Embracing risk

I am posting this book review so I don't forget to buy it...comes out February 5:

http://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/jan/26/risk-wise-nine-everyday-adventures-polly-morland-review

Quotes from the review: "The secret for harvesting from existence the greatest fruitfulness and the greatest enjoyment is – to live dangerously." - not that I feel I need encouragement to live wildly and crazily, and...

"The message here is that to achieve the higher aim it is necessary to be willing to jettison what you already have." - which is timely, given I've been contemplating what it would mean to jettison my house, job, and close-ish proximity to adult children to move for a new job. 

Shuffling

Inevitability, like a blind kitten or other mammal pawing it's way forward with no way of knowing precisely what is forward or why go there seems to be how most of us live. Stumbling in the dark, in a mist, a fog, or a soup thick with fragments of what you or others think you should be, with rare moments of clarity. And pawing forward anyway as if compelled.

I believe in universals, the universality of humanity, that all our colours, creeds, prejudices, almost everything we see, hear, touch of ourselves and others is mere skin, taught and taut, while 90% or more, much more, is aglow with hope, with potential for fun, for greatness even. 

I will no doubt go to my death still foundering on rocks and believe over and over I am undone, but I'm also grasping blindly for another truth I only sense is there, I am falling towards a much bigger hope that seems inevitable, written.

I heard an interesting idea today that entrepreneurs climb mountains not for what's there, at the top, but for the climb itself. That the climb is everything. Persistence, then. It's not the top of the mountain, it's the climb. I'll try to remember. 

Notes from Cuba

Sweat streaming down my back, across my lips, forehead, running in small rivulets into the small of my back. Chaos, lies and confusion rotating at airport luggage carousel in place of my suitcase and remembering (always remembering) her, how much easier, simpler to be travelling with someone else. I trusted her instincts, especially about things like the lies people tell about luggage collection at insanely busy foreign airports. And here, what, 7,000 miles away? here she is with me still, seeping through, present in all my thoughts from what to choose to eat to whose smile to believe. 

Cuba. Exactly as I'd expected, probably how most people expect it, but also all my preconceptions had proved wholly unable to imagine the blazing exuberance and warmth, the sense of at once just being somewhere, another country, and at the same time being nowhere my imagination could have foreseen or coloured in sufficiently well.

Am riding with 17 others plus our guide, Yuri, whose Russian name dates him at approximately 40 years of age, and our driver, the quietly stable Jose, younger, no doubt with a small family hidden somewhere in Havana. These new people give me another 'country' of new and foreign souls to learn. To carve out my place among, albeit for a short but intensely bonding 8 days. 

In both these strange new territories I have grown and come to know myself and my limitations, I have come to accept myself through a new lens, not always flattering but sharply truer than the self who puts one foot in front of the other without thought in my daily routines at home, work. Perhaps that is one of the reasons people travel or choose to do hard physical labour, it is so exposing and intense, like four cups of seeing and being squeezed into the place of just one normal, routine amount of seeing, understanding a new place, our beautiful world and variety of landscapes, foods, climates, and also the infinite and beautiful variety of others and of ourselves. 

I don't know if this is what others also find when they step off international jets, this childlike joy, this education, this cleaning of the looking glass, though  I sense it is universal. 

At the Eastern Bloc inspired hotel braced like an ugly dog over the lake, amidst the mountains everything, everyone, brings to mind a Russian movie with gangsters, all with thick necks, shaved heads and smiles which don't reach their eyes, acting as waiters, bellboys, desk clerks. They and their brutal hotel appear to have come straight from central casting. The cowboys, the street musicians, the eye wateringly beautiful young women, the big mamma with the sad, beaten but I'll fight for my family until I die eyes, all of them, all of Cuba appears to be from a brilliantly well rendered movie set. Everything is large or loud or stunning or so much a caricature it's hard to believe it's true. My eyes hurt with it. Everything from the humblest street and it's characters, to the architecture of the largest city, the mountains and beaches with bars staffed by people whose ancestors were Negro slaves, or Russian sailors, or Spanish traders, or from a neighbouring Caribbean country, all colours and combinations, they all seem extraordinary and unreal, it's as if the country is being choreographed by a sensory genius and just outside the peripheral vision a stack of cameras is probably capturing it all unfurl on celluloid. 

I'm now the age my mum was when she died, I'm doing this for her as much as for myself, to try to live as much as I can before my turn comes to follow her over the last edge. I'm trying to balance bravery and recklessness. In the past that's not something I've often got right.

I miss her terribly. Always always always. There is just nobody on this planet who I'd rather be here with, be anywhere with. I'm as tied to her now as I always was. I didn't expect that. I'm also stronger than I'd expected. I feel exposed, raw, true and my flaws are myriad and reflect back at me dazzlingly as if I'm in a prism, enclosed in this skin, this soul, as tied to me as hope. But I'm learning to try to accept it, the flaws, the not knowing if I'm doing anything right. I think what I have to do is keep cycling or working or walking or trying or being happy all at once. Just keep on living with whatever portion of faith I've been allotted, with as much dignity and kindness as I can, with as much love as it's humanly possible to breathe in and out. I am happy, very happy, if a little sore of heart and bum. 

I pluck hairs from my legs, my face. An apparently expert waxer without the wax. I think about the country I came from, about her. about my sitting room at home and where I'll decide to hang my Cuba pictures and whether my dining room would be more welcoming if I painted it a specific shade of yellow I've seen in a magazine. I think about home. On one level it is simple, some rooms which I own. On another level it is my foreign-ness, the distance, the weight of time which now separates and estranges me from my birth home, ever increasing and ever washing over me, waves of nostalgia shush in full of faces, voices, corner dairies and Roman sandals, and shush back out empty. It is my home, bones and blood, it is no longer my home and I don't care, it is, it isn't, I care and I don't, over and over. And her, a deeper primal home something in me is programmed to want, to need, to endlessly snag on. I think about home in all it's forms. The colour of walls, the structure of my bones, the structure of my soul. And there are three homes, maybe four, possibly more. As I spiral upwards slowly as if scaling a giant white shell, straining for the apex, I count them one two three, all are sustaining me, making me. Maybe I am greedy. Sometimes I think I might be lost. And yet, and yet, where is it written we can have only one home? 

I hope to be gentle and strong, brave and free. And I mostly am, except those times I forget to be patient. I am immeasurably luckier than my mother, her mother. I am not as lucky, nor half as smart as my daughter. Ever grander and more demanding than the previous generation. 

Today, by accident, I fell into step behind a young man, a boy really, of about 15 walking the cobbled smelly streets of Havana. He had a mesmerising bearing, walking tall and relaxed, like he owned the street, drawing gazes and many, many shouts of ola! and clapping joyous hand shakes, mostly from boys the same age or younger. For a few minutes, perhaps five or six, I was in step with a fierce and beautiful stranger on a centuries old road going to buy ice cream or take his mother some produce. And just for a moment before our paths changed I felt as blessed as him, beautiful, confident, an aura of mana as thick as a grown man's thighs emanating from him, making his life happen from the inside out, effortlessly clearing a way through a crowded street, my arms and legs sauntering in harmony with his, until I all but evaporated and for just a fleeting moment was him and loved him. 

Yesterday, by the pool at the posh hotel I sneaked into with my swimsuit under my clothes so I could swim and read in peace and pretend to be one of the guests, I watched a family of grossly overweight Russians throw their empty beer cans and plastic glasses in a wide circle while they caroused and swam and went pink under the sun. They are, my Australian friend said, used to being in charge here, the imperialist power, the provider of everything that isn't sugar or rum. Like any imperialist faction with as yet too little education to be gracious or respecting of their to-them minor hosts, they behave shockingly. It's like watching daytime TV. I think of the English in Africa and India, of the New Zealanders in the Pacific islands, of the French in Morocco. The historical balance of power is corrupt in those places too and it's deeply unpleasant to think I or my family or friends have ever acted like entitled spoilt brats in some culturally 'lesser' but sunny Archipelago albeit unthinkingly. To treat a king and a poor man the same, then you'll be a man, my son, comes to mind. Archipelago is such a nice word, five small syllables strung out in a curve, like a string of Islands in a turquoise sea. I wonder where it comes from, Latin? Must look it up when I'm home. 

I sit alone at a table for five, maybe six people, queues of mostly families stand and wait to take my place, any place. The coffee here is excellent and they all seem to know that of all the numerous cafés, waiting here is a good decision. I am not hurried, I read, I smoke, I stare at the people, I once offer, via gestures, the spare seats at my table to a small waiting family but they are not convinced, prefer to wait. This doesn't bother me but does make me wonder what they see. An older woman, glasses on the end of her nose, hair scraped back, reading, occasionally examining them. The invisibility of age comes to mind. Right here, in the shade of this cafe, in Havana, Cuba, in the heat of midday sun where yesterday reports of snow in England found me, I am not concerned. I decide to let the queues queue, to retain my seat, maybe order a sandwich. I am happy. I like being alone. Despite the setting, the fact I am happily alone travelling to exotic and strange lands, I am still bourgeois. It is a stain I can't wash out, though I've tried. It seems to lie in the weft and weave underlying everything. I wonder how it got there. Nature or nurture? And does it really matter? The more I travel or think or read, the less I care, the more gentle I become, including to my own petty little bourgeois self. 

Despite that, I can honestly say the world seems to reflect back that life is and will be extraordinarily rich and interesting. Increasingly I say yes to everything. Increasingly I enjoy my life like a child, riding my bike, staring at strangers, asking shockingly blunt questions. I have feared for some long time I might be autistic, somehow always wrong for my setting, and perhaps I am, but at this moment I don't care, I am free and life is wonderful. 

Today I wore my long black dress. The one men and women always comment on, though how a plain long sleeveless black dress elicits such approval is beyond me. It seems almost magical the way people respond to me when I'm wearing it. I wear it partly because it has this effect and partly because it's the only thing I have left which isn't covered in stains. It is, but being black hides them. I've been here three days now and I'm learning, they appreciate a certain sashaying here, what the French would call j'ne sais quoi, confidence, what Latinos seem to think is de rigeuer. They treat me much better, nobody hawks their wares, not one, I sashay down crowded, steaming streets smelling of urine and shit and coffee and rum and sweat and aftershave and I am allowed to pass. Because the dress is so long I can swing my legs wide when I sit for coffee, I can command my own small space. It's a far cry from the power of youth or beauty but it's still measurably power. Today I was immune to the barking of dogs and the need to take more photos, I had seen enough 1950s cars and shops selling Che Guevara t-shirts, I was merely walking from A to B, unhurried, unimpressed, untouchable. It felt really good. It felt entirely unapologetic. 

A child screams and 100 pigeons are on the wing, wheeling over Plaza le Viaja. I need a wee. The worst thing about travelling alone is not being able to leave all your things when you go to the loo. 

A stunning black girl of about 16 leans into a white man aged about 65 and tries unsuccessfully to not look bored. He moves his feet nearer to hers, til they're touching. This is rarer here than in Thailand, but it's always upsetting. I want to shout at him but I don't. It's impossible to be sure whether she has made a good trade, though I doubt she has. I want to tell her 'he will never take you with him home to Europe', but I don't. One of the quartet of men I traded prices with for two posters earlier said 'take me with you, I beg you'. Who knows. They all look stupidly happy, joyous even, as if something is put in the water to anaesthetise them. But sometimes desperation leaks out. 

At home, the landlady's mother tells me using fingers to count that she is 84. She has the skin of a peach. She showed me a photo of her aged 17 and I asked her to pose with it for a photo. She has no English and I have no Spanish but we understood one another enough. I learned she has a great grand-daughter whom she adores, that her mother died aged 40, as did her husband in his sleep alongside her in this bed. That she's lonely and her daughter thinks she talks too much. That she's kind and is desperate for a new wardrobe. She showed me how the doors creak, she showed me the interior. Spools of thread hung on the inside of the door, a small bag of photos lay atop her clothes. I barely understood more than three or four words in her ten minute soliloquy, but I understood the sentiment, life can be very hard and very long but it's not all bad. I hugged her. She hugged me back, she is tiny, like a bird, I was frightened I'd break her. 

Tonight, on my last night in Cuba, I met Roaldo, a Morgan Freeman doppelgänger and the man in charge of the city's oldest bakery. I had read in my guidebook that the street I was staying in was the worst street in the entire city, that I should never go out unaccompanied, and that after dark I should always take a taxi. So I decided to go out at night alone and walk the street to see if it was true because nothing I'd seen or heard or experienced so far bore out anything written in the book. I met Roaldo because I asked if I could take a photo of the nearly stacked loaves at the front of the shop and the man serving called for his boss, Roaldo. He was about 6'6, his eyes gentle and intelligent. He shrugged yes, I may take photos but asked if I might prefer to see the bread being made, and to take photos of that? And yes, of course, I would. He led me back behind the counter to cavernous rooms of stainless steel and tiled benches at which four younger men stood making different shaped rolls from glutinous creamy dough. They seemed as astonished as me that I was there, they fell silent as Roaldo showed me everything, talking quietly about the oven, which he opened, a cavernous blazing brick lined furnace reminiscent of gigantic pizza oven, and the sauna-like proving room where racks and racks of long rolls, short rolls, round rolls were being coaxed to rise, water pooling on the floor, the bread sweating gently in the mist. Roaldo said he is trying to learn English. He's already very good, I should have told him. The bread doesn't excite me to eat, all puffy white, the same rolls my landlady tries to make me eat every breakfast. But the bakery is interesting, the cocky young bakers gathered their strength to quiz me. Their first question, via Roaldo as interpreter, am I alone in Cuba, yes, their second, do I choose to travel alone, yes, rendering them mute, possibly pitying but also like a class of 10 or 12 year old boys, the jocularity hiding only barely their plain human interest. An interest we all share. Roaldo was patient, generous, quietly spoken, behaving as if this - a stranger who spoke no Spanish wandering round his bakery - was the most routine event, and perhaps it is. How much longer would I stay. I leave tomorrow. It was the first time I realised I'd miss this country. I've been longing to go home, I'm tired and it's expensive being on the road, though not lonely. My brother had asked me would I be safe on my own in Cuba. Wasn't I worried? Was I sure I'd be okay? And here I was at about11pm in a dark backstreet bakery, safe and inexplicably moved by Roaldo and the rising bread. I made sure to eat all my bread at breakfast the next day. It was good. 

Is kindness love?

I came across a small book in a shop at the weekend called 'congratulations by the way'. It's a transcript of a commencement speech, the sort of rousing, spirited call to go forth and conquer speech which American universities seem to love, to lap up. As do I.

You can read what I think is the whole speech on the New York Times website here: 

http://6thfloor.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/07/31/george-saunderss-advice-to-graduates/?_php=true&_type=blogs&_php=true&_type=blogs&_r=1&

The author, George Saunders, talks about kindness being a by-product of ageing. He says someone once said "I'm nearly all love now" because they'd lived so long.

I was thinking about this as I stood in the bookshop reading it, taking a photograph of the cover so I'd remember to look it up later. I am seeking kindness. It's a major pillar of who I think I am going to become or want to become and the main reason for this blog, the search for losing myself, my selfish self, my boundaries and instead to try and merge with others and 'see' them. His book also got me wondering how many others are there trying to do this? And how can I meet some of them? Also I wondered is it true that we all come to this, to a step of trepidation towards kindness. I'd love to be able to say trying to be kind is easy or even a leap of faith, but it's definitely more like a small step for me, and one filled with doubt running in rivulets down its face, some of them eroding, exposing anything false which lies beneath. All the same, it's encouraging to read someone else stating the need, the inevitability of growing towards kindness so eloquently, stirringly.

So much is written about ageing, you'd be forgiven for thinking, if you were young, that it was all grim once you stepped past 40, 50. I'm very happy it isn't, not just for me, but for all of us. I wish my parents had lived long enough to see if this was as ubiquitous as it is now appearing to be. 

And then this...

Today I was looking for a book to read and from all the books on shelves and piles in my house I just pulled a random one out that I couldn't remember if I'd read and opened the pages, thinking I'd recognise it soon enough if I had. 

Just as I began to get into the story, out of the pages ahead a photo fell. It was of me, close up looking sideways from the lens. I am younger, not significantly but enough to recognise fewer wrinkles, better hair. The look on my face is one of utter joy. 

I knew then the book belonged to her, as did the photo. It was one of many relics she left behind which so far has included three dust covered mismatched socks behind the drier (she has a particluar love of socks and would have missed them), a brand new cashmere jumper she was given one Christmas by her aunt, still in its tissue and box, which I found in a small cupboard I thought was empty in a hard to reach corner behind the bath, and which I am guessing she left on purpose. There are numerous tiny, pretty hair clips that she wore scattered throughout her hair lying in wait for me when I do DIY or try to clean too close to the edges of carpets and behind radiators. The stash of them in my bathroom is faintly embarrassing given I will never wear them. There are some CDs and DVDs of course, and a photo of her aged about three, and once, I found a not-quite-empty bottle of her perfume which had special powers over my mind when she wore it and later, after she had gone, I took to walking round clutching it like a cigarette, taking a furtive sniff now and then. It took me weeks to throw that away. She also left many, possibly all the gifts I'd given her. I still feel the need to sit in the garden chair I bought for her because it reclined so deeply and she loved to lie back and sleep in it, pretending to read, ever watchful, no matter how exhausted, of the arrival of anything or anyone in the garden. When I sit in it for some reason I adopt the exact same pose she used, even though it feels, to me, unnatural. I've positioned it far from the house so it's only catches the sun for the last hour of the day, giving me barely any opportunity to sit there, conjuring up the same spirit of reclining while remaining alert. 

There are so many reminders of her, each arriving like fresh footsteps in the carpet or whispers of wings at the window, ghostly, supernatural, powerful and primitive. 

After I'd looked at the photo for a long time, trying to remember it being taken, trying to remember where I was and if I'd ever seen it before, trying to remember being that much younger, I noticed there, at the edge of the frame, her. It was just her nose and a bit of her forehead, barely in shot at all, barely there. But there she was kissing my neck and taking my photo and there was I as happy as I've ever in this world been. And I remembered.

Go to the edge, look out, report back

Had a weird day today. Drove almost right up to the door of my former lover (love-of-my-life lover who I called time on nearly two years ago when I realised the relationship was killing me, us both). Stopped short, in a lay-by, and went for a short walk in a field. The straw was lying in heavy damp piles, waiting for the sun to make it dry enough to store for the winter. I smoked a few pretend cigarettes (have been on e-cigarettes for nearly a year now) and sat in the shade of a tree hoping she would magically just come by. 

I longed to see her.

This is the text I wrote while I waited for her in the field, and which I didn't send:

Why won't the missing stop? I'm going to go to my grave missing you and not knowing if I'm a fool for loving you, a fool for losing you, a fool for wanting desperately to win you back. I know nothing at all except I can't seem to breathe when I think about you and to my surprise and endless frustration, I think about you every day. I am not sorry for texting. I am not sorry I love you still. I am only sorry I can't seem to find a way out of this hole no matter how I try. I asked God to stop me messaging you if it was the wrong thing to do (I ask him all sorts of crap, as you know) and so I half expect a sign like a bee to sting me or a wild horse to suddenly jump out of the hedgerows and trample me to stop me sending this. Half (at least) of me hopes I won't press send. I don't want to unleash more pain for you or for me. Heaven knows we've both had enough. But you are the only person in this whole world I can tell, I can't seem to get over this person I once knew and it breaks my heart anew every day. I hope you're better than me, better than this.  

Then I cried. 

Because she wouldn't come by. She'd be out living, doing something fun like captaining a boat or cycling too fast down a steep muddy hill or playing with someone else's puppy. She would also not come by because she is okay, doing well, surviving and definitely not driving around her neighbourhood on the off-chance I might be hiding in a field near her house with a great view of cow parsley. 

Obviously.

I knew my tears were pathetic and self-pitying and after a while I began to realise what I really needed.

I didn't need her exactly, though I'd have loved to see her, to put my face deep into the fold of her neck, to feel her narrow back enfolded in my arms and to find the words to tell her I've finally learned some things she needed me to learn and am, I hope, better at loving, at understanding. What I need and want and was crying about was having or, in this case, not having someone to love who loved me back. 

It's insulting to her or to anyone that I could assume a former love could slot back into my life to fill the hole of gaping need, just because they had filled it once before. 

Once I got a grip on myself I had a long think about this and about how many others must feel like this. We all want to love and be loved, we all hope someone will magically walk up to us in a deserted field or supermarket or office or footpath and look into our eyes and everything will suddenly be all right. Everything will suddenly make perfect sense. The world and our hearts will sing. 

But it won't. At least it probably won't. It does happen for some people but not very many.

Instead I realised I had to do more work, I had to live and live well and stop moping about hoping to be found, rescued.

I have to do what I'm here to do. And that, for me, is to go to the edge, look out and report back what I see. 

I'm not sure if I am supposed to report back in writing or painting or the way I live and offer friends whatever support I can, but I'll try all of those and see if any are useful to others. Underlying that most basic human need to be loved and seen and wanted, is, I think, an even greater desire to be useful, do something valuable, worthwhile and meaningful.

Letter to my younger self

The general idea behind letters to our younger selves seems to be to gently encourage and support and warn. To my younger self I'd say wow, you're way ahead of me on some things, you burn with a passion I struggle to recall now.

On other things you're exactly like me, you are me, in mineral form maybe. Elemental, so it's like looking in the mirror and waving a little self-consciously, not entirely sure which is the actual and which is the reflection, freckles and a mild blush of embarrassment on both faces, the same eyes, the same sight, here or there.

One thing I've learned which you also knew or, rather, sensed and which you are bang on about is your belief in envisioning your future, creating your future. Yes, it really does work, it is true, though you didn't envision this reality. Even so, some snapshots along the way have proved pixel perfect. You are making me even now. Remember that vision of an old woman in an orchard? Long grey hair? I'm a few years off that yet and my hair is still short, but I don't doubt we will one day meet her too.

So to you, what would I say?

Relax. Keep seeing, learning, listening, looking. Never lose faith in the peace and wisdom in repose. Or that gained in action. Balance is what you're aiming for. It's harder than it sounds, but you can do it, you will.

Your instincts are amazing, sure.

There are some things that get better and you don't have to either grasp or deny them. Mobile phones, the internet, your interest - finally - in fitness, your children, the view from 35,000 feet of the red earth of India, sex with a woman, love, the slow erosion of ego. All these will come and astound you whether you want them or not. Live. Joy is a by-product rather than a goal.

Your Mum dies young. Be kinder to her now. You'll miss her much, much more than you can imagine. You'll transpose your need for mothering on to random women then, eventually, on to white feathers so you can be found by her at some level always, but especially in the Spring, the season when birds fly the nest. You left yours so young, you still carry the bruises of too many falls.

I love you, I whisper it through the veils of time, opaque mists in the valleys like bowls of milk between hilltops of then and now.

I love you.

Hold on. Believe.