Monday, 5 March 2018
My blog has been a little short on pictures of late .. my attention has been otherwise occupied, the inside of me more accessible than the outside of me. But like a shoot breaking through soil i am pushing myself to come back to life. The snow from the east was winters last shot i think. And gave me chance to connect to my garden in a different way.
Most precious was the fox, that ran past my back door as i opened it for my cat to go out. It stopped half way up my garden and looked at me and then began to come closer, it came a little way then paused and danced in a circle back to the same spot, then came a little closer and again danced in a circle, and kept doing this until it was only yards away and i moved so it didn't come too close. Sometimes it pounced as it came back to it's spot and sometimes it sniffled into the snow. All the while snow was falling and silence only broken my the bells from the close by cathedral.
The next day i stamped a path from the back door to the end of my garden so my cat didn't have to wade through snow.
Most precious was the fox, that ran past my back door as i opened it for my cat to go out. It stopped half way up my garden and looked at me and then began to come closer, it came a little way then paused and danced in a circle back to the same spot, then came a little closer and again danced in a circle, and kept doing this until it was only yards away and i moved so it didn't come too close. Sometimes it pounced as it came back to it's spot and sometimes it sniffled into the snow. All the while snow was falling and silence only broken my the bells from the close by cathedral.
The next day i stamped a path from the back door to the end of my garden so my cat didn't have to wade through snow.
Saturday, 3 March 2018
Blogging ... why blog ? ... why blog today ? ...blogging today because I've been meaning to for a week or so. Blogging because over the past few months particularly but also over years my blog acts as a notebook documenting what i'm doing, what is interesting me, what i am obsessing on, how i'm feeling, what i'm making, thinking, where i am, what flowers are growing in my garden and so on. It's a fairly unconscious witness to my life story since 2012 because it's written in immediate time and is generally unrevised apart from the odd word, or comma, in the hours after i make it a public document.
What do i need to say to my blog today. After months of living in another world there are days now when i realise i have been living in another world. That other world is peopled with ghosts. My chief ghost is Jon but there are others too, some dead and some dead to me but likely still living. Some benign and some not so much. My old body has not yet absorbed Jon's death. I know he is dead but part of me is still in denial. I have not really accepted his death because i don't want it to be true. It is true, but i still half expect an email from him to pop up in my inbox.
A little while back I listened to an interview with Julian Barnes on the radio .. he said "everyone believes when they first fall in love that they begin at year zero" or something along those lines and that "it doesn't matter what age you are the experience of falling in love is always like that". But the actuality is that we carry our pre-lived life inside of us and that pre-lived life includes connections and schemas that affect how we respond to what is going on in the now (whether we are in love or not) and the future we look forward to.
The patterns and forms that we take are shaped by our history, and not just our own history but our parents, and our parent's parents, and their parents, and so on, back into long forgotten time. Our recall of that time becomes a detail within the fabric of our being, a bend in our bodies, a response so inborn it feels like nothing of note, often quite a fixed behaviour until we meet another whose response questions our response. Sometimes that question can be a good thing it can allow change to happen.
See here I am wondering what the hell i am doing with my life, and who the hell i am. My affair with Jon was seminal. He told me i was beautiful, he told me that he loved me. Now it is quite possible, and likely, that he said that to each and every woman that he bedded before and after me. But to be given that repeatedly even with the counterbalance of being called a useless whore changed the substance of me. He let me feel lovely and lovable and feeling lovely and lovable felt wonderful.
I am letting myself drift into nostalgia which is dangerous territory. My mind is still tracing the paths i took with Jon, mapping the time we spent together, recalling every moment of note as i search for understanding. My feeling is that in the end understanding is silent, but to pre-empt that silence is not hastening understanding but smothering knowledge. Words are slippery material, writing or speaking the words in my mind can be good and can be bad, once they are out they are out, cannot be unsaid, but laying down my letters, even if i repeat myself or take a wrong turn, is cartography of a kind. And I don't know if the silence will be easier, or just other, which is why I am annotating my thoughts as they rise to the surface because later i think i may forget and i don't want to forget.
From the moment i picked up the email from Jon's sister-in-law telling me that Jon was dead I have been living in strange space. Here but not really here. Grief is new country. I loved him. He landmarked my life. He was a rock, he was a river, a field, a cliff path, a wood. He was buzzards keening, the scent of fennel on my hands. He was light streaming in through the pale thin curtains in his bedroom, and the wind buffeting the walls as i lay in his bed between his sheets in half-darkness, wrapped in the scent of him, he is the tadpoles in the little pond he dug in his garden that mix with the tadpoles in my grandparent's pond.
Maybe I am spilling too much of myself on to the page, giving too much away. I am absorbing Jon as i knew him, my wandering mind is tracking him, following his ghost-paths, the stories he told me about his life before we knew each other and after we parted. I am on a quest for understanding. My tracking is aboriginal. I am an elephant touching and taking hold of the bones my ancestors gathering insight from those that went before me as I search for his bones, the bones of his being.
Perhaps i seem peculiar when i talk like that. I have just a handful of friends i can talk to about Jon, people who knew us as two in love, two rowing, two parting and coming together, they know the distances we covered. And maybe grief when it hits hard is a road we tread alone because the relationship we have is one to one, no one can take the place of that other. I have met softer grief and it is softer because my ties have been weaker. I did not know how much of me still belonged to Jon until he died. It's funny who we give our hearts to isn't it ?
What do i need to say to my blog today. After months of living in another world there are days now when i realise i have been living in another world. That other world is peopled with ghosts. My chief ghost is Jon but there are others too, some dead and some dead to me but likely still living. Some benign and some not so much. My old body has not yet absorbed Jon's death. I know he is dead but part of me is still in denial. I have not really accepted his death because i don't want it to be true. It is true, but i still half expect an email from him to pop up in my inbox.
A little while back I listened to an interview with Julian Barnes on the radio .. he said "everyone believes when they first fall in love that they begin at year zero" or something along those lines and that "it doesn't matter what age you are the experience of falling in love is always like that". But the actuality is that we carry our pre-lived life inside of us and that pre-lived life includes connections and schemas that affect how we respond to what is going on in the now (whether we are in love or not) and the future we look forward to.
The patterns and forms that we take are shaped by our history, and not just our own history but our parents, and our parent's parents, and their parents, and so on, back into long forgotten time. Our recall of that time becomes a detail within the fabric of our being, a bend in our bodies, a response so inborn it feels like nothing of note, often quite a fixed behaviour until we meet another whose response questions our response. Sometimes that question can be a good thing it can allow change to happen.
See here I am wondering what the hell i am doing with my life, and who the hell i am. My affair with Jon was seminal. He told me i was beautiful, he told me that he loved me. Now it is quite possible, and likely, that he said that to each and every woman that he bedded before and after me. But to be given that repeatedly even with the counterbalance of being called a useless whore changed the substance of me. He let me feel lovely and lovable and feeling lovely and lovable felt wonderful.
I am letting myself drift into nostalgia which is dangerous territory. My mind is still tracing the paths i took with Jon, mapping the time we spent together, recalling every moment of note as i search for understanding. My feeling is that in the end understanding is silent, but to pre-empt that silence is not hastening understanding but smothering knowledge. Words are slippery material, writing or speaking the words in my mind can be good and can be bad, once they are out they are out, cannot be unsaid, but laying down my letters, even if i repeat myself or take a wrong turn, is cartography of a kind. And I don't know if the silence will be easier, or just other, which is why I am annotating my thoughts as they rise to the surface because later i think i may forget and i don't want to forget.
From the moment i picked up the email from Jon's sister-in-law telling me that Jon was dead I have been living in strange space. Here but not really here. Grief is new country. I loved him. He landmarked my life. He was a rock, he was a river, a field, a cliff path, a wood. He was buzzards keening, the scent of fennel on my hands. He was light streaming in through the pale thin curtains in his bedroom, and the wind buffeting the walls as i lay in his bed between his sheets in half-darkness, wrapped in the scent of him, he is the tadpoles in the little pond he dug in his garden that mix with the tadpoles in my grandparent's pond.
Maybe I am spilling too much of myself on to the page, giving too much away. I am absorbing Jon as i knew him, my wandering mind is tracking him, following his ghost-paths, the stories he told me about his life before we knew each other and after we parted. I am on a quest for understanding. My tracking is aboriginal. I am an elephant touching and taking hold of the bones my ancestors gathering insight from those that went before me as I search for his bones, the bones of his being.
Perhaps i seem peculiar when i talk like that. I have just a handful of friends i can talk to about Jon, people who knew us as two in love, two rowing, two parting and coming together, they know the distances we covered. And maybe grief when it hits hard is a road we tread alone because the relationship we have is one to one, no one can take the place of that other. I have met softer grief and it is softer because my ties have been weaker. I did not know how much of me still belonged to Jon until he died. It's funny who we give our hearts to isn't it ?
Tuesday, 13 February 2018
I keep writing and writing and writing, here and elsewhere, casting my words out as a thread so that if i get too far lost in the labyrinth that is my mind i have some chance of finding my way out.
Over the past few days i have begun using movement as a way to explore space. I think i am practicing Butoh, but i don't know much about Butoh, i haven't read or studied the concepts or form, so maybe i'm just moving from what i have learned in life to date. I am negotiating a course between the shadow of death and the ephemeral brilliance of life.
Casting my line back into my past, as i seek to recall every detail of my life with Jon, i am finding myself up against older memories, shoved away, out back. As i meet these memories through movement my body expands or contracts to meet or evade them.
It is curious exploration because when i met Jon i loved him so much i let go of my life before him, it was my past, he was my now and, in my dreams, my future. But now he is dead. And however i eventually take in his death his living form will never take part in my todays, or tomorrows.
It is an odd thing grieving an ex. This is my experience and i can't speak for anyone else but there's an element of shame. That a man who left you is still causing you so much pain marks you out as a fool, a Miss Havisham, a Corpse Bride. An ordinary person would have moved on, forgotten, or at least have enough sense to disguise their feelings. But no, there you are sitting among the remains of your wedding feast, shabby in your wedding gown forever caught in the moment when your dreams got broken. Stuck in limbo. Why didn't you move on ? Why didn't i move on ? What a loser ..
Now, i have no choice, i know how much i loved him because my response when i learned of his dying was so visceral, so wholly unadulterated by decorum, is still so visceral and not yet trapped by manners and/or common need. But now i have no choice but to let go. We will not ever find ourselves face to face in a cafe, we will not ever have the chance to say sorry, to make good mistakes, to look each other in the eye and know that whatever has happened something good still runs between us, the stream of light that courses between two who know and love each other in all their good and bad, as friends of the heart. We will not ever have that heart stopping unexpected encounter walking down the street, at an airport or station, even on a beach that i'd hoped for. I will not ever see him again. I may still feel connected. I do. But he is gone. He is split into pieces. The piece that lives in me. The pieces that live in anyone else who cares to remember him.
Away from Jon, or maybe looking at the air around him. I return to my above mentioned movement practice and also the black and white stones of the previous blog.
After some days of active movement, yesterday i felt plugged up and glue-y, my head had been chock full of blistering thoughts all day and a part of me didn't want to give myself my hour of movement last night. I was clock watching through the hour, make of that what you will, and my body was leaden. There is an urge to fight through the weight and obligation of a heavy body with fire and forge-through intention but i just didn't have it in me, and being still with my discomfort felt more honest, so i was still and then moved just a little and was still, and then moved just a little, and so on, for a full hour. And here a body memory would flick up like a fish flipping across mud and my body would go with that memory until it met water or sank back into the mud.
Just as my hour passed, i bind myself to an hour to give myself boundary. I found myself back with my stones. After i blogged on friday, i thought it is interesting to me that the black stone is always in my right hand and the white in my left. I wondered how it would be if i changed them from one hand to the other. In the space set up by the hour before i was able to meet this idea as physical possibility; to hold out my palms with an imaginary stone in each and to pass those stones into the other hand and feel them differently as my more passive hand held the dark stone and my more active hand held the light. After a while and some contemplation i put the stones down to rest and felt the weight of my empty hands held out before me.
In a life that leads forward, there is no going back. Who knows if this life is the only life led but it is the life i think most us buy into. So only in my imagination can i imagine where the what ifs might have led, with Jon, or any other consolidating or pivotal factor in my life. Imagination is a free spirit and can run where it will but the body i am in is an ageing thing. If nothing else the death of someone much loved brings home the transitory nature of this gift we are given at birth, which is to live, and to live to our fullest until the day we die. Carpe diem.
Over the past few days i have begun using movement as a way to explore space. I think i am practicing Butoh, but i don't know much about Butoh, i haven't read or studied the concepts or form, so maybe i'm just moving from what i have learned in life to date. I am negotiating a course between the shadow of death and the ephemeral brilliance of life.
Casting my line back into my past, as i seek to recall every detail of my life with Jon, i am finding myself up against older memories, shoved away, out back. As i meet these memories through movement my body expands or contracts to meet or evade them.
It is curious exploration because when i met Jon i loved him so much i let go of my life before him, it was my past, he was my now and, in my dreams, my future. But now he is dead. And however i eventually take in his death his living form will never take part in my todays, or tomorrows.
It is an odd thing grieving an ex. This is my experience and i can't speak for anyone else but there's an element of shame. That a man who left you is still causing you so much pain marks you out as a fool, a Miss Havisham, a Corpse Bride. An ordinary person would have moved on, forgotten, or at least have enough sense to disguise their feelings. But no, there you are sitting among the remains of your wedding feast, shabby in your wedding gown forever caught in the moment when your dreams got broken. Stuck in limbo. Why didn't you move on ? Why didn't i move on ? What a loser ..
Now, i have no choice, i know how much i loved him because my response when i learned of his dying was so visceral, so wholly unadulterated by decorum, is still so visceral and not yet trapped by manners and/or common need. But now i have no choice but to let go. We will not ever find ourselves face to face in a cafe, we will not ever have the chance to say sorry, to make good mistakes, to look each other in the eye and know that whatever has happened something good still runs between us, the stream of light that courses between two who know and love each other in all their good and bad, as friends of the heart. We will not ever have that heart stopping unexpected encounter walking down the street, at an airport or station, even on a beach that i'd hoped for. I will not ever see him again. I may still feel connected. I do. But he is gone. He is split into pieces. The piece that lives in me. The pieces that live in anyone else who cares to remember him.
Away from Jon, or maybe looking at the air around him. I return to my above mentioned movement practice and also the black and white stones of the previous blog.
After some days of active movement, yesterday i felt plugged up and glue-y, my head had been chock full of blistering thoughts all day and a part of me didn't want to give myself my hour of movement last night. I was clock watching through the hour, make of that what you will, and my body was leaden. There is an urge to fight through the weight and obligation of a heavy body with fire and forge-through intention but i just didn't have it in me, and being still with my discomfort felt more honest, so i was still and then moved just a little and was still, and then moved just a little, and so on, for a full hour. And here a body memory would flick up like a fish flipping across mud and my body would go with that memory until it met water or sank back into the mud.
Just as my hour passed, i bind myself to an hour to give myself boundary. I found myself back with my stones. After i blogged on friday, i thought it is interesting to me that the black stone is always in my right hand and the white in my left. I wondered how it would be if i changed them from one hand to the other. In the space set up by the hour before i was able to meet this idea as physical possibility; to hold out my palms with an imaginary stone in each and to pass those stones into the other hand and feel them differently as my more passive hand held the dark stone and my more active hand held the light. After a while and some contemplation i put the stones down to rest and felt the weight of my empty hands held out before me.
In a life that leads forward, there is no going back. Who knows if this life is the only life led but it is the life i think most us buy into. So only in my imagination can i imagine where the what ifs might have led, with Jon, or any other consolidating or pivotal factor in my life. Imagination is a free spirit and can run where it will but the body i am in is an ageing thing. If nothing else the death of someone much loved brings home the transitory nature of this gift we are given at birth, which is to live, and to live to our fullest until the day we die. Carpe diem.
Thursday, 8 February 2018
Oh boy, i need to blog. I feel i should blog. I want to blog. Because my blogs act as marking points for me. Days, weeks, pass, and my mind goes this way, and then that, every so often i'll find myself on a path that feels like it might lead somewhere, i know these are the beginnings of something and they give me hope, but they don't run for long, and my sense of being lost in fog is still mostly overwhelming.
Thing is, grieving Jon is complicated, just as loving him when he was alive was complicated. The image that keeps coming up in my mind is of two hands - my hands - in one i hold a white stone, this white stone is the easy stuff, the Jon who was easy to love, the me who was easy to love, and in the other hand i hold a black stone, the black stone is the dross, the Jon who was not easy to love, the me who was not easy to love, the nastiness. The black stone is all the fucked up, nightmare, bastard bits of our relationship, and the white stone which i surely want to keep is the wonder and joy and happiness.
The inclination is to chuck away all but the good but if i did that i'd be living with a half truth, alternatively, and this is not going to happen, i could chuck away the good and think only of the bad, make him out to be a total louse, but that too would be untrue.
There are parts which i am looking forward to discarding. His family were odd when we were together and were the greatest source of conflict between us. Their manners made me feel like trash, made me feel like i was just another pair of knickers Jon had got into. This is what we fought over, i needed to be allowed self-respect. Maybe it is vanity to think i wasn't trash, but i do not think i would have such an abiding and strong sense of loving and being loved in return if that narrative was the whole truth.
So I am angry at his family because i feel hurt and put down by them. And i'm frustrated. I don't want to be angry. I want to let go. But I know that locking down feelings and/or trying to pretend they don't exist doesn't make them go away, if anything they get harder and heavier and more deeply entrenched so I'm trying to practice buddha-mind so when they pop up i observe them like clouds in the sky knowing they will pass presently. I have to say I am not doing that well with my buddha-mind but i think my iil-will and sadness and sufferance will pass presently because it's not weight i want to carry and it's not worth carrying.
But the bits of Jon, and me, that were mean and uncomfortable are part of our story. Who wants to remember that shit ? Remembering may be the wrong word but until i find the right one i'll stick with it. I would say i do not want to remember the bad stuff, but, if i don't the story will have gaps that turn it into nonsense. If it was so peachy sweet how come you broke up, how come this, that or the other happened etc. It's why grieving Jon is complicated, i am sifting through the ten years we knew each other, and there is delight and there is despair, and dull, and disappointing and dreary, deception, damage, excuse me i couldn't resist all those d-words. What i'm trying to do is make some kind of sense of it all. Not so much mind sense as heart sense. To me, my mind sense is logic and reason, those are great and useful but they offer only superficial understanding, they are the maths, whereas my heart sense is deeper, instinctive, not clouded by rules or societal pressure, my heart offers me an understanding that is intuitive, that understanding feels more whole. The bridge between my heart and mind is poetry.
So that is where the two hands and the stones come in, i am measuring and weighing the past ten years, the good and the bad, my two hands are like the pans on a set of scales. My being depends upon me getting this right. I am deciding what parts of our shared life i need to carry in to my future and what parts i need to let go. It's about finding equilibrium.
Thing is, grieving Jon is complicated, just as loving him when he was alive was complicated. The image that keeps coming up in my mind is of two hands - my hands - in one i hold a white stone, this white stone is the easy stuff, the Jon who was easy to love, the me who was easy to love, and in the other hand i hold a black stone, the black stone is the dross, the Jon who was not easy to love, the me who was not easy to love, the nastiness. The black stone is all the fucked up, nightmare, bastard bits of our relationship, and the white stone which i surely want to keep is the wonder and joy and happiness.
The inclination is to chuck away all but the good but if i did that i'd be living with a half truth, alternatively, and this is not going to happen, i could chuck away the good and think only of the bad, make him out to be a total louse, but that too would be untrue.
There are parts which i am looking forward to discarding. His family were odd when we were together and were the greatest source of conflict between us. Their manners made me feel like trash, made me feel like i was just another pair of knickers Jon had got into. This is what we fought over, i needed to be allowed self-respect. Maybe it is vanity to think i wasn't trash, but i do not think i would have such an abiding and strong sense of loving and being loved in return if that narrative was the whole truth.
So I am angry at his family because i feel hurt and put down by them. And i'm frustrated. I don't want to be angry. I want to let go. But I know that locking down feelings and/or trying to pretend they don't exist doesn't make them go away, if anything they get harder and heavier and more deeply entrenched so I'm trying to practice buddha-mind so when they pop up i observe them like clouds in the sky knowing they will pass presently. I have to say I am not doing that well with my buddha-mind but i think my iil-will and sadness and sufferance will pass presently because it's not weight i want to carry and it's not worth carrying.
But the bits of Jon, and me, that were mean and uncomfortable are part of our story. Who wants to remember that shit ? Remembering may be the wrong word but until i find the right one i'll stick with it. I would say i do not want to remember the bad stuff, but, if i don't the story will have gaps that turn it into nonsense. If it was so peachy sweet how come you broke up, how come this, that or the other happened etc. It's why grieving Jon is complicated, i am sifting through the ten years we knew each other, and there is delight and there is despair, and dull, and disappointing and dreary, deception, damage, excuse me i couldn't resist all those d-words. What i'm trying to do is make some kind of sense of it all. Not so much mind sense as heart sense. To me, my mind sense is logic and reason, those are great and useful but they offer only superficial understanding, they are the maths, whereas my heart sense is deeper, instinctive, not clouded by rules or societal pressure, my heart offers me an understanding that is intuitive, that understanding feels more whole. The bridge between my heart and mind is poetry.
So that is where the two hands and the stones come in, i am measuring and weighing the past ten years, the good and the bad, my two hands are like the pans on a set of scales. My being depends upon me getting this right. I am deciding what parts of our shared life i need to carry in to my future and what parts i need to let go. It's about finding equilibrium.
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