Looking closely, stepping back

Continuing the metaphor from the other day.

Wanting to get up close, see into the heart, know deeply.

But needing, too, to step back, look around and see things in a wider perspective.

As a short-sighted introvert, I know which view I gravitate to first!

Too late for Halloween...

... or to cavort with their fellows at the Halloween Festival of the Trees: spotted leering and waving just the other day, as the last of the leaves fell and laid them bare.

Meanwhile, spotted in the blogosphere, which always provides delight and diversion when I'm not up to writing anything myself:

• Two memorable posts on Remembrance Day, by Andy and Hg.

• Language Hat sent me back to a rich and lengthy discussion in the New York Times on the new translation of War and Peace. (My copy, ordered from US Amazon, is on its way - apparently by very slow boat - and due to arrive some time in December).

• And Ernesto at Never Neutral wrote a truly stunning essay on life, art, globalisation and, er, everything.

What would I do without you?

From both sides now

Whenever I photograph the Millenium Bridge, it comes out prettty, but flat and unsubtle of light and colour. Clearly neither I nor the camera are up to this.

Never mind. My point, anyway, was a metaphorical one: something about looking around and moving around in life and holding all its aspects in view - the difference between facing up to something and getting stuck in it.

"... I've looked at life from both sides now
from up and and down and still somehow ..."

So, well

I'm terribly sad about something terribly sad, and it's not mine to write about, and I don't feel like writing about anything else. So this 'every day in November' lark seems to have gone by the board. Not sure if it's just a blip (the sadness isn't) or a need to descend into a deeper silence.

Leaping tree

Trees leap. Life moves on. Things change. And Blogger doesn't always work, which is why the badge is under the damn photo not above it!

I remember - I'm sure no one else does - that one of the first things I blogged about was the local pharmacist calling me Jean. It made me feel odd, somehow defined by chronic illness. Strangely, really, as I hate being called anything else and my instinct is always to use first names. Ms Morris? Who's that? Too much like Ms Mouse! But he's much younger than me, and everyone calls him Mr Patel. It felt wrong: 'ça cloche', as the French untranslateably say.

I froze him out, and he never did it again. Until today, when I went for the nty-nth time to collect my migraine medication (for which I daily thank god, or whoever), and the shop, exceptionally, was empty. Since the first time I mentioned it, the pharmacist's shop has been refurbished, extended, sells all manner of lovely homeopathic and organic everything from shampoo to handcream to insect repellant, as well as holding the repeat prescription franchise from most of the local doctors' surgeries. An exemplary independent business holding its own in the age of globalisation. But today, Saturday, at 12.15 pm, it was empty. The pharmacist emerged from behind the partition to serve me himself and said: hello Jean. Hello, I said. How are you? My goodness, how rare to see the shop empty! Ow, he said, do not tempt fate! That's what you get for having such a lovely shop, I said. It's lovely. Really. You sell such great stuff. He smiled and we were equal. I was not patronised. The shop is lovely. Two and a half years seems a long time. Sometimes.

The Curse of Gemini

I redesigned my blog banner yesterday. Twenty times, perhaps. Do not presume that minimal design means minimal effort. Oh, no. Then I put it back the way it was before. Then looked at a friend's redesign in progress, came back and tried again. Left the new one up. But I might not leave it for long.

My head was buzzing, not just with this: with the integrated blog and website I want to build, all the different sections, what they'll say; not to mention three different major life/work transformations I could aim for in the next couple of years. Great stuff, you might think. The trouble is, I'll have changed my mind by next week. The Curse of Gemini - changeable, divided, to put it brutally: fickle!

I don't believe in astrology. No. I think the interesting astrologers are those who use it as a hook for subtle description and analysis of character traits. If you identify with something attributed to your sign, of course you'll remember it, and forget the stuff that means nothing. However, I'm certainly in some ways the 'typical Gemini': twin - if not multiple - personalities, divided against myself, in/out, this today, that tomorrow. It's a curse. Aaargh!

Presents

I’m not all that keen on memes usually, but this one, from Udge, is just lovely:

The first three people to comment here and then post the same message on their blogs will receive a small (real, not virtual) present from me!

Isn’t that great? As Pronoia absolutely delightfully said, it’s the opposite of Amway.

STOP PRESS. And here's another BIG lovely present. One of the amazing, unbelievable things the blogosphere has brought me is the friendship of Natalie d'Arbeloff. That Natalie's a uniquely talented artist, writer and thinker is not news. The news is that some very clever and prominent women have just given her a well-deserved accolade. Read about it on her blog.

Browsing under M

Something satisfying about these. If I went back and lurked in the same place until someone went right through the print catalogue, I could make a flipbook... of a flipbook.

Under the bell

Last night was the last in a short course of Buddhist meditation classes I've been taking. Ten years now that I've had a meditation practice, on and off, more on than off, and fairly seriously. Still, I appreciate meeting new (and old) teachers and sitting in a room with others, new and old to the practice, many experiencing something that will change them as it has changed and continues to change me... oh those tiny, gradual changes in perception and response that make a huge, huge difference to everything.

This course was excellent, a strong impetus to fresh approaches and recommitment. I was drawn to it by the name of one of the teachers, John Teasdale. Now a teacher in the Insight meditation tradition, as a research psychologist in Oxford, London and Cambridge, he has been one of the UK pioneers of Mindfulness Based Cognitive Therapy.

MBCT, which takes the precious philosophy and techniques of Buddhist mindfulness training, in secular form, into the mainstream health service, has recently been hitting the headlines with the publication of a wonderful book, The Mindful Way Through Depression, of which John is a co-author with Zindel Segal, Mark Williams and Jon Kabat-Zinn, but was already the subject of respected research studies (many cited here) and beginning to find a place in the National Health Service. There is far, far to go, but this seems like a real, small hope for our sick minds and sick society. Little of late has made me happier.

We split into small groups last night to discuss our practice. "I think I know you! Aren't you Jean?": a woman I met 12 or 13 years ago, perhaps the very first to speak of me of Buddhist practice, a good while before I tried it for myself. Long lost sight of, she had moved away and has only recently returned to live near me. We will meet, perhaps try to start a local sitting group! In the great amorphous city, the crossing and re-crossing of paths with like-minded people feels very precious.

Before leaving, we sat for one last time. The power of silence and forty intent minds in this beautiful space. The exquisite medieval church of St Ethelburga was destroyed by an IRA bomb in 1993 and rebuilt as an interfaith centre for peace and reconciliation.

At 9 pm, in the middle of London, the bell chimes right above our heads.

My own private...

... sketchcrawl. Even if you haven't a clue, it's a nice thing to do, makes you look differently, spot the main lines and the small things that sparkle. The sky was extra blue behind the white house, the leaves were red, red, the flowers were purple and floated on the air, the water rippled and the feet were silhouetted in the strong sunlight under the table.