Friday afternoon ..

Here's my world view for today 

A delicious-looking cupcake from Peggy Porschen,

Gorgeousness from the Tadashi Shoji Autumn / Winter 2012/13 show at New York Fashion Week,

Support for the beleaguered people of Syria

& Britain bracing itself for more cold weather. 

Friday evening ..

Almost New Year's eve & before you know it it'll be the much vaunted 2012, beloved of prophecy mongers & soothsayers, cartoonists & conspiracy theorists. A watershed for global consciousness, with those not making the leap, the side-step into awareness, finding themselves metaphorically standing on a tiny spit of sand with a spring tide rushing in...


I'm not a big fan of parties, & New Year's eve is no exception, in fact really the only way I feel comfortable at parties or any event where the accent is on enjoyment & having fun is to be working for all or at least part of the time. Fun per se is not something I do. I'll be snug in bed at the appointed hour, & grateful to be so.


But this is the time of year when I look around & see where I am now & how I got here, & I have to share with you this version of Auld Lang Syne, sung by Mairi Campbell & featured in the film Sex & the City, because I also appreciate, remember, & am grateful for friends who have been with me along the way; new, old, fallen away.
Three new friends
People have fallen away, or removed themselves, or been removed, & this is inevitable as day follows night. Some have gone leaving a big hole, others have apparently brushed the dust of their departure smooth behind them. 


I experience more space than before, & new friends are more light-filled, or perhaps it's me.


& of course I acknowledge my master Osho; in the words of the song, 'Nobody does it better.' This is the guy whose love has taught me to watch, to wait, & to allow. In endless gratefulness, thank you Osho.


Happy New Year!

Tuesday evening ..

It's eight months since I last wrote & time (concept though it is) is flying! There's a kitten between me & the keyboard, forcing me to look at it from between two ears. He's also lying somewhat heavily across my left arm so I am typing with one hand. Why not move him? Because once I've finished this I will be sleeping & he will join his two brothers outside for the night. He won't like it but that's just how it is.

I lead a charmed life. To be visited by such a creature is truly a blessing.

Monday evening ..

Who am I & what am I doing here? Lately it's more a question of how to be here & where to be, & so far the answer is I really don't know.

Next week I return to India after an absence of two months, during which time I have been mainly in England with a three week stint in Amsterdam for work & seeing old friends. It was fun. Amsterdam is a fun city to visit. The work part went really well & so did the seeing old friends part. I enjoyed being somewhere different. I enjoyed living out of a bag. I stayed with lovely people & felt loved.

Returning to England I stay with my parents where I am confronted by being a daughter, the child who kicked the traces yet came back round the other side to an acceptance, an understanding, a knowing..well, not 'a' knowing, I own this one ~ I know that there is no separation, that there is no death, & that everything's fine right now. Well of course 'fine' is a label, life simply is. Everything is. It's the old 'how to say the unsayable' conundrum.

Which brings me to a discovery I just made this evening; I like myself.

This may not seem like a revelation, yet to me it constitutes, well tears are welling as I write it, as I acknowledge it.

Here's how I made this discovery; I found a piece about positive thinking which states that life just is. Which it is. An unequivocal statement. It talks of the inherent balance in life, of day & night & so on. I looked further & came across an Advaita type, the type who strips everything back to the bare bones, who question every statement for veracity.

I find this approach stark, I find it male & I do not find it light. I like some mystery to remain, I like to look between, into & around what is said, & delight finding how best to say it. Clarity with lightness, & the ability to laugh at myself when I mess it up, & to give it my best shot.

This is why I like myself.

This is my gift, this is my task, this is what I'm doing here.

On the one hand it is true that the truth cannot be spoken; on the other hand, because the truth cannot be spoken it has to be spoken in thousands of ways. The problem is not that the truth will reach to you through thousands of ways, but you may become infected with the search. If a man speaks about the truth he may not be able to say it…but you can get a glimpse from his eyes, you can get something from his gestures – something not from the words but the way the words are spoken, the emphasis, the gaps. The presence of such a man speaking may be just an excuse to allow you to be showered by his presence.

Osho, Beyond Psychology chapter 3

Monday evening ..

My favourite soap comes in a box. Inside the box the bar of soap used to be wrapped in a kind of grease-proof paper. Now it's sealed in cellophane. Previously the soap was ideal for travelling as you could keep the wrapper to re-wrap the bar before setting off to your next destination. Now there's no chance of that. So what? Get over it! Have you nothing better to think about, or, worse still, write about? But you don't understand, I've been using this soap for over twenty years, & it's yet another thing to add to the growing list of things that have changed in the last couple of months...

Including me. I went through a number of years fairly confident about whom I am etc etc & recently I wonder all over again. In fact I have less idea than ever. The picture I've posted is blurry & this accurately reflects how I feel about myself.

This is in part due to my bones starting to disintegrate. It's curious as I feel nothing of it, & it isn't dramatically into the red, so to speak, yet still at times I feel I am only held together by my skin. I'm kind of incorporating more protein as per the Blood Type Diet. I say kind of as it's kind of hard to find decent protein here in India. Thank god for canned tuna! A friend who had a hip replaced at around my age now has healthy bones as a result of eating this way, & without taking the appalling-side-effect producing drugs routinely prescribed for osteoporosis.

Thank you Vandana.

& I must post this from Rumi ~

You've no idea how hard I've looked for a gift to bring you.
Nothing seemed right.

What's the point of bringing gold to the gold mine, or water to the ocean.
Everything I came up with was like taking spices to the Orient.

It's no good giving my heart and my soul because you already have these.

So I've brought you a mirror.

Look at yourself and remember me.

Sunday afternoon ..

Will someone please explain to me the need to add music to film? One of the best & most memorable pieces of film I've ever seen was shot at a ghat in Varanasi over 24 hours & the only sounds came from what was actually happening. This irritating habit has begun only in the last ten years I would say, but like political correctness & other recent insanities it has taken a firm hold. I just clicked on a short video of a puppy prancing about in front of a rather bored-looking cat. Perhaps the music is a favourite of the person who shot the video? I would have preferred just ambient sounds as I found the content entertaining enough on its own. A bizarre example of the music-with-everything trend is adding it to television news stories! As Suparni would say, "What's up with that?"

I think it's an off-shoot of dumbing down, like the asinine captions on a collection of photos I saw earlier on Huffington Post. These particular photos were of graffiti, so they really needed no introduction, yet this normally excellent online news site clearly has less confidence in the intelligence, or even reading ability of its readers than I had thought.

Dumbing down is another thing, & here's what Stephen Fry had to say about it in June of this year in the Daily Mail, "Infantilism's the problem. The number of times I turn on the television and I think: "Gosh, children's television's gone on, that's a really good art documentary... Oh my God, it's nine o'clock in the evening. This is for grown-ups?"

A word about Suparni, she's a wonderful person with excellent taste & happens to be a terrific photographer, here's a link to her web site, Jen Ross Photography. Her work is copyrighted otherwise I'd show you myself.

So today's picture is of my mother's Christmas cake. As time progresses it will have brandy added at the rate of 'a good spoonful a couple of times a week.' Another one may have to be made as my brother will get to it before the end of December & what he doesn't eat he'll take back with him to Kabul. And I've promised a slice to Suparni!

& my brother is in Kabul for the Mines Advisory Group, 'a neutral & impartial humanitarian organisation that clears the remnants of conflict for the benefit of communities worldwide.'

Tuesday morning ..

Can anyone tell me what this is? I mean what insect? Whatever it is has made a coat for itself out of little bits of dry grass stalk or similar, & I came across it as it let itself down a wall by a thread. The picture shows the start of the return journey ..& the thing is about half an inch long ..

I just wrote a couple of sentences about how this body is doing but really that's not where I want to put my attention. I mean it is getting attention, & love, & I don't need or want to go on about it. Full stop.

I went the other night to the Resort to dance. It was towards the end of the Monsoon Festival & it was just tremendous fun to be there. It's been a while since I danced like that & if you have any kind of a lurking feeling that perhaps one day you'd like to see the place for yourself then absolutely do it & as now as possible!

I was looking for a quote & then I thought I'd better just leave it. I've been keeping my head down somewhat over the last couple of weeks, just have't felt like venturing out much. I mean I do go out almost every day for errands & stuff, for physio, to take care of things for friends who are away, but not really more than that. I've been reading about some major planetary goings-on which accounts for much of what's been happening world-wide, or no, wait... which is a way of explaining what's been happening world-wide... see how easy it is to fall into the trap of mind? Things are as they are & that's the beginning & the end of it!