Cali joy

"You've been to The Source," said Cecilia, who is veh veh Insightful. 'Tis true. California is the place for good. It's as if you are dropped down, very carefully, by a giant benevolent hand, into a magical place where everything is set up to work in your favor.  And you can take one, two, three dance steps with pointed toes to meet the pavement where it meets you. (Quite a few of) The people you love are there. The friends are there. Even people you haven't seen for years are there, and you bump into them frequently during the day, as a reminder that you're on the right track. The food is delicious. The trees are blooming. You discover the Eastern Redbud tree, filled with its tiny fuchsia colored orchid-like flowers. There is an Orange-Crowned Warbler outside your window at five ayem, singing its heart out. A small child called Otto, who thinks you're really, really funny, even when nobody else does, likes to sit next to you. He also stares at you intently, observing everything, waiting for the next sign to laugh.  You see a sliver of eclipsed moon on your first evening, and a mist that could have been from Avalon, floating over Wilshire Boulevard the following morning. There are long forgotten loquats, that plum yellow fruit, in almost every garden, bougainvillea falling over every wall, palest blue skies, new restaurant build outs on Larchmont, along with overpriced (but delicious) match and cardamom pastries from Sweden, and yes, your sister-in-law, by chance, wearing vintage earrings, hugging you unexpectedly. Also lunch with girlfriends you haven't chatted with in years. Walks with your son in the rain. Biscuits with cheese and chives in Griffith Park. Italian take-out with friends who've tucked you in a white blanket by the fire because you have jetlag and are complaining, like a baby, of exhaustion. There is green rice and black beans and seared fish and massaged kale salad, and churros, hot from the pan, served with either warm caramel or warm chocolate sauce. There is the old friend who has the new Great Dane puppy, already a hundred pounds, and spotted like your second Dalmatian who she loved so much. But BIGGER, Monica! Much bigger than a Dalmatian. Similarly adored. And your dress shop friend, the chicest person you know, with her new chin length haircut with the faintest sign of a flip, who makes cardigans and neck scarves look fresh and clever. Your journalist friend eating breakfast in the farmer's market with the same group every morning for thirty years. The booths that carry sound waves like speakers at the Beverly Hills Hotel, where no-one plays polo. The tv writer who trained as a quantum physicist. (Everyone carries something. We all carry something. We all do our best. I must remember this.) But yes, this is the source of optimism and hope and joy. This is the place where people root for you to win, not fail. It's where you belong, where you put in your years, where you found a home in that weird bit of manicured and watered desert, where you fell in and out of love, where your children put down their roots too, deep down where it's no longer dry. It doesn't matter what people say about California and how the dream has failed, or that the homelessness is out of control. All these things can be true. (There is a particularly moving opinion piece in the NY Times about the unhoused problem here.) It's still there, the source, the very true and brave and real and heady idea that you can do whatever you want to do, follow your dream, and you can succeed at it. That there is something you can plug into that will pull the best out of you and manifest it (ugh I am so not a fan of that word, but what is a better word?) It's filled with people with big dreams and big ideas and big emotions and the desire to talk about it all. You can almost see the ideas floating just a few feet above the people as they walk down the street, forming as they walk. They are out there, with light shone on them, sunlight...not held inside and twisted and shamed and tamped down, but lifted up for the world to see. Curiosity did not in fact kill the cat. It launched a million dreams.

Incidentally The Source was a very groovy Vegan restaurant on Sunset Strip when I first came to LA. Perfect, right?

 ‘Do what you want, just be kind’ - 
Father Yod of the Source Family

I've been thinking so much about this:

What you seek is seeking you - Rumi

More reasons for grace

There's a comforting lilt to posts I've written in the past about food and family. The lovely Amy Ephron would poach (no pun intended) food posts from Miss Whistle and purloin them for her own One For The Table, and I'm honored she did so. Here is one that just popped up - Thanksgiving: Cooking for 22. (Amy Ephron is a wonderful writer - you must check out her A Cup Of Tea.) And so, in this weird time where Mercury is retrograding like billy-o I'm coming back to the calm of writing about food (and thus, everything else) in this my favorite place to write. Thank you to those of you who still come back to Miss Whistle. I'm enormously grateful.

Something happened just two days ago that changed us on a cellular level - the arrival of Spring. On Thursday everything was wet and sodden and grey; huge swathes of pasture were under water, unable to receive even another drop, beyond absorbency and tired of it, clearly. A whole bunch of exasperated fields and lacklustre solitary daffodils, bowing at awkward angles, their limbs broken and feeling awfully sorry for themselves. Even the bunnies were hopping lackadaisically. Bare, dull, beige trees stood around like surly teenagers. Good Friday was as you would expect it to be: sad. And then, on Easter Saturday, the world burst open, birch leaves popping, wild garlic shooting, green fractals expanding spirally, chaotically, joyfully. A million more birds appeared and sang very, very loudly, like the annoying competitive family at the back of the church. Far too many descants. Hooting geese charged overhead in twos and threes like Messerschmidts, and the jackdaws and magpies and pheasants did an elaborate Morris dance outside the backdoor where the chicken scratch corn had been scattered. It was glorioius mayhem. Walk in it and you could feel every little organelle and microchondria bursting inside you, just bursting with joy. All the things that had been closed down, were absolutely brimming, every single thing that was true and honest and just and pure and lovely and of good report, were filled with praise.

And you think I'm exaggerating?

We were positively giddy, walking hand in hand down Pangbourne High Street, stopping for bread and cheese, and tulips for my mother. Swallowing, as you do, when you can't quite believe what you're seeing or how you're feeling; every little cell buzzing like a Murakami-style smiley face, every flower nodding towards the energy of the sun.

Lunch was artichoke soup, made with artichokes from one of the men C rings the church bells with, scrubbed and sliced thinly and put in a pan with some shallot and milk and a tiny bit of white leek, an Ottolenghi recipe. It's served with a spinach and hazlenut pesto. We had bread from Birch's, some very good cheese from the Pangbourne Cheese Shop (and some lovely Cornish Truffler that my sister brought with her).

Easter lunch was a bit more of a challenge. Nine people and four small children. A gluten and dairy intolerance to work around, and no assurance of sunshine. Sunshine is awfully helpful when there are small children, dogs and a lunch to be had; they often do what we adults should learn from, take off their socks and shoes and charge around on the grass like musketeers, or gleeful benevolent marauders, allowing the earth to ground them (it does). I don't cater very much to small people tastes. Most of the children in our family are happy to eat most things, so I don't have to make plain pasta or cardboard pizza which seems to be generic when people raise uncurious eaters. Instead we made a slow cooked lamb shoulder, marinated in parsley and coriander and cumin and lemon zest and garlic, which goes in the oven as soon as you wake up. It sits on a bed of celeriac and carrots and garlic heads, big chunky pieces. Even people who have uneasy relationships with lamb because of school horror stories like this. We served it with Turkish flatbread, homemade hummus (from my Lebanese family in LA), a chicory salad with oranges and hazlenuts, a Persian cucumber, tomato and pomegranate salad with mint, dill, olive oil and cherry molasses (I'd run out of pomegranate molasses) served on a smearing of labneh. And Persian jewelled rice with barberries, orange rind, slivered almonds (pistachio intolerance) and pinenuts, and I added some fat yellow sultanas for good measure. The tadig could have been better, it was a little pale gold not golden brown, but no-one complained. And then rhubarb from the garden, which C bakes in the oven with honey, and the Claudia Roden almond flour and clementine cake as adapted by Nigella. Whipped cream or coconut yogurt.

The sun did come out, briefly, and filled the garden with light. It had been dry enough for a few hours that people could sit on the grass, or on benches which surround the wall. It's funny when it's not your own family. The conversations are about people you don't know as well, and you have to try a bit harder to make sure that everyone is comfortable. Merging cultures is hard. Misunderstandings with your own family are what they are, fast flare ups that get settled quickly and with hugs. Mix-ups and communication fails with people who aren't your family or haven't been your family for long are awfully complicated. There is no shorthand, and each word that is chosen must not be assumed to be understood. Meaning could be entirely different. It's easier, almost, to assume that people are color blind. This way, at least, doesn't lead to unintentional hurt. Different cultures do things in different ways, and it's our job, those of us that doh-si-doh our way into new communities, to observe, appreciate and embrace other ways of doing things. Just as my Danish grandmother who was born in 1908, the daughter of a consul and shipowner who traveled widely all over the world and brought home exotic spices, tastes and Chinoiserie, married a Norwegian doctor who was more interested in the theatre than the social etiquette of the time. Just as my upper middle class Norwegian mother who had grown up in the bourgeoisie of Oslo came to England in 1960 had to adapt to my father's farming family, with dogs everywhere, dusty houses and tweed (and she laments, no tablecloths). Just as I left England in the height of Sloane Ranger rah rah rah, weekends in country houses, and a completely blinkered, naive, frankly blind, view of the world, had to embrace the crazy, loud, joyful Lebanese/Jewish/Catholic/White Bread American family of my husband's family, and then from the all the things we'd learned create our own culture, our own way of doing things, searching through the generations of stuff and coming up with a big, glorious hybrid approach that tried I suppose to take the best bits of everything and marry them together to find something inclusive that worked for everyone and saved the individual bits we really cared about. And now, after all of that building, to find a whole other somewhat bewildering landscape, even after all of these years (I have been back in England since January, 2017). More room to adapt. More reasons for grace, I suppose.

I've been thinking a lot lately about life feeling like a wobble board. About trying to keep everything in balance, about how you can think too hard about your legs shaking and focus too much on them, looking downwards, instead of looking out, and fixing one's gaze on something beautiful and bright (it helps tree pose in yoga, so it must help me, one thinks). About how we struggle to regain equilibrium, and grab for joy when we find it. (Every day can't be like that sunny Saturday in Pangbourne; every day can't be giddy.) But in fact, that is the nature of life, that Tao shape, the light and the dark, the happy and the sad, the scarcity and the abundance, the change. That is the only thing we can hold on to. The only constant is that balance/change between the extremes.

There are bumblebees on my magnolia tree, so fat I can see them from my desk.

In my beginning is my end. TS Eliot.

Acornology

I am a huge, huge fan of Cynthia Bourgeault, the episcopal priest, modern day mystic and retreat leader, and I listened to this story from her book 'The Wisdom Way of Knowing' as I was driving back from riding this morning. I'm sharing it because it feels pretty much perfect for a Monday morning.

Ancient oak, Big Sur, New Year's Day 2024

Acornology 

Once upon a time, in a land not so far away, there was a kingdom of acorns, nestled at the foot of a grand old oak tree. Since the citizens of this kingdom were modern, fully Westernized acorns, they went about their life with a purposeful energy; and since they were mid-life baby-boomer acorns, they engaged in a lot of self-help courses. There were seminars called “Getting All You Can out of Your Shell” and “Who Would You Be Without Your Nutty Story?” There were woundedness and recovery groups for acorns who had been bruised in their fall from the tree. There were spas for oiling and polishing those shells and various acornopathic therapies to enhance longevity and well-being.

One day in the midst of this kingdom there suddenly appeared a knotty little stranger, apparently dropped out of the blue by a passing bird. He was capless and dirty, making an immediate negative impression on his fellow acorns. And to make things worse, crouched beneath the mighty oak tree, he stammered out a wild tale. Pointing up at the tree, he said, “We … are … that!”

Delusional thinking, obviously, the other acorns concluded, but one of them continued to engage him in conversation: “So tell us, how would we become that tree?” “Well,” said he, pointing downward, “it has something to do with going into the ground…and cracking open the shell.”

“Insane!” they responded. “Totally morbid! Why then we wouldn’t be acorns anymore.”

*This story originated with Maurice Nicoll in the 1950s. Jacob Needleman popularized it in Lost Christianity and named it “Acornology.” Cynthia Bourgeault retold the story in her book, The Wisdom Way of Knowing.

Have a great week. xo 

Inspired by Elmo

It's February the first, always a good day to start something new. As Frank Cottrell Boyce says, "BEGIN...it doesn't matter where you begin but BEGIN because there is magic in starting something new." I keep a little scrappy picture of his handwritten IG post to hand and I refer to it liberally.

And the other person who is interesting on this subject is the slightly controversial Joe Dispenza, whose NY Times bestselling book "Becoming Supernatural" seems to inspire people. He says, and I'm paraphrasing, that you can't expect different results if you continue to behave the same way every day, that's it's only by changing things up that we ourselves change; that we should change our habits to change our lives.

I'm not an authority on change but I am someone who needs to make quite a lot of effort to be happy, especially in these winter months. I have to remember every day, and every time I catch myself in the rearview mirror to "turn that frown upside down." I'm a genuinely happy person, but it takes some work, and maybe you can relate.

On Monday, Elmo, everyone's favorite little red fuzzy Sesame Street character, tweeted, somewhat innocuously "Elmo is just checking in. How is everybody doing?" He was flooded with replies:

"I'm at my lowest. Thanks for asking," one person replied. 

"Elmo I'm depressed and broke," another wrote.

"Elmo I'm suffering from existential dread over here," another replied.

(source: CBS News) 

It's rough out there. And we're all feeling it.

I was at a dinner this weekend for 18 people and four of the people at the party told me that they had an adult child who was suffering from anxiety. One had trouble leaving the house at all. Another was obsessed with conspiracy theories. And another just hadn't found their place in the world, and was living at home, sleeping a lot.

So today I was thinking about whether there was something I could do to help. I've spent at least two years on an interesting path, a path to discover wisdom, a path that brings me back to when I was a philosophy student, but also something that is I suppose an effort to become a better or more realized person, to expose all the bits that have been covered up, and read books by those who are on a path of spiritual enlightenment in the attempt to understand better why we are here and how to make it a happier place for everyone. And also, I suppose, to expand in some way in an effort to find the truth.

A lot of the things I have discovered are about love, that it indeed makes the world go round, and, to a certain extent, that it is the basic building block of everything. I don't want to alienate people -- I am a bit woo-woo (I get the "you're so LA" a lot, as you can imagine) but hopefully some of this stuff is relatable. Here are some sure-fire ways to get you back on the right track, or at least to make you feel that you aren't swimming against the tide.

1. Wake up an hour or half an hour earlier. Get out of bed without looking at your phone (put it in another room; we are all addicts). Do something quiet for a few minutes while you're still in that beautiful, soft liminal state between sleeping and waking. Meditate. Pray. Do some yoga. Or write in your journal (I do Julia Cameron's three pages of longhand writing). Or do a combination of all of these things. This is what sets your intention for the day, so that the day doesn't just dump on you.

2. Get out in the world before the sun rises. You will start out grumpy but you will see the most magical skies shot with pink and orange, and the bare winter trees will sparkle as if they're covered in snow, and sometimes there will be geese or crows. And then, like an aria, the sun will rise, and you will stop in your tracks, or pull your car over, in order to photograph it or just marvel in its glory. (Even on blurgh days it's possible to witness a sunrise).

3. While you're making your morning cup of tea and waiting for the kettle to boil, get down on your hands and knees and commune with your dog. Everything else will melt away and it will just be you and your favorite thing in the world loving each other. (I was listening to Swami Medhananda who was talking about a particularly Hindu faith that believes that God so loves us that he/she manifests as what we love, so that for example, for Christians God manifests as Jesus, and for Hindus it's Krishna and so on. It struck me that for us dog lovers, that is exactly where we find God.)

4. Walking. 10,000 steps a day is a bare minimum. If you want to shift your energy or vibrate on a different level, walk or run or dance; just move your body. Lots of stuff gets stuck, so if you can't walk or dance or run, move your fingers, your toes, your arms, your neck, swing your legs back and forth, or do spinal flexes (cat/cow).

5. Be in nature. There is a character in Isabella Tree's Wilding who is an Oak tree expert, and does marvelous mystical diagnoses on Oaks and what they need to thrive. He refuses to wash at all because he believes that the spores and bacteria and bits of micorrhyzal ephemera that stick to us are important for us to thrive as well. Everyone knows about shinrin yoku/forest bathing now. I go as far as hugging trees, especially on the oak avenue in the field to the south-west of our house, and the ancient yew tree in the churchyard. It's surrounded with a bench and I stand on the bench and throw my arms around the trunk and feel my body fizz with good energy.

6. Be a good friend. Check in with friends. Send them notes and poems and bits of random information so that they know you are thinking. This will come back to you in spades. Yesterday, I received a little box of writing paper adorned with bumble bees, from a girlfriend who said, "I saw these and they made me smile and think of you." That little parcel brought me back from a deep spiral of feeling a bit lost. Like magic. Such kindness! 

7. Be in water. Drink it. Soak in it. Shower in it. Walk by it. Feel its energy (waves). Immediate mood changer.

8. Breathe. 4.7.8 or 4.4.4.4 or just a deep cleansing breath to reset yourself. I tend hold my breath when I work or when I'm concentrating and forget this. I get stuck in a bit of fight or flight. Every time you go through a doorway, think "breathe." It's like a little moment of centering or bringing yourself back to the here and now. Imagine Ram Dass smiling beatifically at you as you do this.

9. Be part of a group. Join a local bridge club. Find the quilting ladies in the next town. Learn campanology. Chat to people at the local shop, smile at the lady at the garage when you're buying gas/petrol, say hello to fellow dog walkers. Find people with similar interests (I love my barn/yard/horse ladies so very much and last night we all went to see the film Priscilla which I worked on.)

10. Turn off the news. Of course you should keep up to date and be informed, but the 24 hour news cycle is just bad for our mental health. You know that sour feeling when you've been disaster-scrolling. Just stop. And instead of dwelling on the horrendous situations in the world, find a mindful way to do something. Give to Save the Children, for example. Find a way to channel your concern into something that might make a difference. (I know this is really hard. We are so very divided in the world right now.)

11. Create. There is a theory I like that says God is creativity. I think I believe it. It's in creating that we find that magical wisdom we've been so yearning for. Write, draw, paint, arrange some flowers, bake a coffee cake, reorganize your bookshelves, compose an opera. These are all acts of creation. I love to think of it as making something beautiful that wasn't there before. If a day goes by and I don't do this, I don't think I've kept my promise to the world and I find myself feeling a little empty.

12. This may or may not work for you and I'm not here to judge (as I still suffer from bouts of depression) but maybe try not drinking alcohol for a bit?  I gave up drinking 13 months ago, and everything is better. I don't miss it either, which I know astounds people. I sleep better and I don't wake up with existential angst, and there seems to be more time in the day. I am less scattered, more focused, happier. It probably deserves a bigger post, but I'm here to say, as someone who used to drink a couple of glasses every single night, that this is pretty awesome. If you would like more information on this, please ping me.

13. You are not your thoughts. I cannot state this enough.

14. Take an afternoon nap. Block it out in your calendar as a meeting. Sleep only 20 minutes, no longer. (Alternately do a thirty minute yoga nidra which you can find on Insight Timer, which, just like Heineken, reaches the parts other things can't reach.)

15. This is a silly little thing but tremendously cheering. The iphone wallpaper now has an option to choose photos of pets in its shuffle categories. (Go to Settings, Wallpaper, Customize and you'll see a little icon at the bottom left where you can choose pets or people or views...) I have Bean (the lovely deceased dalmatian who is the face of MissWhistle) on there, and Dotsie, who died ten years ago, as well as Thistle, my Frenchie. I'm trying to get out of the habit of looking at my phone, but when I do, I'm faced with an image of DOG. :)

Good luck to you with your February journey. I'm happy to be back on the blog; please do tell me if you have other good ideas we can add to this list. You can find me on Instagram at @bumbleward or email me at bramblejelly@gmail.com. Sending much love and hoping that it reverberates around the world. ❤️

 

Failing and Flying

BY JACK GILBERT

Everyone forgets that Icarus also flew.

It's the same when love comes to an end,

or the marriage fails and people say

they knew it was a mistake, that everybody

said it would never work. That she was

old enough to know better. But anything

worth doing is worth doing badly.

Like being there by that summer ocean

on the other side of the island while

love was fading out of her, the stars

burning so extravagantly those nights that

anyone could tell you they would never last.

Every morning she was asleep in my bed

like a visitation, the gentleness in her

like antelope standing in the dawn mist.

Each afternoon I watched her coming back

through the hot stony field after swimming,

the sea light behind her and the huge sky

on the other side of that. Listened to her

while we ate lunch. How can they say

the marriage failed? Like the people who

came back from Provence (when it was Provence)

and said it was pretty but the food was greasy.

I believe Icarus was not failing as he fell,

but just coming to the end of his triumph.

 

Co-vert

To say that this week has been a blur is an understatement. Due to my malady, I've been sucked into Emily in Paris, at my mother's and everyone else's recommendation, and have gone so far down the rabbit hole that I've started to look up Chateaux in Champagne, and I'm thiiis close to ordering these frames that Camille wore in an episode of Season Three, featuring Sofia the confessional artist from Greece. I want most of Sylvie's wardrobe and half of Camille's and I'm even considering moving my office to Paris. Oy.

I felt odd on Tuesday, odd enough to whine about it to Charlie, odd enough to say "I don't want to go to New York tomorrow," but somehow managed to get my packing done to the point of not fearing death the way I usually do pre-trip, with shirts and sweaters and trousers and cute shoes in neat piles (outfit coordination worthy of Emily) on the bench in the bedroom, ready to go. With a cute navy dress, some pearls, thick tights and a big furry scarf we headed up the M4 London-bound for a friend's birthday screening, and C, who is incredibly amenable, listened to Thomas Keating with me, because he knows I love him, and because it was miraculously tuned in to this podcast on my phone. The essence of what we'd been listening to is this "Let Go & Let God (Act)" which is, I suppose, the idea that if you clear your mind enough and create some quiet space, and trust, then God will help you out. OR Show up and the Universe will meet you half way. It's part of the twelve step too. It was a beautiful drive - bright, cold sunlight and pink and pale blue skies. But I still didn't feel like myself. At all. Even though I'd be looking forward to going to New York for weeks, to see my client's new film, get a breath of the city, and of course my lovely friend Jack who runs his antique/design business out of Sag Harbor. 

Then a ping from a client who was also supposed to be travelling to NYC to see the same film "Can you give me a quick ring?" And thus, the dominoes started to smack the table in a satisfying procession; his girlfriend had Covid close to him and wasn't sure he could fly as it was probably a matter of time, so what did I think? We could go but it was risky because he didn't want to be down for the count in New York for two weeks, and then the possibility of giving it to everyone else, but then when could we make the trip and was it worth my doing it without him? etcetera etcetera. Trip gets cancelled quickly. Somehow, my tickets are refunded and my hotel cancelled under the wire. Jack texts to say he can't in fact have dinner because he has to drive to Maine for a client. So in one half hour everything is cancelled and tied up in pretty bows. No New York trip. No disappointed client (more time to focus on the edit), no disappointed friend, and no travelling with a stuffy nose (me). 

By Wednesday morning I was feeling distinctly flu-ish but generally bright and even managed a zoom with a client. On a whim, I PCR tested myself and wham, two thick red lines. C banished me to bed in a thick cashmere cardigan and beanie, with Christmas socks, a small schnarfing Frenchie, and steaming cups of tea, and I've been alternately dozing and watching Emily ever since, completely in another world. C brings me supper and sits on the other side of the room in a mask. He brings me grapes and crudités and easy peelers and Dairy Milk with hot cross buns, and he comes in and checks on me while I am sleeping ("I can hear you breathing" I say). I am thoroughly spoiled. Thick slices of fresh sourdough from the local pub, slathered in Lurpak and chocolate caramel wafer biscuits for tea. I managed a shower today, and I walked to the garden gate and back to get some air, because you feel quite strange after almost three days in bed. I've also flung open the bathroom window to let the oxygen circulate. 

The pink geraniums who felt neglected on the kitchen sink counter have been in front of the bedroom window for a couple of weeks and are blooming, an astoundingly jolly fuchsia. I've been staring at them intently, and their petit Amazon arrangement to the right of them, and beyond that, the birds nibbling the fatballs in the cherry tree, endlessly, so that we're referring to it as the Garden of Tits. Thousands of tits. Tits are arriving from all over the world to be in our garden, it appears. The word is out. Birds are flying in with their suitcases, whole tit families.

I'm in a fog. A complete odd and blurry state, senses blunted (my taste is not entirely gone, but enough to not notice the flavours or whether there is dressing on the salad), occasional bouts of ocular migraine (kaleidoscopic vision which mildly absorbing if it weren't so annoying), brain thick and stodgy. But I have given in to it. God, I'm spoiled and lucky to be looked after so well. I wonder if this is a cleansing of sorts; a reset? Is it a kind of clearing out to make room for other things? Or perhaps that what we should use if for. A reminder of clarity, of the need for making space for clarity. Does that make any sense? Or is it the Covid talking?

Remain open

I've woken up full of optimism. The sky is clear, spotted with pink and yellow from the sunrise; I can see splodges of hopeful color through the branches of the oak tree in front of my bedroom window. The birds have started to sing and there is a glimpse, just a mere speck of spring, when you wake to a full dawn chorus and bright cloudless skies. Every new day is a blank canvas, a way to reintroduce yourself to the world, an opportunity to start again. I want nothing to get in the way of this moment; I want to channel all things into a funnel of positive, thoughtful nowness, nudging everything gently to the edge of what might be, what could be. We are standing around on the edge of a great river of flow and all we have to do is take one step in, one courageous step, eschewing fear, into the unknown, for everything to be revealed and available to us. It's that little push that takes us from our complacency and safety to the place where everything is happening all at once.

This used to be called "a kick up the backside."

We walked seven and a half miles yesterday with two great friends. It didn't seem like seven and a half miles because we were so engaged in the conversation and the trees and the laughter that we just kept putting one foot in front of another, and thar she blows. I jumped off the top of a barbed wire fence without ruining my knees. They constantly ache and I ignore it, but that is the age I'm at, where knees start to creak and lower backs start to moan. I steadfastly refuse to give in to it. It's fifty five years of riding horses; that must have some impact on knee joints. I fantasize about having my hocks injected, like a horse, and then immediately dispel the idea from my mind, because the idea of a large needle going anywhere near my synovial fluid makes my tummy hurt. But knees aside, over the years I've thought about my mother's solve for every sadness "go for a long walk" and I'm beginning to see the wisdom. There is enormous comfort in nature. Lewellyn Vaughan Lee, a Sufi mystic, talks about meditating under trees and their ability to take away emotional pain. (Before you roll your eyes, imagine this: imagine trying it once, imagine opening up your mind just enough to try something that you consider completely outlandish, imagine being open to an idea that doesn't fit with your view of the world, just once. Is there anything really more ignorant than scoffing at something you haven't tried? Someone said this, and due to a brain that's aging as fast as my knees, his name isn't immediately to hand. I do know that I had lunch with an old friend and her new husband, a venerable and senior correspondent, who, when the subject of psychotherapy was raised, became irate and said "quacks, quacks, all of them" and knocked back another large mouthful of red wine, his third glass.)

I feel as if I am pregnant and something is about to be birthed. Everything is conspiring. I am excited for it. I wish you all (if you happen to find your way over here) a very happy week. Remember to remain *open.

*On the subject of openness, the Christian idea of kenosis is rather a good one - my understanding is that it's self emptying so that there's room for the holy spirit. Or, in my somewhat less Christian interpretation, it's emptying one's mind (through contemplation, meditation) so that there is room for new ideas to foment. For example, if you are constantly bombarded with images from Instagram and bon mots from Twitter, doesn't all of that contribute to a foggy mind stew of meaninglessness, that's really just a distraction? Once again, nature is very good at clearing this out.  Good luck.