LA missive number one

We're all walking on the hot pavements trying to avoid the cracks, jumping hopscotch through what is going on in the world and not sure what to do. I keep wondering about Mr Rogers' helpers. Where are they? Senator Chris Murphy, sure. Robert de Niro in Cannes. Now Bruce Springsteen. The people who pop up on my Instagram feed with advice about embracing the world as it is, not as you would like it to be. (It's good advice, I'm not knocking it). Mel Robbins, I'm glad to see that you've taken off in the world, spreading love as you do. But we are all a little off, aren't we? How can you not be when the barometric pressure of angst in the world has gone up to ELEVEN. There is a LOT going on and if you're not feeling it you're probably living in an enchanted dell in the middle of a sylvan forest inhabited by sprites and fairy folk. I haven't written here because I've been second guessing everything. I'm struggling, and as far as I can tell, so are you.

I've decamped to Los Angeles for a couple of weeks for work, yes, but mostly to see my family here. As I gathered my things at home the day before my flight, I realized I find it impossible to fly without getting my whole world into order, as if death is imminent. I can't just pack, I have to organize each drawer. I pulled a piece of paper out of my work notebook, something I'd written hurriedly during a zoom meeting on a train:

Now couldn't be a more important time to experience, create, promote lovely things. More than ever, this is what we need to fill our souls. I'm staring out of the train window and yelling "thank you, thank you, thank you" in my head (as the dappled trees whoosh by). Everything will be all right.

The mistake we make is waiting for someone else to say something, to do something. When actually the saviour is you. And it always has been.

My friend has lent me her guest house. It's huge and beautiful, with white sofas and white curtains and seagrass rugs on the floor, naive paintings on the walls, and blue and white porcelain lamps in pairs. The kitchen is stocked with good English tea bags, jars of biscotti, local honey, a fridge filled with salsa and hummus and tiny organic carrots, a piece of ripe cheese under a glass dome, yogurt and snacking tuna in pouches. The bathroom has a mountain of fluffy towels and malin+goetz essentials. She has thought of everything. The first night I'm too jetlagged to pay attention but this morning I'm marveling at her thoughtfulness. I have my own little haven in the the middle of LA with a smart speaker that plays Aad Guray Nameh miraculously while I look out at white roses and lavender in the garden. I'm in Los Angeles at I'm sitting at a table in a white wood-panelled house with my laptop and I'm powering through emails and there are humming birds in the garden, and on the street there are gardeners with leaf blowers who say "good morning" as I walk past. I'm taking pictures of bottle brush trees and gingko trees and pink bougainvillea flowers scattered over a sidewalk, and a veritable field of rose-scented geranium that brush against my legs as I walk. I pick a leaf, crush it in my left hand, drop it in my pocket. I want to make scented sugar with it, use it in a Persian Love Cake.

LA has all the bullshit and all the brilliance one would expect. The effortlessly casual Loro Piana clad and earpodded writer sashaying down Larchmont and speaking too loudly, virtue signalling into the phone. The private school mother and daughter in matching black work-out lycra. The daughter orders another coffee because a fly has dropped into her cup, annoyingly. The mother looks into her phone as her daughter speaks for her. The parents in the bookstore with their distracted three year old son, his face painted like a tiger; they patiently deal with his tantrum as other parents nod with knowing appreciation. There is kindness too, the lovely server who tells me with the greatest diplomacy that I can't have Danish Rye bread with my eggs as they only sell that by the loaf, but would seed bread work? (It does). The local cleaner where I take my pile of shirts (seven for each day I've been here). "Name, please" he says as he counts my order, "Emma" I say. It's my Starbucks name. "Let me find you in the system," he says. "Oh I haven't been here before," I say. And I look up at the string of Christmas cards above his head and see a beloved friend and her family smiling into the camera. I feel immediately at home.

I read a piece in the New Yorker this morning by Michael Pollan about a psilocybin study by Johns Hopkins on spiritual leaders, a Buddhist, and Episcopal priest, a Rabbi, an Iman...you almost know the punchline although they don't walk into a bar. The playlist that was piped into the headphones of the participants as they lay comfortably under a blanket, their eyes covered in a mask, is available on Spotify and I'm listening to it as I work. Lovely lovely transcendental stuff. But here's the thing, the overall takeaway from all of them, each one of those people in the Johns Hopkins study, is that LOVE IS ALL. That's it. That's the simple truth.

I was lucky enough to learn transcendental meditation on April 26 (thank you E). I'd been meditating on and off for a few years, but TM always eluded me. My friend Karen Taylor tried to bring me to a class in Oxford when we were there. It was in St Giles. I remember we had our bikes and we were walking and there was a sign on a lamp post.  I don't know what stopped me. The death of David Lynch brought so much more awareness to it, and suddenly the socials were flooded with the benefits. I've been doing twenty minutes twice a day for almost a month now, and everything is changing, in a very way. The initial benefits are interesting: there is space between things, things taste more, colors are brighter.  I am kinder. But where I would be a bit hesitant before I'm now an eager beaver to get to my chair, to sit. Before there wasn't time for it, and now everything has shifted around so that there is time. (If you are interested, do let me know and I'll introduce you to my teacher). As my friend E said to me "it's the best high, everrrr." Perhaps these ways of softening ourselves, of coming back to our higher selves, of trusting and allowing are the only ways we have to spread love in the world. There is a ripple effect, because your edges become smoothed just a little and the way you react out there is just slightly softened. You become less judgey...just a little...and more able to step into another person's shoes. And the cumulative effect (one hopes) is that those rings of ripples spread out into the world.

By the way, there is nothing more irksome than someone forcing you to be calm. Have you ever wanted to punch anyone more than when they say "just calm down"? Thankfully, it's not like that. Apparently everyone has thoughts that float in. The point is just to be easy with them, not to overreact, not to judge yourself (how many times have you heard "I can't do it" "my brain's too busy" or "i can't clear my mind.") No-one can.  That's the point; it's coming back every time, realizing that you're thinking about scrambled eggs for breakfast, and coming back to the mantra, easily, without fuss. 

The morning birds are waking outside my window. I saw finches in the jacaranda trees yesterday, playing. The birds are still here, thank God. I've sat on this post for days so I'm just going to put it out there, and I have to walk before my work day starts. Wherever you are in the world, I'm sending you love.  Let's be strong (soft) together.

 

 

Safety Net

Someone very lovely sent me this poem yesterday. I think it's absolutely wonderful. I hope it speaks to you too. Sending love. xo

Safety Net
This morning I woke
thinking of all the people I love
and all the people they love
and how big the net
of lovers. It felt so clear,
all those invisible ties
interwoven like silken threads
strong enough to make a mesh
that for thousands of years
has been woven and rewoven
to catch us all.
Sometimes we go on
as if we forget
about it. Believing only
in the fall. But the net
is just as real. Every day,
with every small kindness,
with every generous act,
we strengthen it. Notice,
even now, how
as the whole world
seems to be falling, it
is there for us as we
walk the day’s tightrope,
how every tie matters.
~ Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

Make me an instrument of your peace

I am thinking this morning of Pope Francis who died earlier today, who chose his name in honor of St Francis of Assisi. May he rest in heavenly peace. I am sharing the words of the prayer of St Francis here. Whatever your belief, these are words to live by:

Lord, make me an instrument of your peace. Where there is hatred, let me sow love; where there is injury, pardon; where there is doubt, faith; where there is despair, hope; where there is darkness, light; and where there is sadness, joy.

I keep a tattered piece of paper tacked to the wall in front of my desk to remind me. We have everything we need. We are not alone. We need to keep coming back to being instruments of peace in this beautiful green place we call home. 

This is how the Pope lived. In a statement announcing his death, the Vatican said:

"He taught us to live the values ​​of the Gospel with fidelity, courage and universal love, especially in favour of the poorest and most marginalised."

If there is ever any doubt this is the right course -- if we are for one moment swayed by the nonsense which is overtaking America -- let us all come to our senses and remember this humility. 

* * * * *

In a side note, I should mention that he managed to come to the balcony at the Vatican yesterday in a wheelchair to greet the crowds and wish his brothers and sisters a happy Easter. We had our own Easter celebration in the garden, with five grandchildren, with dyed eggs and radishes, a tomato tart,  bundt cake and berries, under the magnolia tree who has surrendered her blooms, surrounded by tulips in pots and our first potted lilac. There were dogs trying desperately to grab chocolate dropped from the hands of small children, and the odd sausage that no-one would miss. Thistle, a thirteen year old Frenchie who grew up in Laurel Canyon, who can't see or hear very well, still has a fine sense of smell. She made her way to where the small children were picnicking on the lawn and surveyed the plates for her Easter feast. Sausages? No. Chicken drumsticks? No. A fully loaded toasted sesame bagel with cream cheese and smoked salmon? Yes please. She carried it gently back to our table, gloating. "Oh you can tell she's an LA dog," said Kate. "An English one would've gone for the sausages." 

My mother joined us, pretty in a pink sweater and pink pearls. "How are you, Mamma?" I asked. "I'm in good company," she said. "The Pope and I in our wheelchairs, enjoying Easter."

The children and the whippet tore about the garden, shrieking. People were very kind about my collapsed Bundt (a rookie mistake, using an elaborate Christmas pan, replete with candles and fir trees, for an Easter loaf). "Is this the Bundt recovery hotline?" I said to my friend Jack who lives in Sag Harbor and offered me a most excellent almond and lemon cake recipe. "Honey, dip it in a hot bain-marie to save it" he offered. "If all else fails, glue the two pieces together with a lemon butter cream and smother the whole thing in whipped cream." I love him so very much. 

Recipe here. Would work just as well in a regular cake pan (also less margin for error).

Sending love to you wherever you are in the world.

 

 

 

Frontload your Mornings

I suppose the elephant in the room is the widespread anxiety and panic caused by the current President of the United States. I'm not being an ostrich but I refuse to engage with his bullshit. However, if you are a relatively sensitive person and even if you don't read the news, you will feel this stuff. You will feel the anxiety. This is posted as an antidote to that anxiety. It's about frontloading your mornings with good stuff that will help you deal head on with the stuff that hits you during the day.

Dear Friends and Readers,

I realize that we're bombarded with good advice, from all over, all of the time, and that it becomes overwhelming. The downside of working on oneself or being on a healing journey is the underlying idea that something needs to be fixed, that we're somehow flawed. I don't believe this. I love the idea that we have everything that we need and it's just about accessing it deep inside of each one of use. In these doolally, upside down, unsettling times one of the most helpful things I've found is to frontload my day with useful stuff so that I feel full and strong ready to meet the day. It hasn't been always very easy. For months during the winter I struggled with a morning routine; I wanted to find something that allowed me to do all the things I wanted to do before the work day started. These included walking outside (with dogs), yoga, meditation, writing and some kind of prayer (or gratitude practise).  I'm sharing with you some things that I have found useful, and I hope they might  be useful for you too. If this isn't your bag, please feel free to move on.

1. Greet every day as if it's going to be the best day ever. Simple advice, yes, but actually grounded in science. If you are looking for good things you will find them. (And the opposite applies).

2. Drink a full glass of water before your morning tea or coffee. You will be more dehydrated than you think after 7-8 hours of sleep. (Water of any kind: splash your face or have a shower. It shifts the energy.)

3. Time expands and contracts depending on your perspective. When you are anxious, for example, there never seems to be enough of it. If you are in a flow state (this happens to me on a horse, or walking the dogs in the woods) time stretches out luxuriously. 

4.For a long time during a difficult period of my life, I did kundalini yoga almost every day with Tej in Los Angeles. I hadn't found a practise in the UK that spoke to me until I found this: Yogigems has bite-sized kundalini yoga videos, from 10-30 minutes long and delivered in a clear, warm and organized way. She has the loveliest voice, is a proper kundalini yoga teacher, and doesn't chit-chat annoyingly. I find it soothing and useful and its effect is very powerful. I've now done this practise for 10 days without a break and it has taken away the annoying racing thoughts that I've become so used to.

5. Be in nature. The marvelous Mel Robbins says that you shouldn't make any kind of decision until you've walked on it and find this to be true. Out of the door goes a tight, irritated, grumpy person, back comes a calm, happy, connected person. We've been gifted in the UK for the past couple of weeks clear, beautiful, sunny Los Angeles style weather, which has made it very easy to be out in it. There is so much going on! Yesterday we saw Tortoishell butterflies and cowslips on the Berkshire downs. Check out this lovely advice from Michael Mosley about the power of phytoncides.

6. Write down first thing ten things you're grateful for, send love to 2 people you find a little irksome, and sit quietly for five minutes and ask for advice. That's it. 

7. Allow yourself to be outdoors. I read a wonderful account of a man who took his work outside for just an hour a day every day of the year, come rain or shine. 

8. Be here now. This super simple piece of advice from Ram Dass is so clear. Everything happens in this moment. This very moment. Not the past (spoiler: you can't change it) or the future.

9. Greet everyone you meet as you would someone you love. (It helps, miraculously. You can be the change and all that.)

10. Eat some protein. Eggs, avocado, spinach, rye bread make a very good breakfast.

I hope some of this helps you. Take what you need as they say. Go well and peacefully.

With love from,

Miss Whistle

Oops upside your head

I said oops upside your head, oops upside your head. -- The Gap Band, 1979

Bean in a field in summer

Life's like this: You're driving along listening to "The Hustle" (to which, I have to let you know, my ex-husband learned how to do at Beverly Hills High School on a rainy day sports period, another reason I'm jealous I didn't have a California education) and watching the freakily huge and mesmerizingly gorgeous hailstorm depositing buckets of small white frozen balls onto the road, and marvelling at the beauty of it all, passing a lorry, and a couple of people walking, standing on the side of the road and waving as you drive slowly past, and the next you've been hit by a car going about 50 mph that has slid on black hail-ice and is shunting you across the road and on to the grass verge. It's intense, actually, but there is this moment when you notice something blue and fast moving out of the corner of your right eye and then suddenly the world slows down and you're watching in slo-mo as the car comes closer and closer and closer. And for a moment you are utterly, beautifully speechless, completely calm and you feel nothing but peace and contentment, almost the way you see heroin addicts depicted on screen. I think I am writing this to tell you that guardian angels are absolutely and without question a thing. A real, and serious thing, and that they are there with you, lifting you, gently lifting you through the slomo and the underwater soundtrack, so that you are no longer in time, you are pulled through a little rip in the space time continuum, on a soft soft cushion where you are cosseted, gently, velvetly, as if in warm saltwater, but better. There is softness and quiet and a sense of pure calm just before you hear your own voice say "Oh fuck, someone hit me." When I was small, my brother and I believed that we flew downstairs. We would lift off the ground with just the tiniest touch of a foot to the floor, and we'd float to the next landing before touching off again, down three soft layers of stairs to the hall. It was effortless, easy, un-rehearsed, and just like this. A softness of protection surrounds you.

The policewoman rang and told me that my phone had called in the crash. I'd just staggered out of the door, underneath the airbag. Perhaps the door had opened in the crash, I don't know. I just know I couldn't get back in that way when I tried. I must have been slightly in shock. "The hail just started out of the blue and then the whole road was covered in it," I said to her. "Oh I know," she said, "we had dozens of calls of crashes all at the same time as yours." So, just like that, or just like something out of "Magnolia" the sky opened a crack and the earth went off its axis just long enough to let a cloud release a mountain of hail onto a little country road in rural Oxfordshire, just long enough for scores of cars to lose control and spin out, and smack against each other, and then seal up again in a matter of minutes, with no visible sign of inclement weather. There's a disaster film too (we disagree; Charlie actually thinks it's a scene from "Carnal Knowledge" with white cars) where a bunch of Teslas are programmed to smash into each other one by one. It felt like that. It felt as if the laws of nature weren't working for a moment. It was mayhem but it was okay. As if you'd just given up control of everything. As if your ego, your little self, had stopped trying.

The woman in the other car was holding her head and pacing and repeating "I'm so stupid, I'm so stupid." Poor woman. It seemed like a grief response. She had blonde hair and a navy blue parker with a fur collar, but it was unzipped. My fingers were fiddling with my phone which didn't seem to be working. I was wet from riding and cold from standing outside and colder and shaking from shock. But, extraordinarily, we both seemed okay. No broken bones, or blood, but I'm reminded off falls from horses and adrenaline is a powerful drug. I hugged her. Hard. And then I sat in my car with the heat on to get warm, but the heat wasn't working. It was blowing cold onto my already frozen legs in their wet breeches.  I found two dog blankets in the back and wrapped myself up in them. I wished I'd left some polos in the car. And then I texted "I'm okay" to Ned and Honor who'd gotten emergency contact texts. Somehow I got it together to video where the cars were and the skid marks on the road in the melting hail. I'd travelled. As they say.

The police and the ambulance teams were amazing. I had a full MOT and despite a stretched trapeze muscle, a sore neck and a bit of whiplash, there wasn't much wrong.  I said "I feel a bit hypoglycemic" and she didn't know what I meant so maybe I was using the word wrongly. Brain all over the place. "Do you have any pets?" she said as she shone a torch into my eyes to test for concussion. She pricked my finger. "Your sugars are good." I was dying for a warm cup of sweet tea and a biscuit. Isn't that why people give blood? Sweet tea on a grey day in the back of an ambulance on the verge of the A4074. Heaven.

But I can't shake this feeling that someone is watching over, that someone is watching over all of us. That we each have our specialized team of super-duper on-it angels, just guiding us. I heard somewhere that there have been 144 generations before us, and if you think about that; that you're carrying all of those generations with you and they're all there to wish you well in the world. That hand on your back which is always there, pushing you gently in the right direction, that's many, many people, all of whom have your best interest at heart. It makes me cry thinking of that. I'm thinking of my grandmother and her mother, who I didn't know because she died when I was very little, and all the Scandinavian women, and how we're all pushing each other along with those warm, strong hands on our backs.

I woke up the next morning at 3am and grabbed my journal and by the light of my phone I wrote: "This is a wake up call. Go inward. This is the Universe smacking me upside my head the only way it knows how." A little like when you're high, you do think you sound rather profound in those liminal spaces between sleep and waking. But, you know, go inward indeed. Spend some time alone, in the quiet, without any interruption, without the clutter. Create some spaciousness, just you and your angels. Remember why you're here. Remember the thing that you forget every day and have to re-member. It's something to do with purpose and why we're here (it's so close I can almost touch it sometimes, and other times I'm on my tiptoes on a chair reaching up to the stars to grasp it.)

Breaking open your heart

I went to see Warhorse last night. In Woking. Not the most inspiring of  towns, but the theatre was fine, stuffed into a badly designed shopping mall that the English are so good at, shops crammed into odd spaces, compromised lighting and everything closed by six. The theatre was packed with school groups of loud teenagers trying to out-swagger each other, in their sweat pants and hoodies and Nikes, swooshing their hair, chewing gum, whispering behind their hands, being generally adorably teen. We sat two rows in front of them, and I stared, as I do, at everyone (luckily without my children to tell me not to). I love people watching. I love trying to imagine what people are thinking, what their relationships are to each other, whether they are in still in love, or whether they've given up. There were plenty of big necklaces, fleeces, and horsey women (I know this breed well as I am one of their ilk). There were plenty of family groups, plenty of couples who weren't speaking to each other. I thought about my friend Lucy, who has no boundaries whatsoever in a way that would be horrendous on anyone else but on her is lovely, coltish, affectionate. She would immediately start chatting to people next to her. She would offer to share her sweet and salty popcorn. She would make friends. I remembered that I was English and that the English aren't keen on that kind of thing. I remembered to move my elbows and not take over the arm rest on my right. "Do you have tissues?" said Charlie. "Why?" I said defensively. "Do *you* have tissues?" I asked rudely, like a teenager. "Well it might be quite emotional" he said kindly. "Oh, I'll be fine," I said, brushing it off, doing my best Kevin or Perry.

The stage was very plain, with a large swath of something that looked like a thick piece of ripped wallpaper in the shape of a sweet potato, which became an ersatz screen onto which pencil drawn animated scenes were projected: the village in Devon the boy comes from, the battleground in the Somme, horses galloping, drawn in HB pencil. A troubador woman in country clothes sings a ballad in a rich voice and the scene is set - a horse auction at a local town where our hero is bought as a colt by a drunken farmer who spends thirty nine pounds of mortgage money on the horse - a half draught, half thoroughbred. Joey. The farmer's son bonds with the horse and trains it. You know the story. I believe that my whole persona changed the minute the little colt, made of wood and metal and cloth, appeared on the stage. How does a puppet, so clearly animated by two or three people with sticks attached to it, move and breathe and flicker with something so closely appropriating life? How does the puppet colt look and move and twitch with such playfulness, such inquisitiveness, such a beating heart? I think I started to sob when the young horse makes a Herculean effort to show that he can pull a plough and didn't actually stop crying until most people had left the theatre. At one point Charlie said to me, "Are you okay, darling? Would you like to leave?" "No," I managed to sniffle back to him, my chest heaving, the breath caught in my throat.

Warhorse is transformative. You walk in as one person and leave quite simply as another. There is no doubt that a transformation takes place. For me, all the armor fell aside. It broke my heart open, as I think all good art does, to allow you to receive. It's also magic. You suspend your disbelief completely, as the puppeteers dance across the stage.

I've been listening to Michael Meade's podcast Living Myth today. I have a long drive every morning out to the horse, and this is an ideal time for listening. Today's episode is on gratitude and grace. "A broken heart is the only heart worth having," ie the eye of the heart is the seat of the soul (Cynthia Bourgeault has a book about this too.) Watch Michael Meade here. "Some people find it through a spiritual path, some people find it through creative arts, some people find it through making love, there's many ways to find it, but the idea is to find that which opens the heart...and that allows the soul to grow." - Michael Meade

But the idea of great art being transformative is a heady one. And perhaps that is why we pursue art.

Horses have an electro-magnetic field that is so huge, that just being a few feet away from them is transformative. (I just googled it. Ha ha.) My friend Angela, who is part of the morning riding crew said to me today, "how do other people deal with depression?" and I know what she meant. About three minutes after you are in contact with a horse, everything falls aside, all the petty worries, the little anxieties (the big anxieties), the tension, the tightness, the small things just disappear, melt into thin air, and you experiences wholeness; you experience your heart opening and you are suddenly part of a unity, not a tiny little lonely creature living with your own metallic worries, your fears, your rigidity. Suddenly, everything is possible. That place (also called flow, I believe) is where all good things come from. That place of vast abundance. So, greeting Bella this morning was hard without tears, after experiencing Warhorse. Horses give us everything they have. They allow us to -  and give us a safe place to - open our hearts. I think that realization was brought home in the theatre last night.

Gratitude, even momentary gratitude, is a state of wholeness. - Michael Meade

(Here is the Living Myth podcast The Necessity of Gratitude.)

So, I'm thinking that those gratitude journals that everyone poo-poos might be worth it. Just a few minutes every morning, to keep us on track, to keep us aligned, before the world sweeps us up in its dramas. 

Be safe everyone. I love you, LA.

Try to Praise the Mutilated World

Try to praise the mutilated world.
Remember June’s long days,
and wild strawberries, drops of wine, the dew.
The nettles that methodically overgrow
the abandoned homesteads of exiles.
You must praise the mutilated world.
You watched the stylish yachts and ships;
one of them had a long trip ahead of it,
while salty oblivion awaited others.
You’ve seen the refugees heading nowhere,
you’ve heard the executioners sing joyfully.
You should praise the mutilated world.
Remember the moments when we were together
in a white room and the curtain fluttered.
Return in thought to the concert where music flared.
You gathered acorns in the park in autumn
and leaves eddied over the earth’s scars.
Praise the mutilated world
and the gray feather a thrush lost,
and the gentle light that strays and vanishes
and returns.

-- Adam Zagajewski

(Translated, from the Polish, by Clare Cavanagh.)