I wrote this on my way back to UK, on a ferry headed to Volos..... Please tell me why it is when there are LOADS of spare seats around, a group of young Greek people decide to play their card games at a table right next to me, their mobile phones going off and the sun streaming through the window annoying them so they tweak the curtain back and cut off my vista? Sigh. Inhibit. When they played a pop song on their phone, I just switched my windows media, turned up the volume and played some opera back. Have I turned into a grouchy old woman? YES!! I was probably just as noisy space invading and irritating as a youth and thought myself justified. However they are now playing an action film without headphones....bloody hell!! Sounds like helicopters bombarding people.....
The last 3 weeks have been tiresome. I had a cold, the weather got cold and damp so plans for sunny outings in the car to other parts of the island were dashed. Also there were only two days I could do any gardening. I had bad news about my pay level and found myself feeling bad tempered. I observed this phenomenon, losing my cool, having a short fuse, and couldn’t do much about it. Outside things conspired to give me tricky stimuli. The stove went wrong and belched diesel smoke into the room, and had to be turned off. The electric heater only worked on one bar instead of three and the toilet began blocking up. Shit happens as they say! However, our neighbour leant us two if his heaters and having a little car meant trips to Patitiri for the bank and the shops in the pouring rain were a dream!
I have done a little planning for the summer workshops – a new poster- and my newly designed website www.alexanderingreece.com is up and running.
From January I had hoped to run private classes for individual pupils in the school at ArtsEd but no-one has emailed me or shown any interest yet. This is marvellous as it will give me more time for my private practice and time to write and practice my violin!
The latter has benefited from my more regular practice though I am aware I might be practicing bad habits. I have recently discovered that sitting down seems to make me less tense and my violin playing has affected well my bar chords on the guitar. Bm is now a different experience.
I was on my laptop a lot, listening to the Archers or Radio 7 dramas. I am pleased that I have no symptoms of RSI yet, although it may have contributed to the back ache I received over the last few days. I joined a poetry group on FB which aim is to write a poem every day/week/month for a year. I chose a week, as i thought that might be just about reasonable, but others have clearly chosen a day and I am being flooded with poetry through my mailbox. Rather lovely even if I do delete most of the messages so I am not overwhelmed. It has made me write more, three in a week, so I am saving them up and will release them one week at a time for those moments when the muse dries up. I think this is a form of inhibition and not end-gaining. Being tortoise-like rather than the hare.
Last year I resolved to walk cheerfully and live adventurously. I will continue this and add courage and joy to my resolves. I enjoyed the film the Mystic River and the bit that really sticks in my mind is right at the end when the guy is rightly feeling guilty for wrongfully suspecting and killing his friend for child abuse. As I remember it, his wife embraces him and says how wonderful she thinks he is that he would take such a step to protect his daughter and others like her. And he walks back out on the street head held high. It was such a contrast to the friend’s wife who despised her husband and also suspected him of such a dreadful thing. In allowing myself to be joyful, I sang my way home from the headland to the village. The dog was very kind and put up with this, after years of accompanying this strange woman on her walks.
I have done my lying down sessions and I reproduce my report on this here, as I shall read out to my acting students this coming week. Some of them I am pleased to say have made entries in my Facebook page ‘I like lying down in semi-supine’.....
‘Reading through my notes there were two distinct types of lying down – before Christmas I lay down outside when I was walking my dog.
I found places beneath pine trees or by the sea or on paved terraces or on a deserted path, a rock or a plastic bottle under my head. The dog used to this strange behaviour over the years, would lie down nearby or right next to me expecting his tummy to be scratched before I pushed him away in Dog Whisperer style.
I noticed the trees, the dance of the clouds in the sky, the birds flying overhead, the dog snuffling an insect buzzing, my own ears ringing. I noticed the wind blowing cold. All this, the awareness of the outside world, is part of my system of bringing myself to the moment.
I would also notice the wandering of my mind, thinking of the philosophy of life, Alexander work, but a lot on problems – injustice in the world in general but mostly in my personal world. Sometimes I would notice the silence. And the wandering of the mind was like the wandering of the goats on the mountain – something to notice observe from a distance, another place that was not the living in and with the herd.
During this time I had a cold and I found the outside environment comforting somehow. Occasionally I would fall asleep and other times noticed the viral ache in my muscles.
At Christmas onwards the weather turned colder and wetter and even when there were moments I could have lain down outside, I didn’t want to. I was feeling better. I waited till late at night and lay by the stove in the low light. A couple of times before I left, I did it in the morning. My lower back had started aching – I think due to a bad bed and my driving a car again after some years, and it became imperative to reorganise the spine and allow the psoas muscle to relax. Which it did.
Sometimes I would fall asleep. Always when I fall asleep in semi supine I have a very restful nap. Once after such a time I rolled over and played my violin and sang with my guitar for two hours with much joy. (My partner is very hard of hearing so it is easy for me to make such a loud noise late at night without disturbing him.)
During this latter time I also listened to the CD from the Open Focus Brain which has correlations with the unified field of attention in the Alexander World. I thought of my three dimensional self and the space between things – distances between my eyes, the volume of my head, the shoulders, all the way down to the feet. I felt like an Anthony Gormley sculpture. The space between outside things. And this brought me easily to an alpha brain wave state, a peace and nowness.
The CD goes through instructions very slowly and specifically and it began to annoy me so I stopped listening and used my own model – also over the years of my own work I can think myself into this state, all of me together, in a sweep of an arm, which is slightly longer than a blink of an eye, but that same idea of a steady clear shift from disparate thinking and being into a wholesome place. It may not stay for any length of time, but I know it exists and can find it anytime I choose to let go and dwell in this field of consciousness. It’s an easier place to inhabit without conflict, but o my ego does like to hang on to the familiar territory of worry, control and frustration.
