I'm cured!

I won't actually say this out loud because it seems to be that this may be overly-presumptuous and the heavy hand of fate (or fist rather) will flatten me, but after nearly a week of feeling ill and under the weather (and the weather in London this week has been dreadful so that says a lot), I am feeling better.

And it is through just a little practice of ye olde yoga... and least it seems to be. Yes, hippies, we have yet another victory over the people firmly steeped in the mainstream. Those taking pills and tablets and addictive syrups. (My righteousness is cut short, as usual, by the headache that was still dogging me nearly the entire day and the whiff of ibuprofen that took care of that.) My chi is restored. Being in touch with the "subtle energies" creates an authority to say that it was because of the yoga I practised before dinner. A self-fulfilling hippy science. Not unlike the more conventional schools of science.

But this is the first evening in well over a week where, come evening, my limbs are not freezing and my finger and toenails are not purple, where my nausea hasn't crept in post-meal to help me remember (in an almost itemised, uncomfortably visceral fashion) what I just ate and where my energy is merely a figment of my memory. Yes, a few sun salutations (despite the soggy lack of sustainable sunshine) has put paid to my flu.

Hallelujah!

On the couch

Normally this would mean something different for me, but this week, it is more literal.

I have apparently contracted a stomach bug and have been, therefore, banned from going to work, since I work in a school. Although I often joke that it is a "germ-redistribution centre", I don't think they want that to be its official purpose, so one day off (Tuesday) to recover from dizzy, flu symptoms has now become four days off.

I am a bit sad.

I like work. And not only do I like work, but I like to be a "good" worker. This probably stems from some version of the "nice girl syndrome" whereby little girls want to grow up to be "nice and pretty" or something similar. Here I am a grown woman, who truly believes that if someone is ill, they should keep themselves home, take care of themselves and keep their mangy plagues to themselves. I too have read the shocking statistics about "presenteeism", worse in the States than here in the UK, I suspect, what with everyone actually having medical care and all, but there is still guilt that niggles.

But this is no drippy nose. And I cover a lot of food technology lessons. The mind boggles at the potential for an unwitting carrier to spread the virus (I am assuming it's a virus) I apparently am currently carrying. I feel like I might say to my kids next week: look kids! I stayed home! I didn't come and cook pizza with you even though it was going to be fun!

And by stressing about missing work, I will only make myself more miserable. I didn't even make this choice after all. I have to see this as a considerate thing I am doing for others, so they do not get sick. I am walking the walking. Or lying on the couch. Whatever.

"And that was number one!"

Basically, these fantastic women at the Unitarian community I am apart of came up with this idea: we are now one hundred people. If every one of us did radical, audacious, kind, caring, wonderful things, what a change that would create!

Well, I do some of the things they spoke about already: volunteer, meditate, etc. so this has to be outside my "normal range" in order to challenge and push me. I immediately thought of homeless people. I am really so bothered, as a human being, to wander down the street and ignore people living outside, sitting there. Ignoring is the default, the easy answer. But what do I do instead? Do I give money? I don't have a lot of money to give, particularly not equally or meaningfully to everyone. Would they want anything else? How can I help?

My attempts in the past to rectify this, even minorly, I felt, came off as patronising and not really helpful. Nor did these attempts inform me of how to be an ally in the future.

So, my task for the hundred acts project (link to follow) is that I am going to have 100 conversations with people who are homeless. It is scary to me that I might offend people and I am one of the masses who find security in not talking to strangers so... wow... a challenge indeed.

Except today I surprised myself.

My mom and my Tony and I were walking down the street. I had my brolli, ma had her raincoat, and as the forecast did not call for rain, Tony had borrowed a brolli off of Andy. We were walking down the street to the train and I saw a guy, sitting on the pavement of upper street shivering. Now, I like my brolli. It is cute and small and fits in any bag. And as a bonus, I found it on the tube so it didn't cost me a farthing, but I knew...knew that I value other people more than the ownership of my brolli. I knew this was more important.

So, I ran back and leaned down and said, "Hey. Would you find this umbrella useful?" He said, "Sure, but what about you?" (As an aside, is it offensive to find his selflessness amazing? He is the one shivering in the rain and he is concerned for me.) I said, "My husband has a massive one that will cover us both." He said, "Sure." I gave him the umbrella and caught up with ma and Tony.

"And that was number one!" feeling pleased that I had started right away on my task (not procrastinating as is my default when I find something difficult or scary), but I became instantly aware as well that me feeling chuffed with myself was not the point.

I didn't hear him say thank you if he did and it didn't matter. I remembered my dear, departed Jo who taught me that one.

We finally got home (bah: unannounced engineering works!) and I checked the book of face. I saw one of my acquaintances on their who is living on the street and in shelters in California. Could she be my number two?

Regardless of the number, the take-home point is clearly that homeless people are people, as diverse as any demographic on the planet. They just happen, through circumstance, to live outside. It is obviously way more deep and complicated than that, and inevitably, I will have to face this during this time too, but that means that every one of the individuals I have the opportunity to talk to during these 100 conversations will be as easy or as difficult as any other person to talk to.

It is funny too because in my own weird way, I think this is my way of confronting the fact that for the longest, scariest night of my life, I was homeless. I tried living in a car and it was so so hard, even as it was nothing compared to what the people I will be talking to are dealing with, either in terms of ultimate or material support or in terms of conditions and the time actually spent in so potentially a vulnerable and unstable condition.

I feel gratitude for the opportunity to learn more, gratitude that my first conversation was an easy and kind one (so I can find encouragement to continue, and dare I say it? To be excited), and I feel grateful for the support I get from my community to do courageous things I never otherwise would have considered doing.

Reflections on the quotidian

I de-scaled the kettle today. For most people in the US, making boiled water doesn't require an electric kettle and so this may not make sense, but in England where tea is so English that school kids lecture me on how English it is, Miss, even as I insist that yes and no: tea was brought into the culture relatively recently, one must remove the build-up of a lot of water as it boils away.

This set of facts may already be boring you. In fact, it is not the point of this story.

I was proud of de-scaling. That is my point.

Despite my feminist upbringing and my post-post-post philosophy, I am loving the domestic routines that I have developed. Every school holiday, which (thank the effing heavens) occurs about every 6-7 weeks, I descale the kettle. And get my hair trimmed. And catch up on sleep.

So, while accomplishing the first, I reflected on the quotidian. (In my top 50 words of all time, by the way.) The mundane and the routine, the daily, can become a gorgeous dance, a ballet of balance. And yet, I knew instinctively today that it will someday become a prison of hang-up and unquestioned habit. I knew someday, I would break free of this thing I so enjoyed currently. Over the sink, removing the yellow-white build-up on the inside of our kettle in a satisfyingly effective rhythm, I knew that this was my cycle: create, build, get accustomed, practice, practice, practice, question, dismantle and maybe burn it all to the ground. The routines I mean.

It becomes a little tinderbox for the rage I (and probably most people if they let themselves) inevitably feel at being boxed in tigers in a society that thinks much, much less of us all and expects things completely opposite to our natures.

This was a happy sacrifice. Someday this routine will be a happy little ephemeral moment only.

Today I saw the future, and like the certainty of forest fires scorching the earth and opening up pine cones so that new seeds can germinate, I found a little bit of peace in this.

A year on...

I am glad I saved this blog. Because I feel like writing again. The book of face (with so little of either) does not serve me well and I find the character-limit... limiting. And everything I want to put on there feels like I am exposing too much when I do.... I want to write: I will have art damnit! And it feels like I am yelling at my co-workers.

So, instead I will reflect into the void and trust that those who want to participate will and those who want to hear it can, while those who do not, do not have to be yelled at about my intense need for art (that follows along closely with my intense wishes that my sensitivities were other than they are).

I have been a writer since I discovered the combination of blank books and learned how. Blank screens will do for now.