Saturday 9 May Day 10

 

Very late night reading Dark Matter. Intriguing quote from Mark Twain -

“Nothing exists; all is a dream. God—man—the world—the sun, the moon, the wilderness of stars—a dream, all a dream; they have no existence. Nothing exists save empty space—and you! . . . and you are not you . . . you are but a thought”

 V groggy- didn’t get up until 7. Grumpy, just being in the shit (ie v Little self). Zazen with eyes open is definitely work. Starling still silent. Maybe I was wrong and it was trapped all that time. Henriette thinks it’s sitting on its eggs. Have another stare.

Drank the liquor from my fermented hawthorn flowers et al. Odd taste, not sure it worked, although I did sleep like the dead once I’d turned off the light (1am?)

The law of unintended consequences - what if an awful lot of people have discovered staying at home not doing much on 80% of £2,400 a month is a lot more fun than flogging into work every day? And that not having much to do with other people, mostly complete strangers, is not much of a hardship. We’re not all single mums trapped with screaming children in high rise slums, or abused partners. Say we all refuse to go back? Let the workaholics drive the buses, work in retail, and empty the bins. Tax the tits off the rich, obvs.

The orioles have started singing

Went shopping after doing angel stuff for lunch and ticking Lachlan off for the second time, for being a prat and behaving like a useless teenager. And then managed to get round SuperU without buying whisky despite the tempting display of 20cl bottles for €3 each, and getting marooned in the booze aisles looking for beer and juice which have been shifted completely elsewhere.  Day 10 is starting to feel serious, I may even write to Belle. And get to Day 30, maybe.

Catherine’s 58th birthday. She said a prayer of thanks at meditation and made me feel bad - or slightly ashamed anyway : whatever its faults, this place and this community is lovely, and I’m very lucky to be a part of it. I keep thinking / behaving as if there was another much better one just up the road , the reality is there’s my old life or something like it, or here.

Thoughts of sex, affairs, localmatures, Asian masseuses , all day. Heat, sunshine, summer, solo again. Eyeing up the talent on my excursion today - need to smarten myself up. 

Dark Matter by Blake Crouch (silly name). Entanglement. I always used to think Sukie and I were bound together, meant for each other, and that’s still there. Something broke, which we / I couldn’t fix, and in some ways the great question for me ever since has been was it my fault? what could I have done, should I have done, to stop it? Or that that too was meant to happen. And I felt the same way about Pol, a bit, and about Susanne, a lot I think, which is why it hurts as much as it does, even though we were together for barely a year (after Dijon doesn’t count, I’m not even sure after Mulhouse and the hotel Bristol counts). So I feel for Jason, searching for his lost Daniela, a grain of sand among a trillion. If I could step back, where would I go? Piraeus obviously, and Hydra, or Paros, and then tread very carefully perhaps. . .