When I'm worried, I move the furniture. Today, I've lugged an old Georgian desk with three drawers in it all the way up the stairs (upwards, step by step in a wiggling movement, rounded foot by rounded foot) to my office. I've jettisoned the white IKEA desk, more fitting, I think, for an architect, and now I've balanced my laptop, a lamp, a glass of water on the desk from my parents' drawing room where the phone used to be. Behind it on the wall (in the house I grew up in) was an old and flattering mirror, with a pretty, rather ornate wooden frame, so you could look at yourself while speaking on the phone. It appealed to my teenage self. The desk is awkward and I can't fit my knees under it from my ergonomic chair, so I'm sitting cross-legged and facing the window and the thankfully blue sky. What it lacks in comfort it makes up for in solace and safety. I like that one of the drawers is filled with years of November paper poppies with green plastic stems. I've pushed the daybed against the wall, topped it with my rainbow horse blanket and the ancient Frenchie. I'm remembering to drink more water than I think I need.
The day started oddly. I dragged myself and the dogs down the field to the river at about a quarter to 6, in my Birks, through wet grass, in order to stem it (the oddness). Both dogs walked into the stream and drank. It started to rain. We galloped back up the hill. I did deep breathing exercises because I thought that might help the crazy thick energy. I know you're all feeling it too. Water with electrolytes, a cup of tea. Then 35 minutes of YogiGems. Instead of choosing a set of kriyas randomly I searched "depression" which revealed 30-minute kundalini yoga to remove tension and negativity. Having a tough time? Dealing with difficult energies or people? Bingo. I love her so much. The breathing helps massively. Then the ho-oponopono meditation. Then TM (with a nod to dear Pam Gregory and all the people who meditate at 7 for a harmonious and peaceful planet). I say it, along with my prayers, the lists and lists of people and animals that I must remember. I know, it's insane. It's like Daryl from Mallory Towers who says a prayer for the earwigs in the garden shed. All this just to put myself together in the morning. We are in the most intense of times. We are all holding on by a thread. I think this and then I chide myself for even allowing the thought. I remember positive affirmations. I remember water. I remember my to do list and the water device and the refresh the flowers on the altars. I do some more breathing. I think this is called magical thinking.
The first thing I saw on my phone was a message on The Hub, our local community What's App group, lovingly curated by my friend L, was 7.39am Looking for a male long haired miniature dachsund to mate with mine. She's coming into season shortly. Quickly followed by the helpful reply: Champ Dogs is a respected website for doggy dating.
I took the dogs to Yattendon to grab coffee and sit with people and my journal. C is in Brussells voting on films with the European Parliament. I live in the middle of nowhere and I thought to myself, today is not the day to be alone. Dear little Pip curled up in a ball next to me and I struck up a conversation with the woman on the next table, who has a five year old Spaniel. Eggs, coffee.Admiration for the lovely woman who runs it. I should do this, I think. How much more satisfying a life it is to give people delicious breakfast. Everyone loves breakfast. A conversation behind me about the viral meningitis break out in Henley and all the news crews that stalked the college. It was hard for the students as they were in the middle of exams. "Sky News was really aggressive" says the young woman. Yattendon has pleasingly green doors, a good little shop which tempts you in to buy things like Tunnocks Snowballs and bloater paste, a lot of people with dogs. On the way back I stopped in to see L in her nice shop. We really should have a secret handshake. "How are you doing with this, you know, energy" she said and I could've cried. "I'm doing everything I can" I said. I'm not sure I can let her in to my crazy morning routine, but no doubt she has one too. I see some adventurine. It's pleasingly green and both dull and sparkly. I'm wearing all green and it matches me. We talk about crystals and her beautiful amethysts. She tells me how to clean my crystals. She offers me sage. I say I have palo santo and don't say that I want to call it palo alto. I tell her that The Hub is the reason I've stayed in West Berks. All the lovely crazy ladies and their crickets bats, and teenage sons who need garden work, ten pound Zara dresses, chocolate Guinness cake, and questions about where to eat in Marrakech. I look at L and see a kindred spirit. I know she won't laugh at kundalini and have seen her save people from themselves when they're a little drunk in charge of the Whats App group. She is, I think, a Good Egg. Also the cafe across from her is being taken over by the pub so she's expecting an influx of people this summer. Good.
The police are doing their thing next door training their very howly dogs so that Pip lays by the bedroom window with one ear permanently raised. It's all very serious. Guns pointed. Men with stuffing in their arms. Grown up faces. All of that. They train on the grounds of the big house next door to us until it's sold. Sometimes when they include the ambulance teams too there are tents erected and hamburgers grilled. And they leave half eaten buns in the leaves, much to Pip's delight. I take him up the drive to pick up something from Amazon. The Julia Elliot book Hellions. I'm rather pleased. I think of my friend H in LA who married a man who did nothing but order from Amazon while she worked her arse off. I could never understand it. He also went on a silent retreat in real life ie not while away with likeminded people staying in yurts, and they'd turn up to dinner parties and only one of them would speak. Poor H would walk in and announce gently that her husband was taking a talking sabbatical My friend Lucy said it was quite boring sitting next to him because he could only nod or shake his head. Thank goodness she is a good conversationalist. But, she said, he was apparently very good at sex, so I suppose grunting and moaning was allowed. Quite a good way to appear gloriously enigmatic and interesting, don't you think?
I'm not avoiding the subject. All my gang are talking about it. When I say gang I don't mean my friends. It's a bit like being in the resistance, you don't really tell people about it for fear that they may think you a bit mad. But my most straightforward and sensible friend J says that people don't mind because they know me and I've always been this way (which is true; I've signed my emails with "everything is connected" since about 1996) but it doesn't mean that you can out yourself. I sit at lunches and dinner parties and try to be witty and funny because I'm sure I used to be that way, but it doesn't seem to work so well. Either I'm the "intense" one - which is fair - or I've gone beyond the age where being eccentric is both charming and sexy. Poor C, after every single lunch we have here I say "Am I boring? I know I am." And he says "no you're not boring, my darling." And I look for cracks in his armor and hesitation in his usually Jeremy Irons-like delivery (I'm not joking. He sounds exactly like Jeremy Irons. I love it.) But my gang (Kirsty and Pam and David and Lee and whathaveyou) are talking a lot about this massive shift that is happening in consciousness. And that it's not just humans that are shifting, but mother nature, the whole planet. There are a LOT of earthquakes now, for example, and solar flares, and wars (at least 8 conflicts in the world currently, and 10,000 or more combat-related deaths), and disputes, and utter madness, things we've never seen before, certainly not in my life, certainly not from people in public office.
I've resorted to a happy patch. It's yellow and filled with things like Lion's Mane. Previously known as a dopamine patch but they were sued for copyright infringement or some such thing. I've stuck it on the most hairless part of my body per the instructions, which happens to be on the side of my ribcage. Actually it's called a Kind Patch. I hope it helps.
While I was illegally scrolling on Instagram yesterday, I came across an interview with a man who used to be a monk. He was tall, elegant, dressed in a button down shirt, chinos, wearing a hat. His skin was tanned and his eyes twinkly. He spoke gently, kindly, as you would expect. It made me want to do that so much. Not that we can hide anywhere when the world is turning upside down. But I wonder if that is spiritual bypassing? There are two approaches to spirituality, by transcendence or embodiment. Maybe the embodiment one is more challenging, and maybe it's the one we should be aiming for. Nobody said it was going to be easy, all of this. But I didn't know it was going to be quite so hard to own everything, to be responsible for one's whole self in this way. To be accountable for your behaviour and to acknowledge your role in what is happening in the world. We are all culpable for the strife, the wars. And, I think, I believe, until we see how much we are responsible (we are sovereign) the discordant stuff will continue. There is no-one else to help us other than ourselves. The blaming and shaming doesn't help. The judging doesn't help. Nothing is better or worse. We can't hide. There's nowhere to go. It's just us attempting to take the plank out of our own eye (feels a bit Monty Python, I know) and being ready to walk our sisters and brothers home. Preachy as fuck, I know. But I really don't have anything better right now. It's where I am. Or rather, it's the conclusion I've come to while trying to make head or tails of the whole thing.
PS Yesterday was the Luckiest Day of the Year because of the Venus Jupiter conjunct (they were closer together than they have been in many years). Therefore all people, even those who are prone to humbuggery, were expected to have a little bit of a skip in their step. I dropped my beloved at the train station early to catch the Eurostar and whizzed over the Thames via the Whitchurch Bridge to go see my horse, Bella, who's actually on gardening leave, while her lesion on the fetlock bone heals. She gardens her paddock, mowing the lawn extremely well with her short teeth (why the long face?). Jan, the lady who mans the bridge booth in the mornings, all cashmere and powdery and fragrant, was smiling as usual. "Today is a very Lucky Day" I said. "Venus and Jupiter are closer than they've Ever Been" (I'm prone to slight exaggeration; I do think it makes thing more fun.) "Oh, what a good start to the day!" she said. And I thought Yes! What a good start to the day. Think of all those people who will be driving through that toll booth, and she will be greeting them with the knowledge that Today is the Luckiest Day and all that Magic Juju will be sprinkled on all of them to bring to their places of work. Hooray. The road was closed and so I drove around Woodcote and Stoke Row, via Highmoor and Nettlebed. Bella was awfully happy to see me. For two reasons: 1) I'm the bringer of carrots and 2) I'm the itcher of her teats. It's almost comical, and she doesn't do it with anyone else, but every time I see her, after a few minutes, she lifts her near hind leg and cranes her neck left towards me as if to ask "Could you please give me a scratch?" And dutifully, I rub her teats and get rid of all the muck that lodges itself there, and she puts one of those horse smiles on her face where they stretch their mouth at you comically. "Well clearly Bella is having a Lucky Day"said Kathy. We had a little more Beauty Parlor which included pulling on her ears with a piece of sheepskin, and washing her eyes and nostrils with a warm sponge. She closed her eyes in bliss and then we wandered back to her field, eating some Tasty Spring Grass along the way.
The dogs were with me and I knew I had to find a place to walk them but with the Road Closed signs on our usual routes, we came back via Highmoor (after of course telling Tom and Marny at McQueen's where I get my coffee that this was The Luckiest Day.) I parked up down a byway, got the dogs out of the car and walked into the middle of a beech wood. Huge, old oak trees, mulchy roads, squirrels, and a criss cross pattern of footpaths, dotted with a few very pretty cottages. I met two women with a red labrador and a viszla and managed not to tell them it was a Very Lucky Day. Instead I said "Oh, I grew up with red labs. Aren't they the best?" On the left of us was a huge park field, with a few chestnut trees, a hay meadow probably, and on the right a pretty white gabled cottage that had a thirties feel. I realized I was on the Nettlebed Estate otherwise known as the Fleming Estate. There are 2000 acres of historic woodland including 560 acres of protected woods. (The legendary pond from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang isn't far off in Russell's Water). And then it happened, my brain went into one of its frequent vortices, which happens a lot when walking in the woods, where I started to imagine living in a cottage in the Chiltern Beechwoods of the Fleming Estate. How perfect! Close to my horse! Close to my friends! In the Chiltern Hills! Feels like The Faraway Tree. Check. I called Charlie who by now was actually on the Eurostar beaming through rural France. "I think we should rent a cottage on the Fleming Estate" I said. "I'm on the train surrounded by people" he said in his Grown Up voice. "But isn't this a good option?" I said. "We could live in the middle of the woods. It's beautiful here." "Are there any pubs?" he said. "Oh, masses." I replied. Sweet man knows me well enough to indulge me.
As I drove closer to home I gradually drifted away from my fantasy of living in a fairytale cottage on the storied Fleming Estate (Robert Fleming bought the estate in 1903 and his son, Ian Fleming was born in Joyce Grove Manor House shortly thereafter) and towards the awning man I was meeting at home. I parked my car and in the moment between turning off the engine and opening the car door, there is always a moment when the radio comes on. The voice on the radio said, "The Ian Fleming Estate has announced..." I love a bit of synchronicity. How was your Lucky Day?
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