Here goes again ... launching myself into another blog ... many years ago when i was a child my dad used to sometimes take me as his sailing crew. I wasn't his preferred crew, my oldest sister Vicky was keener and more competent, but sometimes, not often i would be there in the boat with him. It would be planned the day before, getting up at whatever time was needed to catch the high tide, gearing up and going to the boat yard to rig the boat, it was a Tideway, a wooden clinker-built boat that my dad maintained well because that's how my dad is. When the boat was as rigged as it could be on land he would wheel it on it's squeaky trailer to the harbour slipway, along with all the other boats and their sailors, with me following. I was a bit of a puddle of a child, not sharp or clever or agile, I suspect taking me out sailing was a bit of a chore for my father, but the thought of launching into my blog brought back the memory of getting into the boat, leg deep in water and over the side before my dad pushed the boat out getting in as the boat sailed out into deeper water. I think of the salt smell and the clinking of metal ropes and the flapping of sails and the shouting and excitement and i think thats a good memory to have tho' i suspect i was really only part present as i was/am not really all with it, more often than not i am faraway in some dream world.
Memories are funny things. This year past has been full of memories of Jon, i think i've mentioned that before, and as memories of time i spent with him and without him have surfaced within the net are other memories and they are all very live, vivid and visceral in quality.
We are as living beings and bodies a container for the life we've lived, I think. I am repeating myself please excuse me. Repeat is a thing, part of our patterning. Here we go again, this way of living that actually doesn't quite work for us hitting up against the same or a similar obstacle and until we learn to meet it in another way. 
We, who is this we ? I've noticed i slip into this when i blog as if i can speak for others when i only speak for me. because how can i know how it is for someone else. Maybe it's only me that repeats mistakes, responds in the same way to some one or something that gets to me, makes me feel bad, or good, tho' feeling good would seem like less of a problem. But then what if good is an addiction, this drink makes me feel better, now i need this drink to feel better, now the drink doesn't necessarily make me feel better but i need it because if i don't have it i feel awful. I'm speaking with very ancient knowledge about drinking. Falling back into my late teens when my drinking was no more than any eighteen to nineteen year old's drinking but when if i hadn't had my daughter it might have gone bad. 
I am throwing up yesterdays because over the past few weeks i've been thinking about time. It began when i started using my instagram account. 
I'd had a look at Patti Smith's and looking at hers gave me ideas about how i could use that platform to make notes in a slightly different way. All social media platforms eat time. This blog is no exception. But if they perform a useful function then they are worth the time. This is a kind of diary. Twitter and facebook i mostly use as scrapbooks/notebooks often posting stuff to myself much as i might jot down a note on a scrap of paper. Face book memories are great. On twitter and facebook i get waylaid by national and global politics, then i become someone i don't like, mouthy and horrible, but i can't seem to help myself. I guess it's one of my patterns, it forces me up against a version of myself i am not comfortable with but can't let go, a part of me that has to fight when i think something is foul. A legacy perhaps from feeling desperately vulnerable when my children were small and Thatcher was in power. Anything that triggers feelings i recognise from those days tends to make me edgy and ugly. My body contains the fear and darkness of those days. Or maybe it is something even earlier in my life, something wary that hates to be confined. 
But back to yesterdays and why i am throwing those up in this blog it's because beginning to engage with instagram has made me wonder how long is an instant ? Is an instant a lifetime ? A lifetime of a species ? A lifetime of a world ? Is the lifetime of a thing that lasts less time, a mayfly for instance, of the same worth as the lifetime of something more long lived, a human, you or me ? Does their instant  weigh the same as ours ? 
Here I am a series of breath filled incidents that occur from the moment i'm born, or maybe conceived, until the day that i die. Does my instant go back into my ancestral past ? Does it go forward beyond my dying to my descendants and those i have touched whilst still alive ? 
It feels strange to me that a person's instant might end when their physical body ceases to live because those and that which i love and value is part of my being and so continues to be part of my being. Will that go on forever. I think of the me that got up early to go sailing with my dad, that me is still me, and the person i was before i had children, and later the young mother and the woman i am now. Every part of my being is part of my instant, my now, and in that instant, that now, even tho' some of the people and places i was once connected to are no longer accessible physically, their being still lives in me until i forget or die too, until i dissolve into the ether. 
I can feel resistance like a wall of wind as i write now. I am trying to finish this blog but i keep writing and then deleting what i've written and starting again. I don't know how to meet my next day.  I want to talk about Jon but also I don't. I want to stop grieving, I'm tired of grieving, is that a terrible thing to say ? I want to let go. But also i don't. I don't know how to move on without losing him. He was important to me and so the thought of forgetting him hurts. But forgetting will happen I think. Is that why i am calling my life a single instant so that the time we had together still retains some presence in my everyday ? He was far from perfect but a person doesn't have to be perfect to be loved do they. 
Understanding is a curious thing. The effort to understand can be unbearable, filling space with questions and mind-noise, but understanding itself, i feel, is quiet. I wonder if maybe the only path to understanding is to let go of some of the questions (some questions are un-answerable) so that silence and softness allow understanding to nestle gently in the steady beat of my heart, so the steady beat of my heart can carry me forward into tomorrow. 
I think this blog is to be continued ... this is maybe part one 

Two blogs in a row because the karma thing keeps coming up, my thoughts feel unfinished . And also because my blog serves as one of my notebooks, easily accessible and something i can refer back to, an old fashioned diary i guess. I write in notebooks too and sometimes i'll open one up and come across thoughts written years ago. The other day i found the one i was scribbling my pain into when i first heard that Jon had died, the first weeks when i was obliterated by grief. 
Why bring up grief, and Jon, again ? It's over a year since he died. Shouldn't i be over it now ? Shouldn't i have moved on ? Shouldn't i let go and stop making a fuss ? And of course that sort of is what happens. Life goes on, the absence is not exactly filled but becomes familiar. Tears which were daily are now not so frequent but sometimes, sometimes, grief grasps you by the throat and pushes you against the wall, and all you can do, all i can do is go with it, let myself feel whatever it is that i need to feel. 
There will be triggers of course. The spring weather last week did it, Jon loved those first few days in spring, he'd have been out in his garden with his shirt off in shorts, all hop-skippy in the sunshine. And, before the spring weather, the rugby which he loved. I remember him buying himself an England rugby shirt in the last year we were together, little things like that made him sweetly happy, he wasn't good at treating himself so it was nice when he did. Before i knew Jon rugby meant nothing to me, big blokes running round a field with an H shaped goal and mud was how i saw it. Jon explained it to me a little; and talked about playing rugby at school; and because the six nations was something he loved i loved it too; we'd arrange our weekends around the games he needed/wanted to watch and snuggle up in the warm to watch them together, it was all very cosy, wintry afternoons on his sofa  are cherished memories. 
And see that's how it goes with the missing of someone who is dead. In my head i can go back to those times and that's nice and i am glad to have so many gorgeous moments to crawl back into but it hurts that they are done, that there will never be more, that he can't feel the sun warming his flesh, or the rugby rush of testosterone. 
And so i return to karma. Because maybe that is also what karma is. Maybe it is the traces you leave in another, traces you leave whilst still alive and also after you are gone, after you are dead. 
Way back in the mid eighties when i was first pregnant with my daughter some members of my family were not thrilled. My paternal grandmother sent me a letter saying that she didn't want to see or speak to me again because the child was a bastard, and my aunt wrote suggesting an abortion. People have reasons for doing and saying the things they do and say. I was a feisty nineteen year old with green hair and attitude and no one was telling me what to do so i can't really claim to have been put upon tho' it wasn't the warmest of family welcomes for my daughter. 
But there was one member of my family who responded with extraordinary kindness. And with that kindness she left her mark. That person was my Auntie Leska. Auntie Leska wrote me a letter saying she thought it would be hard but that she was pleased i was keeping the baby. She knitted clothes for my unborn baby, wooly tights with braces in the bright colours i asked for. It meant a lot. Even the arrogant teen that i was knew that i was being shown how to be good. 
Here, this is what i mean about traces and karma. Our lives leave marks, good and bad. Some people leave us bruised or broken, some leave a stain or a scar. Others by their being give hope, make good, make things better. Our memories of those who have marked us is how their karma is carried forward. My Auntie Leska is long dead but what she did, who she was when she knitted my daughters layette made a difference and means she still lives in me as someone who showed me kindness, and my daughter, and maybe my grandchildren too. 
Last summer i went to Wenhaston, Suffolk to see a small art show in the church inspired by an artist called Becker. It was good to see the exhibition, the work gave me food for thought, but i was pleased too to have been drawn to the church because there is a fantastic medieval painting on one wall a part of which has the devil weighing out the dead's souls. Is this perhaps a version of karma ? There it is, the good deeds and the bad. And in the end by your life shall you be known. 
But a life lived looks different from different angles. I am very far from being saintly, when someone pisses me off i will lay curses on them, and hope that life slaps them down. But curses backfire so i try now to hope that people get what they deserve. However this too is unreliable, lovely people get hit with horrible things and horrible people seem to be able to be horrible with impunity. Hashtag Jacob Rhys Mogg for instance.
So that's what i mean about karma being more subtle than my British brain seems to be able to grasp. And i think it's because stories look different depending on your perspective. This i guess is at the root of most conflict. Two people with different ideas of what's right will fight it out, to the death if necessary, if neither one can find it in themselves to see, if only for a moment, the other person's point of view. If both parties are able to step into the other one's shoes then conflict resolution might be easier. The problem would likely be the same but seen through understanding eyes, listened to with understanding ears, felt with a body that recognises the other as equal, maybe then the problem becomes objective rather than subjective. I hope what i've said there is what I mean.
I can talk this talk, we can all talk this talk but conflicting interests are not easy to resolve even if everyone is tired of fighting and longs for peaceful resolution. What am i waffling on about now ? It sounds a bit Brexit-y, but it isn't so much that, what I'm thinking about is how i am struggling to let go of feeling angry with Jon's family, their manners seemed hard when we were together and drove a wedge between us. I have struggled to understand why they were the way they were then, and later why they didn't offer him more help, why they seemingly just let him drink himself to death. 
In the week after Jon died, before i knew he was dead, i was talking to my son who had just come back to England after two years in Singapore, i was saying how the time when i was with Jon was the only time in my life when i'd felt like i'd got it, that i was winning (winning is a word Jon gave me, if i was having a difficult time he would say/text/email me - "are you winning?").  i said how i didn't understand his family. He suggested that maybe Jon and his brother weren't close, as i am not close to my sisters. I guess that could be why. In 2016 after he had been hospitalised a second time I wanted to walk him dry, to get him close to nature which i knew from our time together put a spring in his step, an appetite for life and twinkle in his eye.  But i needed their help, i needed them to be on side. I wonder if they hadn't hated me so much they might have helped, i wonder if he would still be alive but it's neither here nor there because what is is. I guess that is their stain on me and maybe i have left a stain on them. My refusal to give up on the beautiful memories i have of him is perhaps annoying to them, maybe it upsets their story because i tell it from another angle and rather than join the dots they need and want to keep to their story and not connect to mine tho we were together for six years and shared so much. 
That's life isn't it. When Jon and I fell out and it wasn't worth fighting over i'd let hm know i'd given up by saying "hey ho" and i guess that's all i can do with his family, all i can do is say to myself "hey ho" and let go.  

I had not realised it had been so long since i blogged. I see from my posts page that i had an aborted attempt in late January but it stayed as a draft and won't get published. But it's not for lack of thought just lack of clarity of thought. And that may seem laughable as my blogs are usually just a meandering ramble through the inner workings of my mind. 
I have been wondering if that is good enough. I have been wondering if airing my thoughts as if they are of consequence is ok. I have also been conscious that words are one thing, and words are part of my work process, but that words are not my medium i am not a writer or poet, i play with words i do not work with them, maybe i will one day but at the moment my voice in writing has the timbre and crack of a young boy on the edge of adolescence. I have been thinking i should put more pictures in my blog, make it more about my work as an artist. But then where does my work as an artist start and stop. Vocational professions are not the same as sensible jobs that pay the bills. A vocation is something undeniable, whatever you do it calls you back. 
Many years ago i remember having a shiatsu tutorial while i was training. It was a moment when i met one of my edges and as i was walking home i remember thinking "oh no, i have a vocation to be a shiatsu practitioner" and then thinking "damn, now all i'll be able to drink is water, and i'll have to be  more perfect than i want to be" i did not want to be that person, i ran away, stopped training for a few years, refused the vocation. But then my body brought me back, my elbows ached so i went for a shiatsu treatment which inspired me to go back to my shiatsu books and complete my training and then my elbows were fine again. It sounds a bit mystical but i find life follows a truer path if i accept my body as my guide. 
Recently i have been thinking about karma. Now although i have practised yoga for about thirty years and read about other cultures the culture i stem from is white British christian. That's fine. It feels and sounds a bit heavier and more solid and unbending than i want to feel but that's my roots and because of those roots my relationship to the idea of karma can be a bit crime and punishment, eye for an eye, simplistic. My experience of karma is more subtle. I am sure i am not alone amongst the people i know to hope that karma will catch out the people who i feel have wronged me, or, who i feel are wrong per say (people who kill or maim animals, people who preach malevolence and so on) but damn that karma button it doesn't seem to work like that. And i think maybe it doesn't work like that because karma is not so caught up in the instant and my simple animal being is. 
Of course if someone metaphorically bites me i want to bite back but that is reaction not response. If i pause and think around a thing there is almost always a path that brought me and that other into conflict. The conflict may not even be about me, or them. 
The evening i heard that Jon had died my son gave me a book, i was still in innocence having been away and not picked up the email informing me of his death. The book sat on my shelves for over a year, books are like that, they are patient messengers. The book is called Frog by Mo Yan and there's a line it that caught me sharp "Can blood on one's hands never be washed clean ? Can a soul entangled in guilt  never be free ?" those questions seem to relate to karma and the trace we leave behind. 
Now about that vocation to be a shiatsu practitioner, it turns out that i am fine with being a person who mostly "only drinks water" and as regards being perfect that was always an impossible task because believing myself perfect would be the imperfection, perfect is not possible although sometimes for a thin slip of a moment it can feel as if perfection is a thing that we hold in our hands only to know that holding it too often breaks the moment and there's no going back. 
Because there is no going back. "Can blood on one's hands never be washed clean ? Can a soul entangled in guilt  never be free ?" what do you think ? I think that each of us leaves a trail, a tale, although seemingly we might start anew all that we left behind us is there in our wake. 
When i met Jon and fell in love, i took him as a blank page. But that was stupid. He said he was an alcoholic, had been to prison, had slept with his wife's best friend, Auntie S, and so on and so on, but in that blissful whirr that is head over heels in love i let myself believe that that was his past. But our pasts are never our pasts. Our present being may ameliorate the wrongs we have done another but they don't undo the wrong. And everyone gets things wrong. 
I remember asking Jon what he did with his daughter when she visited and he said "i couldn't even look after myself let alone a child so she has never visited" talking about the time between his time in prison and the time i knew him. He told me another time about breaking his parole and staying in a hotel and then in the woods before he was caught and it was in those heady weeks when we were getting to know each other and his sinful ways were not an issue because i had a small bucket of sin of my own. But i think now that, of course, that was his tail, his trail, his tale, the story/stories he told me were new to me, but were also lived by those who knew him while they were happening and were likely not good memories. 
What am i getting at ? Karma. Our lives are full of mistakes and the expectation that others will forgive or get over our mistakes is unreasonable, when we wrong another we violate their line. The knack is to try not to do that but life is constant compromise. If I make a mistake that mistake passes into the history of the world. There are many worlds, great and small, and each of our actions has a consequence within a world because not one of us lives in complete isolation. I think it's the consequences that are our karma. 
This is why i say that karma is more subtle than brutal desire for vengeance. Karma keeps going, it keeps going and going and going, it may not be you that reaps the dividend of your ill will or carelessness. See how for instance it is not the generation that has polluted that will bear the brunt of climate change but the generations that are being born now, that it is the children who are speaking out because those who are old have failed to respond with common sense to a real threat to existence.
That is a great example. It happens at lesser scale too. Our family lines are made up of the ancestors who bore us. Our mother's womb and the squit that our fathers invested in our mothers is our birthplace. We are the product of that womb, that squit. They are our inheritance, and more precious than gold, or land, is who we are, what we give to the world in our being. A child conceived and carried to term is witness to the connection it's parents made and bears the karma of that interaction. It comes into the world as a product of that union, carries the essence of it's parent's and their parent's and their parent's quality as it's non-negotiable life spark. 
Oh what ? Am i being preach-y ? I think i am. I think i am saying "be love" "be your best" because being anything other than that will ripple out into the wider world and that wider world will surely be sweeter for the love and the best of you than it will if give it your bad. 
I write, as always, as I think, the punctuation is lousy, please accept apologies, and whether this blog is my good or my bad i can't tell it is only me. Maybe now i need to sit on a rock for a little while and contemplate a little further before i throw more concrete words out into the ether.  

Edging towards the new year i am reflecting on the year past and setting intentions for the year to come. The year past has been some journey. I've come a long way from where i was on January 1st a year ago but the year has passed at a speed that has made it hard to assimilate. I have no achievements to proclaim. My growth has mostly been internal.
This time last year I decided to play/work with twelve fairy tales/fables/stories. It turned out to be thirteen as i miswrote the title of one which gave me two which is how things happen sometimes, a mistake creates a happy chance. These stories kept me moving and exploring through days that were dark and days that were less dark. 
Life is like a river, it keeps on going. I/we might cry "stop" but no, the river stops for no-one. It is unperturbed by our cries. When something momentous happens, a birth, a death, or a major change -good or bad - there's a before and after. The before is sort of known, but the after is all strange. Say that the momentous event is a good one, the change may outrun the capacity to absorb the experience but because it is lovely it's not too important, too much wonderful is rarely a cause for complaint, but say the momentous event is hard, then the immensity of it can be overwhelming and exhausting. 
I remember when i broke up with my older two children's father way back in the late 1980's. My son was three months old and my daughter just three. It broke my understanding. He was an oaf in the last months i lived with him. If i spoke to him he'd lift a buttock and fart at me or burp. His going was a relief. But it rained on my roses-round-the-door notion of happy ever after. My dream of  domestic bliss and a nice happy family was smashed. In truth we weren't and would never have been a nice happy family, he and i were cut from quite different cloth, but at 23 it was a shock, it wasn't meant to be like that, I had to change to accommodate the break up.  
As it's christmas time i'll throw in my thoughts on families as a by-the-by because it's a time when families gather. I think families are like strings of fairy lights, no matter how neatly you thought you had put them away the year before they always come out in a tangle. Families are unruly, and most of them seem to be a mix of mess and love and so long as the love outweighs the mess you are doing ok.
My break up from my older children's dad is a long time in my past, ancient history, but this year has been interesting in that it has thrown up a mass of memories. It's as if a switch was flicked when Jon died. Memories of him and our time together came flooding back, and with them memories of time before i knew him, time before i had children - a child, a teenager - and after when i was a young adult negotiating my pathway through the world. Houses i lived in, places i stayed in, people i knew, streaming through my conscious mind in glorious technicolur. I spent one month - August - jotting my memories down, for myself not anyone else, one day i'll pick up that notebook and re-read them. It was an attempt to recall as much of Jon as possible to stop myself forgetting, but with him and his garden came other gardens. With our roaming, our walks and small travelling came other journeys, other walking companions. And so on. 
Writing is slower than remembering and more difficult. Writing my memories made me cry. It was hard reliving the beautiful times i spent with Jon, and reliving the bad times, tho' they are part of his whole, and act as counterweight and keep his being real not romanticised, feels mean and sad and unhelpful when what i want to remember is the best of him and our time spent together not the worst. Maybe the bad is better buried with his bones, known but let go. Also my writing is too solid, committing thought to paper, to words, is frustrating, writing is a skill i have yet to feel free with. 
And all the time the river of life, "old man river", keeps on rolling, and whatever before and after you are living, the river throws up junk and obstacles, pushes aside yesterday to make way for today and tomorrow and tomorrow until tomorrow is yesterday. Day becomes night becomes day becomes night and so on, birthdays and anniversaries happen and yearly markers, Valentine's day, April Fools, Easter, Halloween and Christmas, days that have memories attached to them, April Fools day was our anniversary. Seasons pass.
Coming up, of course, is new years day. The new year inviting in the new. An open door, what now ? what next ? where to ? The need to set intentions and resolutions is strong in me if for no other reason than to have something to hold on to should the road be rocky, the waters choppy, the mountain steep. 
The past is done. I can wish things other than they are but my wishes don't make them so. My task is to live with what is and to make the best of it. I think most of us are doing that most of the time. Sometimes it can feel unfair. Some people seem to have all the luck, and others hardly any. I don't know how those inequalities can be amended because the luck of it is what it is. 
I think it's the Dalai Lama who says that it's how we respond to our fortune - good or bad - that gives us our way forward. I like that but responding well to falls and fails isn't easy and some people are awful when fortune favours them and they win. 
I end this blog with a nod to the past two months fairy tales. In November I was faced with the company of the obnoxious little brute that is Goldilocks. December gave me Little Red Riding Hood. How could it be that two little girls setting out on woodland paths might be so different and meet such different fates. And who did they become after their oft-told stories closed. This is what i am pondering in the last couple of days of 2018. I wonder if they met in future life who they would be. I guess that any one of us could be that little girl wandering and that it's what we carry forward that affects the rest of our lives. We know little of Goldilock's origins. In some stories she is an old vagrant woman does that change the way we see/meet her. Little Red Riding Hood steps out wrapped in her mother's love, the little red cloak/hood has to act as some kind of protection, and she carries with her food and tonic wine for her grandmother and a warning not to step off the path. She is also rescued. Perhaps in the light of her good fortune it's possible to see her journey-fellow Goldilocks with kinder eyes. Goldilocks seems so much of a taker but if you have little, we don't know if she does or she doesn't, then her need to satisfy herself, to eat, to rest, albeit at someone else's expense, is maybe born out of desolation and deprivation, her unloveliness is perhaps a reflection of a life lived as an unloved unlovable. 
Food for thought perhaps. Happy New Year.  

Back to my blog again. But why ? Why blog ? Who cares ? A year ago i was blogging out the first stages of grieving Jon. It helped. Having no-one to talk to about him, about my life with him, about my feelings, my blog page acted as an unquestioning friend. I did have real friends who listened to me too, and i was lucky in that, but speaking to a person is different to speaking to a page. 
The page acts as confidant, it is a pool of water reflecting back or responding to that which is given; a face inquiring, a tongue lapping, a stone breaking the surface, to drop through until it meets ground. 
Last weekend i blogged about feeling angry. Anger is not a pretty feeling but sometimes it is good, it is needed. It is part of being. Mostly we are taught to not give in to anger and keeping a lid on anger is good for social stability. Anger is an overbearing emotion, loud anger and silent anger create an oppressive mood. Anger ? Maybe call it rage. 
I remember when i was with Jon how his silent rage would reduce me to nothing, kept me dancing from foot to foot, het up with anxiety i would gabble to fill the silence which made him more furious. Yes this is the same Jon i have been grieving this past year. Sometimes this week i have wondered if he was worth grieving, if he was worth loving. But grief like love doesn't seem to follow reason it just is. I loved him for the good in him and stuck with him because i believed that the good in him was worth loving. I still believe that. But it doesn't make me blind to his flaws, or the flaws of any other i love. Only the new born seem to be perfect. New born babies. And I guess those who are new born to us. Those who are unknown can present their gleaming perfect self initially. Is this a drive that keeps the modern nomad moving ? A quest to find the perfect self reflected in new surroundings, new lovers, new friends, new, new, new ...
I've been thinking this week about how each of us is like a gobbit of energy, a bundle of cells made man, but within those cells is a quality of being. Last weekend i was an angry gobbit. This of course is what set me to thinking. I'd like to be a lovely glowing gobbit of loving kindness. What the hell ... i can aspire to that but would i really want to be that blank all the time. I think a gobbit of constant loving kindness might be like swimming in a sea of custard and never reaching land. Custard is nice but it's better with a sticky toffee pudding. And what about days when sweet is not the fancy, when sharp or tart is the flavour required, or salty, or bitter, you catch my drift. A mix of flavours will make up a balanced life. And each person is their own changing mix of flavours.
In traditional chinese medicine, as i have been taught and understand, the flavours relate to the 5 elements, water, wood, earth, fire and metal. These elements form a cycle, each one leads to the next and backs on to the one before, within the cycle there is a creative and a controlling cycle. A person or thing may lean towards a particular elemental quality but each element is within reach. 
If i go back for a moment to a person being a gobbit of energy then what i understand as our ancestral essence is formed at conception. The moment when two make one. That one is made up of it's two parent's being at that moment, the who they are, the life they have led to date, the life their parents and their parent's parents led and so on back to time long forgotten. The ancestral essence is set at that moment. 
Later as life runs it's course our surroundings and how we live life may affect the way we are. So  children soak in the atmosphere of their home or homes and the people who surround them. And later the same happens with adults as they choose with more discrimination and freedom the people they want to spend time with. 
One of the things that was making me cross last week was an ongoing dispute that is running along in my family. It's a rotten thing, there is no party that is all right and there are innocent victims. Frankly it pisses me off. In this instance I'd like a bit more custard with my sticky toffee pudding and i'd like a sharp white wine to wash it down with because the sweet is a bit cloying. Actually scrap the custard and the sticky toffee pudding i'll take just the wine and maybe some black olives and good cheese and an apple. 
What I'm saying is that my family and those who are family by extension are currently serving up a meal i find unpalatable. I have choices; I can walk away from the table, i can make do with what is served, i can bring what i want to the table - bring it and offer it to share, or i can brush aside everything on offer, destroy the whole meal, brush it to the floor with the sweep of an arm, or two, or throw the table upside down. Those are not the only choices they are just a few. Suffice to say the table is laid but it is not a currently good table.
I guess that a nation is also a family, the uk is currently all over the place with Brexit. I'm not really sure what to think. There are voices calling for this, or that, often in opposition and nobody listening to the other. And people being driven to despair because their hopes and dreams are being destroyed by someone else's hopes and dreams. And others, for whom it is all too much, shut up and keep quiet because the conflict is disabling and they know that in the end what they will do is make the best of whatever decisions those with whom power lies decide. It's a hot mess. 
That hot mess is my country. And i think the hot mess may in fact be humanity as a species. Selfishness has become such a dominant ideology that social co-operation has lost it's footing. Amongst small groups it is still happening but patterns of selfishness seems to be something all of us need to watch for in ourselves. 
This is something i was talking about with my younger son this week when he popped in to park his car in my front garden before going out to begin his christmas shopping. He is a wise and kind and also quite mischievous man and i value his opinions even when they differ from my own because i know there is deep thought behind them.
In a white trash moment i had posted on facebook that I hated everyone. The post was mainly a warning to the world that i was not in the mood for argument because my patience and desire to socially co-operate had run out. He asked me how i was and i explained to him that i was fed up about lots of different things, some personal and some political and none that i had any control over.
It was the weekend when Trump's troops were gassing children on the Mexican border, and the uk news-fronts were broadcasting that the metropolitan police were knocking kids off their scooters/mopeds as a way to stop them committing crimes. Yes i know thieving is wrong, but, if you live in a society where the needs of the poor are disregarded the poor will find ways that are less than desirable to make a living. Oh, and climate change continues to be a throw away problem. The majority of politicians seem to think they can ignore it because the change is relatively slow on a timeline that runs concurrent with their political lives, so they push it to one side as an ignorable issue. This stuff frustrates me. hence the anger. 
But the anger is also with myself, my own refusal to make changes, and my nearest and dearest, and those i know but don't love who really ought to behave better but don't, the anger is frustration at my selfishness and the selfishness of all of us. Our selfishness is a dark part of us that needs to holding in but too often seems to be lauded and praised. Wealth and high status are the pinnacles of achievement in modern culture maybe it has always been so but what is the real worth of those things set perhaps against the wonder of something that comes to us for free, the joy of sight, sound, smell, taste, touch. Too often those with the most seem to be terminally unsatisfied.
Each one of moves through this world, one little gobbit interacting with other little gobbits and each one of those gobbits has a responsibility to all the other gobbits, except that mostly it's too exhausting to think beyond the gobbits that are closest to us and so we look away when we see people struggling, or behaving badly, unless it directly affects us, even those who are close to us may be erased from our awareness. Indifference is a slight that can damage too.
And me, I am the same, and so my anger is me really shaking my own tree, asking myself how do i change to be a better version of myself, to grow out of my old tired skin, to find the new in me, because others will do what they want to, and i am not master of their being, but i am master of mine, and surely i can be better than i am now, not better than anyone else, but better than who i was yesterday if i choose to be. 

post script: regarding gobbits i am not sure what the dictionary definition is or if there is one but for me a gobbit is a bit like one of those really bouncy hard rubber balls, a dust mote, a star, and glob of something made of phlegm and flame.    

Oh I want to shout and roar and stamp my feet, to shake my arse in the face of my enemies and kick them with my hind hooves. But no i won't i'll politely write a blog that says "i'm angry" and even that might draw pursed lips and reproving tuts from the people i most want to shout and roar at if they happened to read it which thankfully they won't. 
Anger is one those emotions we are supposed to suppress. Or if it must be given vent then let it be vented upon a chosen scapegoat. Heaven help us if the anger we feel is at those who deem themselves superior because they have a strong hold on their feelings. Why would having a strong hold on your feelings be a good thing. Maybe those who have a strong hold on their feelings are actually just people whose heart beat is a dreary plod, whose emotional range is slight. There is nothing wrong with dreary plod but why do those people censor those whose hearts race and stop, and jump and skip. Why is it that those people, too often pillars of the community, hold such store by the flattening of feeling. 
I can already feel myself self-censoring, ready to write some stuffed up tedious blog about feelings and how the middle road is best in the long run. Ack, whatever. And well yes, maybe, maybe we do all do that conform and give way, but should we ? Is that the right way or is it fear that stops us, binds us to that course, stops us from being the whole of ourselves, makes us more at ease with safe and dull than edge and light. 
Societal rules condemn us to behaving well, moderately, even when others are not. We commend people for coping in the face of adversity but why should we cope well, why shouldn't we crumple and fold, why shouldn't we walk away from commitments, why shouldn't we rage when we've been hurt or put upon or made to feel bad ? 
Each one of us is making those choices all the time. Stay within the perimeters given to us by our social group or defy the boundaries and risk being made an outcast. 
Manners. Manners are part of this code of conduct. Manners cost nothing. Manners smooth the way. Manners can smooth the way. But manners can also be a treacherous maze, one way leading to social acceptability and/or advancement and the other to dismissal and contempt. It's a game of politics whether you know it or not. 
Admitting to frustration feels quite exposing. Frustration isn't a pretty emotion. And rage is frankly scary. It needs to be scary, it's a last resort. I'm not really raging I'm just fed up but i think i may need to let loose some of that fed up some way, some how. I'm not really raging yet but the fed up needs to find a way out. I'm hoping i can turn it into something useful or beautiful. 

We have slipped into November and my fairy tale this month is Goldilocks and the Three Bears. I have a horrible feeling i will put some horrible adult spin on this story that makes Goldilocks more morally deviant than necessary and the bears more wild. But hey, maybe i won't, maybe this time i'll keep it simple. 
In the mean time I want to make some blog notes about The Tinder Box because i have really enjoyed inhabiting this world. 
Once upon a time a poor soldier was returning home from war. He was foot-sore and world weary and the soles on his boots were gone, so to gather strength, before heading to town, he took a little rest under the branches of a great oak that stood by the edge of the road. As he sat eating the last of his rations an old woman came by. She stood for a while quite quietly then asked what his plans were for the future, all the time admiring his mighty sword.
"Why to raise some money old mother" said he "for as you can see I'm down to stone broke"
"Well" says she "I'll give you some help if you will do one small favour for me"
"Fire away" says he "what is the help ? And what is the favour ?"
"Well" says she "you see this big tree that you are sat with your back to. If you climb up into it's branches you will see that it is hollow inside. Climb down into the hollow and you will find three caves with three dogs guarding all the gold, silver and copper your heart desires. If you take my apron and put it on the floor the dogs will lay upon it and you will able to help yourself to all the gold, silver and copper you want. All that i ask is that you bring me the tinder box that you will find in the cave. What say you soldier will you do as i say and ask ?"
"This" thinks he "is a no brainer" so he responds with a casual "sure, no problem old woman and thank you" 
She unties her apron and gives it to him and he climbs up to the top of the bole of the tree and sure enough there is a hollow that goes all the way down the centre of the trunk as is quite common in very old oaks. There's a rope tied fast to a branch hanging down, and so carefully he climbs down until he reaches solid ground. From there he can see that within the roots are three vast caves. He goes into one and there is a dog with eyes as big as saucers sat upon a great chest filled to over flowing with copper coins. He lays down the apron upon the floor and the dog sits itself on it while the soldier fills all his pockets with coins and his knapsack too. Then the soldier bids farewell and the dog gets up off the apron which the soldier picks up and takes into the second cave. What's in the second cave ? A dog with eyes as big as dinner plates sat upon a great chest filled to over flowing with silver. It's pretty scary but the soldier lays down the apron. And just as before the dog sits itself down while the soldiers empties his pockets and knapsack of copper coins and refills them with silver. Then as before he bids farewell, the dog gets up and he picks up the old woman's apron and goes into the last cave. In the last cave is a dog with eyes as big as wagon wheels sitting on a great chest overflowing with gold coins. And so the soldier repeats what he did in the second cave. Now with his pockets and knapsack filled with gold he goes to climb out, remembering just in time to look for the tinder box which he finds quite easily and slips into his top left pocket which is only one left with any room. Then with some effort he climbs up the hanging rope and down to where the old woman is waiting. 
With a smile he thanks her and goes to take her leave. 
"But wait" she says "where is my tinderbox ?" 
Whereupon he takes his sword and chops off her head. Leaving her there he walks on into town. When he reaches the town he goes into an inn and asks for the best rooms the innkeeper has. He looks a bit shabby and rough but the colour of his money speaks for him and so the innkeeper gives him the finest suite and from there the soldier heads out to buy himself new boots and beautiful clothes and proceeds to become quite the most popular man about town. 
All's well for a while, until his money runs out. Then when it does he finds himself forced to take residence in less salubrious lodgings and his new found friends drift away. 
One night as he is sitting in the dark and cold he picks up the old tinderbox that he found in the tree. Just for something to do he strikes it and as the spark catches the wick of the candle stub sat on his bare table, the dog with eyes as big as saucers appears and asks what his master wishes for.
Now, for a long time, the soldier has been thinking about the beautiful princess who lives locked behind dark walls in the centre of town. Her beauty is legend and he would like to see the princess so he asks the dog to bring her to him so that he may look upon her. And thus it happens. The dog goes to the palace and brings the sleeping princess on his back to the soldiers lowly garret. And yes she is as beautiful as legend has it. The soldier plants a tender kiss upon her lips, she stirs but doesn't wake and the dog takes her back to bed safe and unharmed. 
In the morning at breakfast the princess sleepily relates a dream she had in the night to her royal parents. 
"I dreamed i was atop a great dog and the dog took me to a room where a man was waiting. He kissed me but he did not speak and then the dog brought me home" 
The queen was suspicious. She spoke to the princess' nurse. 
"Tonight please keep awake and watch the princess while she sleeps i think something is afoot"
And so the nurse stays awake. And the next night the soldier inflamed by the thought of the princess strikes the tinderbox again and the dog with eyes as big as dinner plates appears and asks what his master wishes for. And the soldier asks that the dog bring him the princess so he might look on her again. And so it happens. But this time the nurse follows the dog and marks the door of the house in which the soldier lives with a red cross. Then she goes home to sleep. The soldier once again kisses the princess and this time she opens her eyes just for a moment before the dog returns her to her chambers. After which he marks each door in every street across the town with a red cross. So it is that when the next day the queen sends out her soldiers to arrest the young man the soldiers are unable to find him because all of the doors are marked. 
The queen's lips purse. The soldier dreams of one more glimpse of the beautiful princess. And the princess wonders who the handsome man she has dreamed of for two nights in a row is. 
And so it goes that on the third night when the soldier strikes the tinderbox and the dog with eyes as big as wagon wheels turns up and asks him his wish the queen has filled the princess' pockets with flour, which gently trickles out of the holes that the queen has made and so a trail is left and the dog doesn't notice and so the soldier is found even tho' the princess is returned safe and unharmed just as before. 
Safe and unharmed but not unaware for this time she had woken and they had spoken for some time and gazed into each other's eyes and fallen in love. 
But that's as it goes for the soldier is in gaol and sentenced to hang. But still he has hope for his prison is just below street level and as a young butcher boy passes he calls him to come and for a coin to get the tinderbox from his lodgings which the butcher boy does. And so it happens that as he stands at the gallows with a great crowd watching the king asks him if he has any one last request. And the soldier ask for a pipe and a smoke and as he lights the tobacco with one, two, three, sparks from the tinder box the three dogs appear and tear down the gallows and gobble up the king and queen and all the high and mighty which means that the princess and soldier who love each other madly can live happily ever after together without interference or judgement. 
And that is the story of The Tinder Box. Or my rough re-telling. The Tinder Box is a Hans Christian Anderson fairy tale. Every time a story is retold it changes a little. A story is a living thing. It meets the teller and listener and belongs to them in a way that is particular to them. When I read a story i can inhabit every body and every thing within the story. So in this, I am the soldier, the old woman, the dogs, the princess. I am the innkeeper, the friends, the royal parents, the nurse, the butcher boy, the crowd. I am the walls of the town, the bark of the tree, I am the wind that shakes the branches of the tree, and the stars that look down on land and sea and bear witness to the goings on from before they were visible to human eye, and i am the soldiers boots, the old woman's apron, i am the tinderbox and i am the spark. 
I am the spark. And you are the spark. And each one of us will be our own version of whatever we imagine ourselves to be. And whilst we are what we imagine we are also ourselves, flesh and blood, our concrete being, real, substantial, not-imaginary. But that's the way it goes with stories we slip into them, swim naked into thoughts and feelings borrowed from another mind, another's once upon a time. And our own story, our own life, is that too, a river flowing, a story being told.
Here with The Tinder Box it seems to me, from research combined with my own being, that it is a coming of age story. It's a shock when the soldier cuts off the old woman's head. But one source i found suggested that the old woman represents the mother. Her decapitation is a decisive move towards adult independence and freedom from a parental tie. If the old woman is the mother then my reading is that he has been to war, come home to rest and recoup, goes down into the family tree, is given resources that allow him to make a life of his own. The layers of connecting tissue that flesh out the bones of a story are subject to individual interpretation. To me it figures that, if the old woman is his mother, the apron she lends him might be good manners and grace, that the dogs, who feel to me like untamed drives and power, need to be offered courtesy and respect if we want them to serve us and give us what we need. 
And there is so much more. The fair-weather friends, the princess, even bit parts like the butcher's boy and the innkeeper, each character offers a new insight because each one would tell the tale differently. Each one meets the soldier from their own unique perspective and so it is in life.
My fairy tale a month project that i began as way to keep myself upright at the beginning of this year has been a great gift because fairy tales have been one of my go-to sources since i was a child and investing time, thought and activity in knowing a single story means that those i have chosen are now a part of me, the colour of them is embroidered onto my skin and  the tone and timbre is set now in the beat of my heart. 
I am using waft-y language. I feel a bit waft-y today. Giving myself a fairy tale is, i guess, a light form of escapism. There are more harmful ways to escape. On saturday I was drawing with my granddaughter. We were talking about drawing unicorns and i asked her what kind of tail she thought unicorns have, this is a question that vexes me very slightly. We also talked about what colour unicorns are, i thought they were white, but she said "oh no, lots of colours". Then i said something and she gave me a stern look and said that our drawings wouldn't look realistic. We were quiet for a moment. And then she looked at me and i looked at her and we smiled because we knew that however we saw unicorns was going to be imaginary because neither of us had actually seen a unicorn that wasn't out of someone's imagination. It was a special moment. 
The border between real and imaginary is pretty clear but it isn't solid and one person's real can be another's madness. When I say I am the wind in the trees or the stars in the sky i know that I am in reality, just me, Becca, but as it happens just-me-Becca can also stretch out of my solid self to imagine how it is to be a star or the wind or another person or a bird or creature or whatever. My imagination is the starting point for empathy. The word empathy stems from the greek em - in, and pathos - feeling. When we empathise with another it means we are allowing ourselves to meet their feelings, to momentarily merge so as to know what is happening for them, in them. 
The merging thing is disconcerting. It happens in crowds. It happens often between lovers and good friends. It happens in friendship groups and families too. And when we pick up a book or watch a film or play a video game. It is why we might bond over iconic figures they represent a part of ourselves and when we meet someone who also relates to that figure we meet ourselves in them. Which Harry Potter character are you for instance, see how you instantly like the people who choose the same body to inhabit or who are friends with our chosen form ? Is this what binds Trump's supporters ? Is his obvious isolation and grand deflection of pain something that his followers recognise and feel fellowship with ? My imagination veers away from trying to understand, or empathise with, him and the greater body of his fan-base. 
Aversion is an alternative form of empathy perhaps. Something in another body (singular or plural) is unattractive. Generally unless the thing or being is in your face the response is to not see, not know, to refuse to witness. It is perhaps why being born witness to is such powerful medicine. And perhaps why, as a species that has done spectacularly well, we have become more and more narcissistic and needy, see me, hear me, know me, I am important, I am worthy of attention, it is hard in a crowd to attract attention perhaps it is enough to be part of the crowd. But crowds are dangerous, they demand a conformity sticking out in a crowd is not safe, it invites rejection. As someone who has misfitted since forever i have learned to err away from crowds and cliques now. My belonging is more often met in solitude than company. And loneliness is harder to bear in a crowd than alone. 
None of this really has anything to do with The Tinder Box story. But then again maybe it does. The Tinder Box is a very ordinary human journey in many ways. And it is that human journey that i pondered on during October. My journey, and the journeys of others both known and loved, and not known, or not loved. All of us are travelling from one fixed point, birth, to another, death. And how we get to our end point is not always going to be easy. The gift of empathy from others will make it easier, will smooth our path.    
What am I getting at ? I don't know. I suppose i am extolling the virtues of imagination and wishing  for imagination to be given more love and respect, because my experience is that it is those with the greatest imaginations who are often most kind, most likely to show compassion. And hell knows we could do with a little more kindness and compassion in this world at the moment.