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. 

A year ago today i was on my way home from a weekend away with my daughter in Dublin. I did not know that my still loved ex Jon had died. His sister-in-law had sent me an email on the 19th but she had sent it in the evening and we'd left in the morning. I am thankful for this because it meant i was able to enjoy the trip in blissful ignorance. 
I thought about Jon a lot that weekend tho', i think he would have loved Dublin. The pubs and bars i guess if was drinking, but I didn't know him as a drinker except in the later years by email. If we'd gone together as lovers we'd have had a different break because our relationship wasn't about drink, it wasn't what we did together, we'd have gone wandering, exploring the ups and downs, the arts and culture, found places that were out of the way, and made love, because that's what we did together. 
But after getting home, and seeing my son for about an hour before he left town i opened my emails. I was hoping there might be one from him but it was not to be. He had been dead for a good week and a half, dates were not given until much later. My blog is full of my grief then, it is different now. But it goes on. The missing, the sadness, special dates are difficult. I'm guessing anyone who has lost someone they love will say this, it's something i was dimly aware of before but not aware in the way i am now. 
A year on i have had time to run through the time we spent together, to apply discernment to chuck out the trash and make safe the good, the worth-keeping. i often feel him close by, and whether or not that is mad i don't know but i feel like he is with me, watching the birds out of my kitchen window, arms around me, walking with me, gardening with me. Maybe I am just re-tracing cherished memories, who knows. Often when I'm feeling blue I'll open a book and a note in his hand will fall out or a photograph or something we picked up together will turn up or i'll hear his voice in my head just saying my name. I imagine he is with other people who loved him too. 
Last night i opened a draw to put a belt away and there at the top was a postcard he had sent me, words up, i'm not sure when he sent it but the image was of a garden we visited on our first holiday together. I know that I loved Jon and I believe he loved me but our relationship was essentially just us two so it's comforting to find messages from the past that verify my experience, they are proof against those who make me feel that our relationship was a throwaway affair. Maybe it was but when i find a message like this I remember how i did feel loved by him and how even when things went wrong i still loved him because i knew him as the man behind the mask, a man who shone with love.

I know i wasn't the first to love Jon. And probably not the last. I know i was not the first because when we were together i found a book with a book plate proudly declaring the book belonged to the library of him and his ex-wife. I remember thinking someone else has thought like me, hoped for a future with this man, it was at a time when he and I were at our best so it did not worry me but made me sympathetic to his ex-wife, the mother of his daughter. I had been through relationship break ups and knew the hurt of betrayal and disappointment. Maybe i should have been less sympathetic and  made fewer excuses for her, but what was was, really it took Jon's death for me to understand his family and to know that my desire to be included/not socially excluded was never going to be met.
I wanted to blog because a year is a long time. And this has been a long year. Grief is a new country for me. I think that it comes in many shades of black initially and maybe for some it is always black and i've been lucky because through the cracks in the black i can see mimosa yellow in bloom, the green of a fig tree, the pale pink of an almond blossom, berry stained fingers, blue seas, goldfinches and so much more. But, still, now i have met death i am way more afraid of him/it than i was before. The desolation is much greater than i imagined, the despair cuts more deeply, erases hope more fully, and the pain and loneliness are much harder to bear than imagination allows. 
So there, so one year on. I grieve still, but my stare is not so blank i think. And in my grief I can now remember Jon as the best of himself. I know he wasn't all good. I know he messed me about. And I can't say for sure that he loved me only what i felt. But I know that i loved him and i feel immensely grateful for the time that we shared, particularly the time that felt like paradise. 

post script ... I remember the proposal ... i think i laughed ... what we had was enough already 

October 1st and i don't think i have blogged for a month but the first of the month is a doorway. And in my life, this year, i have also given myself a new story as a source to draw from on the first of the month. This month's fairy tale is The Tinder Box. It's the story that got chosen because it jumped out of the box and i decided to go with fate and choose the one that had chosen itself. 

Last month's fairy tale was The Frog Prince. This story was picked for me by my younger son, my youngest child, because he happened to be stopping over with me on the evening of the last of the month and asked if he could choose it for me. I had thought to ask him myself anyway so it was clearly meant to be. 

After August's tears I'd been a bit worried about how my fairy tale musings were going. I guess that fairy tales are open to interpretation and reflect back to us that which we need to see, not necessarily want to see. My son and I talked about how I had turned The Hare and The Tortoise into a rather dark story, where he being more upbeat and lighter took it as more obviously a horrible braggart, the hare, showing off and rightfully getting his come uppance. And the moral being don't be that horrible braggart. 

But how many of us really pay attention to that need to be humble. When our lives are going well, we are inclined to want to shout it from the rooftops, or at best are complacent about our good fortune, if our lives have taken a turn for the worse we may ask for support but it's harder, and so much of everyday life is just walking forward, not more or less than another day. If everyday was amazing and brilliant would our need for amazing and brilliant mean that we needed every day to be more amazing and brilliant, higher and higher pitched and never soft and low. 

But enough of The Hare and The Tortoise, and before I move onto The Tinder Box i want to make some notes on my journey through The Frog Prince. 

For those who don't know the story, it goes something like this. 

Once upon a time a beautiful pampered child princess was walking in the woods close by to her palace. As usual she was playing with her golden ball, which of all her toys was her favourite. She threw the ball up and caught it on it's fall, over and over again, up and down, up and down. But then once she threw it up and failed to catch it and the ball fell to the ground and rolled into a deep  deep well. The princess was grief struck and sat by the well weeping her eyes out for the loss of her precious toy. As she sat weeping she heard a voice "princess" "princess" .. she opened her eyes a little and saw a frog sat on a rock close beside her. "Princess" he said "why do you weep so" and she replied saying that her ball, which she loved, had fallen into the well and her heart was broken for the loss of it. The frog said "what will you give me if i go into the well and retrieve your ball ?" .. "oh frog" she answered "I will give you anything you ask, my father is a king and you shall have jewels and money and all the finest things" .. "these are of no use to me" said the frog " what i want is to live by your side, to eat from your bowl, to sleep in your bed, and be your constant companion" ... "ah" thought the princess "silly frog, how can he be that for he is a frog and i am a princess" and so she agreed to his terms and down into the well dove the frog and not so long after came up with the golden ball which he gave with grace to the princess. The princess was thrilled but she had already forgotten her promise. She ran back to the palace with barely a backwards glance to the frog, a mere thank you and goodbye. But the frog had not forgotten the promise, "princess, princess" he called after her "I cannot run so fast as you, pick me up and carry me with you as you are troth to do" .. but the princess ran faster, her promise had been empty she did not want to live with a frog, to eat and sleep with a frog. 

And so the frog went back to the well. But the next evening when the princess and her father and all the royal family were seated to dine there was slip-slop, flip-flop on the stairs and a voice called out "princess, princess have you forgotten your promise". The princess paled, said nothing and looked down at the plate before her. But the king asked what promise she had made and she had to retell the story of losing her ball and the frog and what she had agreed to in her distress. The father, the king, insisted that she abide by her promise and so the frog was brought into the dining room and sat by the princess' plate and ate with relish all the dainty morsels that were offered. The princess however had lost her appetite and only picked at the food and was glad when the meal was over. 

But worse was to come for when she rose to go to bed, the frog insisted that she take him with her, and her father too as point of honour. So with distaste she picked up the frog and took him into her bedroom and shut the door. She thought this would be enough but when she got into bed the frog asked "princess will you not pick me up and put me in your bed that i may sleep beside you ?". At this the princess lost her temper, enough, she had had enough and threw the frog at the wall. At which point the frog turned into a handsome prince who knelt before her saying "princess, you have broken the spell that was put upon me. I was turned into a frog and only if I could persuade a princess to take me as a frog to live with her would that spell be broken. I ask you now to please marry me". And of course the princess said yes and so it was that the princess and her frog-prince were married straight off and a carriage arrived with Hans the prince's faithful servant riding at the back as the footman to drive them back to the prince's lands. And as the carriage drove forth, a cracking could be heard. And what was the cracking ? The cracking was the sound of the three iron bands that Hans had wrapped around his heart when his master had been turned into a frog breaking. 

Hmm, so not such a brief retelling but once a story is started it's hard to stop. There have been a few things about this story that have piqued my interest this month. The golden ball obviously, but I have always wondered how it is that her throwing the frog against the wall worked. In later versions I think that she kisses the frog and that feeds into our current culture where women are supposed to be gentle and compliant. I had taken those versions as more acceptable but the darker story is more fascinating. So I did a bit of research because if something causes me to question it raises my curiosity and feels like an interesting path to follow. In my research i re-discovered Hans, or Iron Hans.  Iron Hans is sometimes the name of this story which changes the story's drift. Modern versions I have read often leave him out but he is an important character. So too the king, the father, I think. 

So how did I start out with this story, before my research I was fiddling about with paints and pencils, doodling, and scribbling and I thought about the golden ball being thrown up, up, up, into the air and then falling deep into well. Like the beginning of an idea when it first manifests and breaks into the light until it reaches it's peak moment before falling back down to be caught and thrown up again or else to fall into the unconscious. 

Now here is this ball that has fallen and the humble frog who offers to help the princess by bringing it back up to the surface, but the frog (with apologies to frogs, all animals are beautiful), but the frog is not who the lovely princess wants to hang out with and so she runs away. Only to find that her commitment catches up on her and she is forced to abide by it. I'm back to the day to day living, who would not rather be throwing a golden ball up in the air in a beautiful sunlit woodland glade rather than sharing an uncomfortable family meal with an unappealing and demanding guest. But there it goes the guest is there and asks more and more and more until the princesses patience with the situation breaks. Hellfire i imagine most of us have been there with commitments we unwittingly took on but are forced to endure. I think endurance, the capacity to endure, is a part of living, not every day is sunny and bright and those who are felled by a drop of rain are likely to have harder lives than those who take it and keep going. That's an observation rather than judgement because often we meet life as we have been taught to meet life by those who surround us, our families, our village. 

So when the princess loses it with the frog and after I'd done a bit of research I thought about how you could see it as a positive, she had taken the frogs demands up to a point but actually no, he needed to be better than a frog to get into her bed, that is a very reasonable ask. 

If you google The Frog Prince one of the questions that comes up is "how many frogs do i have to kiss before i get my prince ?" and there we are holding out for a prince and kissing the ones who will never be princes in the hopes that they will change if we kiss them. But here in the story the princess is allowed to say "no" and when she does that is when the prince emerges because any man with a heart will know that women too have breaking points that it's ok for us to say no, that no means no, and respecting the other person's "no" is not a big ask from any man, frog or woman. 

And here is where Iron Hans comes in, he is the faithful servant, but maybe we could also allow him to be the prince's better side. Maybe the prince has been forced to take the form of a frog because he has allowed his uglier parts to dominate. But there beside him was always Iron Hans, the man who bound his heart with iron to stop it from breaking when his master became someone un-servable. 

It has taken the princess' grace, albeit given unwillingly, to break the spell, but also the grace of the prince to know when he had pushed too far and to be at last the man she needs him to be if he wants her to be his wife. 

And what of the ball, well my quest is for consciousness so for me the ball is my consciousness and it's fall into the well is my journey into the unknown and unknowable. For others it will be different. 

Lastly, the king, who is an interesting male figure. As the father he has strong influence and forces his daughter to honour her promise. Is he right to do this or not ? He has power over her, is his power used well or badly ? Answers on a postcard please. 

As August draws to a close i have to admit that i have failed to produce any visual work of worth for this months story. When i lucky-dipped The Hare and Tortoise just before going to bed on the 31st July i breathed a sigh of relief. The Seal Bride and The Handless Maiden had been harrowing myths to get into, stories of coercion and brutality, from which it was hard to milk positive meaning. I let myself relax with my new pick, no difficult emotions in that one i thought. 
I was right and wrong, i will expand on that later in the blog but August has not let me off the hook emotionally. It's been a month of tears. The passage through grief is an odd one, perhaps having harrowing stories to work with let me meet my sore heart in a faery-world, an un-real world, taking that away meant that i had nowhere to hide. I think too that as the anniversary of Jon's death gets closer it is hard to think of him being alive a year ago he was a walking, talking, living, breathing man, a state of being that seems so ordinary until it is no longer the current state. Alive, then dead. That's that. Apologies for my dreadful bluntness, it's how his death feels. 
I can't remember when it was that the great dry heat we had this summer broke, but now as we head towards September the temperature has surely dipped and the air is moist. Often August feels a bit dry and dirty, not so much this year, this summer has been exceptional, and so the years rhythm  is a bit off kilter. It is damper than usual i think, and gardens parched by the hot July have taken the rain, soaked it up and thrown up green as a response.  The swifts left, their leaving is for me the mark of summer's end. And other markers, most notably Buddlieia flowers and Rowan berries, also signal time passing. But i think it all happened earlier than normal and with less of a ta-da.  
I have been tidying my garden. In the heat tidying wasn't important, it was watering that was needed and watering my plants with my bath water felt nice. Gardening has thrown me back into missing Jon and my tears. I suspect that when someone loved dies missing them is a forever thing and there isn't a time when wanting to tell them about this, that, or the other, that wishing for just one more day with them, or even just a moment's eye contact, again is par for the course. Gardening takes me back to the many many days we spent in my garden, i feel him with me when i garden but of course he isn't really with me and it's that that makes me cry.
Jon's death is the first that has hit me hard. I have grieved for pets and mourned my grandparents but the grief was sadness rather than obliteration. It has made me a bit scared of death. Death is not a negotiator.  The long-drawn image of a skeleton in a black cloak with a scythe feels quite real now. Mortality is our given. Death will come to us and those around us too. This is not a choice. Tho' how we get there may, or may not be. It has been along those lines that i have been tracing the race between the hare and the tortoise. 
For those who don't know the story it is one of Aesop's fables. The hare and the tortoise are charged to race. The hare believes he has the race in the bag, he is fast and lean and takes off like the wind at the beginning, the tortoise is slow but steps out one foot in front of the other. No rush, no hurry for him. About half way along the race course the hare thinks to himself that he can take a rest and lays down under the shade of a tree. Tortoise keeps going, one foot in front of the other, step by step. At the halfway mark he sees the hare sleeping under the tree and pays no heed just keeps going, straight on towards the finish line. At some point the hare wakes from his sleep, maybe the sun is just going down and the cool rouses him, he gets up and stretches and sets off again, secure in his speed he's still sure that he'll win. But when he gets to the end tortoise has already won. The moral of the story is slow and steady wins the race. 
Perhaps because my mood has been a bit melancholy this month i've looked at the hare and the tortoise as two on a journey from birth to death. I've also mused about it as a pathway to enlightenment. Or for that matter any life path you might choose. Raw talent can take you only so far it is practise and determination, the thousand hours, the thousand thousand hours, that make the difference. Surely raw talent helps but there is no shirking the work. 
I suspect i may be about to get very heavy and less than my best now, forewarned is fore-armed. I'm thinking about how "mindfulness" has been sold over the past few years. As if there is a fast track to mindfulness, that you can do a course and then say "oh yes i did a mindfulness course" as if that then means you are mindful. Mindfulness is a state of being, it is about giving attention, it is who you are, how you live, not something done for a weekend and then tick you are mindful. The weekend course may wake up in a person a desire to be mindful, it may be the first step, but being mindful is an ongoing practise. In the same way my shiatsu practise is ongoing, i don't just practise shiatsu when i'm working with someone, it's all the time, every breath in, every breath out, same for yoga, or my work as an artist, i hesitate to say it but even poetry and dance are things i endeavour to make whole life practises rather than just things i do when i'm in a class or reading a book. 
I mention dance and poetry with shyness because I am not a dancer tho' i love to dance, and i am not a poet or writer, tho' i love to read and i write for myself. It is perhaps the tasks we take up that force us to meet our fallibility, our lack of talent, that represent the tortoise's path. There is no reason why anybody shouldn't write or dance just because they aren't good at it. And if the race to the end is really just life it's ok to go slow, maybe it's ok to go fast and sleep a little too because if the finish line is death then we are all going to get there in the end and how we get there is not someone else's choice to make. 
So be slow and steady or be fast and furious, fall asleep or plod along, try things if they make you happy. I think maybe the only wrong way to be is to sabotage another because if you give too much time to sabotaging another it's likely that, as wily coyote finds with road-runner, you will end up falling foul of your own schemes in the end.