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www.wanting2behere2.blogspot.com

Signs and Sitting

If you are meditating and somewhere within earshot interesting things are going on, you will find your mind going there to check it out. No problem. If you do not resist the process, your attention will of its own accord return to your focus - your breath, or your own thoughts and sensations.

Lorin Roche
Meditation Made Easy, Page 123

I've been tagged by Neith with the Astroblogger meme. Variations of this have been floating around for a little while but this is a first for me. While I don't blog about astrology per se (not knowledgeable or orderly-minded enough) I am a keen amateur practitioner so, stealing Leslee's phrase, this blog has something of an astroflavour.

Here it is:

1. Pick up the nearest book (of at least 123 pages).
2. Open the book to page 123.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the next three sentences.
5. Tag five people

It's been necessary to bend the rules. Never Let Me Go was definitely the nearest book to hand, but only has two short paragraphs at the end of a chapter on page 123 and too few sentences. At a second attempt I found three sentences on page 123 of a basic beginner's meditation guide. This book's great virtue is the emphasis on keeping things simple and enjoying the practice, and given the large dollop of inquisitive Gemini in my birthchart plus a mercurial Virgo ascendant the passage quoted is particularly helpful.

Unless I'm ill or travelling I sit pretty much every morning. Just for fifteen minutes or so but it's become an intrinsic part of my day, While I'm not a Buddhist - sometimes I wish I could sign up for something but that's a topic for another post - their meditation techniques work for me. So there I am in front of my altar, the thinking part galloping into the past and future, the meditative part noticing the fact then trying to bring the focus back to the breath. Where it stays for at least five seconds.

In the silence and space thoughts and feelings rise to the surface then fall away. Insights occur and truth asks to be faced. For this quarter of an hour I am physically quiet and still even if inwardly agitated and there is comfort and strength in that. It can be very peaceful sitting at the window with the faint background sounds of my neighbours starting their days. Very, very occasionally I do approach that place that lies beyond thought. Other days there is restlessness and frustration and the whole thing seems as rewarding and fulfilling as watching paint dry, yet I'd no more leave the house without brushing my teeth than skip this.

I'm groping for a final sentence to explain why I sit. Because I must. Just because.

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I'm not going to tag anyone but if you'd like to do the meme, with any slant or none, leave a note in the comments.

Perspectives

. Compared to the daunting size of some London art galleries the Welsh national collection is built on a human scale. The few rooms are relatively small so it is possible to do them all justice in a couple of hours and then, if you wish, to make a day of it and take in the museum part of the building. Just how museums and galleries ought to be. Having been duly beguiled by Renoir and rendered nostalgic by Sisley, I was jolted awake by a Welsh artist new to me, Kevin Sinnott. For a start, who could resist a painting with such a title? I love its size and energy, the crazy perspective and the unanswered questions, e.g. Why aren't they holding hands?

. After many months of almost no book reading, I've just finished Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go. Set in a dark version of the 1990s the story unfolds at a slow, painstaking pace and at the end left me uncomfortable but, goodness, it should be read. It won't be a hardship either as the book is beautifully written and from one perspective it is purely about human relationships and how we are each of us influenced and dominated by our pasts. That which isn't explained or which just filters through - to the reader as to the main protagonist and her fellow students - is the most chilling part of all.



. The visit to the Welsh national gallery allowed enough time to take in the Cardiff Bay development. The photo was taken at the Water Sculpture (yesterday without the water) and I wasn't the only photographer to be attracted by its hall-of-mirrors potential. It can make you visible yet invisible. A little like a blog.

More photos here.

Arrival

The tulips were blowsy and past their best that lunchtime last April when our van pulled up outside the house. But the splash of colour of the two-toned red and yellow flowers in the front garden was welcoming as I struggled out of the passenger seat clutching the cat basket. I had hardly slept the previous night and it had been a four hour journey. The cat - poor thing - had protested loudly until we reached Ross, when he had no choice but to give in to the call of nature. We pulled over and Bill went for a cigarette while I did the necessary. (My sister had the bright idea of using incontinence pads - one to start the journey with plus a couple of replacements in case of such an occurrence - at the base of his basket).

l was apprehensive that I wouldn't be able to find the key for the front door - the bunch of keys we had collected half an hour earlier from the estate agent's offices in town seemed more suited in size to Fort Knox than a modest semi. My fears were, of course, unjustified - it transpired that there were three copies of each one. Sally the estate agent, at probably half my age, had asked if I would mind waiting while a colleague popped out to the local florist to buy a pink hyacinth as a house-warming present. This may have been company policy but I was touched and found it a niche on a sunny windowsill.

After unloading the boxes and cartons Bill set off home to Sussex. The furniture in storage locally was delivered shortly afterwards. Water, gas and electricity all worked. I released the cat from his portable prison, drank a mug of tea, read the meters and made arrangements with a friend to go shopping for a washing machine and fridge the following day. Oh, and did a bit of unpacking. All surprisingly straightforward after the stress of the previous months.



That freezing weather of a few weeks back is past - for now - sunlight floods the garden and a strong wind blows from the south west. The daffodils are in full flower and those red and yellow tulips are opening. Nearly eleven months later the sight of them once again outside the kitchen window, drawn upwards inexorably through the dark earth by warmth and light, leaves me jubilant and relieved.

This spring the signs of change and rebirth have particular resonance.

Moderation

An interesting week and it looks as if the coming seven days will have their moments as well. Nothing like a total lunar eclipse to stir things up. None of it bears blogging about for the moment, but it's been a reminder that life is nothing if unpredictable.

Thanks for the comments on the previous post. One of the things that gives blogging its fascination is the ability that it affords to chronicle and celebrate a few moments of an icy, dank February morning in a country town in the Marches. The creation of a post allows me the space to contemplate and experience my own world more deeply and thoughtfully and I can share the moments with others worldwide, most of whom I will probably never meet. Blogging as a creative and meditative tool, creating an invisible spider's web of links across the planet as we exchange pieces of our lives. And there are millions of us doing it. All those webs.

I need to limit my time on the internet though often I'm tempted not to. Mostly I manage to find the balance. When I don't my wellbeing suffers. It comes back to the concept of moderation. Not my natural home, and not where I've spent a good part of my life, but, heaven knows, the alternative is counterproductive. I'm getting older and increasingly body, mind and soul need me to aim for a state of equilibrium, however unfamiliar this may feel. I can't afford to waste these years.

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Because I can't resist, a couple of other photographs of those murky, beautiful days. To see enlarged versions of these or any of the pictures on the blog, click on the photograph and go into Flickr, then select All Sizes.

Monochrome (almost)

We've been experiencing some of the lowest night temperatures in the UK.



Clear night skies and heavy frosts combined with early morning fog means the dawn becomes a study in shades of grey.



Any stretch of open water that doesn't move freezes over ....



... and the pigeons wait for the sun to break through.

When it does the contrast is almost shocking. Colour everywhere. Bright. Clear. Glowing.

New Job

I think it's going to work out. I'm getting to grips with the charity's fiendishly complex database. Remembering names and telephone extensions. The people seem nice and the short working week is good.

Part of the job is to upload information onto the computer system and it's impossible not to be aware of the human beings behind the statistics. Elderly men and women in nursing homes, in most cases suffering from dementia, who can no longer care for themselves and whose families can no longer care for them. As I work I wonder about their lives, the contrast between then and now, whether they are aware of what has happened to them.

And what about the families who are forced to take decisions for which they cannot know the outcome, to choose between painful, often less-than-perfect options? Unlike a few of my friends I've never had to face this situation. Both my mother and grandmother were as sharp as tacks when they died in their eighties; my father was confused but not to the extent that he couldn't function.

So. I've started a routine of wishing each person peace as I load the details of their lives onto the database. It's the one thing that I can do.

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Today has been a peaceful and ordered one, productive without being manic, social but with quiet times. Most of the items on the list I drew up this morning have been ticked off. Feelings come and go. It's OK.

Photograph: Eastgate Clock, Chester.