also aware of a different sort of pressure, a physical sensation in the region of my heart. (This is probably not a good thing since the clinicians tell me that my heart is not in prime condition, and I’ve declined the prescription for beta blockers because I don’t want to become an inveterate pill-taker. Maybe a storm will take me out of here one day, but I doubt it.) And yet here’s the mystery:

I once spent three days in a small Royal Navy frigate ploughing through a force 11 storm in mid-Atlantic and found the experience truly thrilling. No fear, no discomfort, just elation. So how do I explain that one? I don’t know, but maybe it was because storms are quieter at sea. There are no tree branches, you see, to give the wind its roaring voice.

A Climate Note.

Storm Eunice is currently roaring mightily and noisily through the Shire, and the order of the day is trying not to think about what might happen any moment. Everything standing in the garden is struggling to remain upright and several pieces of tree branch have already assaulted the living room window with the report of a shotgun. Fortunately, there’s no greenhouse to worry about now because that was destroyed by a similar storm five years ago this month. And also fortunately, the four stakes securing the top-heavy broom bush are holding so far. What I don’t understand is how the birds manage to fly to the feeding tables in conditions like this. They’re so small and fragile. Admittedly, they do seem to be choosing their moments carefully during a little lull in the blast, but it’s still pretty amazing.

The old equinoctial gales used to be a feature of March and October, but storms of this magnitude only happened once every few years. Now we’re getting four to six a year of them, and February seems to be their favourite time to visit.

Meanwhile, both the wild flowers and the garden flowers are nearly all about a month ahead of their normal schedule. Whatever next?