From outside in to inside out

Whilst already awake, I awoke again, to a thought.

I talk to much. And I am tired of listening to myself.

So I had a little chat with my neuroses and in an effort to talk less we decided to take a break from blogging for a while, or not from blogging as such because we’ll be hanging out here, but from talking so much. Because the less I talk the more I listen and the more I listen the more I understand (and the less I annoy those around me).

So thankyou to everybody who has ever visited here and especially to those who have returned to punish themselves more than once, - goodbye for now and goodbye incessant chatter (and hello perhaps enigmatic but ever so slightly scary smile . . .)

peter

Solitude and Loneliness

I drove home yesterday saying these two words to myself, thinking about them. They mean nothing if you say them quickly, you have to draw the words out as you speak stretching the vowels out like an endless Sunday afternoon.

At first they seemed to mean the same thing - being alone, and they do, physically but the difference is emotional. In solitude are happy to be alone, if you are not, then loneliness creeps in. Having lived on my own for 35 years I have been both. It didn’t matter where I was - I have been lonely amongst friends at a crowded dinner table, the conversation whirling around me like a hurricane with me at it’s still centre insulated from from it all. I have also found a peaceful sense of solitude in the centre of a city, just sitting watching the crowds mill around me. The same in the countryside, where I lived. On a quiet evening I would often take a bottle or two of beer and drive out to a spot at the edge of the hills at dusk. From there I could look out over the Lothian countryside and beyond to the Firth of Forth. As the darkness crept in and the lights came on I would sit, sometimes in solitude, sometimes in loneliness but always at peace with the world around me.

Those days are long gone now. The world turns ever changing and I change with it. The difference at least for me, from those days is of course an emotional one - love. Since I fell in love and we got married the loneliness has gone. I can be anywhere in the world, in a crowded airport, or on an isolated empty beach and there will always be someone else with me, there is a connection between us that is independent of physical space. It breaks occasionally when we fall out with each other and then that aching emptiness that is loneliness for me seeps back but that is rare and part of being in love, reminding me that love is something you do as well as what you feel.

Solitude. Loneliness. Peaceful, beautiful words that connect with what is deep within me.

Friends Reunited

Well, it may have taken almost a year but I am ready to listen to Tom Waits again.

But how could I have doubted I wouldn’t be - he is an artist I have never seen live but have listened to regularly for nigh on 30 years. There is no way I could live the rest rest of my life without that driving rhythm, the words that fit together like a beautiful puzzle, the occasional hint of spaghetti western, the sense of humour that echoes my own, and of course that feeling of melancholy and hopelessness that is the flipside of western living.

The way he wrings whatever sound he needs from the instruments to get the desired effect has influenced my writing style for a long, long time now - we may have never met but together we have both aged and grown wise . . .

Sorry Nicola, I'll try to keep the volume low . . .

(ps - Life is never dull when you are married to the dancing queen . . .)

Life 101

Do you ever feel that you are missing something? That if you could only see the world as it really is everything would make sense. When I am learning something new I’ll struggle for ages reading and listening and eventually, overnight often, it suddenly sinks in, I understand how it works. Sometimes all it takes is a different explanation or the clarification of one small point and then I get it. But I don’t get life yet. Everybody else seems to be racing ahead and it seems so easy for them, while I am still at the back of the class unable to begin because nobody has told me which end of the pencil to use. I am the small child in the race that runs the wrong way when the pistol goes because he is just reacting without understanding what the race is. In public I am the older child in the choir who is tolerated but asked to mime the words because their voice spoils the song. I am still playing at “houses” and “parents” and “worker”.

Are there others like me I wonder. Has the man I pass on the park bench decided just to sit there and wait until it all becomes clear? (I tried that six months ago - it didn’t work). The woman in the supermarket staring lifelessly into space while her toddlers scream their heads off, is she wondering what the point of it all is?

Are we the undiscovered poets of the world, or just the future inmates of the asylums?

(Life is never dull when you are a complete nutcase)

Alice

When I was little we would occasionally visit one of my grannies. Apart from the stilted conversation and the strange warm sweet smell of old houses, what I remember most is the bed. Usually very tired from travelling I would wearily climb the narrow creaky stairs and turn the corner into the bedroom. There towering above me on spindly iron legs would be the bed. The mattress was firm but not hard, enveloping but not smothering, confidently there under me like a good parent. Capping this would be layer upon layer of sheets, blankets, eiderdowns and finally a candlewick cover, all firmly tucked in around the edges. Nowadays being used to lightweight Summer duvets I would untuck everything and strip the bedcovers down to the bare essentials but in those days I would carefully squeeze myself in under all the covers and just lie there cocooned. As the bed warmed up I would gradually fall deeply asleep with a big smile on my face.

In the morning the sun shining through the curtains would wake me. I would just lie there warmly cocooned like a forest animal safe within it’s burrow, listening to the distant sounds of breakfast conversation.

Even today I look forward to Autumn when we put on the heavier winter duvet and the quilt over that . As soon as I feel the weight pressing down, holding me, I feel safe and protected. It is no wonder perhaps that somedays I just want to stay here . . .

Life in Black and White

Imagine waking up in the dark. Not the usual darkness though this is close and black like there are walls surrounding you, shutting everything else out. Looking up you can see a small circle of daylight way above you and hear everybody else up there. The blackness is pressing in and you need to get out. You could call out but people may just point and laugh at the daft situation you’ve got yourself in, and anyway you pride yourself on your independence and resourcefulness. So you start to climb.

It is not easy, the blackness is cloying and sucking and you have no energy. Just moving takes a tremendous effort but by the end of the day you make it and collapse at the top, exhausted but glad to be back with your family where you belong. It was a strange experience, one that you don’t fully understand so you do not mention it out loud, perhaps it was just some sort of virus you think as very tired to go to bed early that night.

Next morning you wake up at the bottom of the pit again. And the next morning, and the next. Each day you climb out or attempt to, for some days you are so tired that you fall asleep halfway out and just slip back again as you sleep. Eventually the weariness becomes so great that you cannot climb, you decide to rest at the bottom for a day to regain some strength. That helps the next day and for a while things seem to be improving but the effort of constantly climbing day after day with no respite, no sun, no joy, gradually becomes too much again and you sit at the bottom wondering what is wrong with you . . .

“Go to the doctor” said Nicola, “And tell him how you feel, the truth!”

So I did and it seems that I am suffering from depression. It also seems that I have been this way for a long time, most of my life probably and because of that have become very good at hiding it from others.

But it can be treated . . .

Memories

I have been looking at old photographs. I think it is good to look back occasionally to remember where I have been, the people I have met and the things I have done. I am lucky of course that nothing truly tragic has ever happened to me but even if it had I think like Dr Phil that we should still remember, should accept what has happened because it is these things that make us who we are now.

On the odd occasions when I do some digging in the garden I am always fascinated by the roots of all the plants growing down together twisting and mingling. One earth but a million different paths. We each have a taproot of experiences stretching back from now twisting and burrowing in and around everybody elses lives. We all live in the same world yet no two of us, no matter how close, share the same past.

Looking back I have also noticed that Nicola and myself are people that are not afraid of change. At least not afterwards! There are different kinds of people out there. We used to live in a small village and there were people that were happy to spend their whole lives there. Village life is special but it is not for me - I get the urge to break out now and again, to do something different, to go somewhere else. None of these changes would have been posible if I did not have a good root system of experiences stretching back through the past. It is these that have allowed me to grow up and out into the future each time . . .


I built a small shed once. It was painted green and had a roof of wild flowers and herbs. I have left it behind now but one day I’ll build another one.

The Hissing of the Summer Lawns

Thursday 8.45am 

It is forecast to get to 29 degrees today. Just now at a quarter to eight in the morning even though the nighttime chill still surrounds me I can feel the heat of the sun already pushing through, burning.

I am in the middle of our village, Havelock North. There is a distant hissing of water spraying the grass, the birds chirp and whistle, and the traffic quietly rumbles as everybody begins their day. As I walk past a cafe a hint of coffee fills the air along with the clinking of cups. The people are all isolated, distant, self absorbed as they think about their day ahead . . .

In the UK in the 60’s and 70’s package holidays arrived. Ordinary people could now spend two weeks a year somewhere more exotic than Aberdeen, Spain perhaps or Italy. Everything was arranged for you by the travel company, all you had to do was choose from the brochure, pay the fee, and turn up at the airport. For people like my parents who loved to travel but had decided to stay in one place for their children’s schooling, package holidays were ideal and every year my sister and I would spend two weeks by the pool or on the beach sucking in all the strange sights, sounds and tastes. We would leave Edinburgh paper white and along with the rest of our party return lobster pink, tired but inspired having had a small glimpse of what was out there in the rest of the world.

And that feeling from then of the sun already burning down through the morning cool has penetrated deep within me and stuck. It may only be like this for a brief couple of hours each day but it always evokes those childhood feelings of being on holiday, of having all the time in the world with no worries and a whole world of possibilities and new things to experience. It makes me happy.

Life is never dull when you make time for a cup of coffee and a cheese scone . . .

A pretty cool way to crack walnuts

Sunday 8.51pm

A weekend spent doing a "father-son activity" as my youngest would put it resulted in one of these - a trebuchet.

For a machine designed for destruction it does have an incredibly elegant action that I find quite hypnotic, and I am not the only one.

We spent the afternoon throwing walnuts across the garden.




If you fancy making one yourself, we used these plans but made it half size.

Immortality

Saturday 5.23pm

Nobody wants to die. Some of us do so far too early, some linger on beyond their time. But no matter what, death is inevitable. It is the natural order of things, and without death would we know what life was?

Immortality should be life without death. The gods have it and evil super villains constantly strive for it and yet as befits something an evil person would lust after, it is cursed. You may be immortal but as the villains soon discover you do not escape death for it constantly taunts you - everyone around you will eventually die.

Most of my life so far I have shared with various cats. I remember and miss everyone of them. A small glimpse of what immortality would hold perhaps. So no, immortality is not for me. What I hope for is that death comes for me when the time is right, when I am ready for it.



The photo is Ranna.

Porridge

Sunday 6.53am

Porridge always reminds me of snow. When I was younger, as soon as the first few flakes began to drift down, if it was a school day my mum would be up early making porridge. I would wake to the distant clonking of the wooden spoon on the side of the pan and the radio talking away in the background as she listened to see if schools were open or closed and if the buses were on time. After a while she would pop her head round the bedroom door to say "don't rush to get up, it's been snowing there'll be no school". I would already know about the snow as soon as I opened my eyes - the light is different. Even through the curtains you could see the brighter than usual whiteness outside and of course it was also oh so very quiet out there . . . . just the occasional hiss and crunching sound of car tyres as someone slowly went off to work.

Downstairs the kitchen would be warm with an orangy yellow glow, slightly hazy with condensation from the kettle and the porridge glooping away in it's pan. My mum is traditionalist and so our porridge was always made on the stove with just rolled oats, a pinch of salt and water. Into our bowls it would go in big ladlefuls, milk would be poured round the edges and white sugar piled on top so you ended up with what looked like a small snow capped volcanic island in a milky sea. It was so hot that you could only eat from round the edges and because the bowls were cold, if you poured your milk carefully your island would float and spin around. Nowadays I just have milk, no sugar but I still feel happy if I can get my island to float on the milk.

And then once we were finished, my sister and I, mum would want us out of the way so she could tidy up. So it was off outside for us dressed in jumpers, duffle coats, knitted gloves and welly boots (gum boots you might call them). And the world outside would be crisp and white and still and our cheeks would soon glow and burn with the fire of life within us as we rolled giant snowballs, the biggest ever . . . .

Just like dying but you can still feel the shame

Sunday 7.48am

3am. It is dark, black, and completely silent. This is that darkest hour just before dawn when it is difficult to believe that the light will ever come again. And I am awake. Midnight is the witching hour but of course that is just make believe. This is much, much worse. A land of the dead inhabited only by the things that normally lurk quietly in the deepest recesses of my mind. Things I have said and done in the past rise up to leave me writhing in agonised embarrassment all over again. And added to that any current worries I may have whirl round and round my head until I am completely disorientated with no hope of ever finding a solution. This continues until I eventually fall asleep again or get up and do something else accepting that I will be tired the next day.

There is a solution to this of course. Write them all down. As David Allen says in Getting things done any unresolved tasks in your mind will keep disturbing you over and over again, often at the least convenient times, until you do something about them. But if you keep a piece of paper beside you you can write them all down - clear your mind knowing that the problems are safely recorded to be looked at again in the morning.

Admittedly I have not done this. Just accepting that it is all part of who I am has done the trick for me. It probably goes a long way to explaining my rather introspective, slightly depressive nature . . . . .

Happy New Year

Saturday 1.56pm

When Nicola and I got married, nearly four years ago now, we knew we would be moving to New Zealand. So at the time we were already practicing by drinking as much kiwi wine as possible. For the wedding we had New Zealands answer to affordable bubbly stuff - Lindauer. And of course we are still drinking it today on special occasions. I like to write the occasion and date on the corks and have kept them.

Not sure why really.

2009 is going to be the year that I build on the successes of 2008 and so my catchphrases during the next twelve months will be :- "Consolidate" and "Keep hitting it until I hit it"


Life is never dull when you perhaps come across as a couple of alcoholics.

Science

Monday 9.19pm

There were once two tribes who feuded constantly. The cheif of the Waimarama tribe had a champion, their cheif Te Mata O Rongokako, he was unbeatable. The men of the Herataunga tribe just did not know what to do against this man, but an old woman spoke up. Let Te Mata meet our chief's daughter Hinerakau, her beauty will soon turn his mind from war she said. And it worked, he fell in love, and decided to woo Hinerakau instead of fighting. But the people of Heretaunga had not forgotten his past evils against them and persuaded Hinerakau to set him many difficult tasks to prove his love for her. These he all accomplished easily until the last. Te Mata, she said, our tribes live so far apart, you on the coast us here on the plains. If you really love me you should eat through the hills that seperate us and we could meet more often and more easily. Te Mata took a huge bite out of the earth, but choked on a rock and fell down dead. He still lies there today on the skyline, surrounded by the beautifull cloak that Herekau had covered him with before leaping to her death from the cliffs, for she had fallen in love with him in return.

As people we seek an explanation for the world around us. Stories provide this explanation. Science of course, though never described as such, is just another such set of stories.

Do not believe everything you are told.

Ink

Monday 7.40am

When I was younger, ink came in hard glass bottles with big black shiny plastic tops. It was for fountain pens but you could also draw and paint with it, and this is what I did. And just for fun if you dropped some onto wet paper the ink would spread through it separating out into it's different colours like a bruise. Ink came in different colours of course - blue, black, red, green and brown I think, and also one called "blueblack". This was my favourite. Black was just black, a little plain and a little flat whereas blueblack was blacker than black, such a deep, deep indigo that you could stare into it forever and never see the bottom. Since then if I can I will not use straight black as a colour, although this is much more difficult now with ballpoint pens and inkjet printers. The slightly off colour that can only be got by doing things by hand gives life and vibrancy to what is created, your eye is drawn into the colours and kept interested. Like notebooks in the computer age there will always be a place for the handmade.

Blueblack is also the colour of the sky just before the sun comes over the horizon in the morning.

Notebooks

Saturday 7.10pm

For years now, on and off, I have kept notebooks. Less formal or demanding than a diary they are a place to put things. What things? Anything and everything in fact - ideas, appointments, shopping lists, sketches, handwriting practice, my thoughts on life and the answers to those quizzes and questionaires you find in self help books.

Like dream catchers they allow me to put things down in writing before I forget, and the very act of writing encourages and helps my ideas become more organised, more real. The ones from the past become little snapshots of what I was doing and how I felt at the time. Like music, reading one will take me back to a particular time and I can feel what I felt like then, what I was doing, even what my hopes and aspirations were. A couple of posts ago I listed what makes me happy and one particular notebook has the same thing written years ago  along with my wishes for the future. Written on the edge of a hillside in the Scottish Borders, long before I met Nicola, I find the entry particularly poignent because reading it I can feel exactly how I felt then and you know most of what I wished for has come true. (the rest I am still working on).

I have three notebooks on the go at the moment, one for work, one to keep track of money and my newest one above, is for everything else. Well four actually - my computer is also a notebook - I am writing this on it now, but the the paper ones will always be there as well.

Notebooks. Everyone should have one.

Me and the Ducks

Saturday 2.48pm

It was lunchtime on one of those still, grey days. Just me, the ducks, and the park. There I was sitting eating my cheese sandwich, just idly thinking, feeling a bit down. "Wouldn't it be great" I thought "if I didn't have to go back to work this afternoon, If I could just sit here all afternoon like the ducks." But of course one day I will be able to, because I have thought this way in the past and things inevitably change. I sat thinking of the past for a while, the places I had been, the things I had done since - there has certainly been change, and for the better as well.
And a thought rose up through it all. When I do look back one day, what would I like to be looking back upon? Myself feeling miserable? or the experiences I had on my way there?

Obvious really.

Everything I learned in life

Saturday 1.54pm

Went to see an fun film this morning with Nicola and our youngest – Kung Fu Panda. It had a message of course as these films do. Be yourself, accept yourself even, and work with what you have to become the best you can be. In the words of children’s cartoons “fulfill your destiny.”
Thirty years ago I finished School. And in that twelve years of schooling was I shown how to be myself ? did they work with whatever talents I had to bring out my best ? No. There were good teachers of course but I don’t think modern schooling allows them to teach. I like to cook but I did not learn that at school. I also enjoy writing but again did not learn that at school either. I used to make things out of cardboard and in that I would use my knowledge of geometry, and that I did learn at school.
All that school does is provide the tools for a modern life, but what you do with them is left up to you. And if their learning style does not work for you then all you are left with is the most basic lesson - how to do what you are told and how to get up in the mornings so that you can hold down a job for the rest of your life, paying taxes to support the very thing that let you down in the first place.
I am lucky that I was able to fit in and learn stuff. But without any guidance, finding and accepting myself has been a long and lonely journey.


There must be a better way.


Perhaps here is a place to start http://www.ted.com/

Reality

Tuesday 3am

Nothing seems real. I am sitting in a rented house on the other side of the world from home, surrounded by unfamiliar things, living out of a suitcase really. My sleeping patterns are all mixed up - here I am awake at three in the morning, my head bunged up, hayfever I think, but feeling like I am not quite here, not quite anywhere really. A ghost.

This was an unexpected trip, arranged at short notice due to my fathers death. His illness and death came upon us quite quickly really, not unexpectedly as I have said, but the quickness of his going into hospital, his slight recovery and then rapid decline and death all seemed to happen quicker than I could respond to. The funeral of course was arranged and over in a few days and again this made it almost impossible to be here even if we could have afforded the trip. I should have been here of course and would have liked to have been, but did not realise this until afterwards. Moving so far away from home I knew something like this was bound to happen eventually and I think I really said goodbye to him two and a half years ago when we left.

So now we are all gathered to scatter Eric’s ashes and say goodbye, and I feel detached from it all, like arriving during a film, not quite sure who is who or what the plot is.

Birdsong

Saturday 10.15am

I am in the north of England. In an enclosed garden in a small village called Horncliffe. It is peacefull here, not quiet because I am surrounded by noise but somehow just as it should be. I notice a constant background humming and gradually realise what it is – bees, hundreds of them working away in the flowers that are all around me. And birds too are everywhere, sparrows, blackbirds, thrushes, rustling close by and then more and more distant past the wood pigeons in the woods fading into the distance. But no traffic noise. In Havelock like most places no matter what time of day or night it is there is always the constant rumble of cars, but here off the beaten track it is absent and I feel much more relaxed for that. Just as Edward Thomas described in Adlestrop years ago this background of birdsong is such an English sound. And it is part of me too, part of my englishness that I will carry everywhere deep within me, and no matter where I live.

The rain comes on, a summer shower of sudden heavy, wet raindrops and I go back indoors, carrying the birdsong with me.