Sunday 21 December 2008

Yule - part 2

So, here it is. Yule.

The family stayed up until gone midnight. This meant that I could give Drea her card, though her present will have to wait until later in the day.

Drea got up early and I stayed on in bed. When I finally emerged from the embrace of Morpheus I had a shower and washed my hair and came downstairs. Then out into the garden shed to light the candles. . . Using flint and tinder to light a spill which then lights two candles - one ordinary candle and one longer-lasting night-light. I like to have two candles as an insurance against a sudden gust blowing one of them out.

Drea had knitted me some wonderful Yule socks as a present. They 'start' at the top of the right leg and the pattern goes down and shows the colours of nature getting progressively fainter and more barren towards the toe. The toe of the left sock then picks up the colour and progresses to the first signs of spring at the top of the left leg - marvellous (see photo). I was far less creative. I gave her a Tuareg bracelet that I know she saw and liked.


Drea had also made small presents for everyone who is going to attend tonight - inckle woven bracelets.


There are other preparations to do now so I will update the blog later.

So to continue. . .

There were the sauces to prepare and the dips and the vegetables and also the bread rolls to make. The syllabub and the shortbread in the shape of the sun had been made the day before. I kept checking on the candles to make sure that they hadn't fallen over, blown out or burned down - it was something vaguely manly that I could do, rather than stirring the salsa.

At five o'clock I prepared the barbecue - last year's Yule log gets burned - packed round with charcoal - and the fire is then lit from the candleflame. All the lights in the house are then extinguished and the candle is brought into the house. It first lights the candle for the New Year and is then presented to every room in the house in turn: Man brings fire to cave!

The guests had been arriving and were all present when the candle finished its journey. Mulled wine was then the order of the day followed by the reading of the solar diary. This is a record of what we had done, where we had been and, most importantly, a catalogue of all the mis-speaking and foul-ups during the year. People were still trying to explain what they actually meant to say and why it did not deserve a place in the diary!

After that, the diary is taken out and burned on the barbecue - any mistakes are therefore consigned to history and any memories worth keeping should be remembered. It really is, out with the old, in with the new.

The barbecue meat is cooked and we all enjoyed a hearty meal (with plenty of leftovers for the next couple of days!) and drink was drunk. We had a toast to welcome the New Year, another for absent friends and one to say thank you to Drea for all her hard work and for being wonderful.

I had decided to engage the younger members with some bubble-blowing this year. Les's super-strength bubble mixture did the job - super-size bubbles which are quite able to get to a foot across and will bounce on the carpet. They are very magical and the children loved them, catching them on their clothes to try to get them from one end of the room to the other, followed by a kind of blow football with them. Great fun.

When people decided it was time to go we just had one thing left to do - an invitation to return and the blowing out of the New Year candle. That candle will be the one which brings in the fire and light into the house next year and will light the next New Year candle.

Once the guests had departed my step-son, Ben, then read us a story he had written as a present to us and we had some spiced rum which he had made. The rum was strong and beautifully flavoured and his story was great - the product of a very imaginative mind. It was a fairytale and was well told - a unique and wonderful present.

After that we had some more readings. I came across a book some years ago containing poems to be read aloud, such as "Mandalay", "Ozymandias of Egypt" and "The Green Eye of the Little Yellow God". This was just what was needed as it fit the mood perfectly - a mixture of community and passion stirring our inner fires. Not long after, when everything had been tidied away, we managed to drag ourselves off to our beds.

A great party and a great way to celebrate the start of the New Year!

Saturday 20 December 2008

Yule - part 1

I have been preparing for Yule for about a month now.

Just to refresh your memory - it is what we celebrate on the 21st December. I have wanted to enjoy it even more this year and so I was thinking about how to make it more memorable and engaging.

I had been being more aware of the season itself, more aware of the weather in particular. It also helped to be aware of the general winding down that people experience towards the end of the calendar year. That said, there was more to do this month for my beloved in particular. We have two family birthdays in December, and she had a spinning and also a knitting competition to enter. I have been very busy at work and I also had some entertaining to do (which required some rehearsal). That, combined with preparing for Yule itself (together with Christmas shopping, decorating and making and writing Christmas cards) has meant that it has been a busy time even when not working.

I didn't want to leave Yule to just preparing the day before, so I had been thinking what I might do to enhance it. There will be the usual favorites: the reading of the solar diary, the barbecue (which I have to light without matches or a lighter), the breaking of the shortbread sun, the tipsy chocolate syllabub, lots of home-made wine and the bringing in of the light of the new year), but I was looking for more emotional content. This would have to be done softly as I don't want to make too big a thing about it and make it a chore for anyone.

The whole point of the celebration is to mark the end of one year and the start of the new. Not that radical, but this is the theme - out with the old and in with the new. . . but I wanted to try to give it more 'meaning' and more continuity.

In the end I have settled for the following: having two toasts - one at the start of the meal for 'absent friends' and another one at the end of the meal to state the spirit of family and helping each other.

For the continuity aspect the last toast will end the toast with an invitation to return next year. The candle which I will light earlier in the day to light the barbecue (I don't want to be fiddling about with flint and tinder in the dark when we're all hungry) will be used to light a new candle (continuity again). At the end of the toast we shall all gather to blow out the new candle (like a birthday candle) and the candle will be kept until next Yule.

Well, that's all for now - I have written this as a break between helping Drea with the Yule decorations and polishing the candlestick holders. I'll let you know how it all goes. . .

Saturday 6 December 2008

How to get yourself an 'edge'

Do you remember puzzle of the lily pond? It runs like this. . .

In the middle of the garden there is a lily pond. The pond contains just one lily. Every day the number of lilies in the pond doubles, so when you come to the pond on the second day there are two lilies, on the third day there are four lilies, on the fourth day there are eight lilies - and so on. Now let us say that the pond will be completely full of lilies on the thirtieth day. The question is, on what day will the pond be half-full?

I'll let you think about that for a moment.

One of the news reports today is about the number of relationships which are foundering in the current economic crisis. Apparently it is job insecurities and money worries which are putting a strain on relationships. Bills need to be paid and it is not always certain that the money is available. Work is pressured and the stress of that work does not stop when people leave the office or factory. Tempers get frayed. Things are said which a cooler head would not have uttered. People feel close to breaking point. They are giving there all and there is nowhere left to go. There are no reserves.

And there it is - 'no reserves'. There is no slack in the system. Running on empty.

This is one of the problems with living one's life to the maximum of your capabilities. Living at 'top C' all the time. Letting input exactly equal output - (let's not talk about those organisations that want you to give 110%). The problem is as we are seeing now, that when something unexpected occurs then we have no spare to capacity to deal with the change.

We see this circumstance in other situations:

We drive into work, crowded into arterial roads. One driver thinking about a work problem is not paying attention. They don't stop quite in time and there is a bump. Nothing fatal - hardly a scratch - but matters have to be resolved and so the two drivers exchange details. . . and the queue stretches back as the two lane carriageway is now down to one lane. And a few hundred people who have no slack in their time schedule are now going to be late for work, stressed before they even start trying to be productive.

This is as true of our cars as it is of our jobs, of our finances, of our time and of our relationships. Living at our capacity affects our whole life. There needs to be some slack in the system.

From where do we get this slack? Does it mean that you don't give your all, that you don't live life to the full?

The slack is achieved in two ways. The first way is by not giving up the slack in the first place. The second is by putting as much slack into the system as you can before you need it. Your 'all' is not living at the extent of everything all the time - it is more than that. It also includes your creativity and wit and compassion, your joy, your love, everything you can BE rather than just everything you can DO. Your 'all' includes all those things which get squeezed out of a life by just 'doing more' and 'having more'.

Trying to give ourselves an edge, living life at the edge, might be more of an edge than we first appreciate

Now you may think that is a good idea to try to put some slack back into the system, and that you will get around to doing it. That is why I started this blog with the question about the lily pond.

I am sure that you have got the correct answer by now. You realized that you have to work it out backwards - if the pond is full on the thirtieth day it must be half-full the day before (as it doubles every day). So the answer is that the pond will be half full on day 29.

And there is the thing: on day 29 everything looked fine. There was plenty of space to grow, plenty of opportunity, no problem. For all of the pond's history, everything looked fine and everything looked set to continue. But just one day later there was no more expansion, no more growth and from then onwards life in the pond was never the same again.

We don't always realize how close to the edge we are, how close to our maximum. One way we can check is to ask ourselves if we are being everything we can be or just doing everything we ought. Are we being driven along by circumstance or are we working to a more measured inner quest.

Friday 28 November 2008

One million songs


Ham Wall, Somerset


Today my beloved and I went to Ham Wall in Somerset. We had promised ourselves for a long time that we would go and see the starlings and their flocking display. The birds - over a million at this site - come from their feeding grounds during the day and congregate in huge pods, swathes and waves which seem to undulate and pulsate with a life of their own. They come wave after wave for an hour at dusk.

I had seen clips of this phenomenon before on the internet, but I wanted to go with Drea so that we could watch the event together for real.

Here are some of the pictures I took - click on them to get a larger view:







The birds are masters of the air. It may seem obvious to say that none of them seemed to collide with any other in the flock, but the flowing three-dimensional shapes almost became entities in their own right. What was particularly interesting was that there was no sound other than the rustling of the wings. It sounded like satin being drawn across the back of your hand.

Once they had poured out of the sky into the reed-beds they were then free to discuss the doings of the day and to gossip about any late-comers. My mind suddenly shifted from one element to another, from air to water. I wondered if I would ever see those great shoals of fish which exhibit similar behaviour.

And - just for a moment - the sussuration of the voices of the starlings became the surf caressing a distant shore.

Friday 7 November 2008

Happy Samhain

Happy Samhain to all who read this.

Samhain is one of the eight solar festivals of the year and marks the start of Winter.

How are these festivals determined? Well there are four fixed points in the solar year. There are the two solstices and the two equinoxes. The solstices occur when the Sun gets to its highest or its lowest point in the sky as viewed by us on Earth. As you probably know the Sun seems to get higher and higher in the sky (as observed at noon, for example) every day as we approach the longest day (June 21st). After that the Sun does not rise so high at noon until we have the shortest day of the year (December 21st) six months later. (Intimately connected with this is the Moon's apparent travel. Winter full-moons are high in the sky and summer full-moons are very low).

Between the longest and the shortest days we have one day in Spring and one day in Autumn when the day and the night are of equal length. These are the equinoxes and occur around 21st March and 21st September. Thus we have four fixed points. So how do we get eight?

The other four festivals occur half-way between any of the four fixed points. So taking them in order:


The shortest day (the Winter solstice)on the 21st December, is Yule.

Between Yule and the Spring equinox is 2nd February, Candlemas.

Then we have the Spring equinox (Ostera) on 21st March.

Between the Spring equinox and the Summer solstice, on 1st May, we have Beltane.

Then the Summer solstice (Lithia) occurs on the 21st June.

Between the Summer solstice and the Autumn equinox we have Lammas (or Lughnasadh, pronounced Loose-nah) on the 1st August.

Then comes Mabon, the Autumn equinox on the 21st September followed by,

Samhain (pronounced Sow-een) between the equinox and the Winter solstice.


The precise times and dates of the festivals can be determined astronomically and are shown on this site.

I have indicated some of the old names for the festivals above. Some, it can be seen, have been appropriated by the Christian calendar, with holidays such as Easter, Hallowe'en and indeed Christmas being shoe-horned in to the traditional dates.

We are not Pagans or neo-pagans and do not worship anything at these festivals. It is just a chance to sit down and have a nice meal and to talk. It is an opportunity to observe the turning of the seasons and to experience what nature is doing. The festivals are not commercial and therefore we can make of them what we wish. (For me, the biggest of the festivals is Yule and we make more of that festival than any other - but more on that at another time.)

But because the festivals are not commercial and they largely pass by unknown, we can just go out, have a walk, notice what is happening to buds, leaves, sky and Sun and get back in tune with the turning of the year. We collect fruits, leaves, corn or flowers - whatever plants are symbolic and redolent of the season - and make a display for the meal. We keep some of 'nature outside' in our home and in our heart. But how does observing these festivals feel more natural?

Well apart from knowing that you are celebrating something natural you also get to really see nature. We in the West live in a world where summer is depicted as that time when it is nice, hot weather, we are not at work and can go on holiday. If it's poor weather, well, "that's the summer gone then". Spring is the first few nice days after winter, and so on. But it is not so.

June the 21st is Mid-summer just as the 21st of December is Mid-winter. Winter, then, stretches from the start of November to the start of February, not just when it is cold and snowy. Look at the snow at the end of January - there are snowdrops and crocuses peeping through! These are the first flowers of Spring. Spring has started, my friend!

Appreciating the seasons by what nature shows and what it does is much more natural and more 'real' than what we are directed to appreciate by the needs of modern living. By looking at the real seasons we return to the seasons of our childhood - to almost how we 'used to think of the seasons'.

Living and appreciating the patterns and timings of the world in which we evolved is natural. And I, for one, feel more in tune with the world - and with myself.

Friday 31 October 2008

What are the chances?

This is something that struck me a few days ago. And it starts with the impossible.

Our local supermarket is expanding which means that various aisles are being moved around from one week to the next during the refurbishment. Sometimes our usual purchases are not there because the shelf is being moved. It may be in another part of the store or it might not be available at all.

Drea (my beloved) always gets our favorite wine from the supermarket in the weekly shop. (To be strictly accurate she gets my favorite wine and just goes along with my preference.) One week it was impossible to get our (my) usual wine. So she did what she thought best - picked another wine, with similar characteristics.

Guess what? The wine she found was better than the wine we had before. It was a pattern-break - we had broken the pattern we had established, and that is useful. As simple as it sounds it is important to keep your options open. It actually becomes a matter of simple maths. . .

If I try 'something new' - whatever it is (ethics, morals and personal values permitting) then I am statistically more likely to find something better. This is because with any choice the new thing can be either worse, as good as or better than the original.

If it is worse, well, I won't buy, do or get it again.

If it is as good as the original, then I have a backup or an alternative that I didn't know about before. If nothing else I've increased my potential for supply in the event of one or the other failing. I may have a resource which will be useful to myself or others later. I have an alternative tool in my toolkit.

And of course if it is better, then I have improved my prospects.

Thus, of the three possibilities, two of them leave me as good or better off than what I have now. Given that this represents a broadening of my options or an improvement in them the choice of trying something new is, therefore a 66% (two out of three) improvement.

Opening ourselves to new experiences (providing they are not directly detrimental to you) is therefore something which is to be embraced.

It also helps us keep a positive frame of mind when things don't go according to plan and we have to change how we go about things - the change of direction is more likely to be beneficial for us.

Friday 24 October 2008

The Fisherman's Cottage

I would like you to imagine a room.

It is the most beautiful room you have ever seen. It is furnished in a way that you find most peaceful. A room you could call your idea of a perfect 'home'. A place where you can relax. A room which has everything in it a perfect room should have - you decide.

Now keep that vision in your mind for a moment. Look around it, feel how warm or cool it is in there. Look at the furnishings, the decor, the floor and lighting. . .

Now, be honest, did you imagine a room underground? Did you imagine a triangular room?

I think I am fairly safe in saying 'no' to both those questions. Now why is that?

This was a question originally posed by the architect Christopher Alexander to show that we all have innate ideas of what constitutes beauty and that the patterns which create it for us are more common than they are different.

Here's another question for you. How many coats does a fisherman have? Hmmm, not so easy that one. So let me set the scene.

Let us look down on this area of the coast. Our vision is increasingly filled with views of the landscape as we float down to this little fishing village with a cove and its harbour. Look over there at the few shops and over there some chalets. Now look over here at this row of small cottages.

This one is owned by a fisherman. He lives alone. He lives by the sea. The sea is in his blood as it was in his grandfather's and his father's before him. He works a small boat with three of the other men in the village. Can you see the cottage in your mind? Let's go up the path. What's the garden like? We go in through the main door and into the living room. We see the rolled sea charts on the table and the unwashed coffee cup. We see the stains of other coffee mugs on the table. We see the sofa and the packet of cigarettes on the arm and the newspaper.

We turn back to the main door and notice how many coats are hung up beside it. Now, how many coats does the fisherman have?

Now you know the answer and you know what each one of them is for, don't you.

So how has this happened? When you were asked the question the first time it was almost impossible to answer except with a guess. But once you understand the context and the drives, once you understand the core the rest flows outwards naturally, you just know the answer!

This is the point. Going from the outside inwards we don't know the answer really. But working from the inside out, going from the core, the essence, the true self outwards, we add increasing layers which all naturally fit and work together.

Trying to create a life, or more correctly, a lifestyle, from the outside inwards will never really work. To try to convince yourself and others of your 'nature' by what you collect and try to shoe-horn together in some pastiche of a life will always have some incongruence. Flowing from the inside out, however, means that what we create will usually hang together, because each piece we add will be a refinement of what has gone before and will be tied to the central theme - your true nature. If it does look out of joint at any point it is probably because it is in the process of being adapted - just give it a little time, a little Kairos.

It will hang together naturally and uniquely, just as your perfect room did. It will be comfortable and be just perfect for you because you created it naturally.

And that is the secret of the Fisherman's cottage.

Friday 17 October 2008

Priceless

Often the things we find priceless in life are given away freely.

It is difficult to be corrupt when our interaction is based on mutual respect, sharing and love.

The commercial world is not interested in this kind of interaction. It is concerned with the five golden rules of business:

1. What's
2. In
3. It
4. For
5. Me

Robert Ringer in his famous work "Winning Through Intimidation" identified three types of people in the business world.

Type number 1's: Those people who will tell you straight from the outset that they are there to grab as many chips off the table as they can and it is your lookout to do the same. He says these people are not great in number, but in terms of business ethics (of being 'straightforward') they are 'honest' - what you see is what you get.

Type number 2's: These people say that they hope you get everything you deserve out of the deal, but then try to do everything they can to grab your and their chips off the table.

Type number 3's: These are similar to type number 2's except that they genuinely mean what they say. They really do hope you will succeed. But through chance or accident, they end up removing as many of your chips as they can from the table in the end.

Type number 4's: These are the exception. These are the people who stand directly to gain from you succeeding in life or business.

But he did not discuss this fourth type of person in any detail. One of the reasons is that you don't usually find them in the world of business.

It is not in the commercial world's interest to allow you to take time. "Buy now!", "Hurry while stocks last!", "Time-limited offer!"

But the important things, the priceless things. . . they tend to be personal, individual, to take time - the kind of things a 'type number 4 person' will give you. And in creating these priceless things people add something incredible. When you get something from someone which they have created from deep down, you're getting some of their feelings. You can see that you have something special.

You're having the time of their life.

Monday 6 October 2008

The time of your life

In keeping with the idea that you might be living your life too fast, I think I should say something about time.

The Greeks have two words for the concept of time. The first is the word 'Kronos'. This refers to what we usually understand by our word 'time' - the time-of-day type of time. It is the root of the word Chronometer (a time meter), chronicle, chronology and the lovely dendro-chronology, (finding out the age of a tree by counting its rings).

The second word they have is 'Kairos'. This also means time, but is a more emotional concept. It means 'the right time', or 'the appropriate time'. There are many 'right times' which occur in our lives. Loaves are cooked and wine is ready at the 'right time'. There is a right time to propose marriage and crops are ripe at the 'right time'. As soon as we grasp this slower beat to life we can see it in all sorts of places. We see it when things work to their own internal rhythm and pace and come to fruition when they are ready.

Of course we can hurry things along and we might also delay them, but then they would lose their organic integrity. Pieces of a system all have their own separate functions. In a natural system they don't tend go too fast or too slowly because various feedback and regulation processes govern their interplay. There are checks and balances. There are pauses in the system for a reason, whether we know what those reasons are or not. The system has evolved. It may have taken us many years to develop ourselves in order, like an artist, to let our skills flow in our work, and it has taken Nature millions of years to develop the living complexity we see all around us.

This is not to say that we live in a pre-ordained world and that everything natural beats to just one rhythm. Natural things all have their own rhythm of birth, growth, maturity and death. Rhythms may be similar or very different. Looking for, and respecting, those rhythms of Kairos wherever we find them will help us feel both some of the similarities in the living things and some of their differences. Seeing both the similarities and differences helps awaken us to the wonder of diversity in the natural world. And knowing they all fit into a natural wholeness helps produce a feeling of connectedness in us, knowing that we, too, have our own natural rhythm.

Thursday 2 October 2008

A fair deal

One of the first tools we need to be able to deploy in our mental armoury is the concept of the 'balanced transaction'.

It is evident from the principles of natural justice that if you do me a favour, I owe you a favour in return. If I do you a service then I resonably expect a comparable service from you. This is something which has helped the cohesiveness of our society, and if we did not have this feature in our makeup we would not be the social animals we are.

If I go out on the hunt, you look after my children. In return, you get a choice piece of the kill when we return. Swings and roundabouts. Fair play.

This gets interesting, of course, when we try to estimate and agree on the comparative worth of the two pieces in the transaction. It's simple to think one apple equates to one pear. But consider if you live in Britain, how many apples equate to one peach. The thing is, apples are reasonable common in Britain. So how many of them would I need to trade them for a peach grown under special conditions or from another country.

The answer is not simple to factor out (length of growing time, transport costs, freshness, bulk discount and so on), but can be determined between the parties to the negotiation quite simply by looking at things like sourcing it elsewhere (the scarcity or uniqueness of the product), the intrinsic appeal of the product, the time I have available to investigate other options, and so on.
What this comes down to is whether I feel I am getting a good deal - whether I feel there is a balance in this transaction.

Now the concept of balanced transaction applies in all areas of interaction with others. It is one of the marks of our improving culture that instead of saying, for example, that if a person commits murder they too should be executed - an eye for an eye - that we can instead balance the transaction and say instead that the murder should serve a prison sentence.

In an everyday sense, however we like to feel that we are getting more out than we put in - this magic ingredient and the whole meal is transformed. That new bauble and I will be happy. A little bit of typing and suddenly out pops something which looks like a typeset document with full brochure, courtesy of our new marketing software.

The thing is that deep down we are not fooled.

As the time taken for production reduces, the effort and emotional input from us decreases towards zero. As a result of the improvements in production, the number of items produced increases towards infinity. As the number of items in our in-tray or letterbox approches infinity our time available to deal with them decreases to zero. So the less effort in production, the more rubbish there is and the less time there is to look at it. Mass produced products in infinite variety overload our capacity to absorb and be interested.

But when we see something hand-crafted, heart-felt, unique and personally and recognisably designed for us, we will pay attention. It is our personal intervention, our care and yes, our passion (despite the business world hijacking that word and, through overuse, diminishing its true meaning) which will imbue what we do and give it true uniqueness, value and meaning in our lives.

Tuesday 30 September 2008

Magician exposes secrets

Some may know of my interests in magic. Here, and in the future, I would like to expose some secrets for you.

Now before any of the magical authorities invoke any of the various curses unleashed on initiates who pass on secret knowledge to cowans and other knowlessmen, let me state that the secrets I will reveal are those of the corporate world intent on getting you to part with your very hard-earned cash.

My purpose is simple. I want to reveal some of the ways sellers get you to buy stuff, particularly stuff you didn't know you wanted. You and I are the targets of deliberate manipulation of our desires. And just as conjurers quite rightly hate having their secrets exposed I am hoping that by showing how some of this manipulation occurs that we can reclaim some of the initiative and not be forced into purchasing decisions that are not in our best interest.

Let me begin then, by giving a brief history of how the situation of us being made to want things came to be. It can perhaps best be traced back to Edward Bernays. He was the nephew of Sigmund Freud and he was one of the first to try to influence the buying public through the manipulation of the message or, as he referred to it, "the engineering of consent".

Now strictly speaking, what Bernays was involved in was public relations rather than advertising. However, some of the same principles are used by advertisers to influence us and affect our behaviour and are derived directly from his ideas.

He was able to demonstrate the power of his techniques, for example, by helping the tobacco industry. In the early part of the twentieth century few women smoked in public. Even those women who smoked in private were often seen as rebels or eccentrics. Bernays approached the tobacco industry and offered them the opportunity to capture this untapped market (with such health benefits to womankind as may be imagined). To do this he tapped into many women's desire for emancipation, liberation and equality by making the smoking of a cigarette - or 'torches of freedom' as they were billed - a symbol of independence. The market blossomed and through this kind of exercise the field of public relations was born.

In future posts I shall attempt to show how we are being manipulated to this day. More importantly, I shall suggest what sort of counter-measures we might deploy in order to reclaim our right to decide what is important in our lives from those who would seek to decide for us. I believe it is we, as individuals, rather than PR consultants and corporate vested interest, who should decide on what we should spend our time, money and effort. It is up to us to put back the quality in our lives.

Saturday 27 September 2008

When galaxies collide


[Click on the picture to enlarge]

This is a picture of MACSJ0025 showing what happens when two giant galaxy clusters collide. For me the most amazing thing is the number of galaxies (you really need to enlarge the picture to get the full benefit) caught in this picture - each one might be the size of our own Milky Way galaxy or much larger.

Just thinking of all those stars which make up all those individual galaxies and wondering how many of them might have planets orbiting them - and then wondering how many of them might support life. . .

It's awe-inspiring.

We tend to see the world as being more or less at eye-level and downwards. But above our heads the majesty of the universe goes on turning, oblivious to our concerns.

So what's this been about so far?

What I have sought to do in these posts so far is to suggest that we can reconnect with things and feelings that are important in life by travelling slower.

But how does that add to the quality of life?

By allowing me to move at my own internal pace. A pace which allows me to feel grounded, but more than that, to feel in-tune with my own rhythm and sense of identity, to reconnect with the feelings I feel and to let the pieces settle in my mind and my life. It allows me to do those things which rightly, wrongly or simply differently I feel are important and of value to me.

I would like to expand on two points here: When I say they are important to me it is not meant in an egotistical sense. It is meant in a quality of life sense by allowing me to be a functioning spiritually, emotionally, mentally and physically connecting being. With whom do I need to have this connection?

First, myself.
Secondly, my wife
Thirdly, the rest of my family
Fourth, my neighbours and local community
Fifthly, the wider world

. . . and in that order.

If I am not integrated within myself I will not be much use to anyone else. My wife comes next as she is without doubt the closest person to me by a long, long way. If that relationship was not settled then I would not be able to relate to the wider rings of my social circle, and so on.

The second point I would make is that it seems to me that there are four speeds at which people metaphorically move and live their lives these days:

The fastest speed is the speed of light: Their lives are lived at the push of a button, by the speed of electronic transmission (video, television and computer). They are living as fast as they can and often trying to speed up still faster.

The next slowest speed is the speed of sound: People reacting and responding to what they hear, to the latest gossip, to stories in the news, the speed of conversation. There is often not much depth here, it is often fleeting, circumstantial and commercial.

Many people seem to be operating somewhere between those two speeds. It is the speed of eveyday, commercial life. But of course life does not move that fast - not real, worthwhile and meaningful life at any rate. To get to that level, you need to stop living your life so fast and slow down.

The next slowest speed is the speed of apprehension, the speed of thought. This is the speed at which your mind can grasp and understand (to apprehend) the significance - the full significance - of what you and others are seeing and saying. It is the speed of your own natural thinking process.

The slowest speed is the speed of feeling or comprehension. This is the speed at which you can internalise, feel and come to terms with something. This is where you relate to others, think before you speak, the speed at which you can pause and consider. This is where you consider yourself and others.

What these levels look like in practice is hard to say. Only you really know for yourself. You can easily lie to yourself and others about how fast you are living. I think we are joined more by our humanity than our technology, that we are more alike than we are different. If you get a sense that someone is living their life too fast then you might be right as you would know how you would be if you moved, thought and reacted that fast.

One of the reasons that we don't like to admit that we are living too fast is that we tend to feel it is more exciting to live faster and boring to live slower. But one of the reasons we feel there is a lack of quality in our lives is precisely because none of the pieces have had a chance to settle, we stop feeling connected to who and what we are deep down and it is our unconscious mind and our body which is sending us signals that we are living our life too fast. When we feel this disconnection, when we wonder what it is all about, we need to take that time to reconnect, to live slower and stop living our lives so fast.

Friday 26 September 2008

The pot at the end of the rainbow

What a lovely day it has been today. The weather was just perfect. A real 'second of autumn' day.

We have 'light-catchers' in our window in the sitting room. These are prisms, crystals and other pieces of faceted glass which catch the sunlight and fill the room with chunks of rainbow of different sizes. The variations and patterns are amazing - little sturdy chunks about two by three inches up to spears of colour one inch by six feet.

Some of the crystals move while others are static. It make for a very magical display enhanced in its beauty by its very fact of its transitory nature.

Drea caught her breath and alerted me to one particular rainbow this afternoon. On the wall opposite the window is a writing bureau and on this there is a vase which Drea had made (she being a very good potter). A rainbow was hitting the vase and producing the most vivid hues.

The vase itself is a creamy white stoneware pot with a matt glaze, and the full spectrum of colours played on its surface like luminous velvet. It make the pot look like the home of the rainbow genie.

As the earth turned and the angle of the sun changed, the spectrum slowly slid off on to the wall with the seeming shadow pushing it off the vase. The final moments were like the last seconds of an eclipse or the final view of the setting sun as it slips under the horizon. The same kind of feeling as when the circus leaves town.

Thursday 25 September 2008

The Third of Autumn

The weather at the moment is very mild. When the Sun comes out the whole day can be transformed. It is the time of year when you can really sense the turning of the seasons.

This is a poem I wrote some time ago to try to express the mood of this time of year.


The Third of Autumn

The first of Autumn is a blue-gray day
A blue-mooded, gray day of dismay
A leaden sulk, a wet face-slap
Trickling 'till dusk and then all the way back.

The second of Autumn is a soft, downy gold
The honey-butter day breathes out and gets old
We're swimming in dapples and big country apples
It smoothes on our faces with unhurried graces

The third of Autumn is a sharp and clear Sun
A bite to our actions, a swallow it's done
We focus our minds and pick up the pace
We harvest the time so the day does not waste
We rustle the papers and pick up our pens

And the three days of Autumn are wed at the end.


Les. P. Cross. 2001.

Wednesday 24 September 2008

Candle

How many parts or separate features of a lit candle can you identify?

Just take a simple candle and light it.

What do you see?

How many separate parts can you really see? Now look again.

Tell me.



(I shouldn't have posted this question, but never mind.)

Grounding

I went to a meeting in Bristol today. The weather was very nice after all the rain and cloudy days we have been having.

I was in very good time for the meeting, so I decided to take an unfamiliar path from the car park to the hotel where meeting was to be held. The path was delightful and was elevated from the road at the side of Castle Park in the centre of town. The path was bordered with some large horse-chestnut trees and some of the conkers had already fallen to the ground.

I picked one up and also found an unopened casing. I pressed it slightly with my foot and two pristine conkers eased out. They were absolutely beautiful. The sheen on them does not last long but the depth of colour and the gently undulating variations in hue are one of nature's jewels. The very nature of this transitory appearance only adds to the magic of the find, knowing that in a few short hours they will become merely brown nuts, passing to one of the three functions of the next stage of their lives: food for squirrels, the hope of another tree or the percussive toy of a child.

What else do I do with my time

I mentioned below that I have better things to do with my time than watching television.

Go here: What else I do

If you follow the link you will see that I also offer character readings for corporate entertainment, private parties and private insights. I get to meet lots of interesting people with very interesting lives doing this. . .

Tuesday 23 September 2008

Why I stopped watching TV

I stopped watching TV in 2001 and I will never go back to watching it.

Why did I stop?

There are a number of reasons and a number of circumstances.

Reasons first:

1. The content seemed to me to be too thin. I tried to look critically at programmes and make a note of what I actually learned as a result of the programme. They seemed to take a long time to say only a little. This was wasting my life.

2. The programme sometimes seemed to be presented to justify its own existence. I had no real interest in the topic being presented and just watched it because it was on. Sometimes the programme was just entertainment and no substance. (I will say more about 'entertainment' in a moment).

3. I can think of more important things to do with my time - I have several hobbies which take time to practice and perform. There are classics of literature which I had never read and was not likely to have the time to read if I give in to the lure of easy entertainment.

4. The information in the programme was very distant. Some 'American comedian', some 'Hollywood actress', some 'Australian soap-opera'. What did that matter when I didn't know the names of my next-door neighbours? Why was watching these shows more important than being with my friends?

5. I tried to think in what way I was a better person as a result of having watched the programme. Over a few months I could not find a programme which made me think I had been glad to watch it.

Now I should say that I am certainly not against entertainment, but there are a number of considerations here:

Is this entertainment I had actively sought?
Was it just appealing to some basic human instinct for titillation or lazy emotion - and did I not want to be better than that?
Was it the best form of entertainment I could think of having?

And so on.

Here were some of the circumstances I ran into:

Whenever I told people that I didn't watch TV they would often become defensive (interestingly) and say things like "Oh I only watch the news and the good programmes, like the wildlife programmes".

Comment: Many of these subsequently became available on DVD (at less than the license fee, could be seen whenever I wanted and were better quality than the broadcast version).

What else? "I like to watch sport and I can only do that on the TV".

Comment: Perhaps you can only watch your particular team or sports person on the TV as travelling to see them might be cost prohibitive - OK I can accept that is a decision only you can make. I am not a sports fan so that wasn't a consideration for me. But I did wonder how fit and healthy I was getting just watching someone else doing their 'day job' and the thing they really enjoyed and got paid for. Of course, I could partake of this licenced voyeurism, but it was not my choice. I have my own interests and my own dreams to live. I want to live my life, rather than watching someone else living theirs.

People would also openly admit that they needed their 'fix' of a particular soap-opera. OK, again, that is their choice. But please consider carefully that this is then an addiction. Consider what you are giving up.

A some questions to think about:

Why can't you get the essential bits of the news from the radio or the internet?
How have you used any of the information you have gained from that programme subesquently?
In what way are you a better person for watching that programme?
What did people do for entertainment before television?

Here is a real story:

I became television-free just a couple of weeks before my wife. One of the programmes she wanted to watch was about Prof. Colin Pillinger, the lead scientist organising the Beagle 2 mission to Mars. My wife and I were both members of the Bristol Astronomical Society and the mission was obviously of interest. She was disappointed in the programme because instead of talking about the mission and looking at the growth of the programme in informative detail it was presented more like a docu-soap. For example, Prof. Pillinger was shown full of expectation going into a meeting to try to get some funding - then a fade out. Fade back in again and he was shown either happy or disappointed with the outcome. There was little actual meat in the programme.

A few weeks later (as it happens) members of Bristol Astronomical Society were invited to Hewlett-Packard's complex just up the road to see a lecture by Prof Pillinger to hear just those kind of details which had been lacking from the programme. Following the lecture there we were sharing a glass of wine and canapes with him and asking belly-to-belly all the questions we still had.

The point of this? It was getting out and doing it which was the most satifying - the real deal.

Just switch off and see what happens.

It's your life and it's ticking by. . .

Stirring the wine

Just stirred the wine during my lunch break.

It was important to me not just to do it as a maintenance task, but to recall that I am doing it as part of an on-going project that is something I set out to create.

In other words, don't think of it as a chore (it's not, anyway, it's interesting), but use the experience to reconnect with what is important in your life.

Monday 22 September 2008

Wine on the go!

We have just started the wine off. Three gallons of Blackberry and Apple. It should give a final strength of 15% ABV, which is quite acceptable.

We had to buy bottled water for the wine as the tap water here has a contaminant which gives it an unpleasant earthy taste which I find quite undrinkable (though I am assured it is not hazardous to health).

Taking the time to enjoy the meal

The meal was wonderful. Lamb Souvlaki with a lemon, spring onion and greek yoghurt sauce. Drea made some pita breads for it and also created a lovely table display from iris leaves from the garden which she wove into a mat and then put on some large rose-hips, some passion-flower fruits and various leaves of different colours to give a feel for what colours are present in nature at the moment. A nice bottle of greek wine which we had been given as a present from holiday was excellent.

Drea also made an apple crumble for dessert, but that will have to wait until the meal has gone down a bit.

One of the most significant things for me about the meal was to take the time to savour the flavours. Don't rush the food. OK, how do you savour it? Think about the sensations in your mouth. Describe them mentally to yourself or outloud to others. What does the flavour remind you of? Take your food in combination with other parts of the dish on offer - what does it taste like with a sip of wine (before, after or during). Try to smell the food as you are chewing it. This is a real challenge for me. Touch, taste and smell are my least developed senses. But the trick here (like so many things) is to want to experience the food.

If nothing else, this can serve as a guide to what to do differently next time you make the dish - a little less garlic, perhaps or a touch more salt.

What else? Candles. A couple of large night-lights to provide that living elemental quality that only a living flame can give.

The most important thing though, is to share the meal if you can - the conversation and the opinions about the dish itself, certainly. But just being with family and friends and letting the act of eating act as a springboard for other observations and comments and a chance to catch up on what has been happening in everyone's life that day.

Starting my blog

Hello.

Today is the middle of Autumn, the autumn equinox, also called Mabon. I thought it a suitably significant time of the year to start my blog.

What do I want to do with a blog? I have thought about it for some time and I want to share some of the things which I feel concerned about and also those things which might be done to improve the quality of one's life.

Now let me state at the start that I believe I already have a good quality of life, certainly compared with the lives of many others one sees reported in the news from around the world.

I noted above that it is the autumn equinox. This is significant in our household as we will be celebrating it later with a special meal - special for us, that is. We like to celebrate the turning of the seasons and just take some time to relax and think about how the year is changing. We don't do this out of some pagan belief but merely to take time to appreciate. One of the beauties of having these celebrations is that they are not commercial and we can make of them what we will.

This is one of the things we do to add quality - or rather, to reclaim the quality - of our lives. So much of life is taken up with moving, working and thinking
fast. It is important to take the time to put some "slack" back into living. Taking time to appreciate and taking a mental breather.

If you want to find out more about when the key points are in the solar year you can find out by visiting the following site:

http://www.archaeoastronomy.com

then click on 'orbital maps' and 'countdowns'.

One of the other things will are doing is to make some Blackberry and Apple wine. The apples are all 'fallers' from my mother-in-law's garden and the blackberries were picked from the lane behind our house and from the garden. Drea (my beloved) is busy peeling and coring the apples, leaving me to do the 'technical bit' of measuring the water, sugar and yeast.

Why is this important to me? Because as part of adding quality to life it is important to create something, even something small. The fact that we are creating something natural like homemade wine which is both pleasant to drink and which serves as a reminder of times spent together is an important part of feeling grounded together. Instead of merely consuming our resources we are creating something which will be greater than the sum of the parts of which it is made.