Bratislava: Perhaps it’s time for another coffee

Bratislava

Travelling with Midget involves talking about art galleries, museums and great places of historical merit… and going out for coffee.

One

Cappuccino for me, and a black coffee and a panini for Midget while Judy Garland and Marilyn Monroe smile down from the walls. The waitress, an Ellie Goulding fan, leans across the counter, going through YouTube, creating a playlist to accompany her shift. Obviously her laptop’s more interesting than yet more boring tourists. I still try to thank her for our breakfast. But unfortunately, although I’m saying what I think is the Slovakian for thank you – dakujem – she has no idea what I’m trying to say. Confusion occurs. Understandably Midget is embarrassed. We haven’t yet travelled long enough for her to get used to my atrocious attempts at languages.

Two

Later, we splash out on two iced coffees and, feeling daring, I go one step further and delight in a savoury cupcake with poppy seeds.

At a nearby table, a young woman leans forward. There’s such an absence of self doubt in her person that I can’t help but be intrigued.  She has a philosophy on work and her companion is going to calmly listen to and agree with what she has to say. I am certain he is incapable of any other option. While they speak in English, neither of them sound like they speak it as a first language. This makes for an even more entertaining back and forth. Bless the companion, he tries. However, the woman insists that her colleagues aren’t committed enough. We hear how they don’t demonstrate the right attitude. Furthermore, these incompetent and lazy dancers are affecting her attitude, and this is intolerable. She needs to do something about the dismal state of things and with some urgency. There must be action.

What she wants to do is create something worthwhile, something new. She wants to experiment. She recognises that having such a freedom in life is difficult, a luxury perhaps. But she wants to dedicate her soul to dance. For this she requires collaborators who love dance like she does.

Her passion delights me. People who fight to do more emit such a wondrous energy.

We walk past graffiti and I wonder why it took me so long to travel again.

Three

Stylised newspaper decorates the walls of the third establishment we venture to. The lyric-less music bounces. A stand for a sewing machine makes a quirky café table; the pedal is by my feet. We taste each other’s drinks – a caramelised ginger lemonade for me and raspberry lemonade for Midget – and talk.  These fancy lemonades deserve much attention.

Most of all though, for me, the reason for being like this, ambling through coffee and tea, is that it provides a lovely sense of space. It’s a chance for Midget and I to simply be in each other’s company. While the Midget reads her guide to Europe, I take out my diary. And I’m smiling.

Based on my diary from Bratislava, August 2014.

Vienna: That chap Figaro, and a wedding.

figaro, vienna

Vienna, August 2014

Midget is besotted. There are violins, cellos, all that orchestral stuff that I don’t know the names of, a chorus and opera singers. I like the opera singers. I’m not sure why, but I have the feeling that it’s the depth of human emotion you see, and hear, in opera. I remember watching opera for the first time in Verona, on cushions on the stone seats of the Roman Amphitheatre. I remember the homeless people outside, and the Mother warning me, a young teenager, to watch myself.

If I had to pick a sound that was the opposite of depression, I’d pick that night in Verona.

Midget of course likes the instruments, particularly the violins I think, but they make her nostalgic because she can play good music. Nostalgia being tinted with sadness because playing good music requires regular practices, and regular practice isn’t quite so sweet. She knew the music, whereas I followed the antics on the stage with no idea when one thing ended and another began. Midget had played some of the music we were listening to – Figaro – and the familiar sounds call to her.

We came tonight because I saw that look in her eyes when she walked past the man selling tickets. The look of longing. And she would have said nothing. She would have walked past.

Not surprisingly, I don’t want her to have nothing. I want her to delight in the familiar sounds, in this great hall with marble busts of composers she thinks I should know. Her eyes should sparkle. When she hears these sounds, they mean something special to her. I want her fingers to move subconsciously as she lives in both this time and a past time where it was her making the music sing.

She thinks I’m crazy, buying concert tickets here and there, not knowing who this Figaro chap is and why his music is special.

She says it’s not Figaro’s music, and she rolls her eyes to demonstrate that I should know better. A chap called Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart wrote it. The piece is the Marriage of Figaro.

Where I gloat about how wonderful it feels to be able to run.

Running on the moors

…and, blessed as if a soul escaped from purgatory, I bounded, leaped, and flew down the steep road; then, quitting its windings, shot direct across the moor, rolling over banks, and wading through marshes…

-Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights

I leapt across an icy puddle up on my moor this afternoon. The ground was frosty and hard, except in spots where dark mud oozed through and my trainers sank and the cold reached my feet and I thought ‘eww’. And I laughed.

Another such habit that I am reliant on is going outside. Not just walking between the house and the car, or hurrying along the street to get from the car park to the hairdressers, but being and enjoying being outside.

“I’m never doing this again,” I swore after the father dragged me up Snowdon as a rather unfit teenager. And yet, now I’ve taken responsibility for my body and I’m not so squidgy, walking is something I really enjoy doing. It’s bliss whether it’s giggles and chatter with a companion, the slow unravelling of life’s problems, or a quiet occasional exchange of peaceful thoughts. When I’m on my lonesome, where fellow walkers glance around expecting any moment to see a dog leaping through the heather there’s an undistracted, invaluable calm.

If I could go back and convince my younger self of anything, it would be that I need to use my hands, and I need to feel the sun on my face, or if not the sun, the bitter coldness of a fresh winter breeze, or the murky drizzle. My body doesn’t feel alive seated in front of a computer. It doesn’t matter how ergonomic the chair is, I’m still missing the joys of movement.

Swooping down the hills on my bike is the closest I know to being an eagle. It’s not so easy as walking. Initially, my body resists giving up its comfort. It’s understandable. We’ve got hills here. There’s also a haunting fear associated with being reliant on a piece of machinery which I don’t entirely understand. When I swoop down those hills I’m depending on the breaks to work. As the wheels spin faster, and gravity pulls me down, I’m praying that I’m not about to end up in a hedge. It’s a risk. Adrenaline. Fun.

And then there’s running. For me, cycling is the better sport, but it’s also the one I fear more. If I fall over running, I’ll have a grazed knee. I know I can manage a little disaster. I’ve run back to an apartment in a foreign town, 3km, with blood pouring out both my knees and been fine. However, if I come off my bike, the damage is likely to be more than just a grazed knee. If I get stuck on a run, I’m going to be a couple of miles from home at the most. On a bike ride, I’m hopefully going further. The risk is higher. I’ve still never managed to mend a puncture on the side of a road, or replace an inner-tube. And yet, to soar…

But running has its own delights. When you go running for the first time in a long while, or after a cold, or when you’re forcing yourself to go rather than wanting to go, it can be miserable. It can be more than miserable. It can be horrendous. You feel like you’re dying. However, for those days where you’re running and your breath isn’t wheezing or drowning out the rattle of your house keys, you feel powerful. That satisfaction of all the cogs in this great machine working together. I look alive.

Exercise makes me feel better – stronger – and it makes me feel more confident about my body. As sad as it may be, the truth is that for most of us, image and self-worth are intricately connected. It’s all too easy to develop a negative relationship with your body image. Which is another reason I like running and cycling. It’s hard not to like yourself when you can climb a steep hill on your bike, or when you glide past a couple walking their dog and they smile at you with respect for the efforts you’re extolling.

Even if I can’t see it in the mirror, I can feel how amazing my body is. With exercise, my confidence exists independent of the mirror’s reflection. This isn’t to say I’m not insecure about how I look, or at other times vain, or that I don’t love make-up, high heels and pretty clothes. I do. Applying make-up is painting on the most interesting canvas I own. But make-up can’t give me the belief in myself that pushing my heart can.

I know which one I value more.

For me, respect for my body isn’t simply theoretical, it’s a physical sensation that’s earnt through hard work. The more I see and feel what I can do, the more I realize that my ideal body isn’t an idea sold to me through a magazine or an advertising billboard. It’s a body that knows how to ache joyously.

It’s like a game: pattern building my life.

habit building
Sometimes the path ahead is a long one.
Teia, Spain, 2016.

Ten years ago, I had a list of things that I believed if I just did them each day, would make me happier. It included clean my teeth, which was easy; have a tidy bedroom, which I haven’t discovered ticked in any of the tiny Hello Kitty notebook pages; and do my homework, this one normally came with exclamation marks stating that my attitude here really needed to change.

I must have known it then, but not really understood it. Habits are everything.

By which I mean, if you have good habits, happiness will undoubtedly come following. If you have bad habits, you’ll climb into a small box and sit there until you start doing something good again.

Habits are patterns so routine you do them because that’s what you do.

You don’t want a friend who was kind once, you want a friend who’s habitually kind. For whom kindness has gone from a series of small actions to the reason why you now trust them and will be there for them when they need you.

Again, I have created a list of things I must do each day. This happens whenever I find myself feeling a little lost and confused about what I’m supposed to be doing with myself and wallowing. Wallowing doesn’t make me a nice person to hang around with. It’s marked by an internalisation of all my thoughts. Everything I do and think is based on an abundance of feelings of inadequacy. The ‘wicked’ problem of being me saturates my mind.

Wicked problems are those like life, the universe and everything, where the answer, 42, does nothing to help, and isn’t really an answer at all. You can lose a lot of time tangled in such problems.

Anyway, out of this mud. Because whilst occasional wallowing is inevitable, there are ways of turning that internal mooch into creativity. I must assure the worry that whilst I’m listening, and I care, it’s got to share my attention with other people, paper and pens. I need a clear head so that I’m able to sit and listen to others without projecting my own frustrations.

A simple but important habit for me is to draw something every day. I must draw, because if I don’t draw, I don’t make any money. Drawing yesterday and today makes drawing tomorrow easier. This is partly because drawing is something that happens best without words passing through my mind. It’s instinctual, but it requires that little voice in my head to be sweetly dozing. It’s agitating to have my own voice narrate stories in which I am both protagonist and antagonist whilst I’m working.

In a way, drawing is like meditation. In both you feel better about the outcome if the voice is still, but you can’t silence the voice by force. Meditation doesn’t necessarily get easier, like drawing doesn’t get easier. But with practice and persistence you reap greater and greater rewards.

I need to be able to step from a place of negative, or numbed thinking, and into a serene productivity that’s outward looking as well as inwardly aware. My list is a set of habits I want to have that mirror my dreams. My focus now is not on the end goal. It’s to practice those habits that I know, in the long run, will get me to who I want to be.

The other books I read in 2016 to restore sanity and try and help me be nice

Part Two Fiction

39.  The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde

and

40.  An Ideal Husband by Oscar Wilde

“Ah! The strength of women comes from the fact that psychology cannot explain us. Men can be analysed, women… merely adored.”

These two are both plays. I probably preferred ‘An Ideal Husband’ because the female characters had a bit more substance to them, but both plays made me giggle and were a gentle, light relief.

41.  Pygmalion by George Bernard Shaw

The third play I read was Pygmalion, which is better known perhaps as My Fair Lady. I particularly like My Fair Lady. I found the afterword ever so entertaining.

42.  Offshore by Penelope Fitzgerald

I needed fiction, and this was a short literary book that studied the lives of some less than lucky folk living on the Thames. It gave me what I needed, a glimpse into someone else’s life, a perspective on worries that were not my own. It won the Man Booker Prize in 1979, but whilst it was nice, I didn’t feel it moved me enough to be worthy of being considered great.

43.  The Casual Vacancy by J.K. Rowling

I wrote an entire blog post on this one book, which touched me more than I expected.

44.  The Call of the Wild by Jack London

I remember reading White Fang when I was quite small, late at night at my grandparents’ house. I read a lot of books there, but White Fang stood out because it was more gory and violent than the others. In the first stories I wrote as a child, the characters were dogs, and I think Jack London was probably a great influence on this.

The Call of the Wild however felt like more than just a tale of a rather big dog being drawn by his instincts into the wilderness. It’s about a psychological battle. Fitting in, belonging, being responsible for those around you, versus being something that feels a little reckless. Or maybe, that’s just how I interpreted it.

45.  The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka

Disappointing.

46.  Hero and Leander by Christopher Marlowe

“These lovers parleyed by the touch of hands;

True love is mute, and oft amazed stands.”

I enjoyed this more than I imagined.

47.  I, Claudius by Robert Graves

Ok. Perhaps it’s based on rumours, propaganda and creative scandalous claims. And perhaps it uses its licence as fiction to streamline a few characters into caricatures. But it’s an excellent book, a compelling read, and fascinating all the same. For a giggle read this excellent blog post on Caligula.

48.  Chronicle of a Death Foretold by Gabriel García-Márquez

This is a murder mystery. It’s also a beautiful book. Elegantly sad; poetic but compelling.

49.  The Bean Trees by Barbara Kingsolver

and

50.  Flight Behaviour by Barbara Kingsolver

The Lacuna is still my favourite of the books by Barbara Kingsolver that I’ve read, but I enjoyed these two immensely. Flight Behaviour was more like the Prodigal Summer with ecological themes, it centred on monarch butterflies and a broken family. Whereas The Bean Trees was a much shorter read, and centred on ideas of home, belonging and motherhood.

51.  Truckers: The First Book of the Nomes by Terry Pratchett

There is too little Terry Pratchett on this list. I shall have to remedy this.

52.  Mortal Designs by Reem Bassiouney

In Cairo, there is a rather lovely little bookshop on a triangular square, a short walk from Tahrir Square where I decided to buy and read two books written by Egyptian women. This is the first of the two, and it centres around characters from across the social spectrum. It made a good read.

53.  Around the World in Eighty Days by Jules Verne

This book was hilarious and often had me laughing. In some ways, I’m reminded of Evelyn Waugh’s Scoop.

54.  The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain

Considered in another blog post. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer is downloaded on my ebook reader.

55.  The Symposium by Plato

I hesitated before classifying this as fiction. It’s really philosophy, but the line between philosophy and story is rather blurred, and I read it as fiction that could instruct me through empathy rather than self-help with instruction through bullet point lists and sound bites. Plus, it’s funny.

“…let me recommend you to hold your breath, and if after you have done so for some time the hiccough is no better, then gargle with a little water; and if it still continues, tickle your nose with something and sneeze; and if you sneeze once or twice, even the most violent hiccough is soon to go.”

56.  The Lion and The Rose by Kate Quinn

Sometimes you need to be lost in a fantasy, another world, with fancy dresses, exotic perfumes and a giddy, excited compelling plot. Kate Quinn always delivers.

57.  The Wedding Officer: A Novel of Culinary Seduction by Anthony Capella

Like with The Lion and The Rose I wanted something light to read, and this book delivered. There were some scenes that were excellent. There were some that felt like they’d been put in afterwards to hang the whole thing. I would have started it later, finished it sooner, and accepted it as a shorter book.

That said, I’ve never read historical fiction set in Naples or in World War Two. And I’m glad I now have because it’s opened my mind up to a whole new set of questions to ask.

58.  Leaf by Niggle by J.R.R. Tolkien

This tiny book was recommended and leant to me by DeepThought. It generated deep thoughts.

The books I read in 2016 to restore sanity and try and help me be nice

Part One Non-Fiction

1.      Utopian Dreams by Tobias Jones

There doesn’t seem to be an awareness that choice, like freedom, is only a means to an end, not the end itself.

This book was highly recommended to me by my atheist, mindfulness loving host in Sicily. It’s a book about communes in Italy and England. Since when I started travelling the Mother told me she feared that I’d shave my head and join a commune, I had to read the book.

The book challenges several notions about the importance of individuality that interest me. Whilst the idea of individuality is prized in modern society, I started to wonder how important it was relative to the comfort of being the same and belonging to something communal.

I’ve come to conclude an odd observation: when I’m surrounded by people who I expect to be very different to me, I’m more attuned to ways I’m the same. Oddly, this means, away from my familiar surroundings, I’m more aware of feelings of belonging. When I’m travelling, the people I’m staying with work hard to demonstrate that for this temporary moment, their home is my home. Whereas, at home, or with close friends where belonging is taken for granted, I’m acutely aware of the things that make me feel like I don’t belong.

2.      Saxons, Vikings, and Celts: The Genetic Roots of Britain and Ireland by Bryan Sykes

Grand-meré, who has Scottish roots, was reading this book whilst I was staying at the farm in France. Every now and again she’d delight me with another fact about my ancestry, so when she finished the book, I pounced on the opportunity to discover more.

3.      Quelques Philosophes by Jean-Jacques Sempé

Some very clever cartoons, in French.

4.      Ernest Hemingway on Writing by Ernest Hemingway

and

5.      A Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemingway

The first book is a collection of excerpts from novels, memoirs and letters written by Hemingway about writing. The second is an account of his early years living in Paris, meeting Gertrude Stein and F. Scott Fitzgerald, and developing a discipline around writing. I read A Moveable Feast because I enjoyed the extracts from it in Ernest Hemingway on Writing.

Discipline is what I took away from the book. Not just about the practice of writing, but across life. If you want to achieve anything creative you must get on and do it. I’ve never read a Hemingway novel, but I imagine I will soon.

It was necessary to get exercise, to be tired in the body, and it was very good to make love to whom you loved. That was better than anything. But afterwards, when you were empty, it was necessary to read in order not to think or worry about your work until you could do it again.

6.      Fluent in 3 Months: How Anyone at Any Age Can Learn to Speak Any Language from Anywhere in the World by Benny Lewis

Read it. Mostly agreed with it. Ignored it.

7.      Meditations by Marcus Aurelius

I started reading an older translation with rather archaic language, and then I switched to the Gregory Hays translation which is the one I would recommend. The book reminds me of a book of poetry my sister owns. It’s composed of lots of profound ideas that come illustrated with metaphors. Gregory Hays does a great job of making the language feel a little poetic.

To shrug it all off and wipe it clean – every annoyance and distraction – and reach utter stillness.

Child’s play.

I had one of those embarrassing moments reading this book. I was sitting out reading in the French sunshine. Grand-peré came over and asked what I was reading. It’s a bit awkward telling someone you’re reading Roman philosophy. They immediately want to know if it’s for your studies, and when I explain that I’m reading this serious toned ancient stuff for fun I’m embarrassed. Whilst Grand-peré knew the book, he knew the French version of the author’s name, so we had an extensive conversation where I was trying to be totally modest about reading and Grand-peré was trying to work out what it was I was reading. Then he made the connection and laughed at me.

8.      The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference by Malcolm Gladwell

and

9.      Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking by Malcolm Gladwell

These books are super easy to read. Some of the stories stick in my mind, many don’t. They’re what I would call the perfect book for an aeroplane or train journey. They need just enough thought to keep you engrained, but not so much that changing trains is an inconvenience.

10.  Eat, Drink, and Be Healthy: The Harvard Medical School Guide to Healthy Eating by Walter C. Willett

This book made me sceptical of everything I’ve ever read or ever been told about diet. It’s to blame for my insistence on whole-wheat pasta.

11.  How We Learn: Throw out the rule book and unlock your brain’s potential by Benedict Carey

Wrote a blog post thinking about this one. I often read the book on the train between my Catalonian village and Barcelona.

12.  Tribes: We Need You to Lead Us by Seth Godin

This is a manifesto. It’s a plea for a sort of marketing that’s more inclusive and driven by the consumer. Short and aggravating rather than strategic.

13.  The Art of Loving by Erich Fromm

I first thought that what I was learning was what love was – care, respect, responsibility and knowledge. But what I really gained was a different way of looking at the importance of having faith in those people you love.

To have faith requires courage, the ability to take a risk, the readiness even to accept pain and disappointment.

14.  Stumbling on Happiness by Daniel Todd Gilbert

I learnt that, disappointingly, you can’t plan happiness. We’ve not evolved that skill yet. We’re all rubbish at predicting what will make us happy. Our memory doesn’t include emotions like feeling of happiness – which is why for me keeping a diary is so important. When we remember something, or read a story, we recreate the emotions entirely from scratch.

Couples whose relationships have gone sour remember that they were never really happy in the first place.

And…

We are more likely to generate a positive and credible view of an action than an inaction, of a painful experience than of an annoying experience, of an unpleasant experience, of an unpleasant situation that we can’t escape than one we can. And yet, we rarely choose action over inaction, pain over annoyance and commitment over freedom.

15.  The Book of Forgiving: The Fourfold Path for Healing Ourselves and Our World by Desmond Tutu

We live surrounded by so much love, kindness, and trust that we forget it is remarkable.

I also wrote a blog post about this one.

16.  Rising Strong by Brené Brown

Embracing the vulnerability it takes to rise up from a fall and grow a little stronger makes us a little dangerous.

If you haven’t watched Brene Brown’s TED Talk, then do. I don’t care if you’re too ‘hard’, don’t have emotions or think it’s silly. Drown your ego and watch it. And then watch it again and then keep watching it until you can recite it to your heart.

I own, and have read, both The Gifts of Imperfection and Daring Greatly. This book, Rising Strong is a continuation on a theme, but it felt like a slightly different way of writing. It was nice, easy to read and the content useful, but I occasionally felt myself craving the more direct approach of Daring Greatly.

I regularly refer back to the bit that is on ‘the story I’m telling myself’.

17.  Fidelity: How to Create a Loving Relationship That Lasts by Thích Nhat Hanh

and

18.  The Art of Communicating by Thích Nhat Hanh

We think that because we find someone attractive, they have some kind of purity that is meaningful to us. But every person is made up of the pure and the impure, garbage as well as flowers.

It’s not often, but sometimes I start unhealthy thinking habits. Rather than laugh at my humanity, I feed the habit. It starts a spiral of negativity that I know if I keep feeding will only lead to one place: place of nothingness in which I am nothing.

Thích Nhất Hạnh writes short books. Beautiful, elegant, positive books which repeat again and again the thoughts I’m supposed to have engrained in my heart. They are forgiving books. Books which encourage space. And when I start biting at my own self-worth, they provide an anchor back to a gentle place.

19.  Me, Myself, and Us: The Science of Personality and the Art of Well-Being by Brian R. Little

Creative lives can be chaotic.

I find myself difficult company. My standards can be impossibly high, both of myself and others. I’m intensely introspective. In fact, I’m intense. I’m not your typical ‘fun’ person to hang around with. I’m hard work and exhausting. Stay in my company for too long and you’ll probably end up crying. If an experience has failed to make a significant mark on me, I deem it as a failure. I’m useless company on the sofa watching TV and I struggle to have the patience to finish a jigsaw puzzle. My sense of humour is described as ‘different’ and when I’m travelling my hosts regularly tell me to ease up on the studying.

In contrast, at other times I’m eccentrically playful. I’ll make decisions that feel crazy. I’ll skip down moors and tease silly American young men about being to coward to clamber down mountainsides. If necessary, I can do a great impression of a dying dragon.

I probably have what the psychologists call low latent inhibition. My filters of what is important and what isn’t important are a bit skewed. Perhaps it’s why I have a box of pretty pictures cut out of magazines which I cherish dearly, but a distinct lack of steady income, plan of where to live next month and shoes.

There is an upside to having low latent inhibition, however: it opens the individual to a rich array of remotely connected thoughts and images that those with more effective filters would have screened out. This can be a fertile ground for creative insights, heightened sensitivity, and novel ways of seeing the world. On the downside the unfiltered mind risks becoming overwhelmed and the ability to cope compromised.

But back to the cheerful subject of vulnerability and expressing your grief, shame and ugliness:

They [Jamie Pennebaker and his colleagues] have also shown that if you open up about the suppressed aspects of your life by writing or talking about them, something interesting happens to autonomic arousal. First, when opening up, the arousal level briefly increases – it isn’t easy to talk about that which you have been suppressing. But after opening up, arousal diminishes and not only goes back to the prior level of arousal but is actually lower than it was before the opening up. Those who open up are healthier, and this is in part due to enhanced immune system functioning.

20.  Creativity, Inc.: Overcoming the Unseen Forces That Stand in the Way of True Inspiration by Ed Catmull

This is the book that unmasks the magic of Pixar. It’s a book about mistakes and failures, repairing broken trust, being candid, vulnerable about emotions and letting go of the ego.

Which is, amusingly, what I was trying to avoid reading about. I told myself that I’d had enough wallowing in the re-education of my emotional mind and I needed to do something creative instead.

Mistakes aren’t a necessary evil. They aren’t evil at all. They are an inevitable consequence of doing something new (and, as such, should be seen as valuable; without them, we’d have no originality). And yet, even as I say that embracing failure is an important part of learning, I also acknowledge this truth is not enough. That’s because failure is painful, and our feelings about this pain tend to screw up our understanding of its worth.

It’s an excellent book, with some excellent stories.

21.  The Dance of Connection: How to Talk to Someone When You’re Mad, Hurt, Scared, Frustrated, Insulted, Betrayed, or Desperate by Harriet Lerner

This was my first book into psychoanalysis. I’d read several self-help books with the wild aim of working out why I so often get lost in not-quite-belonging, not-quite-honest relationships and a not-quite-sure identity. I’d read some nice idealistic promises from a mindfulness perspective. I’d read Erich Fromm telling us to tough it up and love. And I wanted more.

Honestly, I was hugely sceptical. But I was desperate to read something where someone would give me enough of an idea that I could design a strategy for getting on with my life and putting quality into my relationships.

This book has ended up on my reread list. If you’ve read Brené Brown and are wanting more concrete examples of people screwing up being vulnerable, this is the book to remove the sweetness of Brené Brown’s work and add a bit of salt.

Speaking out and being ‘real’ are not necessarily virtues. Sometimes voicing our thoughts and feelings shuts down the lines of communication, diminishes or shames another person, or makes it less likely that two people can hear each other or even stay in the same room. Nor is talking always a solution. We know from personal experience that our best intentions to process a difficult issue can move a situation from bad to worse. We can also talk a particular subject to death, or focus on the negative in a way that draws us deeper into it, when we’d be better off distracting ourselves and going bowling.

22.  The Examined Life: How We Lose and Find Ourselves by Stephen Grosz

Like in The Dance of Connection, this book is composed of encounters with clients that the psychotherapist Stephen Grosz has had over his career. The encounters are frustrating, because in the clients you see yourself and the people you care about. You see that we are like we are for reasons more complicated than we might imagine, and that change doesn’t happen overnight, if at all.

I found the use of dreams interesting. Particularly how Grosz used the clients’ interpretations of their own dreams – not his own interpretations – as an external arena where ideas could be placed and tackled.

I was touched by the following passage:

My experience is that closure is an extraordinarily compelling fantasy of mourning. It is the fiction that we can love, lose, suffer and then do something to permanently end our sorrow. We want to believe we can reach closure because grief can surprise and disorder us – even years after our loss.

23.  Committed: A Skeptic Makes Peace with Marriage by Elizabeth Gilbert

and

24.  Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear by Elizabeth Gilbert

I like Elizabeth Gilbert because she is slightly screwed up, and people who are slightly screwed up aren’t so threatening as those with scary pretend smiles like waxworks. Committed was written before Eat, Pray, Love went crazy and it feels like her audience is simply herself. She’s trying to convince herself that her necessary marriage is a good idea for reasons other than a visa. It’s an interesting read, and discusses the history and cultural position of marriage in good detail. But the standout factor for me, in relation to couples making success of marriage was the need for humility.

Her book on creativity was in some spots too ‘spiritual’ for my tastes, but I enjoyed it all the same.

25.  The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work by Alain de Botton

and

26.  How to Think More About Sex by Alain de Botton

Although this point is not typically dwelt on in art-historical discussions or museum catalogues, the Mother of Christ can often be an unambiguous turn-on.

                I don’t want to fish tuna or label biscuits. This probably doesn’t surprise you. Almost a year on, I remember many sorrows of work, but I’m struggling to remember what pleasures Alain de Botton eluded to. His books are gentle reads that involve art, history, travel and, for me at least, some occasional spontaneous snorting. His books throw out ideas that challenge and entertain. But they do it in such a way that you imagine he irons his shirts with true dedication.

27.  The Wonderbox: Curious histories of how to live by Roman Krznaric

Roman Krznaric and Alain de Botton work together. This is obvious as soon as you start reading The Wonderbox. However, The Wonderbox does manage to get to many points quickly, and cover a range of topics including love, family, money and death. I was most fascinated by the chapter on death which pointed out the huge distance at which we keep death.

However, the quite that I scribbled down in my diary was from the section on creativity.

‘To blossom forth,’ said Picasso, ‘a work of art must ignore or rather forget all the rules.’ If we wish our lives to blossom, we should do the same, and transform creativity into a philosophy of personal independence, which shapes how we approach our work, our relationships, our beliefs and our ambitions

28.  The Life and Works of Picasso by Nathaniel Harris

During this year, I treated myself to visits to the Picasso museum in Malaga and the Picasso museum in Barcelona. I really like Picasso’s work. I can’t quite articulate why. Others with their audio guides wander past me while I remain lost in feelings conveyed to me by eyes that are simple, blunt, brush strokes. I don’t know why I have the reaction I do. I’m a visual person and put excessive importance on my emotions, so I’m definitely more susceptible than many others. But still I can’t explain.

The book was a way of constructing a timeline around Picasso’s different periods of art. I found it useful.

29.  Get Some Headspace: Ten Minutes to Calm Through Meditation by Andy Puddicombe

I endorse the Headspace app, and if you haven’t tried meditation, or want a way into meditation then the Take Ten (ten ten-minute meditations) series is worth trying. This book is much of the same content as the app but in a different format and with some added autobiographical stories which are entertaining.

30.  Sane New World: Taming The Mind by Ruby Wax

Whilst mindfulness is of course great – if you’re a monk/nun, practice regularly and have great disciple to not be swayed by small or large emotions – but it’s also highly frustrating. The thoughts that I’m best letting float by, as if on a gentle breeze, are those of ‘I should sit and meditate now’.

It can be frustrating reading books by people like Andy Puddlecombe and watching TED Talks by monks, because, whilst modelling success, they do give you a feeling of it being a really long journey.

Ruby Wax is great, because her mind seems completely wacky, her emotions or depressions seem incredibly bold, and she gives you a sense of journeying without shoes but making progress regardless.

31.  The Little Book of Clarity: A Quick Guide to Focus and Declutter Your Mind by Jamie Smart

There are some good ideas hidden behind this book, but it’s wordy, repetitive, uses too many vague metaphors and lacks any story. Strict Vipassana meditation temporarily declutters your mind. This book does not.

32.  The Ragged Edge of Silence: Finding Peace in a Noisy World by John Francis

I used to look at houses as little boxes that we lived in waiting to die.

I learnt that my concept of silence is different to most. My silence isn’t an absence of noise, but what might be called noble silence, the silence of voice, body and mind. It’s a silence that prohibits reading and study. There is no writing. It’s the silence of deep meditation.

But there’s a silence that’s somewhere in between. A silence that is used as a tool to become a better listener and to avoid meaningless arguments, bickering and unkind words.

John Francis is a weird guy. An extreme person. Someone who isn’t ruled by the same incredible desire for validation and social acceptance as me. His perspective and thoughts make an interesting read.

He chose not to speak for 17 years, and he chose not to ride in a motorised vehicle. And he chose to make the world a better place.

33.  A Book of Silence by Sara Maitland

The book was lovely, although it did have a sedating effect on me. Being in the moment is great, but sometimes it’s useful to think about where the moment’s going to get you.

Anyway, Sara Maitland, who writes elegantly, concludes that there are really three types of silence. That dangerous silence which is forced upon you: school playground silent treatment, prisoners held in isolation and people with secrets that can’t be said through fear of shame.  Then there’s meditation and the quiet finding of space within one’s mind to reduce the ego. This is what most religious silences tend to be. And then there’s the necessary solitude and silence often required by an artist to create, which utilises the ego as a tool.

Silence shapes the silent. Which leads me to a question, what silence do I want in my life, and how do I hope for it to shape me?

34.  The Art of the Siesta by Thierry Paquot

The originality of the work that each of us hope to achieve depends largely upon our retaining control of our own time.

I wanted this book to provide evidence that me taking an afternoon nap is a perfectly valid choice. However, this book wasn’t about sleeping. It was about time management, but it approached it’s subject from a variety of unusual perspectives, like descriptions of great paintings that depict a post lunch humanity: a lull in efforts, an increase in sexual arousal, and an appreciation for the moment.

35.  The Battersea Park Road to Enlightenment by Isabel Losada

I like Isabel Losada. I’d genuinely like to have coffee with this woman. If anyone wants to get me another of her books they’re more than welcome.

She’s a scientist, although I don’t think she’d really go for that label. She takes things that may or may not help her deal better with her life, and where many of us would chicken out, she sacrifices her ego and goes for it.

Her experiments include staying in a convent, weekends away to find your inner goddess or some angels, tai chi, numerous massage therapies, and sessions to express your anger.

She’s also done a Vipassana meditation course – which I am of course impressed by because I know how hard that it.

36.  Walden & Civil Disobedience by Henry David Thoreau

You start reading, and a few pages in, you wonder if you’re ever going to see the end of this book. I read it, because it’s one of those books that are regularly referenced. It offered some interesting opinions on what factors you might want to consider when trying to identify how to live your life. It also went on a lot about things like how ants fight. Pages and pages on three ants fighting to the death. Thinking about the dying ants makes me feel quite uneasy.

37.  Shaking hands with death by Terry Pratchett

This tiny book is a speech that Terry Pratchett gave about his opinions on death and the right to die. It’s a good read, and thought provoking.

38.  Long Walk to Freedom by Nelson Mandela

The brave man is not he who does not feel afraid, but he who conquers that fear.

Long but worth it. I also wrote a blog post about this one.

Just some things I did last year

last year
The Nile, Egypt, 2016

Last year I sat on the edge of Horemheb’s tomb – he’s the king that came shortly after Tutankhamun – and I shared tea with three Egyptian men. One invited me to be his third wife, I declined. We laughed about football and he told me about his kids.

Last year I said yes to a young Egyptian man who wanted to buy me coffee. I beat him at pool, and he took me out for dinner. I drove his horse through the villages on the west bank. We saw cows being slaughtered and he bought me chocolate even when I told him not to.

Last year I went to a beautiful club on a boat on the Nile. My dress was the longest dress of all the women. I wore the least makeup and had my shoulder’s covered. In the middle of the dance floor, I belly-danced, for the first time. I was never short of a partner.

Last year I danced on the beach after the sun had set, earphones in, feet bare, not caring who was watching, just because I could.

Last year I spent 9 days in noble silence, doing serious meditation, with more disciplined, more focused and more patience than I had ever imagined.

Last year I woke up early to run up the hill and watch the sun rising on the horizon.

Last year a guy stopped me as I was walking past and apologized for his impropriety, but he just needed to tell me that I was beautiful. I beat him at pool.

Last year I watched my sister stride across the stage, greet her chancellor as an equal and take her degree. No other woman showed such confidence.

Last year I watched my sister fall in love.

Last year I became fitter than I have ever been. I ran up my mountain and swam in the sea. I cycled up a 20% hill and almost fell off my bike at the top.

Last year I created a network of au pairs so that I’d always have someone to have coffee with. I learnt about Italian food, Irish fears of commitment, German heartbreaks, Swedish grit, American religion, philosophy and gynaecologists. We ate chocolate croissants that melted in your mouth.

Last year I ate carrot cake pancakes, and told my secrets. Even the ones that I didn’t want to tell.

Last year I did the grape harvest and made wine.

Last year I caught a black donkey in a dark wood.

Last year I designed, traced, sawed, sanded and painted Christmas lights for the centre of Palermo. I walked beneath them and realized I’d made something real.

Last year I taught nature studies in Catalan, babysat in French (in a really big castle), and did woodwork in Italian.

Last year I read 58 books.

Last year I watched the sun set, orange on a winter’s sky.

Last year I saw the milky way and hunted zombies in the vegetable patch.

Last year I was told thank you by more people, with more sincerity and for more reasons than I could have imagined.

For last year, I am truly grateful.

Reading to learn what forgiveness feels like (Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu)

I don’t recall where this photo comes from, a walk somewhere, a pensive moment perhaps.

Long Walk to Freedom by Nelson Mandela

I’ve finally finished Nelson Mandela’s Long Walk to Freedom. The selfish point of reading it was to discover how one develops the skills of forgiveness: how one goes from angry person to gentle compassionate soul, and what all of this really means.

And I’ve totally failed. I’m no longer even sure if forgiveness, as I originally understood it, is a thing. Mandela is so good at explaining why his opposition feel the way they do, even when they do something stupid that results in a tragedy. I suppose the word is wise. He was a wise man.

I’m not wise. I’m young, emotional and volatile. I take things personally and I don’t simply let go of my anger.

The dictionary gives me the definition that to forgive is to stop feeling angry or resentful towards (someone) for an offence, flaw, or mistake.

Personally, I want to add to ‘angry or resentful’ a third feeling: afraid.

My anger isn’t just that I’m annoyed by circumstances. It primarily comes from a terror that’s embedded deep inside me and which demonstrates its existence through defensive behaviour including being angry. (My friends have several eloquent ways of saying I can be a nightmare in more polite language.)

Anyway, as I understand it, dear Nelson may have been angry and resentful towards certain individuals, but he had a bigger understanding of the world. A bigger problem that he wanted to solve. And as much as he loved or hated individuals, they did not matter so much as making progress in the journey towards his goal: freedom.

In my deeply introspective regurgitation of ideas, this inevitably means I land right back where I started with selfishness. Mandela it seems could forgive, or at least deal with the horror and anger he must have felt, because he was striving forward. He had a purpose bigger than himself. He knew that his goal of freedom required him to have strong working relationships with people whose ideas and beliefs he was fundamentally opposed to. Freedom mattered more than ego.

So, I’m left with the conclusion that forgiveness can be achieved through a mixture of understanding, perspective, and the courage to push forward towards something greater.

Or if it’s not forgiveness, it’s at least something.

The Book of Forgiving: The Fourfold Path for Healing Ourselves and Our World by Archbishop Desmond Tutu

When I was travelling, and Long Walk to Freedom, was too heavy for my luggage, I read this book by Archbishop Desmond Tutu and his daughter.

“Forgiveness is truly the grace by which we enable another person to get up, and get up with dignity, to begin anew.”

I like this definition because it suggests action rather than a simple absence of anger. It’s nice to think of forgiveness as the loss of anger. However, is this really feasible?  You can repress anger, or it can disappear. But then, when triggered, it can resurface or reappear. I can think I’ve developed empathy and understanding, and that I have this time forgiven, and then someone says something, or nothing, and I . I’m afraid and before long I’m closing the door with force than necessary.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu headed The Truth and Reconciliation Commission in post-apartheid South Africa. Several of his stories are from this period.

“Behaviour that is hurtful, shameful, abusive or demeaning must be brought into the fierce light of truth. And truth can be brutal. In fact, truth may exacerbate the hurt; it might make things worse. But if we want real forgiveness and real healing, we must face the real injury.”

Forgiveness is not a weakness. One person told another person that I’d forgive them, because I always do. And I got the impression, rightly or wrongly, that they saw my acceptance and determination to continue to like people even when they hurt me as a weakness. I don’t believe it is. Forgiveness is not the weak scrubbing out one’s self-worth as to accept without reservation another’s story. Forgiveness is a gallant act. It’s empathising with those who have caused you pain, learning to understand why they hurt you, and taking this understanding as a tool for walking out of anger.

Forgiveness is not forgetting.

Nor is it pretending that hurt has not happened.

Forgiveness is not quick or easy. It takes a lot of effort and time to develop that empathy and understanding of a person who has caused you pain, shame and the subsequent fear and anger that come from feeling hurt.

The fourfold path

This route to forgiveness advocated by Archbishop Desmond Tutu isn’t a case of a strategy you can walk through once. Sometimes you must keep going back to the beginning and starting again. Some days you wake up still feeling an old pain that you imagined had left and must start again from the beginning.

  • Tell the story
  • Name the hurt
  • Grant forgiveness
  • Renew or release the relationship

I’m learning. And learning. Further book recommendations or ideas are always welcome.

Swallows and Amazons

Swallows

Today I went to church. This isn’t a usual event for me. It’s not even a usual event for me on Christmas Eve, although I do admit I attended church the last time I celebrated Christmas Eve: an orthodox church on 5th January in Egypt.

But today’s church trip wasn’t for religious reasons, or for learning about a different culture. It was to watch Swallows and Amazons.

You see, we live in a rather adorable village where the local church doubles up as a cinema twice a month. From my pew (not as uncomfortable as I’d imagined), I drank my mug of proper coffee and instead of endless adverts watched a short film of a slightly edited Christmas song led by one of my favourite Yorkshire men. Afterwards my midget sister leant forward, looked down the pew and asked if I’d found it funny.

Then they served ice-cream.

Then we watched the film.

No messing. No excessive advertising. Just two boats, six children and a holiday of play.

And although I woke up this morning in the sort of mood that would make Father Christmas think twice before giving me any presents, I laughed. It’s a beautiful film and a gorgeous story. If you’re a British kid like me, then I do hope you’ve read Swallows and Amazons. If you haven’t, you should. It was probably one of the stories that started me drawing maps. Combined with the Famous Five, it was the source material for numerous games I played with the Midget.

But more than that, I also have a great respect for the film’s setting, the Lake District. The film was a reminder, on a bittersweet day, that amid that landscape, the important thing is let the wind take your sails, call out and play.

Thinking about the stranger on the plane

Palermo, lamps

The plane hits the tarmac, and the Italian lady beside me smiles. I worry for her. She’s in London now, and not so many people here speak Italian. Her English is non-existent. How’s she going to know where the way out is, or baggage reclaim? How’s she going to manage the train, or the tube? How is she going to find her hotel?

It is a stupid concern. I barely know her. I’ve spent the three-hour flight and the twenty-minute delay sleeping. I know she’s not my responsibility. And yet, as I watch her shift uncomfortably beside me, I feel a sense of concern on her behalf.

She will of course be fine. Her phone works, she has access to the Internet. She can translate as she goes, check out the train times and if in doubt loudly wave her arms at whomever is working in the ticket office. Even if success requires carefully pronouncing the place where she wants to travel five times, taking a deep breath and then resorting to writing the name down on paper to get a ticket, she’ll be fine. There will be moments of frustration when communication seems impossible. And there will be wonderful moments of relief when understanding miraculously appears. But she’s going to be fine and one day she’ll be like me, sitting on the plane home.

On a normal everyday basis, I live in this same communication whirlwind. But now I’m home.

Do you find it surprising that, for me, it feel like abroad I am fluent and here I am lost for words.

I can make a friend anywhere, but home forces me to think about how to be a good friend. Relationships involve work, more so than chatting with someone who has no expectation of seeing you again. Being invested in someone in the long run is more complex. For me it’s hard work. I’m more uncertain about my words. I care about what I say and I wish I could say something meaningful and intelligent but most of the time I find myself lost. Sometimes I really screw up.

When I travel, people ask, what and where next. I shrug, smile and explain that I’ll think about that properly in January. To them this seems perfectly reasonable. They don’t care. In January, we won’t be part of each others lives.

But at home, so much uncertainty is less of a satisfactory an answer. Here there are people in my life who are rather more invested in my future. Love, blood and history matters. I’m interacting not with some delightful stranger, but friends and family who I deeply love. It terrifies me.

I wonder who the Italian lady has waiting back home for her.