Tuesday 25 May 2010

Poems and plays

The man on the bus
looked like Clint Eastwood
short greying hair, blue eyes
and a furrow between his brows.
But then Clint Eastwood went pear-shaped
as in a dream when something’s not right at all
and all that was well becomes a horror....

He sat in his blue tee shirt that
matched his eyes
in a slump on his coccyx
his chest sinking
his shoulders rounded,
and it mattered not
he put his sunglasses on
he simply didn’t look cool anymore

and I was glad when he picked up his backpack
and got off at the next stop.

21.5.10




On the bus

The little girl with long dark curly hair
and a cute nose and freckles
dangled her feet from her seat.
She wore Indian sandals
flip flops with fringed fabric colourfully slung between the straps.
She smiled intermittently at
her mother who sat nearby
as she licked her ice-cream....

Her little arms were resting on the
giant arm-rests and her shoulders
were up by her ears

and I had a vision of her as a young woman
smiling on reception,
pretty, shy, friendly
her shoulders still up by her ears and wondering why
she had a pain in the neck
by Friday afternoon.

21.5.10

Do you like them? They are the sort of thing that this Alexander teacher sometimes thinks of when travelling on a 214 bus from Old St to Hampstead Heath for a walk in the hot sunshine (the world and her husband was there this Saturday!)to Parliament Hill before catching a train to Brondesbury to meet Alexander friends to watch 'Shrunk' by Charlotte Eilenberg at the Cock Tavern. Charlotte trained in AT at LCATT in Highbury and was an assistant at ArtsEd with me briefly when she graduated. And clearly she still writes plays! Very very clever - I won't give the plot away, but not unlike a fantasy I had once about a student who suddenly turns into a terrorist in my teaching room and challenges my assumptions about inhibiting reactions to stimuli. 'INHIBIT THIS!' as she pulls the trigger....

Happy days!

On the subject of poetry another student of mine, Peter Daniels won the TLS poetry competition with his poem The Pump. http://extras.timesonline.co.uk/tsl-pdfs/poetrycompetition.pdf

Creative lot my Alexander colleagues and students.

Wednesday 5 May 2010

travelling





April 25th saw me travelling from Alonnisos to Volos on my way back to UK. This is what I wrote:

'I am on the Skiathos Express with friends from Alonnisos, two also travelling back to UK , two to visit the cardiologist and an operation for the heart.

My dog Spiros I left sulking on the bed. He wouldn’t look at me, head on the pillow, deigning to let me stroke him goodbye....Mo came down to the port to see me off. We sat and drank our coffee and beer staring out to sea, just like when we got together 17 years ago....

I was supposed to have left on Friday to do a workshop for the union of music teachers at Thessaloniki – EEME - on Saturday. I had been suffering with appalling dizziness since Wednesday however and had to cancel. I hate doing that. But I spent a day in bed and slowly slowly got better – thanks to some advice by the German ladies I knew who all told me it was labyrinthitis and needed to crash down head first sideways onto the bed both sides to release the stones from the hairs in my inner ear. That and a couple of exciting journeys on the back of Mo’s scooter to Patitiri to change my ticket and buy some ibuprofen. Love the feel of wind in my hair in the sunshine and clapsing the back of my beloved as we zoomed down the hill.

People often ask what do I do on a Greek Island. Well.....at this time of year, work on myself, the garden and being domestic.

I planted an olive tree on the land below, plus a couple of cacti, clearing some of the weeds whilst keeping the poppies going.

I walked the dog long walks, took photos of the wild flowers and views of the light and the village.

I went with the Walking Club and walked up the stony bed of the Gorge to magnificent views above Agios Dimitrios and the new reservoir that is being built with EU money– our water table is going down with more tourists and more swimming pools, showers, toilets etc etc being built.

One evening we went to a rock and roll night at Mary’s Bar and danced the night away with the Aloni Band – you can see them on YouTube, and they’ve been on Greek and French TV – rock with the over 50’s... Mo was very stiff afterwards, but so nice to have a go at jiving with him.

April 13th was Alexander Thinking Day when all my 1st year students are supposed to think in AT terms. I remembered by about 2pm. I laughed and laughed and realised I had already been thinking in Alexander terms of course. I started out walking with Spiros not knowing where I was going, but if I kept going, I’d get there! We ended up visiting Polly and John for a cup of tea near the well, then going on towards Chris and Julia’s and turning off down the path through the olive trees to the kalitheri to the track through the burnt pine forest and around lesser known paths till we arrived on the road from Patitiri to the village. Just before I met our summer neighbour Senora ‘Pou pas?’ ‘on my way to milk my goats’, then nearer home on the mule track I met Fat Maria (no longer fat since her diagnosis of diabetes, as Thin Maria is no longer thin as she has got older) walking her goats up the hill past Panayiottis’ mules and shouting the time of day. Then we met Aleko who was clearing his olive grove, and I felt part of the community for a moment – connected. It seems Kafka’s quote about life rolling at your feet was truly happening without my doing anything – it has no choice.

Of course the volcano erupting in Iceland and stopping air traffic was big news and affected our neighbour Charlie who turned back from Athens airport and stayed a week longer than intended. I seem to have escaped any flight problems – I just missed BA cabin crew strike coming, and the aeroplanes are flying again as I return.

I gave two lessons whilst I was there. One was to Claudia who I have been dying to get onto my table ever since she complained of neck pains some years ago now. The sun was going behind the house by the time she arrived and it was beginning to be a little cool out on my terrace, but nonetheless she wrapped herself up in an extra hoody and I believe she had some new experience of herself.

The other lesson was with Charlie and we had great fun as we took the lesson out to a terrace at the end of the village to experiment in being present, and discovering what was happening to our attention as we gazed down at Mikros Mourtias and over to Skopelos and ducked under the mulberry tree...

I had some more bookings for the summer workshops which I'm very pleased about. I think it's more companionable for participants if there are three or four people to share the experience with.

So there are some memories of my Easter break on Alonnisos. Full of wild flowers and butterflies and fragrance of sage and thyme.'