Stability - 24 hours to lift off!

(If you are getting this post as an email may I suggest that you click on the post title and read the posting in the blog itself ~ it is a much better experience and if I post a video you will automatically be able to view it!)

Stability: the state of being stable; steadiness; fixity; the power of recovering equilibrium. (Chambers dictionary)

Hmmmmm.    Well, having over-run my own 7 year cycle by two years, the pull of change has won out with life and me happily conspiring to enable this new phase to begin TOMORROW!  Means, motive and opportunity are all lined up so its time for the execution.

My life in a set of matching luggage!

Parting is such sweet sorrow ~  William Shakespeare

This has been a week of partings and sweet sorrows, of things given up, given away, and simply passed on. Even now I am not quite at my goal in terms of possessions; I am down to 3 suitcases and my laptop bag to go, and 1 bag, 1 small suitcase, 1 box (stuff for India next year) and 1 attaché case of papers.

My intention is to be like a snail and to reduce further until everything fits into a medium sized backpack (already purchased and in one of the suitcases!) 

But back to the sweet sorrow ~ I think I can pretty safely say that my main "loss" will be in the immediacy of friends ~ when I went on my adventure to India in 1995 communication was via a monthly round robin newsletter and letters which took 10 days in each direction ~ today, that sorrow is sweetened thanks to MSN messenger, Yahoo, Google Blogger, SKYPE and a whole host of other means to keep in touch and I am sure a communication protocol will emerge!  My weekly post on the blog for starters.

It has been gratifying in that those people who might have protested the most at my departure have through love been my most stalwart supporters which is, I am sure, what George Elliot was thinking when writing "Only in the agony of parting do we look into the depths of love."

I hate the winter and am sure to some extent I suffer from SAD,  the start of chill winds, dark evenings, and the fact thatI suddenly become aware of the metal in my leg all makes the thought of a year round temperate climate too good to miss!

And on the subject of miss-ing.....

"What will you miss?"  is a question I have been asked loads and off course surprisingly difficult to answer. I could say Roast beef and Yorkshire pudding [Martin and Jean have ensured that I go away with the taste of fine Herefordshire fore rib], a decent pint, making bread, sitting n the garden, duetting with Barrie, walk round the reservoir with Martin, trips to Hereford, time with friends, radio 4, radio 3 ........  all a bit clichéd.  But all to be enjoyed again intensely on my annual furlough.  However, the plain truth is nearer to the fact that all these things will simply be replaced by other equally wonderful sensations and experiences.  Which will be revealed to you, dear reader, through this blog!

In reality it is very hard to miss things these days as technology is there to fill the gap one way or another ~ the downside of that is it is also hard too create the space to really see and really experience both outwardly and inwardly.    These next two quotes are permenently on my blog as a reminder of what I am about:

"We travel initially, to lose ourselves; and we travel, next, to find ourselves. We travel to open our hearts and eyes and learn more about the world than our newspapers will accommodate. We travel to bring what little we can, in our ignorance and knowledge, to those parts of the globe whose riches are differently dispersed. And we travel, in essence, to become young fools again - to slow time down and get taken in, and fall in love once more." Pico Iyer - Why we travel

"Often I feel I go to some different region of the world to be reminded of who I really am. . . Stripped of your ordinary surroundings, your friends, your daily routines, your refrigerator full of food, your closet full of clothes, you are forced into direct experience. Such direct experience inevitably makes you aware of who it is that is having the experience. That's not always comfortable, but it's always invigorating." Michael Crichton - Travels

 Antigua at dawn sans tourists!

Back to stability, one of the definitions given is the power of recovering equilibrium well for me, it is the very act of change that restores (albeit temporarily) my sense of equilibrium or rather self, as I wrote last time I feel that I am on a continuum and this is my stability.

However, what I do know, is that my two years in the desert of "uselessness" are to be replaced by the simple acts of sharing, living, loving, learning and growing, through, the power of the unexpected!

Ok, ok,  here something more empathetic!

Now where did I put my tickets ......?

Hasta proxima Domingo!  (Until next Sunday!)

P.S. ~A big thank you to my Angels (grand y medio) and this week's super heros Shaun and Rebecca who are now the PROUD guardians of Mr. Moggs and Dame Kiti  - that cloud had the most silver lining! 

The journey is the reward - 21 days to go.

When I sit down to write this blog I never quite know what it will be, sometimes more factual, sometimes more philosophical, but as is my underlying intention, always a reflection and reaction to my journey. 

(And I do hope that some you will pluck up the courage to comment on it – but I assume that will come once I start to reflect on being in Guatemala etc.)

Selling and giving away my possessions is like removing boulders that are blocking my path and that “less is most certainly more” and it is lovely to know that so many objects will be appreciated differently in a new setting.  For me, the less I have the more I can access my senses and try to open myself up to fully engaging with the adventure ahead.

Mr Moggs and Dame Kiti
(click picture to enlarge)

It was very tough (very tough) giving up the cats, Mr. Moggs and Dame Kiti, and returning them to the Cats Protection League, a big lesson in the dangers of anthropomorphism! But it was a great nine months with them, though I miss Mr. Moggs waking me by tapping my cheek with his paw!

Last January my life plan was different, and yet again I realised that I was missing something, and excuse me, but,

Where do you by the ordinance survey map of life?

Well, if it can be bought I seem to have missed the adverts for it and certainly never seen the shop or maybe I have seen it but didn’t have enough money to buy it or just couldn’t find it in a scale that worked for me!

I am amazed, astounded and often mystified by the relative ease by which some people are able to find the map, and happily follow it, seemingly knowing the destination and able to work out the best route.

When I was a kid I used to enjoy jigsaw puzzles  and I remember being bought a series of map jigsaws with lozenge shaped pieces for the place names which you inserted once you had completed the larger map of the country. Somehow for me it was all too logical, I wanted to mix up the pieces create new country or change the place names.

My map of life seems to be out of a box of mixed puzzle pieces, a few fit together and take you in one direction then by one means or another I manage to make a connection with an entirely different set of pieces and I am off in a different direction and looking in the box there are plenty of pieces left, many as yet, blank. And I have a whole heap of lozenge shaped “certainties” but no lozenge shaped holes have as yet appeared in the map to put them in! And I suspect never will!

Quo Vadis?
(click picture to enlarge)

How does the saying go “to travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive” though for me the Taoist version “the journey is the reward” seems to make more sense.  When combined with a mantra from my psychotherapy training “the map is not the territory” I start to see how and why the vagabonding Knowmadic life, has a deep, inherent and necessary appeal for me.

On my wall I have a world map, but it is the “Peters Projection” which represents countries according to their actual size in 2D rather than trying to preserve a 3D view. It is a shock!   Europe and the USA look so much smaller and Africa is so much bigger!  Well of course they never changed in reality but the mind shift required to absorb this information and then to realise how "traditional" maps have completely distorted the territory of our understanding – it is pretty radical.

Peters projection 
(click picture to enlarge)

I suppose that the theme that emerges is that I simply cannot grasp, accept or believe in the “is-ness” of a logical map of life, and that uncertainty is the fuel which powers my life view.

Not satisfied with just accepting things, I want to know more about the “why” and more about the “territory” and trust that the map will look after itself. Each experience for me creates a new piece to that map jigsaw entitled “my life” and of course I have no clue as to how many pieces it contains, what shape it is, its difficulty or whether it is even do-able. 

The joke of course is that on the day that I have all the pieces 

I will be very much like Monty Python’s Parrot!   

  (click to play)

“The journey truly is the reward in and of itself.”