The Guest House

There are times when I want nothing more than to be able to write. There are times too when every condition conducive to writing seems met. The circumstances all allow it, all distractions are absent, and my mind seems ready, willing and able for the thoughts to come. But even so, despite this, somehow the words don’t always come so easily.

Like a child refusing to eat their greens, the words need tempting, teasing out with the promise of “there’ll be custard for dessert if you do!”. Stubborn, frightened, like a cat stuck up a tree refusing to risk one of its nine lives in making the leap of faith down, I have to grab my ladder and make the climb upwards to fetch the words and carry them gently down to terra firma. Or sometimes hidden, somewhere deep under the surface, they need a sharp hook to pull them, gasping, struggling, fighting, like fresh fish caught unsuspecting in murky waters. What bait can I cast off with, a fisherman of words, to tempt my thoughts to take bite and allow them to be raised to the surface, glistening magnificently like the prize catch of the day?

In the absence of a truly tasty morsel I sometimes feel I have only the most meagre of things to throw into the still waters of my mind – a miserable maggot of an idea – and that is, the fact that I am finding it hard to write. For in doing so it often happens that something takes bite that I would never suspect would catch on – I fish for a Trout and catch a Koi Carp.

Other days however, like today, there is nothing I want to do less than write. The conditions just aren’t right at all. I’m tired. I’m miserable. My head hurts. That third vodka and tonic drunk to chase down half a bottle of wine last night really wasn’t a good idea and my jittery, shaking hands are firm proof that I really can’t ‘hold my drink’. And as for the two year old loudly throwing a tantrum next door because he “only wants yellow food to eat”, well, don’t get me started. But yet, despite all this, somehow I find making myself a cup of tea, reaching for a packet of Garibaldi, and nestling down on a bed strewn with an excessive amount of scatter cushions to do just that – to write.

Why, I wonder, is it so much easier to write when I have no intention of doing so? Why can I find the words when I’m not even vaguely looking for them? Do the same principles apply as when looking for your missing car keys – when you’re looking you can’t see them, but when you stop they’re right there under your nose? Possibly. Maybe.

In any case today it was the words that found me. I was the fish that took the bait, not the one casting off from the shoreline. And that bait came to me in the form of a poem sent to me by someone important to me. I wonder if you will take bite too on reading....

The Guest House
This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.

A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.

Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they are a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.

The dark thought, the shame, the malice.
meet them at the door laughing and invite them in.

Be grateful for whatever comes.
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.

Jelaluddin Rumi, translation by Coleman Barks

When I wrote my last blog post, two months ago today, I was in the processing of finding a new home. And if my memory serves me correctly I was, in fact, that weekend staying at a friend’s house as a guest. I needed somewhere to stay and they welcomed me in – a house guest shown nothing but the most generous hospitality, met at the door with a smile like Rumi’s unexpected visitor. Now, two months on, and I am sitting writing this post in a brand new home and have turned to a whole new page in my own guestbook – a new chapter giving rise to new sets of visitors and new unfamiliar feelings.

Rumi’s poem illustrates beautifully, I think, that we never know in life what feelings may check-in with us on a day to day basis, leaving a mark in our guestbook. Feelings drift in and out, changing weekly, daily, hourly even. Some bring heavy luggage, some nothing more than the clothes they arrive in. Some keep themselves locked up quietly in their rooms, hardly letting us know they are there, whilst others may make continual demands for attention and service. And whilst some may be only fleeting guests, with us for a weekend break or an overnight stop, others settle in for a long term visit. Rumi encourages us to accept them all – good and bad – and to treat them equally as welcome guests. They are all a blessing in their own unique way.

Equally, I think, we should accept the very different kinds of callers who pay us a visit in our lives. As in Rumi’s guest-house, you never know who, when and how people will arrive in your life. You may not always know where they came from, how they got here and why it’s you they have decided to pay a visit. Sometimes the visit is welcome, filled with gifts and thankyou’s, warming our homes and lightening our hearts. Other times we wish they had chosen another doorbell to ring, leaving nothing behind them but muddy footprints in the hallway. Some guests outstay their welcome with no sense of propriety or respect. Others leave far too soon with a farewell which feels insufficient, leaving our home feeling all too empty.

It is easier perhaps to control who which visitors we invite into the guest-house of our lives than to control the feelings which flit in and out unannounced. It’s simpler to create a boundary with a lockable door and spy-hole than with freely swinging saloon doors after-all. And it is, arguably, easier to ask a person to leave when they have outstayed their welcome, than a feeling which lives by an entirely different set of rules and etiquette, often with no regard for our convenience or comfort . But in either case, whether it be feelings or guests to our lives, Rumi’s stance of granting hospitality to all kinds of visitors would seem to me to be a good one.

Yes, of course there is an argument to be made for establishing a firm set of ‘house rules’ that we will not let ourselves or our house guests contravene. We ought to, to be sensible, make provisions for some kind of security, a lock on the door to be used in times of danger. And, of course, we must exercise some degree of control to maintain our homes in good condition, not allowing them to be trampled by ourselves, others nor to fall into disrepair. But is it not, I think, still good to remain open and welcoming, to invite in all kinds of guests without fear, and to have faith that all are to be considered a blessing?

A new home, with a new guestbook, and a new space for writing in the messages of unexpected guests. I know I plan to set up my home with a “Welcome” mat outside my front door and a set of fresh towels ready and waiting in the guest room. I wonder though, will I find the same should I call upon you?

Deliberations for the Displaced

I’ve had a certain blog post on my mind for quite some time. It’s one that I’ve been carrying around for several months, dragging it awkwardly behind me on all my travels like a roller suitcase with dodgy wheels. Perhaps it’s the rather cumbersome nature of the thought which has meant it’s taken me so long to actually sit down and write it out. Or perhaps it’s just a question of location – of not having had somewhere to sit down for long enough, and quietly enough, to let the process of contemplation work its way through to some kind of conclusion.

For it is, in some ways, a question of location – or at least, being located – that I want to write about. It’s the question of where we are located, of how we are located, and what it is that keeps us there – for me, it’s all question of Home.

As someone who’s done a fair bit of moving house of late, “home” (and what that means as a concept) is something which features as a rather prevailing thought in my little brain. I’ve been wondering about it a lot. Wondering what or where “home” really is. Wondering how you decide that you are at home – or, indeed, know that you are not. And wondering, why is home so very important, why does it matter, and why do I even need to ask the question?

There are lots of poems about home, songs about home, and a great deal of sayings, all of which might help us in answering some of these questions. The most obvious of course is the classic, the one we find embroidered on scatter cushions and emblazoned on doormats - “Home”, we are told, “ is where the heart is”.

This, I think, is perhaps more of a platitude than a saying, for is it not something of an obvious truth that “home is where the heart is”? Our homes are indeed our lifeblood, as essential to our being as the heart which beats steadily inside us. They are the place in which we spend our formative years as children growing up, the place we return to after a hard day’s work or a trip away, and the place we long for when we are exhausted by life and want somewhere to lay our heavy heads. Home is the place we can go when we want nothing more than to hide from the world. It’s a place of privacy, of safety, of security. It’s the place we feel we can be ourselves. And hopefully, if we’re really lucky, it’s a place which is full of love.

So what happens when, for whatever reason, we leave our homes and make the decision (or have the decision made for us) to move? If home is where the heart is, does a move away constitute leaving behind a little –or a lot – of our hearts in the physical location of the building we call ‘Home’? Is it the place which makes the home, the physicality of the building, the geographical location, the people in it? Or is home the heart that we bring to a place in virtue of carrying it always inside us? Is home a place we need to go out into the world to find (or to make), or is it a place we carry inside us so intrinsically that no matter where we are it will always find us?

And furthermore, by way of a culmination of all these questions, the most burning of all is this – If, as the saying goes, home is where the heart is and heart and home really are so essentially related, I can’t help but wonder - in the words of Jimmy Ruffin - what becomes of the broken hearted? Do they end up homeless? Or just living in a broken home?

Even as I write this post now, I struggle to find answers to these questions. Perhaps because there are none. But one thought which occurs to me is that whatever the relation between heart and home, when either are lost, broken or moved away from, there is one thing left behind which is common to them both, and that’s memory.

It’s memories we are left with when a relationship ends and we find ourselves trying to mend our broken heart. It’s memories we are left with when we leave the physical precinct of that place we call ‘Home’ and try to make another home elsewhere. And – in both cases - it is our memories which are the source and means of the process of reconstruction; they are the foundation upon which we can begin to rebuild, and they are the tools we use to guide us in the design of our new beginnings.

In relationships we often find ourselves drawn to partners who ‘remind us’ of someone else – a past partner, a much loved family member, or someone else we hold in high regard. Conversely it sometimes happens that a memory of something unsettling, painful or sad might make us deliberately seek out someone who seems entirely different to what we are used to.

So too the same applies in the context of home. We often remark that a place “feels like home” or indeed that we feel “a long way away from home”. Anyone who has ever flat hunted or viewed houses with a view to buy will identify with that instinctive feeling you get when you first walk through the door of a property. And I’m sure that many of us have felt similarly when visiting another part of the country or a different part of the world – some places just to seem to fit, others make us reach for our passport and the next flight home.

It’s the sense of the familiar, a point of correlation with a memory held deep within, which makes us feel at home or not – be it in the literal sense or in terms of a relationship. And it’s often the satisfaction of completing the journey we make to get there that reinforces for us whether we really have arrived in the right place. Like a perfect cadence in a chord progression, the journey home and the arrival at that place of familiarity, is a logical progression towards a natural conclusion – we know when we have arrived, we know we are meant to stop and rest, and we can finally enjoy the satisfaction of a long, silent sigh of relief.

But it’s memory I think which gets us there. It’s memory which provides the roadmap, the directions, and the means of travel. To steal a quote from writer Terry Tempest Williams, “memory is the only way home”. Ignore those memories, discount their validity, and it’s likely that in either context – finding a home or building a relationship - we are likely to find ourselves wandering, lost, floating without an anchor somewhere all at sea.

I’ve been trying to find somewhere to settle and feel at home for a while over the best part of the last year, and so I know only too well why it is so important. I can well sympathise with the journey Dorothy makes in The Wizard of Oz to find her way back home, and the sense of yearning she has to get back there. But yellow brick roads are sadly not always easy to find, and in the absence of an actual physical place to call home – a place to finally unpack that suitcase with the dodgy wheels – it would seem all the more important that we feel at home in an entirely different sense, and that’s the feeling of being at home with oneself.

Ok, so we may not all be seafaring folk but I am sure we can all identify on differing levels with what it feels like to be “all at sea”. Perhaps you know what it feels like to feel buffeted by the waves, subject to the providence of a calm or stormy sea, to be caught unawares and unprepared in the midst of harsh weather . You know what it feels like to sense the cold jolt of spray upon your skin and the sting of salt in your eyes and to be swept away by an overwhelming current. You know what it feels like to have lost your compass and experience the desperate yearning for some sign of light on the horizon, a beacon to guide you ashore.

Sometimes for whatever reason, you can’t get to where “home” is. Maybe you’ve lost your way, a road is blocked, or it’s just not there anymore for you to visit. Maybe that storm you’ve been caught in is too thick and too impenetrable to find that glimmering lighthouse on the horizon and sail on back in land. So what can you do? You can drop anchor where you are. Sometimes it’s just a question of isolating where that anchor is and what that means for you. I guess that’s why we all need a reliable crew of family and friends to make the journey with us – for often they can point out where that anchor is an a way that we had not seen ourselves.

Failing that, I guess the other option is to call up the Good Witch of the North and find out just where we can get ourselves a pair of those Ruby Red slippers Dorothy wore. Now there’s a good excuse to go out and buy impractical sparkly shoes if ever I heard one – a direct route back to our own personal Kansas!

After all, there’s no place like home, there’s no place like home, there’s no place like Home...

Nakedness & Nudity - Indecent Exposure or a Bare Faced Lie?

Have you ever met someone new, a new friend or acquaintance, a work colleague or even a potential partner perhaps, and they’ve revealed something about themselves you would never have guessed?

That cute looking guy in your office who you always seem to bump into at the water machine and have an awkward sweaty-palmed conversation with about “staying hydrated”? Well guess what - it turns out he’s a Frisbee champion . Or has a PhD in Dendrology. Or is an amateur taxidermist. (Incidentally there aren’t any cute guys in my office that linger around the water machine.... sadly....although I think there might be a man who’s a taxidermist, and come to think of it I’ve definitely seen a Frisbee tucked under his desk).

It doesn’t matter what 'it' is really, it’s just that that is the fantastic thing about people – they have an endless capacity to surprise.

I think it’s because we live with ourselves everyday - and are so used to the workings of our brain, the things we have achieved, and the ways in which we like to amuse ourselves - that we often forget about ourselves that we also have an endless capacity to surprise – perhaps even to shock. We’re so close to our own selves, so familiar with our own sense of who we are as a person, that it’s often incredibly hard to step back for a moment and consider how a 'revelation' about ourselves might suddenly change the way that someone sees us.

Not so long ago I was talking to someone new and I revealed a little 'something' about me. I happened to mention that I work very occasionally as a life model . It’s something I did on a whim - a very well thought out and emotionally motivated ‘whim’ of course - when I was at University. I met a fabulous artist and modelled for him and, since then, for a few different colleges and art schools.

Now, I know this about me and I also know what it’s all about so I often forget that sometimes people just don’t get it, and that in revealing it to someone I can lay myself bare to criticism, misunderstanding or – at best – a slightly bemused expression. What, you take your clothes off? All of them? In front of ..... people???

The ‘surprise’ of being reacquainted with my own capacity to surprise another in revealing this aspect of my personal life prompted me to think. And what it got me thinking about was this;

What is the big deal about nudity? Is it the inevitable connection that people make in their heads between nudity and sex? If so, what is the relation between nudity and sex? And really, when all is said and done, do we reveal more about ourselves by stripping off and baring our bodies, jumping into bed with someone and having sex OR by opening our mouths to reveal something of who we are?

Now, to my mind, nudity is nudity. It doesn’t equal sex. It’s always been my experience that sex is so much more to do with what happens between two people when they have their clothes on than when they have their clothes off. The nudity part is just a functional requirement of having sex; it’s almost incidental, and in any case, it’s not the meaning. Sex, to my mind, is like the full stop at the end of a sentence; there has to be words and meaning beforehand for the full stop to have any purpose. Similarly nudity, taken alone without the context of a fully clothed relationship, is just a full stop; punctuation without any grammatical significance.

Sex, I think, is the punctuation in a fully clothed, content laden, purposeful conversation; sometimes (if you’re lucky) that punctuation is a “!”, sometimes (interestingly) a “?” and sometimes (sadly) just

.

But however our sexual lives are punctuated, and however many “!” we may or may not be blessed with, without the prerequisite of clothing, sex becomes empty grammar.

So if nudity really is something altogether different from sex, what is it about it that causes us to raise our eyebrows?

It is, of course, the feeling that in being nude we open ourselves up to the most terrible of things – to exposure. And not just to exposure per se, but exposure to being human.

It’s very hard to lie about being human when you are in a state of complete nakedness. Particularly when you are life modelling, it’s also very hard to lie about what particular ‘form’ of you human you are; everything is suddenly on show, in all its toned, wobbly or just-plain-saggy glory and you are suddenly no longer “you” but just a nude, a figure, a source of artistic inspiration. It’s scary stuff, admittedly, but there’s also something very liberating about the experience, something very ‘levelling’, and ultimately (as there would be for me) an opportunity for some kind of philosophical reflection.

Nakedness is, in this sense, incredibly exposing. But in a funny kind of way, it’s also perhaps the most potent and effective form of disguise.

When I stand in front of a class full of art students – people who are complete strangers to me – it isn’t me they get to see, but just a body. Don’t get me wrong, art students and teachers are almost always incredibly friendly and appreciative of their models, but at the end of the day nobody is really interested in who I am and what I do, what I think or what I feel, what I had for my breakfast or what I’m going to have for my tea. Having been left very peacefully to sleep through a forty minute pose only to be woken temporarily with a polite request to “change position now” I know very well that it’s not me that’s of interest during a life modelling session, but rather my functional significance as an object with which to practice their drawing.

Likewise, when it comes to sex, there isn’t necessarily anything particularly exposing about it. At least, not if you’re having the kind of sex which I would, according to my ‘definition’ above, consider to be “empty grammar”. If it’s meaningful and truly intimate and preceded by the appropriate amount of clothed conversation then yes, it can be exposing in the most wonderful and beautiful of ways. But this isn’t, I don’t think, always the case.

No, it is not in nudity nor in sex that we expose the most about ourselves, but rather in the words we speak and those small moments of ‘revelation’ when we share something about ourselves with someone for the first time. Peeling off our clothes to bare our bodies as a life model - or to engage in some entirely different kind of naked ‘activity’ – isn’t necessarily a moment of exposure at all but, as I’ve suggested above, actually a moment when we can ‘cover up’ who we really are in the most powerful way.

It’s the incredibly revealing power of words that I personally love and it’s probably for this reason that I take great pleasure in writing. It’s probably also the reason why I try to live my life with an ideal of honesty, of speaking the truth. I mean, if you’re going to ‘reveal’ anything about yourself to anyone, is it not always best to reveal something real, something true? But therein lies a question for another post perhaps.....

For now I want to end this piece back where we began - back at the water machine in the office, having our awkward chat with the cute Frisbee playing taxidermist with a doctorate in the study of woody plants. Now we might not all have such a weird and wonderful list of things to reveal about ourselves but I can guarantee there’s something about all of us which has that same capacity to surprise, to shock, to shift someone’s perspective on who we are. Maybe we’re just too close to see if, but I really do believe that it’s often the things we consider most mundane or boring about ourselves that others consider to be the most interesting or relevant.

For me, such a ‘revelation’ might be found in sharing an anecdote about my life modelling experiences. But even if being an artist’s model isn’t your ‘thing’, I think it’s worth asking yourself what it is about you that has that capacity to surprise and to shock? And it is also, to my mind, definitely worth taking a risk in allowing yourself to become a little ‘exposed’. There’s something very liberating and exciting about inspiring either response in the face of another person, and something even more liberating about revealing something of yourself to the world and saying “this is me”.

But perhaps I’m wrong about all this and you think I’ve missed the point somewhere? I’m never worried about admitting I’m wrong if I really am, and I’ll be the first to acknowledge another point of view if I believe it to be honestly held and well thought out. So now, I’ve revealed a little bit about me in writing this post, why not reveal a little back and tell me what you think.......I’ve showed you mine, isn’t it about time you show me yours?

* The image used is The Model by Tamara de Lempicka, 1925

Portraits and Pictures – A question of Image

I’ve been looking at some old photos recently. Sorting them through. Deciding which ones I want to keep or throw away. Some hold memories of times with friends or family, or of someone significant who is, for whatever reason, no longer around. Some only bring a tinge of sadness and that small dull ache felt when something touches upon a sore memory, a war-wound endured at some point along my life so far. Photos often function as a means by which a moment in our lives can be lived again, and as I was sorting through photos today I felt both the pleasure of reliving a smile and the pain of recalling injuries sustained. (Incidentally, I wouldn’t want to deny myself of either).

As well as recalling memories, photos are also incredibly good at reminding us of who we were at a certain time in our life. But, on the other hand, have you ever had that feeling of disorientation when you stumble across a photo of you where you don’t recognise yourself? But that’s not me! I don’t remember my hair being that long/short. Nooo, I never wore that did I? God, don’t I look slim/fat/like Gwyneth Paltrow. Ok, so I’ve never looked at a photo of myself and thought “Oo, don’t I look like Gwyneth” (although it’d be a rather grand day if I did) but the point is that photos can sometimes confront us with an image of ourselves that we don’t recognise – and sometimes don’t like.

The great thing is, of course, that if they’re our photos we can simply throw them away or stick them under the duvet, behind the radiator, in the microwave maybe. If they’re on Facebook we can ‘un-tag’ them (a very rare feature of Facebook I actually like, and have found useful on more than one occasion). But when they belong to someone else, well, that’s a bit trickier. Short of breaking and entering I can’t really sneak round to my best mate’s house and steal back those embarrassing photos of me when I was thirteen and had bad hair, bad glasses and even worse dress sense.

So it’s an inevitable fact then that somewhere out there, under someone’s bed, on someone’s bookcase of photo albums or (horror of horrors) on someone’s mantelpiece, someone is holding onto one of those “but that’s not me!” photos, and there’s not really a lot you can do about it. Those pictures, sadly, are you, they’re part of your life story, and they reveal a truth about you that’s undeniable.

After all, the camera never lies, does it?

Maybe not. But what about a portrait? I recently spent an afternoon visiting the National Gallery. I went to see the Christen Købke exhibition, Danish Master of Light, and it got me thinking about portraits and pictures. As I sat and looked around the room at Købke’s portraits I wondered what it was - if anything – I could learn from these paintings and, on a broader scale, what it is I could learn – if anything – from any portrait. Does a portrait portray a truth about the character of the subject, their story, their virtues and vices? Or does it present us with a lie, an illusory image designed to seduce the viewer into a particular way of seeing the sitter?

One obvious difference between a photo and a portrait of course is the role of the artist. Now, I’m not for a second suggesting that photography isn’t also legitimately ‘portraiture’ in the fullest sense of being an art-form, but the photography I’m referring to here isn’t art photography, but ‘snapshot’ photography – the type of photos taken on a night out with the girls or by your dad when you’re least expecting it at some family ‘do’. No, in portraiture there must, by necessity, be an artist who creates, whereas in snapshot photography there need only be someone who points and shoots. So, given the essential role of the artist, what is their job as the portrait artist – to recreate a ‘true’ image of the sitter or to interpret and inspire a specific perspective?

In either case, whether a portrait portrays or betrays a truth or lie about its sitter, what is it about that afternoon spent at the National Gallery that stuck with me and got me thinking? And why would this, and the process of sorting through photos, prompt me to emerge from my blog-writing slumber and write another post? Well, it all comes down to this – whether it be the art of portraiture or the artlessness of snapshot photography, it’s all a question of image.

I worry about image a lot. And no, not because I’m horribly vain, but because I’m horribly human. Its part of being human, I think, that we reflect upon who we are and how we present ourselves to the world. Most of us check ourselves, even if only cursorily, in the mirror before we leave the house. If going for an interview we don our best suit or slip on our smartest heels. We buy a new dress or shirt for a first date and spend hours preening ourselves in our bedrooms, checking our hair, putting on make up. Why? Because we care how we look. We care how we come across to other people. And because we want to be in control of how other people see us. And of course it isn’t just a question of our physical selves. Do we not all strive to present outwardly that image of ourselves that we most want the world to see? An image of strength, of confidence, of intellectual or physical achievement. We don’t tend to want the world to see those bits of ourselves we’re not so keen on – our insecurities, our vulnerabilities, our weaknesses. Isn’t it fair to say that pretty much all of us attempt to keep these bits hidden away from people, at least from those we don’t know, have only just met or perhaps just don’t trust?

In this sense then it seems to me that we are all our own portrait artists, each of us standing with brush and palette in hand and a canvas before us on which to create an ‘image’ of ourselves. We all have a certain degree of control over the “snapshot” we provide of ourselves to the world and a certain degree of control over which snapshots get stuck in the photo album and which end up in the bin. But that control is inevitably limited, for at the end of the day there will always be someone who sees us differently to how we see ourselves, and more often than not this is in fact the case.

I know there have been times when I have felt my brush and palette being taken away from me and an image painted of me which I neither recognise nor like. This can be as uncomfortable, if not more, as seeing one of those “but that’s not me” photographs. When this happens its good perhaps to remember that we can reinvent and recreate ourselves as many times as we want on our canvas – there’s no limits to this and no limits to the images of ourselves that we can present to the world. If we feel ourselves trapped inside a picture frame of a portrait of ourselves that we don't like then there’s nothing else to do but to force yourself out and slip into your artist’s smock. Hold the brush rather than be the canvas, choose your own palette rather than be coloured by another’s image of you - the chances are you’ll end up with a far more beautiful and brilliant artwork than you could ever imagine.

It’s a bit of an epic this post, admittedly, and so I wanted to sign off this piece with some wise words. As is my way I went on a search for a good quote. Now, I have to admit I’m not really a Star Trek fan, but after stumbling across some quotations from Deep Space Nine on Wikiquote (as one does) I must say I’m seriously considering becoming one. I was amazed by the sheer philosophical brilliance of quotes such as

“There comes a time in every man’s life when he must stop thinking and start doing.”

“It takes courage to look inside yourself and even more courage to write it for other people to see.”

And finally,
“Females and finances don't mix” (my personal favourite!)

Geeenius!

So, it is with the wise words of Jadzia Dax that I’ll sign off for now;

“If you want to know who you are, it's important to know who you've been”.

What better reason then to dig out those old photo albums...... Those old pictures of you never lie you know.

* The image used is by Jeremy Lawrence, www.futtfuttfuttphotography.com

Much Ado about Doing

If, like me, you’re a fan of Breakfast at Tiffany’s, you’ll be familiar with the following exchange between the two principle characters, Holly Golightly and Paul Varjak;

Holly: You know those days when you get the mean reds?
Paul: The mean reds, you mean like the blues?
Holly: No. The blues are because you're getting fat and maybe it's been raining too long, you're just sad that's all. The mean reds are horrible. Suddenly you're afraid and you don't know what you're afraid of. Do you ever get that feeling?
Paul: Sure.
Holly: Well, when I get it the only thing that does any good is to jump in a cab and go to Tiffany's. Calms me down right away. The quietness and the proud look of it; nothing very bad could happen to you there. If I could find a real-life place that'd make me feel like Tiffany's, then - then I'd buy some furniture and give the cat a name!

Tiffany’s is Holly’s antidote to the “mean reds”. Fortunately for me (and for my bank balance!) I have found my own antidote which is much closer to hand and, in my opinion, holds far more sparkle than a whole room full of platinum and diamonds. For when I get the “mean reds”, or even “the blues”, I always have the urge to rush out and head for the greens, the browns, the ochre. When that feeling of claustrophobic fear strikes, my instinct is to run to space – to the ‘great outdoors’. A wood, a park, the sea. Somewhere I can feel the edges of myself, the limits of me, paling in my insignificance into the limitless world of nature.

But what is it I find there? Quiet? Serenity? A sense that “nothing very bad could happen to you there”? Yes. Perhaps. Maybe all these things. But more than this, what I encounter in the quiet space of nature is Being.

We all spend so much time 'doing' in our lives that the question of 'Being' and what this means often drops out the bottom of our existence.

Have you ever walked around a supermarket, piling it high with your weekly shop, only to get to the checkout to find that the small item you placed in the trolley at the beginning of the shop has fallen out the bottom? More often than not it is an item you purposely went shopping for, with everything else just impulse buys and unnecessary luxuries. This is what happens with Being I think – it falls out the bottom of our trolley of existence.

Sometimes I think it happens just like this – a single occurrence resulting from our being distracted by other things or piling our trolley too high. Other times it’s a more gradual, insidious draining away – like sugar draining from a hole in the bottom of a packet; you don’t notice until suddenly the hole becomes so large and fragile that everything comes gushing out.

“What is it you do?” - Isn’t this a question we’re all familiar with at parties, gatherings and social functions where we are meeting strangers for the first time?

“What did you do today?” – A question asked by mothers to children, wives to husbands, friends to one another.

When do we ever ask, “How did you ‘be’ today?”. And no, it isn’t just a question of grammar that prevents us from asking this question.

I often don’t know how to answer that question of “What do you do?”. I often don’t really know what it was I ‘did’ on any given day either. It’s all too easy to lose our sense of what it is we’ve ‘done’, should be ‘doing’ or what it is we’re even good at ‘doing’. And there are times in our lives where that painful presence of an absence of ‘doing’ feels suffocatingly close. Like tinnitus in your ear, its shrill noise rings in its persistence and deafens us to the sound of our Being.

So on days where I’m struck by the “mean reds” I run to the greens of nature. For in nature you find no ‘doing’ but only ‘Being’. The concept of ‘doing’ makes no sense out in nature, for ‘doing’ implies purpose and what purpose does nature have other than to be?

Does a tree ever ask itself what it should be doing today? Do birds ever remark upon one another’s birdsong and reflect upon whether they could be doing a better job? Does a gentle breeze ever agonise over what direction it ought to blow in today? No. Being need not make any reference to purpose, to any concept of what needs to be done. Being just is. Its this sense of ‘is-ness’ that I feel most clearly when I take myself out into nature.

The other day, feeling just a little ‘blue’, I decided to take myself off for a walk. I headed to Nymans Garden, a National Trust property in West Sussex, and found myself following the Bluebell trail. It was a cold but sunny March day. I sat upon a pile of trees - cut down for making a pathway it seemed. I felt my skin prickle with cold and a warm red glow of winter sun on my cheeks. I heard a woodpecker busy at work and watched a tiny rabbit scampering through a blanket of crisp golden leaves. I felt a shivery breeze through my hair and heard the gentle bubbling of water over rock in a nearby stream.

Had you asked me on that afternoon, “What did you do today?”, I probably would have said “Not a lot” and at once have felt a definite absence of purpose, a lack of any sense of achievement. But had you asked me, “How were you today? What did you feel?”, then my answer would have been altogether different:

I felt something of the world today.
I felt my heart beating.
I felt alive and real, and it felt good.

When our time is up and we exist to be, I wonder what will matter more – what we did, what we achieved or whether we lived as ourselves, in the fullness of our Being. Will it matter most whether we taught ourselves how to 'do' or whether we really learnt how 'to be'?

To be or to do – now that is the question. I know my answer, the question is, do you?

It's all in the 'I''s

A single glance can say sometimes express more than words could ever say.

I am sure there have been times for all of us when we have looked at someone – our partner, a friend, a stranger even – and needed no language to tell us what they are thinking. A furtive glance, a piercing gaze, a stony silent stare – it is a beautiful truth about being human that our eyes have such a huge expressive capacity, such a wonderful ability to reflect outwardly what we are feeling in our hearts, and sometimes, such a worrying potential to 'give the game away' with thoughts we would rather keep hidden. But then, if, as they say, the eyes are the window to the soul, where does this leave our mouths? What is it we reveal about ourselves when we open it to speak? What do we tell of ourselves by the words we use, the intonation, the imagery we conjure up? And what has more value, what carries more weight – our words or our looks?

A very good and wise friend of mine (whose opinions I have great respect for) seeing that I had started writing this blog expressed some concern about the fact that I had not chosen to write under another name. “Writing can really expose you”, they warned me – a warning which was taken on board with the utmost seriousness. Would I not be best to protect my anonymity? Should I not use a pseudonym and thereby not reveal too much about myself? Words, he wrote, can be “alarmingly unambiguous”, perhaps in a way that a look or an image, are not.

This friend of mine – Neil Moore – is an artist I greatly admire, and for whom I have worked as a model since I was a slightly un-ironed student back in 2001. (Incidentally, I am glad to say I am now always very well 'pressed'!). Neil is a remarkable painter and I have always felt incredibly privileged to model for him and be part of his creative process. And so, when he wrote to me with his comments on my blog his words carried real weight for me, and rang in my head so loudly that I thought – this must be worth writing about.

For it is an interesting thought, this concept of anonymity. For Neil (I believe I am correct in saying) does not seek to reveal himself though his painting, but rather something about the human condition. And, arguably I think, I would probably agree that this is precisely what he does achieve in his work. Looking at Neil’s work always gives me the sense of being put in touch with something about being alive, being human, existing in this world and relating to other beings. It isn’t always a comfortable feeling confronting his work, as his paintings often deal with difficult imagery, with complex emotions & challenging interactions between people – but this is all part of being real is it not, isn’t this real life? And, if you spend any time looking at his work you are, certainly, sure to get a sense of Neil’s style, his technique, perhaps even his philosophy. But – and here’s the question - is this the same as getting a sense of him? Does Neil, the artist, the man, the human, reveal himself through his work, or does the inherent ambiguity of the work he produces protect him in a garb of anonymity? I can only encourage you to have a look at his work at www.neilmoore.co.uk and see what you think for yourself – perhaps you’ll come to your own conclusions about Neil, perhaps not, but I have no doubt you’ll be moved in some way.

An interesting concept too – anonymity – for who is to say this is something we should aspire to? Should we want to protect our anonymity, as we would hold close to us a treasured heirloom? Or should we seek to throw off the shackles of 'being anonymous' like clothes we have become encumbered by or outgrown? Celebrities often bemoan the intrusion upon their private lives by the media, the constant prying eye of the press which snoops upon them in their quiet moments, their loss of their anonymity. But do they not also revel perhaps in a feeling that people 'know their name', that they are known for their “art”, that their talents have carved out a presence for themselves in the world that is felt by other beings?

Perhaps it is not so strange that Neil would raise this issue of anonymity regarding my blog, as maybe that’s precisely the crux of the matter. People often talk of 'making a name for themselves'. Is that what I am trying to do here by writing my heart out and sharing my attempts at philosophical 'musings'? Am I, indeed, 'baring my soul' by putting down on paper (or computer screen) my innermost thoughts? And are my words, as Neil suggests, “alarmingly unambiguous” in what they reveal about the workings of my mind, or rather something I am putting 'out there' deliberately to be interpreted, taken ambiguously, and potentially misunderstood?

Once again, I am full of questions yet rather lacking when it comes to definitive answers. All I can say is this – it feels damn good to be writing. And if writing as I do is the equivalent of running down a crowded high street stark blooming naked, baring all and leaving nothing to the imagination then hand me my running shoes, I’m off for a jog – I bet its nothing you’ve not seen before anyway.


* The image used is Custody of the Eyes by Neil Moore, www.neilmoore.co.uk

A picture tells a thousand words....

Art and life. Being and becoming. Purpose and potential. Love. Love. Oh, and Love. These are things I think about a lot. Nay, agonise over a lot. I have all these thoughts which whirr and reverberate around my brain, keeping me up at night till the wee hours and stopping me from being useful - a paralysis of rumination, immobilized by meditation, a terrified rabbit in the blinding headlights of thought, blah blah blah.... In any case, I thought perhaps they’re best down on paper. Virtual paper maybe, but “out there” nonetheless.

Get the thoughts out, I've been told. Write a letter to yourself or to someone you’re angry or upset with. Tear it up. Burn it. Feed it to the puppy (remarkably satisfying that one, do try...). Orrrrrr, post it on a blog for people to scorn over? OK, so I've never been told me to do that, and indeed whether anyone else wants to read these thoughts is a $64million question. Should I share my lunacy and expect people to delight in and be amused by my self-indulgent ramblings? Will readers (if I have any!) really glean any sense or meaning from a random collection of my thoughts, poems and reflections upon other peoples thoughts, poems and reflections? And will it somehow lead to me making my own $64million? Hmmmm, I not sure I want to know the answers just yet – it’s a very fragile ego I have, and not one that takes too kindly to criticism or rejection.

Then again, plenty of philosophers were a bit loony, and we make whole undergrad and PhD degrees out of their writings – even the nonsensical stuff. Goodness, I wrote about a lot of nonsense for four years at University and I got a 1st Class degree and a Masters with distinction out of it, so who says my moments of insanity can’t make for some good bedtime reading? (Incidentally, my MA dissertation probably would make for extremely effective bedtime reading – fellow insomniacs, do feel free to apply within. I’d be happy to supply a copy if you’re all done with counting sheep, or horses, or anything else which might conceivably jump hedges).

But, there’s a fine line between genius and madness, isn’t that what they say? Maybe. I’ve always wondered where that line is and whether we often mistake “genius” for things which are, in fact, just complete bonkers. (Look at the Turner Prize for example.... but more on that another day). In any case, as long as I stay on the right side of madness and away from genius, I reckon I’ll be okay – and probably you too if you’re reading this.

So, what’s the inspiration for the blog? What was it, so to speak, that gave me that final shove as I stood, tentatively, shivering in my swimming togs, peering down from the great diving board of life (oh lordy lord, scraping the barrel of bad metaphors!) into the cold water below and a potential non-career as a writer of, well, stuff? Well, in this case it was a photographer called Jeremy Lawrence (his website is http://www.futtfuttfuttphotography.com by the way – go check it out –after you’ve finished reading this of course.....)

Jeremy is an awesome, fantastic and just brilliant photographer I met whilst dancing at the Herrang Dance Camp in Sweden. (And talking of dancing, I’m sure there’s plenty of philosophizing to be done over that in time... for another day perhaps). Jeremy took the photo here of me one year in Herrang in a rather makeshift studio – something you wouldn’t tell from the final shot. And it got me thinking. Surprisingly – for me.

It got me thinking about that whole thing about pictures and words, and whether one has more value than the other. A quick skip, hop and a click of the mouse over to Wikipedia and I located the quote I was after.

Un bon croquis vaut mieux qu'un long discours.

Or, for those of us who aint so fluent in the old parlez francais , comme moi, “A good sketch is better than a long speech”. Napoleon supposedly and often misquoted as “a picture is worth a thousand words”.

Is a picture really worth a thousand words, and if so, what does Jeremy’s photo of me say? What does it say of me, of my life? What does it say, if anything, about anyone’s life? If Jeremy’s photo is a good substitute for my – or anyone else’s - ‘long speech’, what would that speech be about? How does it begin, and will there be a profound or amusing punch line at the end?

Questions, questions, questions. And herein, through the power of “the blog”, starts the process of answering....which if you’re an ex-Philosophy student like me, you’ll know really just means asking more questions and coming up with definitions..... which you then have to define, and interrogate..... until your brain starts frying and there’s no relief other than a short, sharp caffeine hit and two whole packets of chocolate hobnobs.

Hmmmm...

Coffee & biccies anyone?....