Bridging
My last post was so happy it’s been kind of intimidating living up to the expectations it set. But now I have a message from the back of a card that is even more mushy than the former, but possibly mushy enough to take me over the edge of mush-land and back onto stable cynical ground on the other side. So, for you to receive as you wish:
“Be nice. Think happy thoughts. Champion silver linings. Love all things (not just cute things like babies and kittens) and when you do love, love like they do in power ballads (you know like on a cliff with the wind in your hair and your eyes shut knowing you’ll never know another love like this). Watch out for dog poo. Smile at people- even grumpy ones. Be nice (oh I already said that). Remember that anything is possible and whatever you do always try to look on the bright side.”
Well, I like the bit about kittens and power ballads. And being nice is pretty good too.
But lol, the card is from a site called www.reallygood.uk.com. Things are becoming soup-like in their mushiness.
And it’s all very ironic, as on the front page of “reallygood” there’s a purse one can buy, which says on it “I hate oysters”, which doesn’t follow their own advice about loving all things at all, so that it’s almost as if they’re just saying warming things on cards to make profit from the demand of nice people who want cards, and that they don’t really mean it, and that perhaps their imperfection in this respect is why they want to insist we love all things not just kittens but dishonest profiteering card companies like them too. “We left the dark side unlit for a reason don’t you know?!!”
Oh happy day!
Today began with cutting and sticking. It progressed to a Quaker Meeting, at the end of which I was greeted with a cup of strong black tea and one of those chocolate cornflake cakes with extra sweet sticky gooey stuff at the bottom of the paper and a purple mini-egg laid on the top (Easter was here!). I spoke to our local Quaker Peace and Social Witness representative about a change I thought would improve the QPSW website, and she enthusiastically promised to pass it on to someone from the central office. Then I took some quiet time in the Quaker library, then on a stone seat in the garden amidst the beautiful flowers and watched the bees and gazed at the colours. That garden is enchanted with peace.
I didn’t feel up to yet another cold soup and bread, and looking up, there in front of me was a poster advertising a street food festival at Gloucester Green; I’d even seen the set-up two nights ago and thought it looked delightful. And it was. There was a real happy, laid back, festival-like, atmosphere. There was a circus tent (I had two gos on the tightrope, opening the way for more only-inner children!), and affordable stone-baked pizza, and free warm spicy sauce in which I soaked mine. It was delicious, and enjoyed at a communal plastic table, next to which an eccentric band played medieval music and sported awful jackets of all varieties. As they played, I watched adorable kids, serious kids, mind-blowingly zen kids, and not-kids-anymore, taking on the tight rope; a fascinating, funny, battle of wills. People around me were eating churros. They were £3.50, and I only had £1.15, which to me looked like an opportunity to practice bargaining and build up some cheek; I wandered over and hovered.
Manager: “This lady looks like she wants a free taster!”
Me: “Thank you!… It’s delicious, wow!… I only have £1.15 left, do you know if I could just have a third of a portion for that?”
The manager grinned and grimaced and nodded and rolled her eyes. I gratefully received a half portion.
Back at the table, Spanish sounds asked, “Do you like the churros?” Then it was “Where are you from in England?” “Where are you from in Spain?” “Oh, your sister will be cycling around Spain? She’s very brave!… Have you heard of the Pilgrim’s Way?…” (An hour later) “… Great, well we have each others email addresses and phone numbers now, so let me know if I can do anything or you want to look round Balliol!” “Let us know if you ever want anything in Spain, anything at all, or Spanish lessons!” Happiness all the way home.
There was to be an open mic night in the square that evening, and I’d been learning some beautiful songs recently, so when I got home I tried out my favourites. A band- a brilliant jazz band, right outside my window- struck up as I moved on to a half-hearted attempt to work. Scrap that! I threw open the window and perched on the not-really-a-balcony, from which I watched and whistled and shoulder-danced and felt like one of the jammiest people alive. A friend offered to join me down on the street to dance, and I raced down, grinning. But the saxophones and drums were moving on (silently) by the time we reached them.
And now I’m looking at a daffodil (an Easter gift from a friend, which has been unfolding its yellowness all week), over the top of my laptop, and looking forward to an open mic night and perhaps a big warm veggie wrap this time in the evening square. What a day!
Phantom
Yesterday brought a beautiful, warm, scented spring evening, and I took a stroll around Hollywell Cemetery. I was the only visitor in the graveyard, and wandering through its grey headstones, I felt like the odd one out: “Everyone else in this graveyard is below the ground”. And indeed, it struck me, most everyone who’s ever lived is ‘below the ground’. The magical thing was that somehow, I was alive, conscious, walking. A phantom for a burst, before the return to mud and feathers.
In a way, life drags on- enough that we get very distracted from its spark-in-the-night-like quality. People certainly don’t seem to hold themselves as magical flame-like phantoms (watch them!). One’s life must seem to drag and extend more on account of us spending so much of our time amongst (that tiny minority of all who ever have lived and will live) the living.
It also just feels like we’re not at all constructed to make the most of our fleeting time as walkers on the world. Walking round the cemetery I had a feeling of being freer, and more ‘agent-like’ than perhaps I really am. We have hearts, and they tie us to things and to feelings, sometimes however much we might wish we could feel and choose and do otherwise. And I’m not sure we can cast off the less pleasant (if not unhelpful) parts of our sociability, such as the concern for reputation.
I tried to reflect on the fitting response to the transitory, odd nature of life. Perhaps simply, the more we are emotionally aware of what our life is, and what it isn’t, the better we’ll live it. I’ve certainly felt like that since my walk through the cemetery: interacting with people more freely and happily, pursuing my goals more straightforwardly, noticing the moments and their qualities…
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Maybe I should become a banker philanthropist…
There’s something I thought I was going to receive which was really opening up the future I want to pursue. Learning I might not get it has made me really realise how many things I have and do just take for granted- not take for granted at the intellectual level, but at the emotional level. And it’s made me take seriously just what money can do for people who are without enough to meet goals or needs that are important to them.
At the same time, it’s made me realised that Mary Chapin Carpenter is also an accurate advocate for the other side of the coin, “We’ve got two lives: one we’re given, and the other one we make… Listen to your heart and your heart might say, ‘Everything we got, we got the hard way’”. So much of the stuff that matters to me I didn’t get through luck or fortune, but through various ‘hard ways’, because that’s when your character, outlook and friendships are formed.
Still, I’ve emotionally realised just how much I have been able to get (still ‘the hard way’) because of a background of unreal economic security. Skilfully expanding that sort of security and opportunity to others is one of the really meaningful, good things the relatively rich (most people in the UK) enjoy the capacity to do. I think I’ll send my Giving What We Can form off now.
Scotland Photos
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- Hills Round Our Cottage
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- Pond up the Road from Our Cottage
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- Hills Around Our Cottage
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- Hills and Loch Above the Cottage (We’re to the left)
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- Landscape Around the Cottage
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- Landscape Around the Cottage
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- Skye
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- Skye
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- Abbey Road/ Skye
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- Bahsteir Gorge, Skye
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- Cailean near Bahsteir Gorge, Skye
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- Me near Bahsteir Gorge, Skye
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- View over Loch next to Cottage
Untitled #1
“You say you’re like a tree or a bus stop
With your hands by your side.
Lets say you’re like a field of tulips
Cheap gold flowers in the sky.”
….
Rest of the lyrics from I Am Kloot’s Untitled #1:
You say you’re like a tree or a bus stop
With your hands by your side
Lets say you’re like a field of tulips
Cheap gold flowers in the sky
If the cavalry comes, is it really no suprise
Count the calory cops, i’m allowing alibis
Drag the shine off your stool and leave me, its raining outside
Catch your life through some strange indifference, i don’t want lullabies
Paralysed on parade and ready to drop you know
Amazed and a mess, you may just stop me and go
(Well he said he was a vegetarian. Well there’s animals in water.)
Here come the calory cops, is it really no suprise?
And if the cavalry comes i’m allowing alibis
Count your life like some strange and different
Go one word at a atime
Can’t you hear the bells ringing
Get your hands off my sky
In a place where the words all just fall apart
With the sound of a stutter
A mutter in your heart
Da da da da..
Clock the spokes off your wheels, its safer just to ride
Put your heart in the back, i’ve not once seen you smile
You say you’re like a tree, or a bus stop
Things to Write About
- What it is about full awareness of others’ worth that I think is so valuable. It the value intrinsic or extrinsic?
- Meditation retreat: “How’s your breathing?”
- A code of practice for economists
- Are city traders etc paid so much because it helps firms persuade ‘consumers’ of their financial services that they are indeed buying something of worth? (How much better than chance are the choices of traders?)
- Internet chat rooms as safe places for young people to experiment?- A case for the affirmative (and what it misses out)
- Affectionate contact / Relationships
- John MacMurray: The end of philosophy is action, and the end of action is friendship
- Obedience and autonomy/ inner-conntectedness
…- The making of unrealistically ambitious lists???
Marxist Limmerick
Found this sribbled in the margin of some lecture notes I’d been making on (the apparenly riveting topic of) social mobility:
There once was a fellow called Marx
Whose name didn’t rhyme with anything helpful.
Bark.
… They’ll make a poet laureat of me yet…
