Farewells

Farewells. Just said the last farewell to the workshop members. What a great time we had again. The weather was unsettled and one morning we were doing our Chi Kung practice and swimming in a gentle rain! (I was intent on taking everyone for a walk into the forest, but my group insisted they wanted a swim....) The sun came out again for the last three days and a splendid time was had by all. My highlights: Romina’s lesson with us in Inner Tango, Aoife’s magic lemon experience, Fraser playing with his voice, and Susie’s Hot Seat answers and discovery of hip joints.

A few days ago I was travelling round Isomota with a friend and pointed up a driveway ‘ Helene the herbalist lives up there. She teaches Nia dance too.’ ‘She must be very strong woman to live here’ my friend responded – true it is in the middle of nowhere, but with such beautiful views over to Peristera. But tonight I am to drink a toast to Helene in celebration of her life, as that very evening she was driving back home from Steni Vala and turned the car over the edge and was killed. No-one knows what happened. Only the week before she had hosted our annual ‘4 strong women’ dinner at her place –for Waultraud, fellow herbalist, Uschi my CST practitioner and I. An evening of dance and salad and Pimms! ‘Send not for whom the bell tolls....’. We never know when our time is up.
My time is up here on Alonnisos for the summer. Spiros is following me around as he knows the signs. I have one more lesson to give, and then I will pack up the table, get out the suitcase, and try and stuff some of my life into it. Mo and I as usual are grown up and keep cheerful despite not seeing each other for 6 weeks........my diary in London is full for next week, so I will be engrossed in settling back to urban life. The dog meantime will sniff my shoes miserably and Mo will sleep better without a restless Pen beside him.

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.'

Another busy day in Alonnisos

I have been here over a week and just about let go of habitual London tensions and speed and slowed down to my island life. Instead of charging about the highways and byways with dog in tow hoping to get fitter and lose weight (my jeans didn’t seem to fit me too well when I was struggling into them to travel in) I am now walking happily engrossed in the beautiful spring flowers and natural events that surround me, allowing the day to unfold as it will.


As Kafka says ‘Remain sitting at your table and listen. You need not even listen, simply wait, just learn to become quiet, still, and solitary. The world will freely offer itself to you to be unmasked. It has no choice; it will roll in ecstasy at your feet.’


This is quoted in a marvellous book called The Actor’s Art and Craft. William Esper teaches the Meisner Technique by William Esper and Damon DiMarco, pub. by Anchor Books, available through Amazon. I brought it with me for the plane and coach and Cat, and am still savouring every moment. It makes it so clear how AT can help in the actor getting out of the way of her/himself, to allow something else to happen. My colleague Aileen at ArtsEd suggested it to me as I have 4 sessions left with MA’s where I can really play and experiment with them, and this will be a great foundation, so they really understand at last that AT is not all about posture or bodies but a profound psycho-physical experience in living.


Natural events that happened in the last week: meeting a snake on the path, a big black grass snake basking in the sun, curled back on itself and having to shout NO SPIROS!! very loudly and run speedily after my dog who was also running towards it barking and hoping to play with it/savage it or something equally dangerous. The poor snake slid off into the undergrowth at all the noise and I breathed a sigh of relief and cuddled Spiros so he knew I wasn’t really cross.


Today we met a very dozy rat that refused to move from the path skirting an olive grove. I held on to Spiros’ collar just in case he tried to have a go, as it occurred to me perhaps the little animal wasn’t well. Spiros was poisoned 18 months ago from insecticide and has had a dicky tummy ever since. They use strong insecticide sometimes on their olive trees.


A few days ago Spiros snuffled out two pheasant from where they were hiding in long grass. Don’t know who was more surprised – him, me or the birds! They lumbered off into flight Spiros wagging his tail and laughing.


On my walks with the dog, I spend some time stopping – either for chi kung practice or to lie down in semi supine. Spiros is used to this now and doesn’t winge too much, but curls up nearby until I have finished. It is very special to do this practice in such a beautiful place.


I have also been thinking about the axis vertebrae in the neck. It is the end of the ‘fixed’ spinal column. I mean that below there are no freely moveable joints, just firm discs, that allow the spine to distort according to our use and movement. And then sitting on its prong is the infinitely moveable atlas which swivels to let our head rotate , and on top of that the skull sitting on the fluid of the joints and balancing itself. Remembering that as I walk somehow changes how the head is sitting, and my spine lengthens. I get a bigger sense of my trapezius too, the neck as it were connected all the way down my thoracic spine. I had a model of the axis sitting on my shelf at home at an odd angle and it was this which set up a new exploration in my thinking and experience .


Today I actually gave a lesson – to Charlie my neighbour here who is out for a few days and who is a long term student of mine. He first came for lessons here some 11 years ago, just wandered down the road and happened to see me on the balcony and said ‘Are you Penny? Do you do Alexander lessons?’ He had read my advert somewhere and come over on a whim hoping to find me and some accommodation. We were able to put him up next door and he has since bought the place when it went on the market a couple of years ago.

So Charlie and I had a great lesson which started as we walked to a quiet sunny spot at the end of the village, and played with balance, intention, allowing, staying present in a unified field of attention - with a view to die for, and blue sky space over our heads to direct up to.....and to include more and more, and still be open and available even delighting in the light of the green leaves as the sun set over Kalovoulos and the sea turned silvery, without narrowing to this or losing our selves.


Two more people booked up for the workshops this summer, so I hope they have equally extraordinary moments as we work together. I have been working on the computer quite a lot, answering questions for them, helping them book flights and booking accommodation for them, and also for Becky who I Alexander trained with 18 years ago at David Gorman’s Centre for Training in North London. She is coming over this June with her husband and 14 year old daughter, and haven’t seen any of them for years. She teaches AT in the context of singing lessons in Cape Town. I am hoping a couple of contacts will come up trumps for a very low cost house for a week. It will take some searching but I think it is possible.


My other joy of course is to be with my darling Mo who waits and watches my London brain slowly change gear – siga, siga...It helped in a funny way that I got a funny tummy for a few days. Just wanted to doze in the sun and not do anything very much. I thought it was some well water that I had filled my bottle with, but I understand there is a bug going round and sadly Mo now seems to have it. He is upstairs sleeping and I will join him soon. I do find the bed here INCREDIBLY uncomfortable for my back, and move around a lot in the night trying in vain to get comfortable. Not helped that I am squidged between heavy dog and man. Thank goodness for my AT.


In contrast I sadly heard that a neighbour up the road found the operation on her back made it even worse and is now mostly in a wheel chair. She had some relief from a few lessons with me the year before but it was unlikely the condition of narrowed nerve channels was going to get better completely. Hmmm....... She wasn’t looking forward to the operation either. However, she has an indominitable spirit and went on an Antarctic cruise with her husband at Xmas and is planning to have her 70th birthday her in Alonnisos next month.