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 Image by Susannah Conway
Yoga
You may have noticed that I haven’t offered any updates for the last couple of days. This is because I’ve not managed to stick to my writing practice as I’ve been getting home (very) late from teaching. My yoga practice, however, is just going from strength to strength. I am so loving it!
I’ve now taught my daughter the yoga practice and the two of us work our way through poses, breathing in tandem, Om-ing together. Feels deeply special, connecting through yoga.
Writing
As I said, no writing the last couple of days, but I have managed to meet today’s target. I used one of the photo prompts very kindly given by the delightfully talented Susannah Conway on Bindu Wiles’ blog today as my jumping off place. I seem to have ended up with something of a story fragment…
I walk past the shop door every day, but never see it. When I was first told of it and where it was located, I didn’t believe it. I mean, I walk down that street every day on my way to work, and I’ve never seen it all the years I’ve made that journey. It was only when Lucy took me there and pointed it out, did I credit its existence. But even now, I wonder if it was ever really there. Whether it wasn’t just a trick of the light. Or some alteration in my consciousness caused by the thick green smell of marijuana smoke that seemed to emanate from the walls of Lucy’s small apartment.
It was while we were sitting in her tiny kitchenette drinking some strange herbal tea, that smelled a bit like compost, when she first mentioned that we should visit the shop. The light filtering in through the dust-coated window-pane reflected off the unwashed dishes piled high in the sink, distracting me momentarily with thoughts of hygiene and salmonella. “Sorry, what did you say?” She sighed, before repeating that we really should go down and check out the tarot lady’s shop on Marlin St. “You know” she said, “the one next to the computer repair place. The one where you got your laptop fixed?” She twirled a long blond curl, her head set to one side, as she looked at me, expectantly. I merely raised my eyebrows in an expression I hoped was a picture of ignorance.
Lucy often spoke of things I had no knowledge of. In fact, I often wondered why she still wanted to hang out with me. I wasn’t really like any of her other friends. People my mother would have called ‘colourful’ but in such a tone of voice that you knew she actually meant downright weird. With my plain mid-brown hair and conservative clothes, I blended in most places. Became invisible. Except when I came along to Lucy’s flat-warming party. There I think I was the most conspicuous I’ve ever been in my entire life. My lack of piercings, tattoos, or tropical fish hair colour marked me as the odd one out; a role I found intensely uncomfortable. After I turned down a hit of the bong doing the rounds in the living room, defended my choice not to take up residence on a beach in Goa in the kitchen, and walked in on a naked couple in the bathroom, I left. There’s only so much one can take in an evening.
Lucy was still looking at me. I shrugged before saying, “I don’t think I’ve ever seen a tarot lady’s shop there, Lucy. And I walk past there all the time. I would have noticed if there was one there. Trust me.” Lucy wasn’t having it though. She then tried several different ways of describing its location to me. “It’s no good,” I told her. “I know exactly where you’re talking about. But I’ve never seen it.” “But you must have” she insisted. “Look, go and grab your coat, and I’ll show you. Maybe we can pop in and make an appointment to have our cards read while we’re there.”
There are some people in this world who are forces of nature; when they have an idea, things happen. Lucy was one of those people. It was because of Lucy that we went to that weird bookshop on Brown that keeps the blinds closed even during opening hours. It was also her fault that we ended up at a house party in the middle of nowhere hosted by someone we’d never met. I never know what she’s going to come up with next. And there must be a part of me that rather likes that, because I keep popping round for a cup of funny tea. Because, you see, Lucy’s one of the very few people who knows me inside out. She knows all my secrets, my preferences, my habits. In fact, she’s the only person in this whole city that really gets me. She’s become my touchstone in this large anonymous city where it becomes so easy to lose yourself. Lose your way.
Walking along Marlin St. me in blue jeans, black anorak, Lucy resplendent in tie-dye, I knew we looked every bit the odd couple. But when she put her hand in mine, that didn’t seem to matter quite as much as it should have. The sky was threatening rain, and the water already lying on the pavement from this morning’s downpour had begun to seep into my trainers. I was just beginning to wonder whether I had brought an umbrella, when Lucy squealed, ‘Look! There it is! See, I told you it was next to the repair shop.’
And she was right. There it was. A narrow doorway between the computer repair shop and a pizza takeaway with a small sign blue-tacked to the window which said, ‘Tarot Reading’s Available by Mme Truffaut.’ I felt my hackles rise at the misuse of the apostrophe, a pet hate of mine, but didn’t mention it as I know it gets on Lucy’s nerves. ‘Come on’ she said, ‘Let’s go in and see how much she charges.’ I was about to pull back, when Lucy dragged me forward, and before I knew it we were tumbling in through the door of the tarot lady’s shop.
Yoga
Namaste. I see the goddess in you. I started my yoga practice this morning with this as my intention, and it felt beautiful. Namaste.
Writing
And the writing wasn’t so beautiful. Not my finest, by any stretch of the imagination. But then, isn’t that the way? It’s a writer’s lot to feel a certain dissatisfaction most of the time when it concerns the putting down of words. Anyway, I hit my target. Tomorrow will be better. But for now it feels like the sign in the gardens of Dean Gallery were right – there will be no miracles here. At least not today.
Antoine de Saint-Exupery, author of The Little Prince, once stated “A rock pile ceases to be a rock pile the moment a single man contemplates it, bearing within him the image of a cathedral.” I’m wondering if the same applies to words… I’m wondering if I approach all the words in the world bearing within me the image of a novel, or at very least a blog post, then does that pile of words cease to be a pile of words. Do they become raw potential? Do they become the material of great works? Or even just works? I would settle for works tonight…
It is late, and I’ve spent the day preparing for a goddess workshop that I’m co-hosting tomorrow, and it is now close to 11pm and I’m tired and my knee hurts and I would really quite like to go to bed. But I can’t. I promised myself I would keep up my writing and that I would hit my daily target of 800 words. It’s been going relatively well, I think. My posts have received some really beautiful comments, and I can read them back without feeling too uncomfortable. Without feeling too great a pang of disappointment that I didn’t quite achieve the flow, the rhythm of words that I initially set out to achieve.
Another source of comfort at times like this is the divine choreographer Martha Graham. She’s the one who claimed:
“There is a vitality, a life force, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and there is only one of you in all time, this expression is unique, and if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium; and be lost. The world will not have it. It is not your business to determine how good it is, not how it compares with other expression. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open. You do not even have to believe in yourself or your work. You have to keep open and aware directly to the urges that motivate you. Keep the channel open. No artist is pleased. There is no satisfaction whatever at any time. There is only a queer, divine dissatisfaction, a blessed unrest that keeps us marching and makes us more alive than the others.”
I have that quote on a sticky note where I can see it every day. It rings so true for me. Because that’s what the work of true creatives is – keeping the channel open. And I am trying. Just some days it seems easier to keep it open than others. Sometimes it gets blocked with fear, boredom, anger… but mostly fear. Fear that whatever is produced just won’t be good enough. Won’t pass muster. Will be deficient and embarrassing in its failed enterprise.
Awful, isn’t it? When I see it written down like that, it looks awful. That kind of reaching. I feel like that drifter in Carole King’s Tapestry, the one who “reached for something golden hanging from a tree, And his hand came down empty.” And yet, it’s comforting to know that even one such as Martha Graham didn’t find satisfaction in her creativity. The blessed unrest, that pacing across the lounge floor as I walk away from the computer and back and away and back, is what keeps me striving for better. It’s what stops me from growing complacent and proud. It’s what stops me from getting lazy.
I am yearning for that feeling I get when the words are flowing. When they drift from my soul, move out of my hands and imprint themselves upon the page. I imagine them as points of orange flame sent out across the Ganges. Words set alight and released, leaving them to lodge in the hearts of those they are meant for. I feel then that I’m doing what I’m here for. I feel focused, like a beacon that shines a light into the dark places, the thin places. Finding the words that fit together feels like it makes things right.
When I began the challenge of 5 days of yoga a week and 21 days of 800 words, I thought it would be the yoga that would find me wanting, not the writing. But the yoga is blissful. A friend told me the other day there that she admired my discipline, but in all honesty, my practice feels like a gift, a delicious gift that I now can’t imagine not having in my life any more. The writing, however, the writing…
But maybe it’s just late. Maybe now that I’m in the depth of night and the sun is due to rise in only a few hours, my energy is unfocused. It’s dispersed, scattered like grains of spilled salt. Maybe when the sun rises, I’ll find that flow again, that sense of purpose. I do hope so.
Yoga
Flow. I started this yoga practice looking for flow, and while I’ve had moments where I could sense flow in my movements, in my breath, but on the whole flow has eluded me. Today I found what I was looking for. And I’m not surprised in the slightest that it arrived on the day when I chose to practice with the intention of gratitude.
Writing
Whereas the yoga flowed, the writing did not. Every word felt like a wrench, as though I had to tug it from my heart to get it to speak, to sing. I think it was worth it though. What do you think?
The last of the day’s sunshine is glancing off the flaking white paint of the old lighthouse that stands just outside my window. At the very edge of the land, it is falling into silent decay. The glass from the windows is broken or missing. The doors are boarded up. The lamp is missing. Around all four sides, it is surrounded by high fencing designed to keep out the curious. All day long the gulls and terns swoop over its flat roof and turret, and the ships pass by its extinguished beacon.
And yet, it is still completely beautiful to me. I don’t care that the light no longer pours through thick glass, an intensified beam that cuts through the miles and the darkness. For me, its very presence is a source of light in the world. As I look out at it now, I can see the sunset reflected on the interior walls, turning the drab and dusty turret bright orange. I close my eyes and imagine what it must be like inside that turret, the pure amber light flooding my senses. Tiny dust motes dance on faint zephyrs, and the distant call of seabirds floats in across the waves that gently lap at the breakwater.
There are some places where the division between the earthly and the divine seems less definite. The Celts called these “thin places”: places where you sense the sacred, places where, if you were to reach out your hand, reach it right out in front of you, then you just might feel the touch of an angel’s wing. When you find yourself in one of these places, you enter a state of sublime consciousness, where the very edges of your ego begin to dissipate and you dissolve into the in between.
In these thin places you can bathe in gratitude, you can let your wishes dance from your heart out into the ineffable, you can just be you and know that this is enough. There lies an invitation to just let go, to release your fears, your pettiness, your smallness, your worries, your sadness, your regrets out into the sunlight where they can evaporate like dew in the heat of an early summer sun. Take this invite; take it and feel grace enter into the thin space between now and always. Take it and feel yourself melt into the moment.
I remember another thin place I once visited. It was also a lighthouse. This one was called Rua Reidh and it sits out past Gairloch, on the far western coastline of Scotland. Standing in its grounds, looking out to sea, there is nothing between you and America other than miles and miles of bluegrey waves, their white crests punctuating the Atlantic vista. As I stared out at the enormity of ocean, the sun began to sink beneath the wide, steady horizon, and the sky turned from blue to peach to burnt orange to deep ruby before ending in a black velvet sprinkled with a million tiny stars. Diamond dust strewn across the heavens.
Except this descent into darkness was momentarily disrupted by the rhythmic revolutions of the lighthouse beam, as it cut through the night sky, sending out a long line of light across the cold black waters. Standing so close to this light, with my love standing behind me, his arms entwined around my waist, my head resting against his chest, we are dazzled by the brightness. The cold night begins to settle all around us, but we are entranced by the rotations of the lighthouse beam, and we stay standing there for a long time.
It is possible to fall so deeply, irrevocably in love in these places that the love found there shines throughout a lifetime. It illuminates the days when the sun refuses to rise, and sorrow and confusion reign. It chases away the shadows brought by money worries, parenting woes, work stress and domestic fatigue. It calls you home when you’re lost in the dark. It carries you through the good times too: the birthdays, the Sunday lie-ins, the champagne fizz and the sweet understanding that you find in one another’s arms when you’re reunited after a long day’s work.
I think of all this and more as I stare out of the window at dimly outlined shape of the dilapidated lighthouse. The sun is now journeying around the globe, and night has fallen across the river Forth. Unmanned lighthouses, automated pulses of light, strike a beat in the deepening blue. I stare out and feel profound gratitude for the thin places. They’ve brought me more riches than one person could ever hope for in a single lifetime. A solitary gull cries as it soars up passed my window and out of view, trawling the twilight behind it. I breathe, reach my hand out in front of me, and touch…
Have you visited a thin place? What did you find there?
Yoga
Today’s practice was undertaken with the intention of release. I’m finding a freedom in my movement that I never had before. I’m finding a reach in my limbs that I never had before. I’m finding a peace in my soul that I never had before. Tomorrow’s practice will be undertaken with the intention of gratitude.
Writing
I had one of those moments before starting to write this evening where I felt like I had lost all my words. That they had all abandoned me and that I wasn’t going to manage my 800 words that I’ve committed to. Slowly and stuttering they began to stumble from my fingertips onto the keyboard, before straggling across the screen. Soon, however, they began to flow smoothly, and before long, my fingers were racing to keep up with them. Funny how writing works, isn’t it?
Ever play that game of ‘What am I?’ How about we play it now, except we hearken back to our seven year old selves…
I am standing in front of the bathroom mirror. It’s not our bathroom, as we are on holiday. Holiday is when I don’t have to go to school and everybody smiles a lot more. We are on holiday in France and this is a French bathroom. It has a large mirror which takes up one half of the wall about the sink. Sunbeams are streaming through the frosted window above the cistern, and are reflected in the smooth surface of the mirror. I am imagining that I am Alice, and that this is the looking glass that leads to an adventure. I am always looking for an adventure. I stare at myself and myself stares back. The sunbeams have turned my eyes a soft gold colour.
My eyes are hazel back at home. I know this because our teacher put us into groups , splitting us up by eye colour; most of my class has brown eyes or blue eyes. Only me and Lisa had ‘hazel’ eyes, although we looked into each other’s eyes and agreed that they were not the same at all. But here, in this place, my eyes are gold. My eyes are like those that survey the savannah, keeping watch on the pride. These eyes are fierce and clear and focused. These eyes are benevolent and kind, but they are not passive, and they are not the eyes of one that can be bent to the will of another. These eyes display a leonine spirit. One that refuses to be broken.
What am I? I am a lion.
I am in the playground at school. It’s breaktime and all the children have broken free of the closeted classrooms and are now standing around getting soaked in the smirr. The fine drizzle just keeps coming, seeping into our anoraks, our thick woolen tights, our scuffed black shoes. A sudden notion takes over me and I flip off my hood and shake my long red hair out. I am laughing as I look at Lisa, who now has a glint in her hazel eyes. Lisa is always up for being wild. She pulls down the hood of her navy jacket and shakes her dark hair loose, and soon we two are standing laughing as the soft Scottish rain dresses the strands of our hair in the tiniest of droplets.
We’ve played this game often, but on such a grey day, as our classmates huddle and wait for the school bell that will invite them back into the dry, stuffy warmth of the classroom, this game feels wild. Our hair loose, pent up energy running through our legs, we start to canter around the playground’s edge. Lisa neighs loudly, and I copy. The two of us, reckless and free, take our canter up to a gallop. Now charging and laughing, neighing and jumping, the ends of our long manes flying out beside us, the colourless tarmacadam playground disappears and Lisa and I are galloping through fields, leaping over hedgerows, fording fast flowing burns. We two have found freedom.
What am I? I am a horse.
I am standing at the edge of the pool. The smell of chlorine makes my eyes sting. My wee brother has already jumped in. He got changed faster than I did. He always does. My skin has broken out into tiny goosebumps, and before I get any colder, I jump in. The water splashes up high on either side of me, as my body plummets, stone-like, to the tiled bottom of the pool. My ears fill instantly and suddenly all I hear is filtered through gallons and gallons of clear turquoise water. My world has become one of legs and kicking feet, bubbles and the occasional goggled face. My lungs start to burn, so I bend my legs, push my feet against the floor, and kick madly for the surface.
I break through to hear my brother’s laughter as he clings to the side. I’ve surprised him by bursting through the blue. Come, I say, let’s imagine we’re in the ocean! We dive and we swim and we dive and we swim, all the way across the length of the pool. Our feet are now tails and we can feel our dorsal fins showing as we glide just beneath surface. Holding our breath for long seconds, we feel like we belong, that the water is our home. Breaking through for air, we throw our heads back and let loose peals of laughter, the water running down our noses. Our arms, now flippers, flap against the water, splashing each other and anyone nearby. The water sluices off our backs, and we dive back down into the turquoise.
What am I? I am a dolphin.
If that’s what I am, what are you? When you were 7? When you are the age you are today?
Yoga
Today’s yoga was completed at 7.30 this morning. I would struggle to remember a time when I woke up especially early in order to do exercise. But, you see, I don’t really see yoga as exercise, as such – it’s so much more. And it is precisely this that I’ve chosen to write my 800 words about today…
Writing
Once again, I’ve been pleasantly surprised by my writing. I really never know exactly what will flow through when I sit down to write. Today my writing was sparked off by a quote on the yoga pose savasana…
A what pose? You want me to pose like a dead person? Why on earth would I want to do that!?
My first thoughts at adopting savasana – or corpse pose, as it’s also known – were not entirely positive. However, this whole yoga thing is still so very new to me, that I knew that I owed it to myself to give up any judgements I may have about the practice, or my capability to achieve half the positions I had committed to attempt.
I’ve surprised myself with how quickly I’ve grown into my practice. How, after even only one week, it’s now become an indispensable part of my day. The foot stretch is still fairly uncomfortable. The child pose is bliss. The plank is an impossibility. The pigeon makes me cry large fat tears for no real reason I have managed to discern. But it’s corpse pose which has surprised me the most…
I have an image in my head. I am standing in front of a mirror, and the mirror-me reflected in the glass seems grey, insubstantial, veiled. As I stand and watch this figure, the veils begin to fall away. Each veil is as fine as gossamer silk, and as it peels away and drops to the floor, the reflection appears a little less grey and a little more radiant. Layer by layer by layer the veils pull away to reveal a luminous me: one who is unashamed, one who is not afraid to step forward as herself.
This is the vision I see when I lie in corpse pose. As Terri Guillemets so beautifully claims, the “corpse pose restores life. Dead parts of your being fall away, the ghosts are released.” When I lie flat on my back, open palms resting lightly by my side, breathing slow but regular, body utterly motionless other than the rhythmic rise and fall of chest and belly, I am in a state of unveiling. My ghost selves are dissipating, dissolving into the ether leaving behind something essential, something pure.
There goes that ghost of humiliation, and there goes the ghost of shame. Hand in hand, the ghosts of embarrassment and fear leave the scene, with the ghost of loss hurrying to catch them up. The ghost of need appears reluctant to leave, but is eventually persuaded by the ghost of lack. The ghost of overload, the ghost of inadequacy and the ghost which just can’t say no are among the last to leave. They seem reluctant to relinquish the place they’ve made home.
You see, they’ve all been so welcomed, made to feel at home. They’re like the guests who wouldn’t leave, and who started making ever more excessive demands on their host. There’s the mistaken belief that by treating them well, by suppressing your true self, your true emotions, that they’ll eventually be satisfied and go away. But they don’t. Instead they grow ever more comfortable, and take ever increasing liberties. After a while, you forget that they were “just visiting” and you believe that they belong.
But they don’t. Belong, that is. And that’s what I realize during savasana. While I’m lying on the floor it suddenly begins to make sense. I feel like with my eyes closed I suddenly see my life, my direction, my self, so much clearer than I did before. As I breathe in and out I repeat the mantra that appears to have become my touchstone throughout this yoga writing challenge: Just let go. These three words over and over and over until they lose their original meaning and become magical sounds which I use to detach the ghosts.
And from beneath these ghostly veils, there’s a shining self which has been trying to find release for oh such a long time. There are glimmers beneath gossamer. There’s a glow beyond the ghosts. Because this luminous figure wrapped up in the veils is me at my highest potential. My work, while I’m here, is to help free that figure. To let that figure breathe and shine; dance and laugh; connect and share. But mostly, my work is to let her be herself. Because that’s what she really wants, and that’s what she really deserves.
And all I need do is keep turning up to the mat. Turn up to the mat, lie prone as I melt into the present moment, that place which is presided over by the goddess of the inbetween. She’s working her magic, but only if I show up to work my own. But together we can speak the sounds (just let go just let go just let go), unwrap the veils, and then one day, one day the last ghost will leave. The work won’t stop there, of course. These ghosts are tricky, and they’ll do their very best to cling to clothes, weave around limbs, drape themselves over shoulders.
Thank goodness for savasana.
How has your experience with savasana been?
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