A case for quiet and light

Hello from Boxing Day and happy holidays and merry merry my friends. Don't you love these days between Christmas and the New Year, when nothing is expected of you? We went for a long, long walk in the woods, with the whippet in his Newmarket jacket, red and yellow and alert, and saw other people similarly bundled up, with their dogs, their children, trundling along, with the crows above, skies white/grey, pines blue/green, one foot in front of another, realizing we're all doing that walking each other home thing Ram Dass talks about. Home for mince pies and tea and lighting the fire, and remembering this piece I wrote two weeks ago.

Last Tuesday night we went to our first Christmas carol service of the season. My oldest friend sings in the Battersea Choral Society and they do an annual Christmas concert to raise money for a local charity. I'd like to say we were gleeful on the way there, but it's funny what we bring to these events; reluctance, residual bits of work (because this seems to be the busy season) - anxiety for things that aren't done, worry about missing important calls - a bit of a sense that Christmas is only for children, a tiny bit of bah humbug, honestly. But we dutifully piled into the church, startled and happily surprised by the lights in London -- a wall of shimmery sparkles covering Peter Jones department store in Sloane Square, all kinds of jolly wreaths and twinkling baubles -- wearing our coats and gloves and hats even though it's not that cold. I wear my mother's double breasted brown tweed coat and one of her scarves, a jaunty red, covered in white horses (so hopeful), and I put on Christmas earings with red pomegranate jewels. We stumble into our row, where dear friends have saved seats, and we're a bit late, of course, and climb over people's bags and legs to get to our chairs. People are holding plastic glasses half filled with mulled wine and showing their teeth to each other. No doubt there were mince pies too, long devoured. Hello we say to our friends and the family of our friends and to the friends of the friends in the row in front, and we lean across each other and catch as much as one can, smilingly, hello, hello, are you ready for Christmas, is all well, making future plans of which 75% won't be kept, but are meant kindly and truthfully in the moment. The orchestra warms up. And the music starts. The nice conductor welcomes us. "He looks a bit like Sam Mendes, doesn't he?" I say to Charlie. "Well, I s'pose.." says Charlie. And the choir is there at the front of the church, men in black tie, women in black dresses, and sparkly things in their hair, different looks and hairdos, rows of black against the stone of the walls. I see my friend Vivien there in the middle, utterly poised and focused on the conductor, warm light on her face, her shoulder-length hair shimmering, her glasses perched on her nose, and I think about how I've known her since we were twelve when we sang in the school choir together in our blue cassocks (and Ian Dury at home). I'm so proud of her. I know how hard she has worked. I feel my heart swell when I see her there, with her book of music, immersed. The hymns come and some involve audience participation, the old favorites "It Came Upon A Midnight Clear," "Hark The Herald Angels Sing." We mumble in our chair, shuffle to our feet, sing heartily, with relief, remembering what it is to be singing carols again. We imagine we're children again, or think of our children, and nativity plays from Christmases past.  A funny reading; a woman reads a recipe for a fruit cake which includes frequent testing of the whiskey; brilliantly, she acts drunker and drunker, hiccuping up on the pulpit, the audience in fits of laughter. I hold Charlie's hand. I sing too loudly. I'm now glad we're there and glad that we're all there together.

And then "O Holy Night" arranged by John Rutter. It might be nice, perhaps, if you don't know it, that you listen to it for maximum effect. It's here if you'd like to.

It's a sacred song about the night Jesus was born, written in 1847 by a Jewish composer Adolphe Adam, adapted from a french poem named Minuit, Chretiens written by an atheist wine merchant, Placid Cappeau. There is a rumour that during the Franco-Prussian War of 1870, there was a temporary cease fire when a French soldier stood up and began singing it in the trenches, which inspired a similar response from the other side. 

O holy night, the stars are brightly shining/It is the night of the dear Saviour's birth/Long lay the world in sin and error pining/Till He appeared/And the soul felt its worth/The thrill of hope, the weary world rejoices/For yonder breaks a new and glorious morn

There is a swell in the music, a crescendo, and the altos come in during the next line:

Fall on your knees, Oh hear the angel voices

Now, I don't know about you, but I burst into floods of tears at this point. Tears of relief, of joy, of feeling understood. It's the most powerful hymn.

(I said to my friend afterwards, "I totally fell apart during O holy night," and she said, thank goodness, "Oh I always do. I sob!")

So why do we sob? Why does this simple carol have just a profound effect on us? I would like to suggest that whether you are a believer or an atheist you can relate to the idea of falling to your knees, of literally being knocked to your knees as you give up trying to hold it all together. When you loosen your grip on the ironclad framework you've created to pin everything on, and fall to your knees, metaphorically or not, there is massive relief. You discover you are not alone. Somehow there is enormous strength in the idea of no longer holding on and yet feeling totally supported, as if you're not alone, that you're never alone, and that the universe, or God, or the angels in this case, have your back.

Fall on your knees, Oh hear the angel voices

Imagine everything leaving you, all the stress and the anxiety and the clinging to the small ego, just to experience the awe of the angels singing.

This emptying is what Cynthia Bourgeault calls "kenosis." I've always imagined this to be the state one achieves through meditation. That quiet stillness which allows you to hear what is intended for you. But it's easy to achieve by walking. Walk out into the trees, into the middle of a field, or just sit in your garden quietly, and it will come over you, the stillness. We are so busy! We fill each living moment with things. How wonderful to stop, to fall to your knees, to allow space for the angels. It's a childlike point of light that lives in each one of us.

The song continues

Truly He taught us to love one another/His law is love and His gospel is peace/Chains shall He Break for the slave is our brother/And in His name/All oppression shall cease 

There is so much anxiety and fear in the world and none of us are immune from it, even if we actively avoid reading the news. (I merely glimpse at the New York Times front page, but the crazy has a way of pulling you in.)  I'm aware that the planets are all over the place, that the world is chaotic, that peace and joy have been usurped by the cynical, the power-hungry, the greedy, and everything feels wobbly. Therefore, I urge you to take time every day for a little bit of quiet where you can feel still and just listen for a bit.

I am drawn back again and again to Mary Karr who writes about how she came to prayer:

Okay, I couldn’t stop drinking. I’d tried everything but prayer. And somebody suggested to me that I kneel every morning and ask God for help not picking up a cocktail, then kneel at night to say thanks. “But I don’t believe in God,” I said. Again Bill Knott came to mind:

People who get down

on their knees to me

are the answers to my prayers.

—Credo

The very idea of prostrating myself brought up the old Marxist saw about religion being the opiate for the masses and congregations dumb as cows. God as Nazi? I wouldn’t have it. My spiritual advisor at the time was an ex-heroin addict who radiated vigor. Janice had enough street cred for me to say to her, “Fuck that god. Any god who’d want people kneeling and sniveling—”

Janice cut me off. “You don’t do it for God, you asshole,” she said. She told me to try it like an experiment: pray for thirty days, and see if I stayed sober and my life got better.

And you can watch her talk about this here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VUrz6tWfBxY

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On Christmas Day, Charlie was ringing the bells and I wandered over after meditating with Nigel at 8.30am  (a long walk, all of about 100 yards) to catch the nine o'clock service. The vicar was late. He often is. I'm not much of a fan but I decided to give him a chance because last year's Christmas sermon wasn't bad at all, and my view of him had begun to shift. But at 9.15am people were beginning to fidget. The man next to me, Derek, and I discussed dementia and old people's homes. Gwen, who was in the pew in front of us turned around and said "Oh I hope the vicar hasn't overslept." I was contemplating that the thought "you had one job" doesn't feel like a very Christian thing to ponder, especially next to Derek and behind Gwen at 9.15am on Christmas morning in a church built in 1100. He lumbered in a few minutes later and sped us through the service. There was no pianist or organist and he was clearly in a rush for the next service a few miles away, so half way through the first warbling verse of Hark The Herald Angels Sing, he shouted "Last Verse!" & of course we were all so surprised that we all dutifully obeyed. No chance of a Blessing of the Animals, then? And then in the call and response prayers, he started speaking the next paragraph just as we were speaking the "and with thy spirit" bit, which was a wee bit rude, don't you thing. By the time we got to the sermon, my arms were firmly cross across my chest and I had a "this better be good" expression across my face.

He did the thing that seasoned speakers do where he started to look from one pew to another, one face to the next, in order to try to connect, and refused to give him anything. I was having a Christmas Morning Mexican Stand Off with the vicar.

But then he said this bit about the light. About coming to a stable and experiencing the coming of the light in the form of the divine birth. And he talks about the light and how the light allows us to see things clearly and as they are. And how we need to see life as it is. And somehow I dropped my cynicism and I forgave Father Paul for being up too late last night because I remembered that the only way to find equanimity is to choose to see the world as it is and not as you wish it to be. Not because I am good person but because I remembered for a glimpse of a moment the person I'd like to be.

The only place to come from is love. 

The only way to be is kind. 

The only way to live is now. 

And to see things as they are, without judgement. 

Again and again.

 - Jon Kabat-Zinn

I think that we choose to walk in the light. I think we look at the finite number of days we have on this planet and we make a choice. Actually, I'm not sure we have a choice.

 

 

 

 

Notes from a Norwegian sojourn

i.               Heat

The weatherman has told us that it will be 32 degrees today on our little island in the Oslo fjord. I've used a Los Angeles tactic of shutting the curtains but leaving the windows and doors open so that breeze can blow through. Yesterday the skies darkened to a shade of indigo (I love that word, comes next to violet) and there was massive rumbling of thunder and flashes of lightning on the horizon. Daisy and I drove back from an ice cream expedition on Hvasser and she said, do you think we'll be struck by it? No, I said, of course not. And later that day I read in the New York Times that a Norwegian, an Olympian of a mere 49 years had been struck dead by lightning right outside of his hytte in the mountains.

On the rocky hill behind our summer cottage there are aspens which make the most marvelous and delicate rattling sound in the wind. They shimmer, really. There is rowan too, juniper, honeysuckle clinging onto the granite rock, little ferns, an apple tree that has seeded itself into the side of the face, nestled among the moss. We've propped up an old iron fire place outside. It was the inside the house before we put in a wood burner, and I can't bear to get rid of it. There are oak trees, dogs, an old fashioned grumpy paysan boy lifting his fist, a rooster, some hens all molded into the iron relief. It's leaning against the rock with optimism. We walk past and consider building an outdoor fireplace and imagine ourselves sitting around it on these long, light evenings telling stories or singing perhaps. We’d be wearing shorts and old button down shirts which live in the cupboards and smell of stale pine and sea salt. This dream is a bit silly, I know, because, well, it's going to be 32 degrees today.

No-one can find the vimple, the standard isosceles triangle shaped flag hat goes up every day, so we only put up the big flag on Sundays and birthdays. I love the red and blue and white of the Norwegian flag, and it makes me feel different than I do when I see the American flag or the Union Jack. It feels bold and bright and jolly.  You see them on the backs of boats too, flying bravely over the sea. The Norwegian flag makes me think of happy summer days, of Firkløver chocolate, of hanging out in the boat smiling. As my mother said to me yesterday on the phone, "If I think about it I don't think I've spent happier times anywhere but Tjøme." 

I've managed to lose the others to a boat trip. Not that I didn't want to go on a boat trip, especially one to Mink Island, where my grandmother saw the mink all those years ago, an island which only has good memories, but I did relish the idea of spending the day alone in this little cottage, sitting out back as I am now, listening to the sound of the aspen (populus tremula, I’ve learned), and the clink of the boats on the jetty, the seagulls, and to do nothing all day. What I love about this island right now is that everyone is doing nothing. Whole families of people doing nothing but pottering about in boats, lying on the grass by the sea in swimsuits, eating a lazy sandwich. I saw a man and his daughter, in a red gingham smocked dress with a white collar, not quite done up properly at the back, half the hem tucked into her knickers, sitting on a chair just outside the supermarket, counting buttons from her little embroidered purse. The father was as fully engaged as the little girl. Another mother with her son walked into the bakery with the golden pretzel sign hanging on a chain outside, as I left, to order boller (cardamom buns). People with little children get up early. It's the best time of the day. Everything is fresh and quiet, sunny but not yet hot, and full of promise. I've brought boller with raisins home and I've sliced one in half and put a bit of brown goats cheese it for my breakfast.

A greek salad with tomatoes and feta and dill and cucumbers has been packed, (I added some garbanzos and pomegranate seed) some chocolate, some apples, the delicious local spelt bread and butter, two bottles of water, in an old ice bag from LL Bean. And they're off in the boat, on the blue, blue sea. My ex-husband was awfully good at building up the supplies in the summer house. Special candle burning hurricane lamps which could double for warming up things. Useful trivets. Spare pairs of boat shoes. Mosquito spray. A barbeque chimney. Smart, efficient plastic boxes for fishing line. All from LL Bean of course. Funny how you appreciate these things so many years later. At the time it just seemed like so much more to pack.

C & I swam early this morning, before the people in the little house opposite our jetty were awake. Our neighbor was already in the sea. "Is it lovely in the water," I asked in Norwegian. "22 degrees" he said, also in Norwegian. Yesterday it was close to 24 degrees. The water was so smooth and calm that little pools of bathwater temperature water had formed, so that you could swim through hot patches that would almost halt your motion, and you'd lie on your back luxuriating in it. This morning it was more choppy. I swam with long, even strokes out towards the old fishing boat that hasn't moved from its place in the bay for years. You can stop and lay flat and stare at the faces in the clouds. The water is the darkest shade of navy blue, not grey or green, but clear, deep blue. It makes you want to put your face in it, to dive into it, to move like a seal. It holds you. You realize you don't have to move at all, that the water has you and it's all going to be fine. This is our favorite thing. Him. Me. The sea. The sky. That's it. All will be well.

I'm glad people are speaking more about recharging their social batteries. Mine is pretty flat. Two or three friends have used that expression and it gives me a sense of relief that other people too feel this way. I am sure it would seem rather dull to my younger self to see me now, sitting on my own listening to the trembling leaves and thinking about when I can jump in the sea. Probably with aging comes the sense that everything you do needs to be nourishing, life-affirming and that there is less time for confection, however sweet it may seem at the time. "Let the water hold you" a friend said, and it's that sense of relief when you realize you don't have to take action all the time, you can just zen the fuck out, and not do a thing and know that you will be okay. That's what it's all about; totally letting go.

 

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ii.              Heart

"And what exactly is that metaphorical thorn for you? It's madness to hate all roses because you got scratched with one thorn, to give up all dreams because one of them didn't come true, to give up all attempts because one of them failed. It's folly to condemn all your friends because one has betrayed you, to no longer believe in love just because someone was unfaithful or didn't love you back, to throw away all your chances to be happy because something went wrong. There will always be another opportunity, another friend, another love, a new strength. For every end, there is always a new beginning..... And now here is my secret, a very simple secret: It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye." - Antoine de St Exupéry

The joke is that I've created my own room here at the end of the tiny lawn we sometimes use for badminton. I have a pale blue hammock tied to two cherry trees, a table and a chair, a glass of water and my notebook. Nothing more is needed. We walked in clover fields this morning, the kind of grass that would cause my mare to do an Irish jig. Lush and bright green from the thunderstorm yesterday afternoon. I woke at five and meditated on the little bench outside our room, looking towards the sunrise, wrapped in a duvet and a pink sweater, remembering why it's important to get up early here on Tjøme to catch the magic. I am barely awake as I stumble out with my phone and take pictures of the sky, shot silk of terracotta, melon, marigold and tangerine, overwhelmed by the beauty. And then I fold my legs under myself on the bench and close my eyes. I am grateful to Bob Roth, who reads this piece from The Little Prince (above) at the end of the meditation. There is always a poem or a quote and it always aligns to exactly where you are (you are exactly where you are supposed to be) and I think of Cynthia Bourgeault, of Buechner, of Ram Dass and his golden meditation. We walk and meet a man with a doodle named Lotta. He, like us, has lived here in the summer for generations. He tells me that when he drives over the bridge onto the island his shoulders drop. He mimes this movement and I know what he means. I think of my grandfather swimming across the strait from Nøtterø to Tjøme with his doctor's bag and a change of clothes in his hands during the war. 

There is a necessary compulsion to map the island every year. It's a small island, only 24 square kilometres and still in the sixty years that I've been coming here, we haven't explored the whole thing. Always a new path, sometimes barely wider than a fox path, appears, as if by magic, and how can you not follow it?

 

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iii.            Nuvle

I love the nights when we make plans for the next day at supper. I love waking up with a plan. I love the excitement of an expedition. We decided to take the boat to Nuvle on my brother’s last day. And we’re going early. It’s a small island directly east of our bay and on the way to black rock where the good cod fish hang out, and it’s shaped like a croissant. I haven’t been there for forty years probably, but I have memories of my uncle driving us out in the big wooden boat, shirtless, with his tanned barrel chest, cracking open beers while we jumped off the boat into the sea. It’s known as a swimming island. And people take tents and stay overnight. There are smooth, rounded rocks everywhere providing shelter from the wind, and in the middle of the island is a verdant tropical bit (well not really tropical, but the flora feels unusual for an island in the middle of the Skaggerak.) We climb off the boat onto the warm rocks barefoot, as my grandmother suggested, and wander about, quite silently, my brother, my daughter, her boyfriend, Charlie and I, like a band looking for a tune. We’re children again, somewhat speechless, mumbling perhaps, in the quiet of the morning, with the sun low in the sky and no boats or people about. There is a teenage seagull viewing us. We don’t really know what we’re searching for, but we search nonetheless, awestruck really.

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iv.            Mackerel

There's an indelible imprint after a holiday. Your body has returned to ease. There is something incredibly powerful about being in a place where everyone is on holiday and doing very little. Lovely, bright marker-style delineation between everything. Work and play. Eating and sleeping. Reading, swimming, playing cards. Wondering about in Norwegian woods, stepping on pinecones, and picking tiny blueberries and lucky clover shaped sorrel that is sour in your mouth. Standing on top of the little mountain (hill) and looking out over the bay of tiny islands, all connected and yet not, like clouds in a mackerel sky. Everyone isn't just on holiday, they're on holiday without trying to prove anything. No having to be at the tennis club, or the smart restaurant, or the pickle ball tournament, or dressing to impress. There is some urgency. The loan 6am runner for example, or the one or two ski-skaters you see on the road to Hvasser. The people at the place we buy our bread and coffee who don't even have time to swim because it's the summer season. "We'll swim in October" they say, smiling. Every day is packed with what? Most urgently for me is the desire to explore, to map the place, to immerse myself in the magic of it all.

Maybe it was on my birthday, I don't remember, but one morning we got up very early to walk because we realized that by 9 it was almost too hot to go out to exercise unless you were in the sea. It's a familiar feeling. It's what we do in LA; 6am hikes with the dogs before the sun shows its face over the San Gabriels. We found a map app that took us round the back of the houses in Flekkeveien, towards Mågerø and we met a rather nice man with a doodle kind of dog called Lotta. He had thick white hair, cut smartly, and was wearing navy blue shorts and a white shirt. "Don't take the seaside path," he said, "I know it's tempting, but there is some dispute over whether it's allowed." Lotta wagged her tail at us as he spoke. "I've been coming here for a long time" he said, assuming, I think that we were tourists. "Oh my grandfather used to swim across the channel at Vrengen Bru [the bridge that connects us to Nøtterø] with his clothes on his head during the war" I say. I don't know why I say this. I have a need to prove I'm not a tourist. Also I like to brag about my Bestefar, who had a white moustache tinged with orange nicotine, and a captain's hat from the Royal Yacht Club.  "They've opened up the land at Mågerø, the forest this side of the King's house," he said. "You can walk there now."

Thus armed, the very next day we drove around the island urgently (for we were on holiday and such things were urgent) to get closer to this new forest. It's just across the bay from us, but longer by foot. If you imagine Grimestad bay as a circle, our house is at 6 and the forest we're talking about is at 11. So the car became the best option. We parked up and somehow found a path that went diagonally across a piece of scrubby ground filled with juniper and blueberries, between two houses, and wiggled up a little hill on a sandy path, between little rocks and gnarly tree roots until it began to drop down towards the sea. Fir trees, raspberries, silver birch and aspen, pine needles underfoot, some birds. Plenty of berries shoved into mouths. And then we found the sea stretched out in front of us, between the trees. The first bay we reached had a small sailing boat anchored in it, but as we followed the path along the sea to our right, there was a small swing comprised of old boat ropes and a thick dowel or piece of broom handle. I can't resist a children’s swing, so I swung on it as C continued walking. We clambered up a smooth rock and through some brambles, leapt over a small, dead but glistening snake to a tall cliff where there was a wartime concrete bunker, rigid and angular amongst the smooth, rounded rocks. He is very chivalrous and holds his hand out for me as we go up and down the rocks, but I learned from my grandmother many many years ago that you’re safer on your own because you know where your balance is, and if in doubt, scoot down on your bottom. Also, you are often safer barefoot.

The third bay shimmered and twinkled at us. It curved in front of us like a scythe, the sand giving way to brown seaweed and shiny pebbles in dark, warm colors, the size of my hand. The sea lapped gently in and out in a steady rhythm until a motorboat went by in the distance and I was aware of how the gentlest ripple can affect everything, gently shifting the sand, moving the pebbles, shunting the little yellow snails up and down the beach. (And thus it is with thought, I ruminated; just thinking about a thing can change it, as suggested in chaos theory. These are the things you think about while lying on your back in the ocean). We had left our swim things in the car and so we swam without. He walked in from the beach and I climbed down some rocks, carefully stepping over barnacles. He’s a walker inner. I’m a plunger. There was no-one within more than half a mile of us. C suggested that we should keep our underwear on for the King out of respect and I imagined all kinds of hidden cameras, but it didn't really bother us. Is there a nation on earth that embraces their nudity like the Norwegians? My grandmother swam naked every single morning, holding the steps (trappen) with one hand and her bottle of Bliw, saltwater soap, in the other. The sea was smooth and darkest blue, the sun reflected on it, so swimming was effortless, and the water held us. Time stopped completely. Nothing needed to be done. Nothing much happened. It was just us and the sea and the little beach and pine forest in the distance. Simple, elemental. We climbed out and lay on the warm rocks to dry out, pointing out animals we were seeing in the clouds. Isn’t it funny how you can see so much when your mind isn’t cluttered with thought?

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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.)