The only things I'll regret are those I don't do

I meditated this morning, and in the emptiness I heard a bird. I think it was a blackbird, at first it was just a warning screech, repeated over and over. Back at the house, that always used to be a sign that one of the cats was out and about, but round here there are no cats – there again, there aren’t usually any song birds either. I decided it was probably coming from the trees outside the church. Later, it developed into a song, faint but liquid against the silence, the absence of traffic.
I thought about the Crystal Space again, and felt it opening around me, the threads leading away into the future or futures, the neurones flashing and sparkling in the gaps between the here-and-now and the still-to-be. Wherever I am, I am at the centre, the glittering paths extending infinitely into the gloom around me. I thought about Himself on Monday night, his eyes and hands and lips on me, ‘I just want to make you happy’ for that small sliver of time, we talked about meeting again, as we always do, ‘better planning next time!’, yet who can say when that might be, the long spaces open out between us again, perhaps it’s better that way, but are we both too diffident, each waiting for the other? Or is it just that life is too complicated? Or perhaps if we saw each other more often, it would all burn out, perhaps there is an upper limit on the time we can spend together and we are making the most of it, stretching it out, extending it, as good love-making should be.
I lost my office keys yesterday. On the way to work I checked both my bags but couldn’t find them, I assumed I’d left them on my desk. I rang the bell and Sue let me in, but there were no keys, and my desk and filing cabinet were both locked. I looked everywhere where I might have put them down after locking up on Tuesday, and convinced myself they must be somewhere at home. There were plenty of jobs that needed doing that didn’t require access to them. But when I got home, I checked pockets, I checked places where I might have put them down, and convinced myself they must be somewhere at the office. I’ll email Sue and ask her to ask the lady I desk-share with to leave her key with Sue on Monday evening and then I’ll get a copy made on Tuesday. Practical solutions.
I have a lot of work to do this weekend, but that’s OK. It’s time for the magazine, and the copy is coming in thick and fast, so I have three days to work on it solidly, and if I run out there is plenty I need to do on the website as well.
I went to a meeting on climate change last night, interesting speakers (well, one interesting speaker), but nothing really new and I was so tired after two late nights this week and several broken ones, that I felt myself nodding off during the presentation. I didn’t see anyone I knew, I’d been hoping to meet some new and interesting people, but I didn’t feel up to networking and came home before the end of the discussion. I put my name and email address on a list for information about transition, maybe something will come from that. You never know where in the crystal space you will find yourself next, or which path will lead you there.
And in a fortnight, I’ll be on my way to Brussels.

Life twists and turns, it circles and spirals, and maybe old Tom Elliot was right when he said that the point of the journey is to go back to where you came from and know the place for the first time.
The first song of the set was, as he described it, that one… ‘…which is probably the only song in the history of the universe to mention street names from Scunthorpe AND New Orleans!’ I first heard it in the summer, when Big Bro emailed me: ‘PS The BBC website has a big chunk on Cambridge Folk festival including video clips of Martin Simpson. You will recognise some of the people and places in the songs’.
I listened and smiled and remembered carrying my push bike up and down the concrete steps of the footbridge over the railway tracks, bowling on my bike down Cemetery Road, even my first erotic fumbles in the dark on a bench in a secluded part of the cemetery itself (not with him, though, I hasten to point out).
We were alternately mates and sparring partners throughout our childhood, until puberty pulled us apart into single-sex ghettoes, the barriers only to be crossed for a specific reason, and though he crossed the barrier with easy charm, shyness and awkwardness made it an insurmountable wall for me. Brother and sister I guess, cat and dog, for me a brother closer to my own age, and for him a little sister to add to the two older half brothers.
I listened, and wondered why I hadn’t been listening to that music all my life, why I got bored with it after university. There is nothing, absolutely nothing to match the sound of an acoustic guitar played so skilfully, his fingers flying up and down the fret, even the tuning riffs magical. I still remember sitting in my back garden and hearing him play in his back garden, if anyone had told us then where life would take him, if anyone had told me then where life would take me…
I knew exactly what I would say if I got the chance, but how would he react, I wondered? What would his recollections be of those times, of me?
We filed out of the auditorium, and I looked around to see where to find out whether my raffle tickets had won anything. Then there he was, behind a table of CDs, people milling around.
I pushed past the crowd, went straight up to him.
‘I just wanted to say, the last time I was at one of your gigs was almost forty years ago.
He stared at me.
‘Where was that, then?’
‘At school, you were playing with Paul Empson. But we’ve known each other a lot longer than that’. I grinned inanely at his confusion, trying to pull me out from all the women of his memory, but inside I was thinking, shit, maybe he won’t actually remember me at all.
‘It’s Linda’ I said at last, putting him out of his misery, to be greeted with a whoop and a hug.
‘You’re kidding me!!!
‘Now, why would I make up something like that?’ I laughed.
‘I recognise your face!’
‘Oh yeah, after forty years?’ I bet he says that to all the girls!
He carried on signing CDs, carrying on five conversations at once, pressing the flesh with adoring fans, and dealing with this stroppy cow who came straight out and said: ‘I can’t exactly say I’ve followed your career closely’ and being rude about his brother.
‘There’s this bloke I know, every time I see him he goes on about your brother and what he’s up to’ he said.
‘You mean, how filthy stinking rich he is?’ I asked.
‘Something like that!’
‘Well, he just has the farm in Kent where his wife stays, and the flat off Millbank that he uses when he’s in town’.
‘As you do’ he grimaced.
‘As you do’ I agreed.
‘We’ve got another mutual friend, but he says you might not remember him’.
‘Who’s that then?’
‘Ed Woodroffe’.
‘Wow, small world! Of course I remember Ed!’
‘Look, I’d better get off and leave you to it. Take care’.
‘Email me! Keep in touch!’
‘I will’.
I drove home with a smile on my face. There have been a few times over the last couple of years when I’ve thought about sending him a ‘remember me?’ email, thought that one day I would go and see him perform, probably in Cambridge. It was sheer fluke that I even saw he was performing last night, bought the ticket.
I realised I never even said how much I’d enjoyed it, how much I loved his playing. Hey, there are enough people to tell him that.
And I never even checked my raffle tickets.

Something strange happened with my phone. I set the alarm for 6.30 last night before I went to sleep. I woke up at 6 and came to for a few minutes, then decided to get up and meditate till the alarm went off. By the time I was settled it was about twenty past. After a while, I started to wonder why the alarm hadn’t gone off, as it felt as though it must be time. I switched the phone on to check whether I had in fact set the alarm, and the first thing it did was ask me to set the time and date. Which explains why the alarm hadn’t gone off. I have no idea why the time and date had been unset, but it’s lucky I wasn’t relying on it to wake me up.
Laura texted on Tuesday when I was at work:
‘at Rushden recycling centre, I’ve bought a futon for £10 but it won’t fit in my car, can we bring yours tomorrow and pick it up?’
My first reaction was – what the hell does she want with a futon? They have a two bedroom flat, with their double bed in one room, and Flick’s cot and another double bed in the other. Ah well. It’s a bargain.
I’d picked up some mail from the house on Monday, including a note from a shop in Rushden where I used to hold a ‘loyalty’ card, saying that they were closing down, sale starting on the 18 November. I told Laura when I told her on Monday, it’s sad because it’s an old family firm, and a bit of an Aladdin’s cave, with different floors and rooms, selling anything you could wish for in the household line, the sort of shop it’s just a pleasure to visit. Still, I haven’t bought anything there in years, because it couldn’t compete on price with the likes of Wilkinson’s, and price has to be the most important criterion for me these days. So to be honest it was more of a surprise that it had kept going so long than that it was closing down now.
So, a trip to Rushden was planned. I picked Laura and Flick up from the flat. My back seat folds down in two sections, so we could put Flick’s car seat on the narrow part and fold down the wider part to squeeze the futon on. ‘It folds flat, it shouldn’t be a problem’ she said confidently.
‘What are you going to do with the other bed in Flick’s room?’
‘Dad’s going to have it’.
‘Poor old Dad! The house is full of your discarded furniture!’
‘But he hasn’t got a bed in the spare room’.
That’s true. I took it.
As we drove through Rushden, we passed the shop with the closing down sale.
‘Oh god, look at the queues to get into the car park!’
Struggling in the cold wind at the recycling centre, we pulled the futon base and matress out of the container, only to find that the thing did not fold completely flat. The two of us tried it a various angles, the last with part of the wooden base over the top of Flick’s head. In the end we got base, mattress and push chair in and closed the hatch.
Or tried to.
Laura swore.
‘I’ll go and ask him if I can have my money back’.
‘We could go home and pick up your car as well, then you can have Flick. We could do it if she wasn’t in the back seat’.
‘It’s not worth it!’
She asked the man in charge, who gave her back the £10, and we hefted it out again and back into the container, then drove off.
Remembering the queues, we found a car park a little way away from the shop and walked. Inside, it was bedlam. Not the easiest shop to negotiate with a pushchair at the best of times, though this was the first time we’d tried it. And the prices were still out of our bracket. A tiny one person casserole, reduced from £15 to £12? Admittedly it was le Creuset, but… I think not.
‘Maybe they’ll reduce the prices a bit more as time goes by’ I said quietly.
We found the lift and got up to the café for some lunch and stared gloomily at one another. Flick started grizzling.
Laura pulled her hand out of her pocket, with the money the man from the recycling centre had given to her, and stared.
‘He’s given me too much’. She dropped a fiver, three £2 coins and two £1 coins on the table. ‘Thirteen pounds! I only gave him ten!’
‘Well, that’ll go some way towards making up for my petrol!’ I laughed.
Maybe we’ll go back again in another couple of weeks when the crowds have died and, with any luck, the prices will be more bearable.

I went to La Piazza, though I didn’t get there till lunchtime, and it was scooters AND bikes this week. On the way I checked out the new Tesco Extra in the high Street, which just opened, but I was less than thrilled. There aren’t many things I get from Tesco, but they didn’t seem to have them there, apart from decaff coffee, which as I’ve said before is very hard to find in the town centre (and on that point, I have tried M&S and it was over priced and not very nice). That’s just reminded me that years and years ago, when I first lived here, there was a proper coffee merchant in one of the arcades, but that is sadly long gone. Other than that, everything the new Tesco has that I might want I can already get elsewhere, so for the ones I can’t I will still have to get the car out and go to the big one. In fact, I’m going to need to do that very soon, maybe tomorrow after pilates. I’ve managed to avoid it very well actually, it’s weeks since I went.
I went to La Piazza, and it wasn’t just sunny, it was amazingly mild, and I sat and read and sipped my mocha. I’ve decided to join a philosophy reading group that I found online. They meet in London, but as the next meeting is on a Sunday afternoon, that’s OK because I can go down and stay in the flat. The book for the next meeting is ‘For a New Liberty’, which I started reading yesterday in the sunshine over my mocha. First reaction is that it is very much of its place (US) and its time (the 1970s). I am cynical about most (OK, let’s say ‘all’) ideological projects, but I like to be able to hone my cynicism and extend my, and maybe other people’s, thoughts, rather than just throwing it down and saying: ‘it’s all bollocks!’ and stomping off. So I read and scribbled in the margins and drank coffee and pretended to be on the Left Bank of the Seine rather than the Ouse.

I went into Poundland and Superdrug and picked up a few items that I needed then came home, determined to write a letter that I should have done months ago. To do that I needed to find the information for it, which meant sorting through my in basket, a wire tray that I keep in the living room and dump paperwork into until I can’t bear it any more. In the process I came across the programme for a music venue in Milton Keynes that I’ve never been to, but that I’ve always thought sounded intriguing. I found a concert in December that looked good, so I went onto the website and ordered a ticket. Then I saw that a guitarist I used to know in school is appearing there on Thursday, so on an impulse I bought a ticket to see him too!
And on Friday, I’m gong to a discussion on climate change by Tony Juniper (who used to be with Friends of the Earth) and the local MP.
And tonight, all being well and First Capital connect permitting, I’ll be seeing Himself.

The street is wet, but there is brilliant sunshine bouncing off the building opposite. Whatever happened to the mega storm? Has it been and gone without me noticing, is it still on its way, or have we escaped? A combination of one and three, I suspect.
I’ll go down to La Piazza later and see if it’s the scooter boys or the bikers this week. I can’t believe how late it is. I slept through till seven, and since then I’ve been lying in bed, drifting in and out of consciousness. No excuses, it just happened. I guess I needed it.
Had a lovely day out yesterday. Getting there was a bit fraught, because I don’t know Coventry at all and the museum is right in the centre. The only time I’ve been before was on a school trip, over forty years ago. I had printed off directions from Multimap, but things started to go haywire around the ring road, and if you don’t have a proper map as well, once you lose the thread it can be tough trying to find it again. I pulled over and checked the road atlas, which gave me enough of a hint to get me into the city centre, but then of course everything was even more confusing. I found a car park at about five to ten – we were supposed to be meeting at ten. I got out of the car and locked up, then realised I’d left the piece of paper with the organiser’s phone number in the car so got it out again.
Walked out of the horrible concrete car park into the horrible concrete shopping precinct. I’m not sure who was harder on poor old Coventry, Hitler in the 40s or the planners in the 60s. Found a traffic warden and asked her the way to the museum. Got there and hoped I would be able to find my way back again. Didn’t see anybody I recognised. Started to look for the loo – the plan was loo first, then a coffee, then ring Gill to find out what was happening– when I heard Gill’s voice.
‘Hi Linda, thanks for coming!’
She was looking for the loo too. ‘I don’t think anyone else is actually here yet’ she said. The talk was due to start at 10.30. I hadn’t brought the agenda either. But it was OK, I’d got there in time.
The talk was fascinating, about a painting by someone called Roger Fry, who I’d never heard of, but apparently he was part of the Bloomsbury set and a very influential critic in at the start of post impressionism. I know next to nothing about art history, what bits I do know have been picked up here and there as tiny fragments from events like this. Mostly I’m the typical philistine: ‘oh, that’s pretty’ or ‘I don’t think much to that’. But I love that sensation of finding out that there is a whole world of knowledge behind something that I’ve never questioned, layers of explanation and understanding and enthusiasm and passion to be explored and tested and absorbed. Because finding out new things and watching the patterns falling into place is magical for me. I guess, if I think about it, really that is what makes life worthwhile.
And a talk about anything by someone with real passion and knowledge and enthusiasm can be fascinating. Apparently (from what I gathered), Fry's big insight was that he claimed that the form of a piece of art is more important than the content. Which I guess is what I just said about lectures. Ting! See what I mean about the patterns falling into place?
The next new experience was playing the harp. It was billed as a ‘hands on harp workshop’, which I wasn’t at all sure about, I guess I thought there would be a harp there and we would take it in turns to pluck aimlessly at it, which didn’t sound all that appealing. But there were eight of them. We sat in a circle, and he taught us a very simple, nine note tune, a medieval pilgrim’s song, which we played over and over, sometimes of course we drifted out of sync and it became a round, but that was even more beautiful, and if it went too far wrong he stopped us and started us again, though that only happened a couple of times. The sound was amazing, hypnotic, the experience meditative. Playing an instrument is another of those things like art history that has always been a mystery to me, though one which would be much harder to acquire because it requires an inherent practical talent, rather than just a talent for absorbing ideas (which I have in spades).
Afterwards, I wandered to the cathedral. Coincidentally, yesterday was the 69th anniversary of the Coventry blitz, when the old cathedral was destroyed. I lit a candle for peace and reconciliation. Well, who knows.
It was a good day.

I’m being sent to Coventry today – well, I’m going of my own accord, to a women graduates’ meeting. Nothing earth-shattering, just a museum visit, lecture, lunch, ‘hands on harp workshop’ and catch up with old acquaintances, maybe even friends. Anyway, it’s a day out, and I think it will do me good to have one. When I saw the forecasts of nasty weather yesterday, I was tempted to use that as an excuse not to go, but I don’t think a weekend stuck in the flat on my own is what I need at the moment. Anyway, it’s not raining here at the moment. And I can check online before I leave.
Went out for dinner on Thursday night, it was Victoria’s leaving do. We started the evening in one notorious gay pub – my local in fact, the one just over the car park fence – and ended in another one! The first was ‘the’ gay pub when I first lived in Bedford, though it seems to be more of a goth pub these days. I’ve only ever been in there once before, at lunchtime/afternoon on Christmas Eve 1984, when I was nursing a hangover from my own leaving do the night before and desperate for iced water (the ice bucket, I seem to remember, was empty). The office I worked in then was over the top of the TSB (now the China Palace), and I was leaving because we were going to live in the States.
I’ve told a lot of people recently about that part of my life – basically because I’ve met a lot of new people through this job (well, a few anyway). Their reaction is usually: ‘Weren’t you gutted to have to come back?’ Well, no, actually, it was my choice. The answer I normally give is: ‘I didn’t want to raise my kids over there’. Is that so hard to understand? That’s only part of it, of course, it was more to do with my feelings about the culture, and of being a fish out of water. Admittedly, that was Texas, there are lots of better places to be. And I do love the country in lots of ways, though I haven’t been for five years, prior to that I went to one part or another every year for about ten.
Life changes. Maybe I’ll go back again one day. Yes, I’m sure I will, though I don’t know when or how I’ll ever be able to afford it as things stand now. But that’s now.
The talk of living overseas is mostly because Victoria is emigrating to Australia. The other thing that keeps coming up in these conversations is about being a ‘kept woman’. Been there, done that. Something else I can’t seem to explain my antipathy to. Even now, even with all my current financial worries, and the loneliness that sometimes settles like a choking fog around me, I wouldn’t go back.
Life is open, life is free, I have no one to answer to but myself ‘No one tells the wind which way to blow’. And who knows what is around the corner?

He stands on the corner outside Marks and Spencer’s, in the pedestrian area, with his acoustic guitar and a microphone on a stand. He must have a licence, because the police never move him on. He is dark eyed and beautiful, maybe a year or two either side of thirty, and he dresses all in black: black shirt, black jeans, and a long black coat around his slender body against the weather. His picking is average, a basic chord-strumming accompaniment, but his voice is divine, soulful, heart wrenching. His pièce de résistance is ‘Wish You Were Here’, but last Friday, when I was going in and out of Marks, dodging in one door and out the other, so that I could walk nonchalantly round the corner one more time, he sang ‘Forever Young’ – ‘May your heart always be joyful/May your wishes all come true…. May you build a ladder to the stars/And climb on every rung’, and when I came home I found the Dylan original and played it over and over, obsessively.
I walked out from the office at lunch time yesterday, planning to go to La Piazza and have a mocha in the sunshine, but by the time I got half way across the square, I could hear his voice, faint but recognisable, and I walked through the market towards his corner. When I got there, he started singing ‘No Woman No Cry’. I wanted to sit on the bench and listen, drink it in. I walked up the road a little way towards the gourmet coffee man’s pitch, but he wasn’t there and the music grew fainter. If I walked all the way to Costa and bought a coffee, the song would be finished by the time I got back, so I turned around.
I looked in the window of Clinton Cards on the opposite corner. There was a man leaning on the barrier around the Christmas tree, he looked as though he might have stopped to listen, although all the other people seemed oblivious. So I leant against the barrier too, round the other side, and watched the young man through the fir branches. I felt self conscious, standing there, lurking behind the tree, he must have noticed me. I caught his eye and looked away.
‘Come on little darlin’/Don’t shed no tear’.
I leant against the barrier and stared past the shoppers, trying to look like a mysterious and intriguing woman, lost in a world of her own thoughts.
‘In that bright future/We can forget the past/So wipe those tears away’.
The man standing on the other side of the tree was joined by his wife, they gathered their shopping and left. He was only waiting for her, after all.
‘Everything’s gonna be all right/Everything’s gonna be all right…’
He reached the end of the song. No applause, no acknowledgement from the shoppers. Surely he must have noticed me standing there.
I made a decision. Aim for what you want. If you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you’ve always got. I walked over and dropped a coin into his guitar case, looked him in the face. He was smiling, and I was smiling. ‘Thank you’, we both said simultaneously.

I went to the business networking group in Huntingdon last night, didn’t get home till eleven, and then had a drink and wound down, so I’m not sure what time it was I got to sleep. Still, I then slept all the way through till six, which is good
I’m not sure about this group. There were only five of us there last night. I seem to be the kiss of death for groups, I join them and they fold. Ho hum. I was hoping to get some business out of it, but so far I’ve only made £15 for this lady’s business cards. I spent most of yesterday fiddling with the website, printing the cards for her, scouring the shops for a suitable container for them, and then making a little box for them.
Never mind.
I decided yesterday would be a good time to get the chair out of my car. I’ve said I’ll go to a women graduates’ meeting in Coventry on Saturday, but I’m thinking of pulling out, it’s a bit of a trek and I’ve still got loads to do. I didn’t do any housework last weekend. I need some time to get my head clear, which doesn’t seem to be happening at the moment.
Anyway, if I do go, I don’t want to drive all the way to Coventry and back with a chair in the back of the car. So I decided yesterday to get the caretaker to help me. I thought I’d start by opening up the car and getting it out by myself before I called on him.
I unlocked the car on the central locking, and tried the hatch door, but it still wouldn’t open. Then I put the key in the lock of the hatch and turned it, and lo and behold I managed to open it. So then I went down to the side door and manipulated the chair out onto the car park. It wasn’t nearly so bad as getting it in. I locked the car again and half carried, half wheeled the chair across the car park to the back door of the flats, and along the corridor to the bottom of the stairs. Then I picked it up, and carried it up the stairs myself, stopping and resting a few times, but it wasn’t that bad. For some reason it was so much easier carrying it up stairs rather than down, possibly helped by the fact that I was wearing trainers rather than heels.
So, I now have a new office chair, I can open my boot again, and I’m feeling rather pleased with myself!

And on Tuesday, I got a text from Himself. I won’t give you the exact words, but the gist was: ‘Come and meet me in London on Monday’.
‘Tuesday would be better’.
‘I know, but I won’t be there on Tuesday’.
‘Monday it is then. Same place as last time?’
‘It’s a deal!’
So that’s put a smile on my face!

I met Barbara for lunch on Monday. We used to have lunch together when we were both doing the Monday morning creative writing course. I started a year before she did, but it was she who introduced me to the afternoon group, so when we were both doing both sessions, we would have lunch together in town in between. It was a semi-regular thing two years ago, but she missed the morning class last year, and I’m not going this year because it’s a repeat of the one I did four years ago. Time rolls and passes and life moves on. Doubly so, because I first knew her thirty years ago when I was in my first job. When we met up at writing three years ago, she recognised me, although I didn’t recognise her till she said her name.
She was something of a confidante for me two years ago, she was one of the first people in the real world who I spoke to about my dissatisfaction with my marriage – this time around, anyway. There are people I’ve spoken to in previous crises. I even pointed her to my blog once, though she found it rather disturbing and I don’t think she read it much.
Anyway, I met her for lunch on Monday, not really having seen much of her for two years, and I found myself being very happy and animated with her, which struck me as strange because that wasn’t really how I was feeling, or had been feeling. We had lunch and caught up and talked about days when we were young and I first knew Hubby, about how he and I got together, about other people we both used to know and about all the times in between. Then we went to the group, and afterwards walked up the road together to the junction where I needed to go to the left and she to the right.
‘Would you like to come home with me and share a home-cooked Chinese?’ She asked. ‘You can walk with me now and we’ll give you a lift back later’.
It was kind, but I smiled and said no thank you, I had things to do, which I did. Maybe another time. But it was nice of her anyway. And in the evening I booked my train and hotel for Brussels, I’m going early on Saturday and coming home late on Tuesday, to maximise the time I have there.
I dreamt – I think it was a dream, because I can’t remember who I was talking to or what the context was – that I was telling someone, a woman, why it is that I can’t write any more. Or I can’t write at the moment. Maybe one day. When life isn’t the way it is now.
I heard a quote on the radio – I think it could have been Dickens, as both ‘A Tale of Two Cities’ and ‘Our Mutual Friend’ are running at the moment –on the lines of: I don’t worry about the things I can’t change, because what’s the point of worrying if I can’t change them? And I don’t worry about the things I can change, because I can change them, so I don’t need to worry.
Well, that’s very neat, but it misses a whole universe of points. For a start, how do you know which ones you can change and which you can’t? And how to decide which actions will change them in which directions, and how to go about performing those actions? And the really big one, what will the outcomes be of your action or inaction? Which of those directions are better to go in, and what will happen when you get there? Life is never predictable, and the future is a mystery.
Every disappointment, every rejection, kills off a little bit of hope, a particular, specific hope. A future pathway. But maybe that wasn’t the right way to go, not a good way, maybe all sorts of pitfalls lay in that path. It’s impossible to know where that path was leading, but now you have to turn away from that one and find another. ‘But there’s no need for turning back/Cause all roads lead to where I stand/And I believe I’ll walk them all/No matter what I may have planned’. That’s from ‘Crossroads’ by Don McLean, and Barbara quoted it in a piece she read at the group a few weeks ago, about her Christian faith. But now I’ve written the words, it occurs to me that they don’t make logical sense – ‘we’ll walk them all’? But if they’ve led here, we’ve either already walked them or not, and anyway, we can’t walk them all. We may have a choice of the road we walk in the future, but it’s only one road, not all simultaneously.
Sorry, got a bit carried away there.

What I wanted to say about hope is, you have to detach the little, disappointed hopes from a larger hope, that although the past is closed, the future is open, and none of us know truly where it’s leading. Standing in the Crystal Space, where all the nodes of Cause and Effect meet and lead out into the future, like Don McLean’s crossroads. And although you lose the little hopes, you can hang on to the big Hope that what comes next might be better or will at least lead you down some interesting paths. That is a completely unspecific, inchoate Hope, not a neatly defined future, but an indeterminate one, just to know that what will be will be and life is an adventure. The most exciting and interesting things that have ever happened to me have mostly come out of the blue, when I’ve least expected them. And every path that seems to have led to a dead end brings you somewhere, to a new starting place for the next journey.

I got up. I could have stayed in bed, but I decided to get up. It took me half an hour to decide that that was what I would do, and another ten minutes to actually do it, but I did it. I am up and sitting at my computer, I have meditated and made myself a cup of coffee, and the six o’clock alarm still hasn’t gone off.
I haven’t meditated in the mornings for a while, mostly I have lain in bed and tried to grab as much sleep as possible, which normally means lying in bed awake and brooding for a couple of hours and then getting up late, or falling back to sleep and either sleeping in (if I don’t have to get up for work) and getting up late, or dozing off and struggling with the alarm and getting up late.
So today I got up.
Last night I was late getting off to sleep, which is unusual, mostly I have no trouble falling asleep when I go to bed, it’s when I wake up in the early hours that the problems start. But last night I was still awake around midnight, still looking at the clock at quarter to one, and then awake again at half past four. I know I swore I wouldn’t blog about insomnia any more, but I just thought I’d mention it this once.
I got up, and of course it was dark. I put the coffee on and set up the mat and blocks. I found the mp3 player last night, it’s been missing for about a week, but it was only down the side of the arm chair.
Oh, the alarm has gone off. Six o’clock. I left it to play. It will go off again in another ten minutes. ‘Still, you are free/No one tells the wind which way to go/Wake up in the morning to yourself open your eyes and start to be you/Listen, we think we can see you/Baby there’s no price upon your head/sing it, shout it/Now the angry words have all been said/Do it, don’t doubt it’.
I found the first track of the preparation for the metta bhavana. ‘This is an opportunity to explore your emotional life without judgment. Being receptive to however you are. Getting in touch with how you’re feeling. Identifying and acknowledging any feelings or absence of feelings in how you’re being right now.
Lonely and scared. That’s how I’m being right now.
I lit the incense and then the candle. The candle went out. Fished a new candle out of the box and lit that. Settled myself down on the blocks in front of the radiator. Opened my eyes briefly and realised that the second candle had gone out. Put the light on again and looked at it. The wick had burnt right down but the wax hadn’t even started, sometimes that happens with them, I don’t know why, but it’s not going to burn now.
So what do you do? Get another one out of the box and try again.
‘In the first stage of the metta bhavana, cultivating an attitude of well wishing and friendliness towards yourself, using the method or methods you chose earlier, using phrases, memory, imagination or awareness of bodily sensations’. I always go for the phrases: ‘May I be happy, may I be well…’ etc, I’ve never really worked out how the others work. Imagine yourself to be happy? No, I can’t quite get there, it has to be the words, otherwise other words will push them out.
I sat through the whole thing, which is about half an hour, I think, if you add up all the stages. I opened my eyes half way through and saw L’Empire des Lumieres, and the shadow of the cheese plant leaf in the candle light. First the shadow on the wall next to the picture, then the leaf itself. The bottom half, the dark half of the picture was dark behind the leaf, the details obscured, the light caught the blue light sky, the tree standing in silhouette, and next to it on the wall, the shadow of the leaf.
The candle goes out. What do you do? Light another one.