impermanence

A friend just sent me these and I figured I’d share in case any of you are interested in introducing some calming and inspiring ideas to your day. What prompted me to share it was this thought from Thich Nhat Hanh which brought up a huge smile from somewhere deep inside me. He was speaking about how suffering is necessary for learning understanding and compassion:

“Suffering and happiness they are both organic, like a flower and garbage. If the flower is on her way to become a piece of garbage, then the garbage can can be on her way to become a flower. That is why you are not afraid of garbage”…

It made me remember these flowers:

made me remember these flowers:

Protected: the dreaded catch up post (email if you need the password, it’s the one I used to use, first letter is a capital)

This post is password protected. To view it please enter your password below:

Password:

he won!! wooooooooooo!!!!!

my X Factor favourite from this year…enjoy!

awareness

Oh I want to write but what do I write… at which point I usually give up.

Not today.

I sat on the bed this morning, post shower, heated from within and scrubbed, and looked out through the slightly parted curtains at a world bathing in luminescent grey rain. I folded my leg in underneath me and thought that I really should hold my back more straight. I petted Kos and told him what a beautiful man he is. I stayed looking out the window, watching my breath, breathing in, breathing out, breathing in, breathing out. I watched the thoughts flow past. I reached out and pulled one down, a nice one about new beginnings. It is ruby red and light and full of relief and promise and excitement. It sits well with a day made of toasty fire and warm fleece and clean kitchens. I resolve to share it with him when I go downstairs, it links in with a conversation from two nights ago, I know he will understand it and share it with me and I want to make him happy with it too.

I came downstairs and nestled into the couch. It is pulled up very close to the open fireplace now, festooned with various thick fleece blankets and two pillows (and usually a cat). The draw from the chimney sucked hard on the freshly lit coals and briquettes and outside little yellow sodden leaves clung to gale-whipped almost bear branches. I felt light, good, there, fully there and happy. Happy on my couch, in my world, in the present. Flickers of future and past go by and I smile and feel the weave of warm clean socks, the fresh, soaked coolness of the day beyond the window almost palpable on my face.

I told him my thought and my feeling and he shared them with me and we talked. I dipped into the past, projected into the future, dipping and darting and flowing, like a bird, or a fish.  Thoughts defy gravity, bodily human gravity and it’s limitations, but they’re still connected (the body and the abstract immaterial thoughts). I realised, not for the first time or the last just how much a thought will prompt a feeling, an emotion, and how fast they flicker and burn and transition into the next and the next. I went to pubs and years and people and exact moments and at each stop I felt it, a shadow, maybe something more vivid, but I felt the emotion I feel about that place. I felt either the emotion I actually felt at the time or how I feel about it now looking back, there is probably even more than that in the mix. But the thought struck up the emotion and sometimes they lingered, pressing on what I wanted to say next, colouring the next thought, the direction of my dialogue.

I noticed this several times in the conversation and at the end brought myself back fully to the here and now and the happiness and lightness of feeling I had at the start of the conversation and which never actually stopped all the while we time travelled with our conversation. At times as I spoke or he spoke I was aware of the thoughts informing the emotions and checked myself, but not fully consciously. I saw it at high speed, like a sign glimpsed but only really read and understood a few hundred metres down the road and at that, there wasn’t enough time to digest it before the next sign which needed to be read. But at the end at least, when I was silent and there was just the fire and the wind and the weight of my body and my breath, I saw a picture in my head. A blob of memory, hanging suspended, like some thought bubble in a cartoon and a fluid, water-like rivulet hanging between my torso and it, the thought was instructing the emotional response of my body. It sparked it. I was able to see it, in motion. I played back over the conversation in my head and even as I did little sparks of feelings welled and subsided, little fears, little happinesses, little anxieties, tumbling after each other as the scenes of those memories and thoughts rolled along quickly in my replay.

It was my choice then to return to the feeling of calm and contentment that I have felt all morning. My choice to not get lost in old thoughts and feelings, to wipe the slate of my mind clean and slosh sudsy water down over lingering old bad feelings. I saw how it worked, felt how it worked, touched it with my intellect, my body and, well, the observer, the part of me that sees between the thoughts. I don’t know what it’s name is. It’s me. Is it I? Me? It doesn’t really matter anyway. It matters more to experience it than quantify it with words.

I just read this quote…

…and a little tingle of happiness and recognition went through me. Helps that I have always really liked Leonard Cohen…

“There is a crack, a crack in everything. It’s how the light gets in”

souvenirs

I glanced at the sleeve of my favourite around the house jumper yesterday evening and I saw two time travelling souvenirs. Little reminders of times gone by.  I saw the careless movement of an arm across a  kitchen door painted light aquamarine blue and a small round cigarette burn. Who knows when the burn happened, but I remember the kitchen. It’s not the memories so much as the sudden feeling of connection with the past that it brought me. Perhaps I was surprised to still see them there too, I don’t notice them very often, in fact I don’t remember noticing the paint before now, which isn’t very like me, but then, my memories of the past (short or long term) are not so close to the surface at the moment, I think. They seem to only surface when triggered and in one instance recently, shock me with their clarity. I wonder if this is because I’m living in the moment more, or is it just getting older? 28 in January. Not old, but it sounds a hell of a lot closer to 30, and thirty is all growed up, right?

 

bit of introspection for old times sake

Maybe a new look will shake the dust off things around here? I don’t like the header image (it’s not mine, comes with the template) but I need to ask a friend for help dealing with it.

So I ordered my food processor. Now, bear in mind, as I said to the lady in the health food shop when she asked if I needed any help ‘no no, I’ll just be here for ages, looking…this is my shoe shopping’. I think she understood. Anyway, food is what I enjoy ’shopping’ for, not clothes or shoes or handbags or house furnishings, (okay, I have a small soft spot for those, but when money isn’t freely available you have to prioritise), my priority is my cookery, ingredients, books and gadgets.

I started with the Cuisinart Brick Oven, then I added that kick ass blender I linked to in the last post and now, it’s the Magimix food processor. In red, because I just couldn’t help myself. I really love red things. Have a peeky here. I thought about it a long time before I went ahead and got it and I’m happy with my research and my choice. I am so terribly particular about quality (of equipment and food) and well, I’m delighted with my decision and dying to meet the new beastie in person.

You know that irritates me. This deep seated need of mine to justify what I do, why must I feel so anxious that I am understood? I know that I have made the best choice available to me with this product, so why should it bother me that someone else might not understand? Might think it was silly? I still care too much about what other people think and it’s daft really.

But I think the over-explanation comes from wanting to share the joy – I am positively joyful about this purchase, I haven’t been in a position to start buying proper cooking aids/things for ‘us’, for our home ever before. Bits and pieces here and there, but not proper big investments like this.

So I over explain because I don’t want that joy to get lost in griping, don’t want my enthusiasm turned into feeling daft or misunderstood, so I do everything I can to make sure my happy feeling is protected, insulated from any possible attack, intentional or otherwise. I don’t want any rain on my parade. But the real question is – why do I fear being misunderstood so much, why does it have the capacity to hurt me? In reality, if someone says, ‘god, why are you spending so much on  some hyped up piece of crap’, surely I can say to myself that though I appreciate where they are coming from, I know my own mind, kitchen and wishes and this is absolutely the best choice for me – the nub of the thing is – why am I getting upset that they don’t understand? Why am I upset that they can’t understand what I understand? Maybe I reincarnated from a planet where mind reading was the principle method of communication.

Anyway. Even if I don’t know why I should be able to zap this with a bit of ‘awareness’. I should be able to say, like Anthony De Mello, that I’m an ass, you’re an ass, so where’s the problem? I misunderstand people and unintentionally hurt them, so why should I expect anything more from any one else and why do I give them that power to hurt me?

I reflected and the thought that came was: but I don’t want my happy joyful thing tainted by ignorance and irritation.I don’t want to be questioned maybe? Perhaps I feel that for the other person to not just say ‘oh good for Louise, she must really feel she needs this and she’s delighted, so I’m delighted for her’, means that they’re having a go at me, trying to take my happy feeling. My happy feeling is a balloon and there they are with their critical needle, waiting to hurt me.

Hmm. So am I projecting this quality onto other people? Do I suspect motives that don’t really exist? Why have I chosen to interpret someone else’s lack of thought as a personal insult? Why does it result in upset for me? What is the nature of my hurt…

Okay, it’s a feeling of frustration, vulnerability first, a sore sort of kicked feeling below my heart, then comes the frustration, always characterised by a mental image of hands being thrown up in the air ‘not this shit again, why can’t people just cop on and think before they say things’. So there is a constant war between me that thinks about everything and the unthinking ‘world’ who does everything without thought or concern for consequence. (I’m not saying any of this is realistic, I’m just breaking down the emotions and the odd shite that goes on somewhere on the border between conscious and subconscious).

That fight has been going on for a long time within me. I think, no one else does. I analyse, everyone else just seems to act on impulse and with selfish disregard for how they’re behaviour impacts on everyone else around them. I feel things strongly, can’t stand loud noises, can’t wear socks with holes in them, everyone else characterises me as ‘particular’, ‘overly sensitive’. But why in the name of all that is good am I fighting with this imaginary everyone? It must be within myself. It must be me that this war really emanates from. I am trying to mold reality perhaps, I have a delusional concept of how the world should work, what people should be like. Or perhaps it’s because I was bullied and I haven’t shaken the damage. Perhaps those thought processes and reactions got so embedded that they are habit now and everyone is a bully, friend, indifferent stranger – anyone that hurts me is a bully – anything that hurts is like being bullied, disliked, feeling different and ostracized. Hence the overreaction. Not a bad suggestion actually.

I’m retraining myself in general. Trying not to get lost in the future or the past, trying to be present in the moment. Trying not to war with reality. Trying to listen to my body, unclench myself standing in grocery queues. Trying to remember all the time, with everyone, that though they might be annoying me or hurting me, no matter who they are, I would climb through broken glass to help them if they were in a car crash. We are all dying, we are all hurt, we are all told to be more than we are when all that we can be is already inside us. Compassion and love are the balm to soothe the inevitable knocks, the key to unlocking the hurts and letting them fly off.

recipe books and kitchen gadgets make my wee heart sing

I must be a terribly suspicious person, but I can’t help raising an eyebrow when I see I’m being googled, three different hits today alone with my name and either this town, my occupation or my diet…hmm…reveal yourself googly-snooper!

Anyway, as you’ll no doubt have noticed it’s been an eon since I wrote here last. Plenty happened, plenty of very exciting things happened, and in general, I didn’t want to write about any of it. I may not still, but if I don’t try I wont find out.

Today we had a nice trip into town where I bought something I really would have never thought I would buy, that naffest of naff 70’s fad kitchen articles: a Fondue set. Of course I had to change the name to ‘Dippydoo set’. I finally got Joanne Stepaniak’s The Ulitmate Uncheese Cookbook on Friday and I’m delighted with myself. I’ve made a mac’n'cheese from it, a cheese spread for toasties and an alfredo sauce using cannellinis and sweetcorn to create the cream sauce. It’s my idea of heaven, healthy wholefood that tastes like it’s sinful but that you can eat a massive pile of because you know it’s not in the least bit bad for you, rather the opposite. And frankly the mad scientist in me loves mixing up the concoctions in my blender and seeing what they come out like, it can all get a bit playdough factory at times, and I love my blender (I bought it around the same time as the Cuisinart brick oven but I didn’t blog it, you can have a look at it here if you’re inclined, I highly recommend it, stuff comes out like whipped velvet).

I got a job lot of cookery books over the weekend actually, the sterling/euro conversion is favourable at the moment so it was time to buy all those long coveted vegan classics from Amazon, including The New Farm Vegetarian Cookbook which I’ve wanted since the very start. It tells you how to make your own Tempeh from scratch, it covers all the basics, soy yoghurt, milk, tofu…the whole shebang (is that how you spell it?).

I also got a diddy little ‘Deli Jar’ in Tkmax, gorgeous orange glass lid (kilner style) and a plump little glass body embossed with fruit and leaf shapes and a great heavy gauge very small baking tray for the small oven, perfect for two pies, sausages, baked tofu for sarnies or whatever.

Cookery has really become one of the greatest passions in my life, in fact, when I’m finished writing here I’m going for a good hard google to decide for once and for all what food processor to buy (the old one can’t even puree cannellini beans to a smooth consistency – seriously, that’s bad).

The other passion, is of course, the mogs. And Boy have they been interesting this month. I need to write that up over at t’other place though, it’s detailed and not for here for various reasons. Will post a single line here when it’s done, which will be whenever I can motivate myself to go up there and fiddle around with flashcards and photoshop.

Right,time to go watch the Xtra Factor, Benny can’t stand Holly Whatserface so I keep it for myself – I love the behind the scenes stuff.

Take care all, x

why does this cat remind me of Matthew Broderick?

(found via http://reponere.com/walloffluff.php thanks to Gord for the suggestion)