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May 29, 2010

A good looking corpse.

Recently I was sitting talking to girlfriend about getting older, this was sparked off by seeing photos of Jackie Collins & Raquel Welch looking decidedly young for their 70+ years.

I'm all for looking after yourself and keeping healthy, but couldn't help wondering whether having so many treatments and surgery to keep yourself looking young was actually helpful.

After all our earthly life time is a journey from birth to death and no amount of treatment will stop our body ageing, even if we manage to stop it showing on the outside.

I think that watching yourself, noticing the changes and seeing the evidence in the mirror, is life's way of preparing you to let go of this life and move on when the time comes. Just as you know when it is time to throw out the bunch of dead flowers, no matter how beautiful they once were.

I wonder whether our societies obsession with staying looking youthful at all costs is actually damaging people psychologically, by not helping them to face the simple truth that our bodies are limited and our time in them brief.

Accepting the inevitable death of my body, helps me to focus on the place inside myself that is not bound by the physical make up of it.

The place that is unbounded, timeless and knows no fear.

Give me the choice of the above or a good looking corpse and I know which way i'm going to jump.

Posted by Shelliz at 05:32 PM | Comments (0)

May 28, 2010

The Best Job in the World

Two things I read lately made me reflect on my working life.

A book "The Case for Working with your Hands: or why office work is bad for us and fixing things feels good" has just been published. The author Matthew Crawford is an academic philosopher and a mechanic who runs his own motorcycle repair shop in Virginia, so presumably he knows wherof he speaks.

The other is our Simon's latest occasional newsletter which, among other things, contains musings about various jobs he did in his life.

Like Simon's, my working life has been varied, interesting and unconventional. I haven't spent a day working in the office.

At the university, way back in my native Poland, I read Marine Biology. I was going to become a marine biologist and thus be in a possession of what I imagined being 'the best job in the world'. But it was not meant to be. For a combination of reasons (aversion to Communism being only one of them) I left the country and for years worked as a waitress in London. That too was 'the best job in the world' - working evenings allowed me to follow my many interests in the daytime, earn lots of tips, mingle with people, and last but not least, have a 'free' cooked dinner every day.

One of those interests was photography, which I went on to study and then took up professionally, specialising in portaiture. My first assignment for the national newspaper convinced me that I had 'the best job in the world' - to meet, have a chat with and photograph a Well Known Writer, then seeing that picture in print AND being paid for it seemed to me a hight of good fortune.

Alas, finding I was not temperamentally suited to a freelance mode of working (on balance, I felt more insecure than free), I decided to quit photography as a mortgage-paying occupation. That's when my current 'best job in the world' started. Working in an independent bookshop is a perfect mixture of manual and knowledge based work, where books and people who love them come together. It is truly 'the best job in the world. For me. For now. And I can still photograph writers, some of whom are customers.

To go back to 'The case for working with ones hands', I think the manual labour vs 'knowledge based work' is a false distinction. We're still dealing with separation based on the status of a job in society. The author would simply want to reverse the accepted order and calls for respecting work that is done with hands over the other kind. But 'the best job in the world' will always involve using hands, head, and heart, whatever the nature of it : repairing motorcycles, building houses or writing a novel. What matters is the love of it and the meaning behind it, not the social status conferred on it by society.

Posted by Marzena at 08:37 PM | Comments (0)

May 27, 2010

Time to learn

I have just finished sewing up a tear in my 45 year old teddy bear. You see, I picked him up in my bedding and washed him by accident, but his old body just couldn't deal with being whizzed around and when he tumbled out into the washing basket, a sawdust come straw like substance was dripping out of his nose. Oh dear, what had I done to Cola bear!

Now the reason why I am telling you this, is that as I was mending him a lost memory came flooding back to me.

When I was about five or six years old, my brother was teasing me by stealing Cola bear and running away with him. When I eventually caught up with my big brother, we started a tug of war, which unfortunately ended in tragic circumstances and left me holding on to one of Cola's legs and my brother laughing hysterically.

I grabbed the rest of Cola and ran off crying, I cried for what seemed like hours and hours despite apologies from my brother, but when I had finished crying I found my Mum's sewing box and threaded my first ever needle and sewed that leg back on. Nobody taught me or showed me, I just did it.

I took contol and made it better, nobody helped me, this is a good thing for me to note.

For even now, sometimes when I'm faced with challenges in my life, I start to panic and look outside myself, asking others advise about what I should do.
When of course I need to be looking inside and asking myself, what is right for this situation?

Amazingly my small self knew this instinctively.

I think the time has come for me to learn from her.

Posted by Shelliz at 02:38 PM | Comments (0)

May 26, 2010

The well by the road

I like this Chinese story which shows that It All Depends on How One Looks at Things.

"A man dug a well by the side of the road. For years afterwards, grateful travellers talked of the Wonderful Well. But one night, a man fell into it and drowned. After that, people avoided the Dreadful Well. Later it was discovered that the victim was a drunken thief who had left the road to avoid being cuptured by the night patrol - only to fall into the Justice- Dispensing Well."

Same well, different perceptions..

I thought about it today, looking at newspaper pictures of the Opening of Parliament and Her Maj resplendent under royal canopy, sitting on her gold throne in robes dripping with yet more gold.

The same old queen, but how many different views that image must have inspired, All Depending on Where You're Coming From. To name just a few: relic of a bygone era that should have no place in XXI century; reassuring symbol of continuity in an ever-changing and unstable world; ancient historical tradition that we can all be proud of; non-elected head of state who's only there by accident of birth, and should therefore be got rid of; tourist magnet; symbol of national unity; octogenerian head of a rather dysfunctional family; a wonderful monarch doing her job, etc etc.

But underneath all that gold encrusted pomp and ceremony, there is also just and old lady with hopes, fears and regrets, sometimes happy, sometimes not, remembering her youth and aware of her mortality.

And like the rest of us, bravely fighting a loosing battle..

Posted by Marzena at 07:07 PM | Comments (0)

The parable of the washing line.

Now, talking of gardening, the recent good weather has tempted me into the wilderness that is my garden. I use the term garden loosely, as postage stamp may be more appropriate.
Actually there is no room to swing a cat, but the previous owners thought there was enough room to swing a rotary washing line and cemented one right in the middle.

I'm not ungrateful as when my children were younger and the washing was a plenty, it came into its own.
It also did a very good side line as a climbing frame and roundabout as my then 2 year old, used to shimmy up the pole and work her way along the bars and her 6 year old sister used to swing her round. Unfortunatly I had to put a stop to this ingenious game as I had visions of the younger one letting go and disappearing over the fence.

Any way back to now, over the last few years I have been wanting to say goodbye to this eyesore, It was once helpful but I now no longer need it, however the cement has been proving a problem, I tried rocking it lose but it was rock solid. So last Sunday with the help of my daughter's boyfriend, we dug around it, we dug down further and further and further, until finally like a grand old oak it toppled.

As it lay flat in the garden, I took a moment to remember and give thanks for all it has known, It's structure being useful for so many things, shade for babies playing, hidey camps for children, hanging up toys for kittens, so many beautiful spider webs and of course drying the washing.

I said my goodbyes, well I thought I said my goodbyes, however due to the large amount of cement used to keep it in place, we were unable to lift it and it is still lying across my small garden.

I've taken advice and I need to buy a big hammer and break up the cement, before I can move it out.

This made me think of the times in my life, when I've known that it was time to let go of something, to say goodbye, to move on. In my experience, this has rarely been an easy process and each time I've had to break things down and deal with small pieces at a time, mourn what was but isn't now, or acknowledge that structures and ways of being that once helped are now constricting and suffocating. This journey has often been difficult, scary and painful, but by accepting and then dealing with what I could manage, little by little, I eventually found a way to move on. I've found that the light and happiness, that is always at the end of what often seems like difficult work, has always been worthwhile.

For me, this has just become 'The parable of the washing line'

Posted by Shelliz at 10:14 AM | Comments (0)

May 24, 2010

A word from a gardening expert

I'm spending a couple of days close to the soil, working for a landscape gardener.

My job is to water the parks of London, and so this is what I'm doing. Man and hose, that's me; and it's good to be out and about, close to the soil and being abused by the public once again...ex-supermarket workers always miss that...

What strikes me? I'm interested how many people ask me for gardening advice. This is because I'm wearing a neon jacket and watering the soil. How little they know...

I know zilch about gardening; really, nothing at all, apart from what I learned in Jesus' parable of the four soils. But because I have a uniform and a hose...

We all love an expert, with his neon jacket or white coat or dog collar or academic qualifications or high salary or easy manner.

These people, they know bollocks. But how we wish to be fooled just once more...before, like the prodigal son, 'coming to ourselves'.

Now, about your geraniums...

Posted by Mr Bojangles at 06:34 PM | Comments (0)

May 22, 2010

May is the kindest month

Poland in May, May in Poland - what's not to love.

Especially the branches of lilac sold on every street corner - the fragrance intoxicatingly divine and my favourite for as long as I've been alive. "Breeding lilacs out of the dead land; mixing memory and desire" as T.S.Eliot remarked of April, applies here too, only a month later, and without any implications of cruelty..

"And I think to myself that this country of mine - melancholy, mediocre, beautiful and hopeless, despairing and painfully banal, sublime and comic, gray as a mouse, drab as rain, and melancholically ordinary - once a year, at this very time, is accorded something like grace, and all its sins are cleansed."

I found this sentence in an essay by a Polish writer Stasiuk, and although he was writing of autumn, I'll think instead of May, and say Amen.

Posted by Marzena at 09:13 PM | Comments (0)

Discovering True Happiness

Live each moment
Being open to all
Responding in the best way you can

Allow all thoughts and feelings
Receive each as a gift
Acknowledge the unwanted ones
The presents that you, would rather not have been given
Express your truth about them
And then let them pass

When fully accepted
All experiences offer growth
Be thankful for this growth
It means that when a similar circumstance
Comes around again, as it will
You will experience it from a different place
A new knowing

Do not rush, sit with things
Answers appear when you are ready to hear them
Allow these cycles of learning
To return as often as they need to
And each time
Receive, Feel, Accept, Give thanks, Let go

Happiness is found in being able to experience and hold all things
Without the need to label, keep or contain anything
When we try to keep something
It festers inside us
Releasing poison into our lives

Even good experiences when held on to
Will spoil or lose their sparkle
If we allow things to go
They will return again
Each time fresh and new
Still pleasurable, still exciting

If we hold on to everything
We will not have space for any thing new
So even with good things
Receive, Enjoy, Give thanks, Let go

Live each moment
And you will find that as you
Experience, accept and transform all that is painful
As you enjoy what is good without clinging
The ability to be happy
Truely Happy, is just there.

Posted by Shelliz at 09:25 AM | Comments (0)

May 20, 2010

Here lies William Widmore

Today, in the beautiful and simple space that is St Swithins-above-Kingsgate in Winchester, I saw, I think, my favourite headstone of all time.

Here it is:

To the memory of Wm Widmore.

He was (which is most rare) a friend without guile.

An Apothecary without ostentation, his extensive charity in his profession entitled him to be called The Physician of the Poor.

Let other inscriptions boast honours, pedigee and riches. Here lies an honest Englishman who died on the 19th Day of June 1756, Aged 63.

I'd like to have met William Widmore - not something I often feel after reading headstones.

Posted by Mr Bojangles at 06:09 PM | Comments (0)

May 19, 2010

Help?

I'm at London's Mind Body Spirit festival next Wednesday, doing a 'One-Minute Mystic' workshop.

I'm told its the biggest gathering of self-help gurus in the country, and I hope it will be good; though it may be unwise to hold our breath in anticipation.

The more I see of the self-help industry, the more I sense that frequently the game is undertaken by those in search of self-righteous distraction rather than from an inner experience of health.

The movement is not short of those who want to help others, simply because its easier than becoming something substantial themselves.

Of course, this was an accusation levelled at Jesus. 'Doctor, heal yourself!' they said, and its a charge relevant to any who dare dabble in other people's lives; I take it to bed with me every night.

Though I suspect in the case of Jesus, there were some mixed motives at work in the hearts of his accusers.

Not unknown today either!

Posted by Mr Bojangles at 04:28 PM | Comments (0)

May 13, 2010

Making the coalition work

Marzena's questions concerning self-labelling are topical of course, as we experience the first few days of a coalition government when old labels have had to be thrown quickly out the window:

Clegg: 'I really really hate the conservative party are the future of this country and its an honour to work with them.'

While Cameron is now saying that when he called Clegg a complete joke he was only joking. 'Comedy, eh?!!I mean, hey, labels - we toss them about. It's what you do! Let's not get too hung up about it all! Let's just, like, move on, this is the new politics! etc etc.

In the light of all this, i was interested to hear an interview with Bel Mooney, the Daily Mail agony aunt. How shall we label her? Well, she has a statue of Buddha in her garden, reads the Hindu scriptures, but calls herself a Christian and attends her parish church, finding support in the community there. She likes the teaching of Jesus as well, but isn't quite sure about the after-life. And she finds God in people coming round for Sunday lunch and in her dog. Oh, and she works for the Daily Mail, which for some is Satan's chosen read.

Quite a coalition, really, reminding us that we are each a crowd in ourselves; each a fragile coalition of hope and despair, warmth and cold, meanness and generosity, nonsense and truth, cobbled together by life.

It's not always easy to handle such dissonance and contradiction in our being, so many different voices, such a crowd of different labels; and when we struggle with this, it quickly becomes self-hate, and inevitably the hate of others. We always project our inner fracture outwards in the end.

Labels have a superficial allure, of course, and like cheese slices, are handy to use. But in the end, they are the refuge of the insecure, and an act of panic. They give us a home, which is what we most want -

- but there's a smell of death in the room. Labels attempt to define that which is indefinable. And that is why they limit; that is why they belittle us, and that is why they kill.

Posted by Mr Bojangles at 09:56 AM | Comments (0)

May 12, 2010

Outlaws, Labels, Nobels

I saw "A room and a half" today - a very beautiful and moving film based loosely on the life of the Russian poet Joseph Brodsky. Brodsky was labelled an Anti-Socialist Sponger and a Social Parasite in his native country and as such sentenced to 5 years of internal exile filled with hard labour and 'rehabilitation'. Here is a true transcription of what took place in that courtroom:

Judge: And what is your profession in general?

Brodsky: A poet and a literary translator.

Judge: Who recognised you as a poet? Who enrolled you in the ranks of poets?

Brodsky: No one. And who enrolled me in the ranks of humankind?

Judge: Did you study this?

Brodsky: This?

Judge: To become a poet. You did not try to finish school where they prepare, where they teach?

Brodsky: I didn't think you could get this from school.

Judge: How then?

Brodsky: I think that it... comes from God.

Many years later Brodsky won literary acclaim and a Nobel Prize - yet another label, one might say.

Maybe because of his life experience, he understood how unnecessary and harmful labels can be. It is wrong to label a poet Elizabethan or Victorian, he said, for the 'poet's appetite for the infinite' makes him one who has 'got to tell you something about YOUR life no matter when and where he lived his'.

He testified to this truth with his own poetry. And yet, when asked towards the end of life how he thought about himself and where his affinities lied, he said : 'I'm a Jew, a Russian poet and an American essayist.'

Maybe some degree of (self)labelling/describing/identifying is inescapable or even desirable in a healthy human being. I don't know, but I'm curious to know what you think.

Posted by Marzena at 08:53 PM | Comments (0)

May 09, 2010

Imagine The Freedom

Imagine the Freedom

If I could allow all others to do what they do without linking it to myself

If I were able to stop my crazed reactions to other peoples words and actions

If I were able to stop allowing myself to get caught up in the crashing flood of feelings that overwhelm and take me to dark places

If I were able to stop my wild thoughts multiplying into nonsense scenarios that wickedly tease and torture

If I were able to stop the the voices that belittle and tell me that I am not and never ever will be good enough

Imagine living a day without all that madness

Imagine the Freedom

Posted by Shelliz at 05:22 PM | Comments (0)

May 07, 2010

wishful thinking

I've been looking for a diagnosis for the last 4 months. Well, we're all searching for something in our lives.

Unexplained stomach pains, bouts of nausea and other symptoms of that ilk have been bothering me on and off, without ever quite disappearing. A happy eater all my life until now, I've been forced to visit doctors, have blood tests, various scans etc. All coming back normal. Quite reassuring on one hand, but as you can imagine it also drives me mad, because on top of the continuing symptoms there is a considerable anxiety about not knowing what might be the underlying problem.

Anyway, long story short, back at the doctor's today, I've been finally persuaded to believe that there is nothing seriously wrong, and resigned myself to taking tablets to control the symptoms.

When I phoned a friend and told her the name of the drug on my prescription, she exclaimed excitedly: "Really? Lucky you! On NHS!?".

Reader, the name of my 'cure' is DOMPERIDONE, a word sounding very much like a rather fine brand of champagne.

But what a lovely thought..

Posted by Marzena at 06:59 PM | Comments (0)

The body, the eviction and the white plastic bag

I had a dream last night.

First, there was an old man who left a dead body in my bath. I asked the man about this, about dumping a body in my flat, but he wasn't too forthcoming. He said it would be alright, but was evasive.

I was also aware that someone else had come into my flat, possibly a builder, and was stripping the walls. I tried to ring the police but nothing came of that. I got on a bus, but disovered it was going in the wrong direction for my purposes. I rang my daughter about my concerns, but when I got back to my flat, it was almost gutted and other people were now there, moving in.

They were not friendly, rather dismissive, and were clearly setting up home there. They wanted me out. The place now looked entirely diffferent to what it had been, and trying to make the best of a bad job, I was gathering my possessions in three white plastic shopping bags.

But these too were disappearing, I wasn't sure where, and I ended up with just one bag, with one or two small items in it.

Dawn was breaking, it was time for me to go.

By the by, I'm off to a studio in Acton today, to be interviewed by 'Conscious TV', which may sound like a dream, but isn't.

Posted by Mr Bojangles at 07:32 AM | Comments (0)

May 05, 2010

A small diversion on my run

I took a turn on my run today through an empty children's play area.

I could have run past it, and perhaps it would have been the easier thing to do. God knows, it's hard to change a familiar route or pattern. But who knows why, I decided against running past, and instead ran through it, past climbing frames and chasing games and paddling pools come summer.

It was good to get back to these childhood things in the early morning dew; back to young days when everything was now and everything lay ahead and everything was well and the world could be trusted.

And so it is.

Posted by Mr Bojangles at 09:17 AM | Comments (0)

May 04, 2010

cherry blossom, again

"Life here was slow, arduous, and then suddenly over. It was like a candle flame fluttering in the draught on a windowsill, a flame so fine that it sews light and dark together with an invisible seam."

This beautiful metaphor refers to a human life in the depths of Africa in the 18th century (plus ca change!) and comes from a book I'm currently devouring. But perhaps it remains true without the qualifiers (human, African, 18 c)..

Have you noticed how suddenly all the gorgeous blossom decorating London streets and parks disappeared? One day it was here in all its pink and white glory; the next day gone. I was lucky to witness what could only be described as a petal blizzard on our street, when millions of snow-white flakes whirled and danced in the wind, before creating a thick blanket on the road. Next day the trees were bereft of their flowers and the road was black again.

Despite the transitory nature of the spectacle, I've decided to capture it (as it were) again this year. How? By going to Poland in May, dear Reader. I'm told that the blossom there is just getting ready for its brief moment in the sun.

So I'm praying to the Roman god of fire, Vulcan, asking for benevolence and clear skies.

Posted by Marzena at 08:25 PM | Comments (0)

May 02, 2010

Touching Freedom

My Soul is always rising up to dance with the Divine

When I am able to free myself from needing worldly things and dependent relationships

When I can empty myself of all that weighs me down and keeps me earthbound

Then I can rise up and join the party

I can experience the place that has no separation, no beginning and no end

I can touch Freedom

Posted by Shelliz at 03:23 PM | Comments (0)