Friday 14 December Day 198 / Day 2 - updated and corrected

A housing estate for mice - each package or box has a neat little mouse sized entrance
and is stuffed with bits of paper, plastic and tin foil. Very comfy, very warm.

in the continuing series of unmade beds

The Day Cabin

Just to demonstrate my interest in the Bronze Age

Link to Sacasas’ piece today. Talking about Paddy Leigh Fermor’s A Time of Silence.

and also interesting the frailest thing: A Withering Light

Wednesday. Day 196. Day 0 maybe no smoking

I recorded a 13 minute piece last night – too tired to write, and I just wanted to turn out the light and go to sleep. Then I listened to it again, and thought I should send it to LF. It started out being about leadership and authority, and then I started talking about how we go about selecting members of the community. AC and I had had a couple of long discussions during the day about the process, or lack of one, and the lack of transparency, and the danger (?) that Bonnevaux just turns in to some sort of geriatric care centre. And also that (in AC’s view) some of the people on the “waiting list” are just plain bonkers. And a lot of us, all of us, have issues of one kind or another. I’m sort of here by accident, or the whim of LF, but informally, the process worked quite well. I spoke to LF at the Day of Peace At St Martins and he said I should go (as he does to many). I rang AC and we agreed I should visit for a week in January, so that we could check each other out. I stayed for nearly 4 weeks, and we agreed that I could come back on a quasi-permanent, or at least longer term basis. I then had a long telephone conversation with LF when I got back to Sweffling. And then I came back with the caravan in April. The community then was only AC and DC and everyone was involved in the process. Discounting RB, I’m the third member of the permanent community. She was here at Christmas, and for the setting up of the farmhouse in March and April, but she’s never made the commitment to being a full time member of the community, and she’s now away for a year at college doing her creative writing MA.

Our latest “recruit” - MKA – is due to join us starting on Epiphany. She stayed here for a week after attending the John Main Seminar in September, when LF suggested she come and see Bonnevaux. Now he’s agreed that she can come for a 3 month period of discernment. She has corresponded with AC and he’s told her she will have to contribute €1,500 (90 x €18 per day) to cover her costs. But there has been no formal consultation with the community (i.e. me, DC, TL and HH) although she will make up 20%. I think there should be. I asked in my recording how other small communities do this, and TL suggested we should ask, but I think most are a little more democratic than BV seems to be.

Anyway, I sent the recording to LF with Whatsapp, then changed my mind and tried to delete it, but I think Whatsapp still wants to send it (i.e. I’ve only deleted the conversation from my thread, not unsent it). Maybe I should send it to JG and see what he thinks. It’s about leadership and authority and obedience and community so it’s relevant to my postulancy. (I’ve sent it to JG, just now. His mum’s funeral is on Friday, said he’d get back to me after that).

LF is talking to SB today. He (LF) asked AC what he thought, and AC said he gave her a glowing report.

LF thought AC should have charged MKA a lot more than €1,500 – that she can afford it. How does LF know?

A Beaulieu (Belle) Anne Boileau. Spooky. Belle’s A – Annabelle? Belle it’s just their company name – A Beaulieu – a beautiful place – Boileau – drink water – Bonnevaux – the happy valley

AC about Herve fixing the lake (and finding real clay). I wonder who put Herve up to it? J-CC? And the French objecting (to everything). TL and Smart meters. M-DR, PC, TL et al to my lake proposal (legal, huge costs – Syr Drainage !!!) J-CC and the baby sacrifice. Everything is a disaster and impossible, until it isn’t. Even WH (who I think is quite sane) said we English ‘cut corners’ - I was saying how we have rules and we follow them – we were “discussing” the EU and Brexit. He thinks the EU Parlement has actual powers.

Very excitable chat with him (WH) in the car back to the station, about Brexit, the EU and living in the community – what we learn from strangers, about ourselves. He is married and has a little girl – just one, very firm, his wife insists on working – we promised we would continue the discussion. I surprised myself by how passionate I got about Brexit and the EU – I really really want us to leave and stick it to the Westminster bubble, the elites, the Brussels plutocrats and all the smug bastards in Europe who think we can’t survive without them, when we saved them twice in two world wars from the Germans. I’ll be joining UKIP soon.

Last fag: 12.xii.2018 at 16:56 – for seven days.

Talking to Belle on the ‘phone about Wolfie. She’s well aware he’s just a projection, but most people need to objectify their demons, Wilber’s 3 in 3-2-1. She doesn’t want to get into shrinkology and analysis (not her field or role), and it does appear most people are happy with Wolfie, out there, someone / something to hate/starve, say fuck off too. If it gets them off and keeps them off, who’s to naysay Belle? For me Wolfie is the ego, the needy child, the search for the lost phallus – something I look at, objectify, but do not imagine is not me. In fact I moved to the 2 of 3-2-1 when I started talking to Gollum in my shed, 10 years ago, but it didn’t help me stop. And then I accepted that I like drinking, I want to drink, I think it’s an answer to my problems. Which made it made much easier to accept and realise that it was a bad deal – the downsides were starting to outweigh the good, and I didn’t want to do it any more. And at that point there was no longer a wolfie / 3^rd person in my head to keep arguing for the defence – we were all agreed that it was an unsustainable path, and a good time to stop. No lying or self deception or half measures – this has to end, now, and forever, because we can’t go on drinking, in any way shape or form. The Wolfie idea might have worked for me a few years earlier, but I doubt it – it just harked back to all those Catholic guilt trips that AA kept trying to work on, and which I simply wasn’t going to put up with.

Long talk with La B. An hour and a half. She told me about the Dalai Lama’s teaching on anger and karma, and she’s right. However there is no point and I won't hide my feelings from myself, but they come with a price. And I suspect a lot of what I felt with KC was backwash from SFS and PC and even Ma. AC gave a glowing reference for her to LF

AC asked me if I would consider ending my postulancy / starting my novitiate at the Christmas Eve Mass. I think he had been talking to LF about an ‘event’. And I fit the book. The funny thing is, I’d only just been thinking about it myself, and I can’t see any reason not to (just like the postulancy) in fact I positively want to do it. I just feel I should be given some sort of test, like in the Sea Scouts, before I move on to the next stage. Untie some spiritual knots.

Thursday 13 December. Day 197. Day 1.

SB talking to LF this morning.

First evening no smoking, not too bad. No physical craving, just an occasional ‘goodo, time for a fag’ and then the disappointment, and a slightly panicky eating jag - ham and very old butter and stale crispbread (which for some reason the mice have totally ignored, along with the rice) and a delicious apple (French russet with a strange name) which had a great bitter gall in the centre. And this morning, Day 1, woke up at 6am and feel fine. Funny last night, how much time I have, not smoking. And noticing the addictive cycle – unhappiness, boredom, whatever, reach for a fag to fix it – Oh, no fag, but then it passes, or rather I see the kick off sensation, the ‘pain’ , has either gone, or is nothing at all, and doesn’t need a cure or reward.

Do feel well. Slept well. Turned the heater on in the night, thinking it was morning, then realised it was only 1:30 so went back to sleep. It is nice waking up in a warm caravan. Feeling very hungry – I want my porridge!

Friday Day 198 / Day 2

-5° and feels it, but the sun is shining and my green light is glowing again (some juice is being put back in to the batteries – but what sucked it all out of them? The cold? My new LED lights? The inverter? Running the heater all day? I need a smart meter).

HT on meditation – “I realise I do listen out for when the guy is to come back in with a further instruction” - I haven’t used Headspace, but this may well be a trick on their part—you listening out is actually you remaining aware, not going off on a day dream. And in any case, in the end it is not what we do, because we are doing nothing, it is all being done to us, and all that is needed from us is that we just surrender to it. The gospel yesterday was the 10 maidens waiting for the bridegroom to arrive—he was late and the foolish five had burnt their oil and not trimmed their wicks and begged the wise virgins to lend them some of their oil, but the wise ones were very mean and said if they did that they would not have enough for themselves, and went off for a wild party of celebration with the bridegroom and left the foolish virgins weeping and gnashing their teeth as one does when one has been foolish and is having to pay the consequence. All of which is basically about staying awake and alert all the time, because you never know when the bridegroom may turn up. And it's no good hoping other people will save you.

Not smoking is fine, almost pleasant, except when I stop for what would have been a coffee and a smoke, or just a smoke, and there’s this hole which I do not know how to fill. I don’t want to start eating or chewing. I meditate enough already. I did have a slight moment of temptation, cleaning out the caravan this morning – found the cigarillos Aden gave me months (if not years) ago, and thought wouldn’t it be nice, just the one with my coffee. But then I realised a) I’ve only got to stop for 7 days i.e. 5 more after today and b), there is no b). I really don’t want / need one, I want the idea of one.

Thought today was going to be busy. AC has cancelled the 1 o’clock meeting – no one wanted to come, slightly irritated that he’s cancelled it after I’d sent out the agenda, recorded all the apologies, updated the agenda and then sent the final things out last night. It’s as if AC is desperate to demonstrate his usefulness, see also his getting Assoconnect working on his own, no help from me or Phillippe, and he’s produced a tax certificate. He could have done this back in October. And I could have done it in August or September. Not sure how I feel about sitting back and letting him do everything, but actually there’s lots I have to do which he can’t do – e.g. my woodburner, this food agreement that Kathleen and Thomas have cooked up, sorting out the salon and fixing the window and back door.

Kathleen’s session on community assets last night was surprisingly fertile and useful. I started off thinking we’re just doing it for her sake (it was obviously very important to her to do it, and she got prettier and happier as the evening went on, also flustered because she was overrunning on time – not by much, we finished at 9:20) – by the end really glad to have done it, and looking forward to the next one, on Monday I think, on Circle talking. I think she’s also beginning to get me (that mostly I’m joking, it’s not about or directed at her, I interrupt everybody), or at least react less. And I’m reacting less to her – she keeps having digs at or about me in company, but it’s fairly easy to just ignore them and smile. And she’s surprisingly deaf, which explains a few things. Repeated blows to head by irate former partners?

She was really animated and emotional and up/happy/high when doing the presentation. A striking contrast with her tonelessness and flatness when reading the psalms or scriptures.

Talked to La B last night for about half an hour, then got frightfully trunk cally and Victorian about how much this was all costing, but she told me all about her chat with LF, and how good he was at calming her down. She said she was very nervous to begin with and he just rambled around and didn’t really get serious until she was properly relaxed. All seems to be a done deal and the only reason for delay is SB sorting out her flat and affairs in Basel. I’d still like her to have a proper job and a stable alternative there, before she leaves everything for BV. She said she will make sure she has a line of retreat and store her stuff somewhere (even just leave it in her flat and sublet it furnished for some period).

I’ve had a fun morning fiddling in my caravan, mostly clearing shelves and chucking away junk and rubbish. Now I’m making a Christmas card for Belle out of a load of bits of crap I’ve found that are vaguely Christmassy. My feet are freezing. I have lent Thomas one of my woollen jumpers, I think he was hypothermic yesterday. He doesn’t wear proper clothes when he’s working, probably sweats and then cools down, he seemed miserable / angry last night, more cheerful this morning. He did a mock interview with me as part of KC’s session, my interests, my secret skills. I told him I was a better listener than most people realised. Not sure he believed me. And then I got carried away about teaching, and about stone age / bronze age pre agricultural humans – my secret skill and obsession, I think even KC started to register an interest. She just jumped on me when I first talked about Hugh Brody and the Inuit. He was just a cultural colonialist (has he not changed since he wrote those books? What would he say to her now? Has she actually read any of his books?)

Must look at the food agreement. Argggh.

So I spent an hour looking at a catalogue of French caravan / motorhome accessories. A joke. A perfectly ordinary item - a mug, oven glove - costs 5 times as much as an ordinary one would in a shop. I was looking at gas / electric combi fridges - over €2,000.