Happy Saint George´s Day!

Saint George by Paolo Uccelo 1470

There are quite a lot of differences between Catalonia and the North West of England. On the Costa Brava beaches there is a strange absence of people, hands clasped around warm flasks of tea, huddled behind windbreakers; and in Stockport County Council, who have sneakily made use of internet possibilities, eerily doesn´t have queues of people, waiting numbed as time grinds to a halt and the barer of the numbered ticket wonders where they got lost in the matrix.

But do not dispair, there are heart warmingly similar things too. Both like black pudding (but at different times of the day), both have cotton industry backgrounds, and Saint George-Sant Jordi is their patron saint. And Happy Saint Day George! It is today, April the 23rd.

It´s a wonderful day in Catalonia. It is when the true spirit of the kind, tradition loving, big hearted Catalans comes out (rather than those not-to-be-mentioned political ideas). It is the equivalent of Saint Valentine´s day - the day for lovers. Women buy men books and men buy women red roses. The brain and the heart unite. Knowledge is comprehended and all is well on Rambla de Catalunya. 

 Las Ramblas de Catalunya - Diada de Sant Jordi

There must be many different perspectives of the myth of Saint George. We studied it a little in symbology and if you don´t want to know much about it, stop reading now.

…So, my faithful friend ("just you, just you, just you" (an echo) there´s no-one else here), you and I are mystery freaks and instead of getting on in what the others call reality, your heart swells and breath becomes rapid entering into a fantasy world which seems more real that a red double-decker bus. And rightly so!

The prince of the skies, Saint George came down from the air. He fell from paradise, from the Platonic highs of Apollonic order, flew down through intuition and found himself confronted by a double-decker bus. Or rather his earthly reality. He is no longer the prince of the skies but now a (half) human (half) being. He is pulled up flat, to face the dragon.

They say that we are born on earth impure. The Catalans would say malparits, which is literally born badly, figuratively translated as “in a sorry state”. We come out all funny and just not quite how we should. We are not in harmony with the universe (one verse) but we pipe our own out-of-tune song. The cosmos flows around in orderly lines, like a ploughed field, in harmonic unison with each other, like an orchestra with each musician playing in unison creating a beautiful uplifting piece of music. And then we are born and get out those party horn things. And blow it. But it´s not exactly Mozart.

http://www.lladyhwk1.com/Wavs/NYHorn.wav

The dragon is a representation of this rather uncoordinated clumsiness. We are all made up of the four elements, everything is. In the perfect heaven, the four elements are equally balanced and working together: Air (intuition), Water (emotions), Fire (thinking) and Earth (sensations). The Ancients, Psychologists, eastern medicine etc all say we need to balance our four elements.  It is the secret of physical and psychological health.  And since non of us (as far as I know) are in a perfect Buddha (or Christ etc) state, we´ve got work to do!

Diagram: Aristotle elemental qualities

The dragon has all of the four elements, he angrily blows fire out from his mouth, his wings allow him to fly clumsily in the air, his claws grip into the earth and he cries big baby crocodile tears. But his elements are all badly born. Clumsy and angry, his elements don´t befit him at all, they are all at odds with each other, like trying to light a fire in the rain or flying through tarmac...

So, Saint George is in a predicament finding this dragon inside, coming down to earth and discovering his instincts. And as all cavaliers, he is faced with one option to save his good name:

Slowly, calmly, he gets out his sword and shield.

He fights nobly from the top of his white horse, just like all of our fantasy boyfriends would do, and with his sophisticated sword work he manages to pierce the reality of himself (like Shiva´s sword) and dominate his dragon. Some stories just go right ahead and kill the dragon off, but how can instincts be killed? Surely it is impossible. It must have been some granddad getting carried away at bedtime story time, and his grandchild happened to be Walt Disney…anyway, the dragon is dominated, Saint George is able to dominate with his mind all the impulses of his instincts.  It is of note he has managed among which to control his sardineta. (The little sardine in Catalan is a euphemism for his todger). Dominating the dragon he has aligned his four elements to be more in harmony. They do not fight so much anymore.

Buddhists say that controlling the breath (air) calms the mind…Saint George finds himself in a more balanced state and as a result, from the mouth of the cave, steps a beautiful maiden now that the dragon is not ferociously guarding the entrance. 

At this point Jungians get all excited and if they haven´t wet themselves already, and shout (ironically impulsively) “His anima, his anima!” which to a normal person is the feminine inner personality within him. His anima influences his interactions with women and his attitudes toward them. It is a more feeling side of him, which needs to be expressed, and if expressed in a harmonious way, while the dragon is comfortable domesticated, it is beauty and truth and purity and all things princess like.

Especially now with internet we have access to any information we may crave in this earthly world. We can be walking dictionaries, with built in GPS systems bluetoothing our dentist. But until we have understood our knowledge through love, it cannot be comprehended.

I don´t know if you´ve had that wonderful feeling of suddenly seeing something clearly with fresh eyes and “clicking”. All at once you´ve really got it.  Before you thought you knew, but now you can “see” it. It is like pealing away an onion skin, or taking off a veil. Normally they are things that are so simple that we wonder actually if we knew all along.

If we only understand our world with our brains, it is dry and unconnected. Comprehension is with our hearts and we connect with our profound memories, with our entire being. This connection of knowledge and heart is represented by the union of Saint George with the beautiful maiden, and how lovely she is. She who allows us to leave those dark depths of Pluto to resurface for fresh air, and to see and smell the roses.  (The Rose is the western equivalent of the eastern Lotus flower). 

The prince and the princess reunite, masculine and feminine come together once more, the sky and the earth rejoin... They have sex (alchemically speaking of course...)

The union of Saint Jordi with his maiden creates a rebirth. This time the birth is a little better. They are transformed into the castle and live happily ever after (according to Walt D). The castle with its perfect four walls is a representation of the four elements in perfect harmony.

And the cycle comes to a close, but not an end. Like any spiral, Saint Jordi is back where he began, at the same point but not the same man. Now he has aligned himself a smidgen to be a little more universal, he has dominated his dragon for a while, and he has incorporated the Beauty of the glimpse of Truth into his self thanks to his inner princess coming out of the cave.

Saint Jordi, of course, is each and everyone of us. So, rest a while and float in the clouds. But surely you wouldn´t want to be in Paradise for ever would you? It gets terribly boring. And there is that windbreaker waiting for us on Blackpool beach to huddle up beside and have real physical contact. Like the gales on our fair shores, Saint Jordi is in constant movement, never getting stale. Soon he´ll find himself freefalling like an autumn leaf back down to earth, birthing in another weird but wonderful way and evolving through love.

Happy Sant Jordi!

Easter Growth

So that chocolate scoffing time of year has come around again.  Breaking open a Cadbury´s Cream Egg even though your stomach´s shouting out “Intoxification!” and your visions begins to blur.  Which is probably exactly what the Hindus mean when they say that the Mundane Egg, in which Brahma gestated, broke its shell in spring.

Easter is the first full moon after the equinox (“equal night”).  This year it was on March 30^th.  It is when the masculine and feminine energies are both at their plenitude and create an energy of fertility on earth, depicted by the engraving “The Philosophers Compass”.  Larry Boemler in his book "Asherah and Easter" writes “The Teutonic dawn goddess of fertility [was] known variously as Ostare, Ostara, Ostern, Eostra, Eostre, Eostur, Eastra, Eastur, Austron and Ausos.”  We get the point Larry…

If you´ve a garden, you can´t help but notice how the plants are having their first splurge of growth, of which I´ve proudly attached “fotos” of our first sproutings.  If we were all dependant on the growth of wheat rather than opening up Mars Bars, we´d be pretty damned glad to see it begin to grow.  And wine lovers will smile with wetted lips as they see what looked dead in the winter, spring into life once more, with little buds bursting on the vines.  The full moon gives the plants a complementary light to go for a marathon of energetic growing through all of the night and all the day…it´s quite logical really.

But Easter isn´t just about the nature´s rhythm, but also about the inner life.  Gods who die on the cross around this time (Jesus, Tammuz, Osiris, Dionysus, Orpheus…) represent how we as spiritual beings need to be have “a second birth” into a greater consciousness of ourselves and our world.  In order to just to start, it is necessary to dominate our egos, like in the Puranic allegory, when Viswakarman's daughter Sanjana (spiritual consciousness), complained as wives tend to do, about the natural qualities of their husbands.  After a while no matter how shiny and great and brill they are, they start to irritate.  Her husband was Surya the sun (often linked in astrology to the ego).  She went back to her daddy and complained he was getting all the attention, that he was shining too bright.  Like any loving father would do, he got his sun-in-law by the neck and being a carpenter of high craftsmanship, crucified the sun on his lathe and cut away an eighth part of his rays – creating around him a dark auroela.  A crown of thorns.

Which is basically spiritual initiation: killing all of those fiery passions, and going through hell, facing our demons, before we can rise into new life and be reborn. We become more conscious of ourselves, less reactionary, more responsive.  We´ve all been through it in some way, some emotional crisis which has made us understand ourselves better where at the end we firmly wobble, “I´m glad it happened but I wouldn´t like to go through that again!” 

In the past initiation was intense, people were put through all sorts of, what my father would call, character building situations, and then left exhausted attached to a “cross” (which I reckon must represent the symbolic centre of ourselves, the centre of creation) They lay there in the dark for three days in which their spirit descended into Hades’ underworld, to be reborn again into a new life once back in the light of day.  Initiates were left exhausted in caves and such, to encounter their inner demons, to face fear, and dominate it, to awaken to another perspective of themselves and their world.

Which is not exactly the same as scoffing our faces with Cadbury cream eggs and then getting stabs of stomach ache…

I remember in primary school going into panic staring into the face of my friend who had fiendishly asked “Are you a human being?” because I had no idea what she was on about.  We are both, we are a human and we are a being, we are physical and we are spiritual.  And as we go to the gym to get perfect bodies, so we are challenged with the evolution of our spirits.  Every time we refuse to listen to that spirit, the divine nature within us is “crucified”, but after each crucifixion there has to be a resurrection, else we would end up as a dead physical blob, only to be later recognised by the Ben and Jerry carton stuck on our heads.  There has to be a balance, we can´t just be spiritual, and we can´t just be physical, because, after my experience in primary school, I can say quite confidently now that we are all human beings.  Psychology, and Life, is the idea of balancing both the “light” and the “dark” within us. Such as in Spring and Autumn equinoxes. And we are back to Star Wars again.  Here is the battle plan described by H P Blavatsky:

He who strives to resurrect the Spirit crucified in him by his own terrestrial passions, and buried deep in the "sepulchre" of his sinful flesh; he who has the strength to roll back the stone of matter from the door of his own inner sanctuary, he has the risen Christ in him. The "Son of Man" is no child of the bond-woman—flesh, but verily of the free-woman—Spirit, the child of man's own deeds and the fruit of his own spiritual labour. (H.P.B. Series No. 7, pp. 4-5)

But why why does it have to be so painful, so difficult, so bloody scary at times.  Why can´t we just all be nice and get on so friendly and just evolve picking out the thorns from our innerds with tweezers, like apes deflea each other? Padma-Sambhava, an Indian sage guru, had to say of it:

Although sesame seed is the source of oil, and milk the source of butter, not until the seed be pressed and the milk churned do the oil and butter appear. Although sentient beings are of the Buddha essence itself, not until they realize this can they attain Nirvana.

To achieve spiritual growth we face a difficult path, in which we have to do things in a specific way.  How is something that each of us must search for ourselves…

Easter is a real and symbolic time of growth through death of the old, and resurrection of the new, of our continual becoming.  I think the idea is rounded up nicely in a eggshell, by Anais Nin:

And the day came when the risk it took to remain tight inside the bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.

Happy Easter everyone! Egg smashing galore!

Words are Mantras. Why not say loving words to ourselves?

Masaru Emoto's water crystal "love".

 We can make a treaure trove of the water in our bodies!

Words are mantras. They form our self images and from there our ideas of the world. In the west we say, and often even with a sense of inverted pride, things like “I am shit, so shit, at maths. I can´t do sums to save my life.”

Which in my case is true.

We smile foolishly, charmingly and proudly declare our ineptitudes. It´s fine to hear “I´m not very good at cooking”, or “I´m hopeless at dancing” and as the words tipple from their lips, we smile a supportive-it-doesn´t-matter smile which makes us feel ever so benevolent. Priests help us with the “Oh! Bless me lord for I am not worthy” chant, and guilt has stayed in fashion since the Oliver Cromwell and the Puritans were in power.

Meanwhile in the East monks chant mantras such as “I cherish the divinity within me” “I worship the light that I emanate” “I am god, god is me.”

We could play spot the differences…

“I am shit” – and – “I am divine”

Quite a sea of separation between them really. Not to understate the issue at hand.

Words create us and destroy us. They define us and create our individual separate beings, our images of ourselves, our beliefs about ourselves. They make us separate to be able to create the necessary distance from the whole to see the whole, so we are not blind to the forest because of the tree in our eye sort of thing. But at the same time they destroy our entelechy, our relationship to the whole.

So as words create enough distance, enough separation, to be able to see ourselves, our lives and our worlds, at the same time they reduce our sense of “cosmic” connectedness, or to put in another way, our connection to our (Jungian) “self”. Words, like layers of an onion, cover and protect our inner being, and at the same time those same words are what individually create us.

So lets chose them carefully god damn it.

I once read in Rob Brezsny´s “Pronoia” to write a love poem to myself. I did. It opened up my eyes. I´m not a bad sort after all. It was a sensation in which I realised that I did indeed have the capacity to love myself. Not arrogantly, but in a cherishing, supporting, encouraging way. It was such a soft and comforting feeling. Ohh this is all a bit embarrassing, but I felt as if I were floating in a cocoon of the light of my own love, and I realised that all was well with the world. I needed nothing as long as I had this connection with myself. It´s impossible to really explain, and I can hear sort of embarrassed, ironic, smirks, (I wonder even if it is my own?) but I explain because it was something that happened for about 10 minutes 3 years ago and still affects me, comforts me, in a timeless sort of manner.

“Authentic Happiness” by Seligman and “Love, Inspiration, Hope” by Karena Kast, “Pronoia” by Rob Brezny and most Jungian Psychoanalysis, all say similar things: “Try and love yourself”. I just say that so that you don´t think that I´m an absolute freak. Let me tell you again, I´m shit at maths.

Loving ourselves can sound arrogant and dinner party chat it is not. It could all get rather embarrassing. “I love NY” is fine to wear across our chest; “I love myself” could be somewhat misconstrued. But loving self is an important human task – it is where all our habits-thoughts-actions-reactions stem from. It could even be our main goal.

Loving ourselvses is not arrogance or conceitedness.  Arrogance (prp. of arrogare "to claim for oneself, assume,") separates ourselves from others, we place ourselves as higher beings which is just silly really.  Even when we think we are "special" it is the ego tricking us into distancing ourselves further from the whole.  We are ALL "unique"...all of us.

Loving ourselvses is not conceitedness (from conceive based on analogy of deceit and receipt. Sense evolved from "something formed in the mind," to "fanciful or witty notion").  Conceit is when we are creating our own images of ourselves that are simply not true. When we think we are super duper (at something or other) but somehow we have to force ourselves to maintain that image, creating quite a stress to our psyches. We try to be something we are not, blocking our intrinsic natures.

Love is keeping our heart open to the here and now, to ourselves as we are. Love allows the ability to see as it is, not how we would like it to be. And to accept it. To see yourself as you really are, and accept both the good and the bad. No one is perfect and yet we all manage eventually to love others. So why not ourselves?

Now I don´t want to go Jesus Christ on you all, but when he said “Love your neighbour as yourself” being one of the main messages of the Christian religion, it infers that beforehand you have managed to love yourself. It´s self evident isn´t it? Because if we love others as we do ourselves, and we continue using negative words about ourselves, we would have to shout “you are shit at driving” every time our neighbour got into his car. In the same way a Christ consciousness doesn´t beat up on others, it doesn´t beat up on itself. The idea can´t be to make ourselves feel lousy, putting ourselves out trying to help others in ways that harm us while we chant “I´m shit at this” and “You are so much better” and “You are worth more”. No, no, no.

Love, I believe is something that puts each other in a better position to be able to be who each naturally is. I do not think that Love is helping someone else to do that and putting yourself in a worse situation, nor putting yourself in a better situation at someone else´s expense. If we are creative we’ll see that there are plenty of combinations to do, to be, something that gives us the same benefits, and choosing one of those that is compatible with our neighbour, with our partners, with our friends, with our family, is simply an act of love to ourselves and to them. In so doing we live in greater harmony.

A friend of mine, edging into her sixties, recently discovered how to love. Beforehand she had felt an impostor of love….loving with the head only. Who are we who say we love? Who are those who we love, and it is real? It was one of those situations…until she let herself comprehend that she is not a pain in the ass, that she is not bad company, until she turned it around and began to believe that she had something to offer: herself. And that it was valuable. She realised, relaxing into her relationships with friends, that she listens really well, and that recently the things that she says (that I think are deep and wonderful) are not just silly little stupidities, but are in fact so very useful to others, they are so deep and wonderful. She helps people to see themselves in a new light. And as she realises, she enjoys her relationships so much more, and gives so much more, and enjoys, in a sort of ever increasing cycle of loving herself and loving others with her listening and her new found confidence in her loving words.

If we love ourselves, Vipassana says, it sort of runs over the brim, and we can´t help but see the world for what it is, for the better or worse, and still love it and those in it.

So go ahead, take off those glasses, see who you are. It´s like hearing your own voice, your own words, on a tape recorder. Gulp. Stand amazed and embarrassed and somewhat disgusted and happy and genuinely surprised. Accept it.

Those around you already do.

And Love yourself. Go on, you know you want to.

Doing things with Love

 

A couple of years back I did a speech in a conference in a very fine stately sort of building surrounded by tendered gardens in a hall for 500 people.  It was titled “¿Hacemos las cosas con Amor?” (Do we do things with Love?).  I was quite pleased with how well I was coping in front of the audience of 30, in spite of the echo, and at the end of the forty minute speech I had a standing ovation from about 18 of them.  The others didn’t stand because they were in a balancing act trying to clap and not let their walking sticks fall over. 

But even though the audience wasn’t so grand in numbers, nor young in age, I was proud of my speech, not only for the fact that they seemed to understand my accent, but for the content.  It basically went:  if we all do things with love, simple day to day things, then we create more meaningful relationships with ourselves, others and the world. 

We’ve all seen people go onto the street wired for an argument.  I’ve done it.  I’m on my bike one day and a car looks like they are going to swerve into the bike lane…so I slow down and give them space.  Another day, the same situation and I angrily keep my ground, let them nearly get me and with that excuse knock all uppity on their window.  They say “Perdona! I didn’t see you” and I launch into a speech about being having to be more aware on the streets, that cyclists have no protection, I hint at possible death etc etc etc.  I jump off my bike and get right onto my high horse. 

But what about if we do it the other way around? If we go onto the street “wired” to help, to be nice, to smile at the least opportunity?  If you try it, it makes you feel like Amelie.  Or Mary Poppins.  It depends on the weather forecast (it’s the umbrella thing).

So this weekend we had some bad news.  On Friday men came knocking on the door and asked about the leak.  What leak?  The leak downstairs they say is drip drip dripping into the vacated bank downstairs. 

God damn. 

Apparently it had been like that for a month.  I’m used to banks insipiently being a money drain, but not like this.  So we spent the weekend (workers respect the Sabbath here with a holiness…) without water.  I didn’t realise how often I wash my hands, or turn on taps.  I hadn’t realised how much I take for granted something so elementary such as water.  With it on again, it really makes me appreciate not just unsticky fingers but the simple fact of water, clean good water.  On tap.

I found the whole affair somewhat threatening.  A mishap within my own castle.  I can only just accept uncontrollable negative things outside, but inside…  So on Monday, Señor Camilla’s brother-in-law, the plumber, came along.  Just to see his face was a relief.  He had such a clear countenance that I instantly felt that I could trust this man which in a world of lampisterias (Spanish plumbers) is a relief in itself.  You can be put over a drippy barrel.  

And I was right, he and his trusty assistant found the leak.  It was under the corner of the bath.  Relieved, we were able to flush.

So today he came and did the final touches, which were putting the spare tiles back into place.  We got out the tiles and Sñr Comilla´s brother-in-law got to work. 

They say it’s all in the timing and this morning I awoke with a particularly bad case of the trots (diarrhoea).   Sñr Comilla´s brother-in-law was really lovely about it all.  A couple of times I found myself doubling over a bit hoping that he could clean the rocky lumps from under the door to be able to close it before my bottom turned into Mount Etna and erupted.  Meanwhile Enric and him are having a right manly chin wag, about the size of tiles, how tiles aren’t the same these days, about their different tools etc.  Sñr Comilla´s brother-in-law was particularly touched by the offer of a coffee, which he sipped while I was groaned in the toilet.

Later Enric was at my bedside with a home remedy from our friendly lampisteria-cum-doctor: a small glass of coca-cola does the trick.  He finished his work, by which time he had invited Enric and I to his house in a little village, Mont Blanc, the next time we were up.  Really he was so very caring, so very open, so very warm hearted…

Which was a good job, because a good job he did not.

Tonight inspecting his work, I said to Enric, “the tiles are jutting out a bit”.  He said “And that was the third attempt, he broke two before that”.  We had a couple of loose tiles in the hall way that we constantly crunched over from the table to the kitchen, and now they are nice and firm, one in a few more pieces than previously and the other slight rised.  To put it blunt, Mr Camilla’s brother-in-law is a bit of a cack hand.

But do you know, I am more than pleased to pay up for the signed three hours, that we reckon a skilled tiler could have done in half of the time.  Because as I sit on the toilet, now in a controlled fashion, I look with a warm feeling, at the jutting out tile.  It reminds me:  it is not what you do, but how you do it.

I´ve got on instantly with that jutting out tile, it makes me think of Mr Camilla’s brother-in-law and wonder what his house is like in that little village, him sat out back with his twenty by twenty tiling.  I like thinking of him doing his best, with his good heart, really trying.  It´s like our house has a bit more character.  But if a horrible man had done it in a bad mood, I wouldn’t react in the same way, at all.  I’d get all farty about it while sat on the white telephone.

You see, it doesn’t matter what we do, even if we are just an English teacher, getting grammar mixed up while trying to untangle phrasal verbs in front of students, or if we are a high flyer dealing with lots of money, or a person who cleans the stairwell in buildings…it doesn’t matter what we do, but how we do it.  

It’s not so important the result of our labour, but how we laboured.  And really, if we do things with love, we don’t only end up enjoying what we do and loving that others appreciate it, but we begin to love ourselves.  Our worlds change. 

No sorry that’s wrong. 

We change.

Just like the Little Prince who tames the fox who tells him  "Here´s my secret, it couldn´t be simpler:  It is only with the heart that one can see rightly. What is essential is invisible to the eye."

And so a big thank you to Señor Comilla’s brother-in-law for the unwobbly reminder that doing things with love makes all the difference because at the end of the day it is not what we do, but who we are, that counts.

Projection

R2D2 Projecting onto Princesses again...

The comic Rodney Dangerfield, once said "My wife´s a water sign.  I´m an earth sign.  Together we make mud."  But really, we do create a third intangible thing when we get together with another.  But what is it?  And do we see it, or do we project something else while hiding the truth from ourselves?

I think most of you know that I am courting an older man.  Difficult to call him really my boy-friend, since long past he ceased to be a boy.  And yet it is one of the longest relationships I’ve had.  It is definitely the one with the least tension, least arguments, least problems and where love has been able to peacefully grow.  He is earth, I am air.  No mud huts.

You can imagine that it was not easy.  It is not easy.  It is like being gay and coming out of the closet.  Except there is no closet.  There is no “May-September” young-older night clubs, magazines, or flags to wave.  There are people who have and are in May-September relationships, quite a lot of famous people actually, but no social standards, no guidelines to follow.

And so it begs the question…what is a relationship.  Why am I living in a partnership with this person.  To what end?  If you are a come-cocos (a coconut eater – or rather someone who thinks too much), it’s quite a tough cookie.  In relationships that are socially more freuquent, then the question is not so evident (though it is still there, just hiding like Anne Frank in her attic).  But what drives us to live, share, sleep with someone else?

I’ve been mulling over this for some time and the conclusion is somewhat embarrassing:  I am unconsciously following, as if along a ploughed path, dreams and fantasies that I have in my mind.  These were created when I was, ohh, all of the age of…

Thirteen. 

One-Three.

What a year.  I was a right little busy bee making up wonderful romantic ideals.  My first idea of true romantic evening was a fantasy (never came true) of watching “Pretty Woman” with a wonderful boy eating pizza on a blanket on the middle of my lounge floor.  Yep, the Cinderella Complex.  That old favourite: I dreamt of being pushed up into a perfect self and henceforth perfect life, thanks to my prince charming.  I needed only to look out from my upper floor window, no work on my behalf needed, and smile, laughingly, charmingly at Richard Gere overcoming his fear of heights with a rose between his teeth.

I remember sitting at my homework desk, with my pink paper and the white lines, with my pink heart pen writing down the list of the characteristics I deemed necessary of my ideal boy hero.  He must be handsome, funny, intelligent, musical, sporty, rich…

Thirteen eh?  A ripe age for dreaming. I remember sorting out my life, what I would be like by the astronaut year of 2000.  I would have children by then and be just like…and again I embarrass my adult self somewhat more…the family in “Back to the Future”.  You know when M J Fox comes back to the future and he’s sorted out those pesty problems of the past.  As a result he has a family in a spotless, white, glorious kitchen, sun shining in through the windows, mum and dad have just come in from a fun, exciting, evenly matched game of tennis, they are smiling, the children are doing their homework happily and are smiling and the baddie, now turned goodie, is super happy in the garage cleaning the car, aware of his inabilities and happy to be working, and is smiling.

It didn’t actually happen for me like that.

But all that dreaming, all that Pretty Woman and Back to the Future, all that sure idea of what life is about, didn’t leave me when faced by a strangely different reality, it went underground and became my secret template without me even knowing it.  It became the glasses that I wore for discerning if my relationship was going right or not, without me really knowing it.

The thing is that with an older man those projections just broke down.  Shattered.  Really, I cannot ask of him to be sporty and (this is the deal) I cannot dream that he will become sporty.  It’s impossible to change him into my hero.  I cannot project onto him the “sporty” characteristic on my pink paper list.  It’s just not going to happen.  I cannot tell him to start climbing mountains, or mountain biking (he cannot ride a bike).  And so I cannot blame him for when I don’t go (which believe me, I have done many a time with other boyfriends).  He is just not going to change much, or be much else than what he is now.  And somehow, it is a huge relief.  It is a clear level playing field.  I am not projecting things into our relationship that simply cannot and aren’t going to happen.  And it leaves me able to more fully appreciate what is there, like comprehension, an ability to love, complicity... 

But still what is a relationship?

I don’t really know, but I know a little more about what it is not.  I wonder if it is simpler than we project.  Since the simplest things are often the most difficult. 

I don’t want Richard Gere to get jealous, but Rainer Maria Rilke is definately a poetic hero.  In his book Letters to a Young Poet he writes “Try to love the questions themselves like locked rooms or like books written in a remote foreign language.  Do not search now for answers that cannot be given to you because you would not be able to live them.  And every thing has to be lived.  Live the questions now.  Perhaps you will then gradually live your way, without noticing, into the answer some day.”

The Inner Self

Image: Jardines del Laberinto de Horta

A friend once told me a simple idea that has stayed with me for years. We are like a garden. Inside our garden we can plant whatever flower or vegetable or tree we like, with or without grass, with or without a rockery, and if you like plastic gnomes, just go ahead feel free. We must discover the conditions of your ground soil, for some plants may struggle while others thrive. Care for our garden with water and light or leave it to grow wild. We can leave it in a complete state if we want to. We can do as we like. But it needs constant work for it to be weed less and lovely.

Let us presume that we have an interior garden that we particularly like, we have done it up just so, just as we like so that we are as comfortable as possible within the conditions that we have been given.

We may allow into our garden who we like. But that person really should respect our garden. We don’t want them to be stamping on our pretty flowers or making mud of our grass lawn. And yet often we forget and allow Tom Dick and Harry to harry around.

And so we must learn to control who is allowed in and who is not, on our own grounds. Those who we feel will not respect what we are growing, we can bar entry if we feel necessary, it is our garden to do as we see fit. We can leave them at the gate. Maybe they’ll move on and leave us in peace or if they have the time and patience they can look through the gate. Maybe they’ll begin to appreciate how delicate our little garden is, how uniquely planted all of the beautiful flowers are. Perhaps with time they will become willing to enter our garden with respect and we can change, if we want to, our original admission policy and let them in.

There are others who see the inherent beauty and can help us to make our garden more us. They see the potential of the plants and help us to fertilize to make them stronger, they see sad plants and can help us to cure them. They bring new seeds. Once fear of change is conquered, we are can glad to allow these people to visit our garden of pleasures.

So who do we attract to our garden? They say energy attracts like energy and if we are positive, for example, we will be able to share our garden with many other wonderful positive people as they pass through and sit in our deck chairs for a while, bringing with them the sun.

Indra’s net is a Hindu idea that we are all diamonds on a net. Each diamond is a garden. Each diamond is a soul. Each diamond reflects all of the other diamonds in the net. So let us make our little garden, our diamond, no matter how insignificant, just to our liking and allow the people who are close to reflect and bathe in the beautiful colours. Like a stained glass window of our petals. We are born with an uniqueness, as each snowflake is different. Think of that and marvel if you may.

We each have a talent for arranging our gardens in different ways, we each can do things easily and effortlessly that others find difficult. How do you want to grow your garden and who do you want to allow in?

Who do you enjoy sitting in your deckchair with sharing each other’s sunlight and doing your bestest to disperse the clouds?

Postcards from the Labyrinth

Image: The first film i went to see without my mum!

Dear Family and Friend,

The time of year has come where we have to doubt if we can ever believe ourselves ever again. Two weeks into New Year glass of red in our hand remembering the night, bright eyed (the champagne) and innocent, when we declared to the world and to ourselves what virtuous thing we are about to do. Today, that pureness of festive good will having met the light of 12 whole days, seems to have got lost with the tv remote down the back of the sofa, and we realise that we haven´t actually reduced drinking alcohol at all. Trainers are neatly lined up still at the back of our wardrobes and you find yourself unable to stop yourself from scoffing chocolate every time you go into the kitchen.

But we still have chance! We can prove to ourselves that we can gyrate our bad habits out of the orbit that we are presently flowing in. (Everyday is really a new opportunity, but don’t say it too loud else we’ll be doing an awful lot of stuff tomorrow.)

So today, I’m starting on my New Year’s resolution. It is to open up and share a little of my inner world. The thing is that in the past I had no problems sending out group mails, because I was travelling, and I felt I had the postcard right to email home. I was treading into new territories, I was experiencing new adventures, and I needed to feel that I had an anchor back home so as to not get lost, again.

These days I have become stable. On the outside world it is really my only news. I have been teaching English for 9 years (albeit in lots of different academies, orphanages, universities, countries), I have been living in Barcelona 7 years (albeit in 10 different houses) but now (drum roll please),

drrrrrrrrrrr

..for the last 2 years, I have become absolutely stable. Yes, yes, feel that rush of fresh air woosh through into stunned silence…

I work in the same single establishment, the UB, I live in the same house (the longest I think I have ever lived in one house as an adult) and I am going out with the same man, which is coming up to record breaking proportions.

But constancy is not totally alien to me. What I have been doing almost steadily since I’ve been travelling (it all began in Patagonia in 1999) is an internal journey. Nepal in 2004 got me on a new track and recently I just finished a two year masters in Jungian Psychology and Psychoanalysis. I’ve been going at it some. And now, really I’m in the same situation as when I set out from Heathrow with Chris 14 years ago. I need an anchor. I need to send post cards of where I have been on this internal adventure so I don´t get lost in the labrynths of the mind. Now, all of you on this list have walked some of this journey with me and we have something special between us because of our joint experiences, our shared learning and the love created through them. And as a result, to show my infinite gratitude, I’m going to bare face use you: I need an audience.

I need you now as an extended family the same way that me and my little bro needed my mum and dad on our Special Theatre Performance nights while coming out from the small hiding place behind the curtains of the double patio doors to say “I say, I say, I say, what do you call….” Mum and Dad would laugh hysterically (not exactly at the joke) and clap politely at the end.

Maybe you are going through a New Year’s resolution to reduce your inbox to a manageable amount and respect to you (but remember to send me a mail so I can remove you from the list). Conversely if you want to send this onto other people, feel free. And if you want to add your tuppence worth email me, and you want to have a knees up discussion for all and sundry, I’m also going to post the notes on a Blog.

But no discussion today, just like a first day of class. Me prancing around and trying to be affectionately nice and then doing a register. Students leaving dazed.

It’s not too late is it to say Happy New Year is it?

Happy New Year.

Thanks, mil thanks for anchoring me.

Lots of love

Julia