Relax Don't Do It

Considering I'm a wordsmith to the marrow of my bones, I find some words (read: most) utterly confusing (this does not apply to words like "smoothie", "waffles" and "trampolining"). Relax is one of those words and joins "epistemology" and "heuristics" except it's a word we all bandy about, like love, and yet no-one really knows what the h-ll anyone really means. An inelegant mind invented 'chillax' in the attempt that hybridisng would somehow tether this levitating verb to sense. So when I declared to myself some much-needed winter down time, to relax, it clanged about pleasantly in the duller chasms of my mind; it was all such a lovely lightly fizzing feeling until I had to decide what relaxing looks like.

I began, like Pooh, at the beginning, and cut out the basics. Stopped working for a bit. Phew. No more early starts, yay! What next? Avoid confusing jargon and communication that ends in chin wobbles/ tears. Done. Er Somehow. Let's pretend so I can tick it off my Relaxation list. Next imaginary rule for R&R is sleep more. Hmm. Not easy. To be fair, 11-7 is a hefty 8 hours. Even 12-8 is the same, which surprises me. Do I need regular 12 hour aviation-induced death sleeps in order to prove that I am in fact relaxed? I'm already getting confused. OK what next. Forget the gym - stay in, read and gaily eat snacks. Mhm. That's weird and won't work. I actually love the gym. And I can't pack carbs or protein shakes in like the meathead gym guys do. Or stuff myself with Papa Johns and doughnuts while watching Love Island. Gross. I'm a lily that eats only when I is hungry. OK, decided - go to the gym but r e l a x. OK. There's a sauna there - that's relaxing. That's what rich people do in films. I'll watch more films for inspiration!

I watch Legally Blonde. It is amazing. Elle Woods is still my hero. I would have watched Clueless but it was £7.99 on Netflix. Extortion is not relaxing. How does Elle Woods relax? She mostly visits nail bars. I'm a 38 year old man with 'he/him' pronouns so that's less relaxing, more humiliating. She then trains to be a lawyer. OK this isn't working. Kim Kardashian is also training to be a lawyer! She seems relaxed and the secret to her planetary derriere may be that she sits on it a lot. I tune in on her IG story. She's going to the gym at 5.30am. She has 5 kids. She runs a clothing business. She appears on at least 2 continents simultaneously mostly on the beach or naked in a mirror with flesh coloured hugging suits. I am deeply confused.

This needs more investigation. Who relaxes?? The RETIRED! The silver crowd! That's it! What do they do? I visit cafes to observe their natural habitat. Anthropology training kicks in.

They are incredibly slow moving. Their plates are full of carbs and they drink dainty beige bowls of tea. Their hair is wispy, large and powerful-looking and they smell nice. They wear lovely shades of grey and other complementary pastels. They look warm. Their cheeks are soft-looking. They go to pilates classes at the church hall and laugh softly at the teacher's semi-risque suggestions and they are flexible but tortoise-ian in how they arrive at a posture. I'm learning. They look kind. They have Land Rovers. They are speaking to each other rather than updating their statuses and improving their IG stories; their gaze upon their device is of disapproval. Hmph. Note to self - my sample size was small. Too late.

Land Rovers. Power hair. Second helpings of cake. I gotta get rich to relax. I get to it. I watch and listen to influencers. I get aligned. No more gloomy chasms. I read the news. I get smart again. No dumbing down for me. Nah. I'm woke. Or awakening. I answer my emails. I phone, no - visit  everyone who can help my re-green and steward the planet. I know my mission! I eat just twice a day - save the land! Who has time to eat 3 times?? I avoid eating whales and insects. I'm declare across my media channels that I am Vegan with a capital V. All 5 followers respect me and push away their burgers. I up the ante with exercise especially concentrating on the finger strength so I can blast out at least 26 emails in less than 3.5 minutes that are professional and Seriously Show my Involvement in every aspect of life. Take me seriously, they scream. I sleep 4 hours a night. I even get the garden looking better. I regularly wield a log-splitter and bare my teeth as the neighbours pass. I am the top of my tree (is that an expression?). I rip weeds from the garden and bung them in my epic smoothies. I buy new shirts to house my inflating physique. I'm a boss. My legs ache from the bench press. My neck aches from humped over my laptop, and the axe. My ankles ache from walking to appointments like a boss. I need a physiotherapist. I need a spa day. I need a swanky hotel. I look at cruises. I wonder about sabbaticals. But I can't afford my own rates. My mum offers me a free holiday in Spain and offers to do my laundry. Maybe then I can relax.

How It Works: Systems

"I love them all, and all of them love me. 

Cus the system works, the system called reciprocity"

- Excerpt of lyrics to "When You're Good To Mama", Chicago 

"Our conception of linear causality and space-time predisposes us to believe that the minute and local could not possibly have a significant effect on a large global scale, but in a complex non-linear web of processes within processes, the emergent properties at the global scale are intricately linked with processes on the scale of individual local interactions in what, for lack of a better word, could be called a fractal-like holarchy of emergence" 

- D.C.Wahl 2002, accessed on medium.com 26 Jun 2019

George Monbiot recently talked about how one effective answer to our earth's pollution problem isn't replacing single-use plastic with natural material; from where, he asks, does that natural material come, and at what cost is it processed? This absence of systems thinking is prevalent across some green debate. Take solar panels - aside from the advantages that the end product provides, again - what kind of process and impact is involved in the extraction of the materials and manufacturing process? Isn't the aggression and scale of industrial manufacture a bigger part of the problem, than what's actually produced? Do we actually consider products as the problem because the scale of industry is far greater than a mind can possibly perceive - so far removed from the practicality of reducing our own family's pollution footprint, taking the bins out? The theme in conversation at my uni's Climate Change collective is reversal of the trend towards individual responsibility by acknowledging its limits - they argue that it's the system that must make change; we're hardly about to change the world if we stop using plastic bags. So that begs the question - how can individuals affect change?

I used to be sensationally angry. Once, at a lecture in Totnes a few years ago, not one but two people came up to me afterwards and suggested that I went to anger management therapy. What were they talking about? What I was feeling was important and had to be said, I thought at the time. Around about this time, I was experimenting with cutting foods out of my diet that I knew wouldn't reap benefits (like sugar). I felt such fire in my belly that everyone should know - I justified these explosions of words because what I had to say could benefit others.

The wonderful social scientist and empath researcher Karla McLaren says of anger that it asserts 3 vital qualities - honour, protection and boundary. In that incarnation of myself, I would have argued that I was defending the honour of myself and others by sharing this knowledge; I would have said that I was honouring the environment, sticking up for it as if it were a trembling blue-green child in the corner of a capitalist playground.

But I had anguish in my heart. And the tightness with which I gripped these subjects, for the sake of my sanity, had to soften finally - blurring my convictions at the same time. I once again found myself sharing meals without anxiety or questioning the contents or origins; I enjoyed an ice cream here and there, and began buying certain foods just because I fancied them. It felt kinder. I felt freed. But there was also a soft rumbling sense of conflict. How on earth do we hold our convictions strongly while not driving ourselves, others or the environment into the ground?

Blue Star Dancing Scissors, Shoshanah Dubiner https://shoshanah-dubiner.pixels.com/

Recently I attended a conference where the environment was at the top of our agenda. It was a fantastic event, and on and off-stage, we all greedily exchanged and gobbled up ideas of stewarding the land around us, best practices of environmental stewardship, contemporary ecology and debated extraordinary notions like the sentience of plants. So at breakfast, when my gentle complaint about the mushrooms lead to an invitation by the chef to tour the kitchen, I gladly accepted. 

And despite the college and the convention's green leanings and exquisite grounds maintenance, before me sulking in the harsh blue light of professional catering, were enormous tins of industrial tuna fish, vast amounts of cheap white-sliced Chorleywood bread, soft-luminous surface detergents in their white hospitalesque bottles waiting to blast the microbiomes out of this stainless steel jungle. As the chef described his curious method of cooking mushroom ('roasting' them under cling film in the oven, then finishing them off on the stove) to my deeply puzzled expression, I crudely calculated the 'goodness' of what we were learning at the event versus the under-bubbling of industrial 'badness' that dripped to us; the celestial algorithm assured me that what we were learning was so much greater than the sum of its comestible parts.

What's the story at home? After having eating communally for roughly 2 or 3 years, whilst in communities in Spain - I was lucky to have spent time where most meals were prepared from scratch, some grown on-site, leftovers were fed to the chickens or we helped ourselves to what couldn't be served a second time to guests - I was filled with sadness to find that house sharing in my new student life wasn't always such a idyllic story; eating cheaply for some meant relying on cheap pasta or instant soups for weeks on end, attempting, like my housemate's boyfriend, to live off £7 per week or diving into the Student Loan via greasy packaging-drenched Deliveroo and Uber Eats. In comparison, I've eaten like Henry VIII; and even when I joined friends 'urban foraging', I have had choice selections of organic smoked salmon, crumpled (but perfectly fine) bags of spelt flour or fresh fruits and vegetables. Could I proclaim the virtues of eating well, while supporting industrial monocultures somewhere at the periphery of developing nations (and my conscience)?

But, who am I kidding? Because, apart from cooking with locally-grown vegetables, planting up my garden with a few kitchen herbs and salad leaves, teaching yoga at uni, I rely as much as everyone else on these foods grown in lands I'll never see and can't pronounce. Despite healthier habits I've tried to curate, I've felt for the first time in my life that affecting change more widely is a very tough thing to do. I've felt, and regularly feel, the blood, guts and mess that it takes to drag the tiny gems of what I've learnt (through exposure to disturbing documentaries and media froth) into a busy, noisy, mad and beautiful world. Without becoming busier, madder and noisier. And who's listening, or busy planting up their gardens with enough food than a smattering of foliage? And I'm a single person with no mortgage - how on earth are you families doing it?! So I wonder if, like plant roots, the communication of change is already underground, in the mycorrhizal subconscious recesses of our psyches. If this is more about symbolic change (becoming greener by making arguably greener choices), can we still be considered hypocrites for not always aligning out outer world choices with our core values and beliefs? Do I condone the mistreatment and industrialisation of cows if I buy a buttery croissant for breakfast? Or is that too crude an equation? Our intellects' capacity seems way beyond that of our bodies, especially bodies that can choose a cleaner neater lighter life away from the sweaty dirt-under-the-nails lives of farmers and gardeners.

When we inherited this earth from our mums and dads, we also inherited these peculiar systems that all add up to that provocative c-word: culture. However, I'm keen to avoid adding to that cacophony of voices that declare emergency, to express disappointment or worse to the Governments; they are the same Governments that have helped create a world where I (and you reading this) can say, eat, think, do...exactly what I want, and even watch a film with an ice cream for a few hours to relax! For me, there is little room for criticism unless it is constructive; unless we are being astute citizen scientists, or market gardeners, or farmers, ourselves. We are no longer, as some recent wealthy ancestors lived, imaginations of some space ship tour of mortal life; we're not floating above the planet - we have learnt, perhaps a tough way lately, that we are enmeshed quite fixedly in the fabric of this world; the very fabric of our laundry and clothes, our crisp packets, the strawberry balanced precariously on the Friday night cocktail, the heated wooden floors, our insect-metal cars that ferry us safely over land, over the tarmac, over soil and muted earth. Yet the privileged (of which I am one...) engage that colossal power of culture and the magic (no hands!) that lets one float from country to country, one idea to the next; but at what cost to our bodies, our health, our communities and the land? Am I barking up the wrong tree? What does your conscience tell you?

pexels.com

How does one participate in this system, with humility and grace? This is the question that has buzzed around my mind for the past 18 months, or 18 years (my head hurts). Do we have a choice? There's a ruthless quality to the pursuit of a dream or an ideal and its volume can be heightened when we're not around those who share our values. But if we don't activate that degree of ruthlessness, and aggression, do we automatically disentitle ourselves to dream at all? Since returning to England and a relatively normal life of work and study, integrating into a new area with a mixture of people who all believe and live such different ways, it's vital that I create or find mechanisms to help me stay deeply connected with what I hold closest to my heart, to those who share similar beliefs while remembering to practice the softness and patience required to be around those who disagree with and challenge my beliefs. Because this is the system: how can we share, when we feel so vulnerable, in a time where sharing and communication are our greatest tools?

Highly recommended resources

Your back garden - get messy. Compost your peelings. It takes so little space.

Your kitchen - get creative!

Abundant Edge

Permaculture

Your local conservation/wildlife group - check Facebook

Giving Up Is Hard To Do

I've always loved goodbyes, probably because I love a sense of occasion. A good goodbye has all the charm and horror of a post-argument state; anticipation, regret, the intoxication of 'forgiveness' in the unknown and soon rendez-vous. There's a neat circularity to it containing the most cinematic human emotions. 

For May's New Moon, I share with you some cleansing detox rituals that I have enjoyed using over the years, and benefited from greatly. I think of them as bodily and psychological goodbyes. And in an age of relentless TMI and hyper-empaths, a vital skill is to be able to machete away the stuff we don't want...or just gently wish the over-sharers well on their way. Following the lunar calendar and its ancient rites, we can maximise the benefits to our body and psyche. 

I first learnt about the moon and its impact on our health when I happened to pick up a copy of Moontime many years ago when I worked at the incredible Neals Yard Remedies back in Manchester. I was the first employee they hired who didn’t have a holistic medicine background; I was plucked from selling beautiful overpriced Gucci shoes because the manager of Neals Yard liked my sassy sales pitches. As soon I started, thanks to a great nutritional therapist and assistant manager, I flung myself at everything…learning about supplements, herbs, attending Solgar and Viridian (supplement companies) workshops, running workshops on how to make your own cosmetics.

Before I worked there, I was a Frescetta kind of eater. For those of you who missed this company’s food and seductive ad campaign, it was the pizza that you cooked from frozen in an unheated oven that would puff up to deliver a crusty polenta ledge that was, to my late teen self, unavoidable and totally necessary for my species survival. If I wanted some fibre, I might have a few baked beans with it.

The nutritional therapist introduced me to new ways of eating and engaging with food. I didn’t consider any idea bonkers; with the state of health at the time, I couldn’t afford to. So I devoured all the ideas in it, what time of the month to cut hair and nails, when to plant seeds and when the most favourable lunar times are to feast and fast.

I haven’t read it since then, although I intend to of course (after the dozens of ethnobotanical books that sulk on my shelves) but I remember clearly the moon passing through zodiac signs every 2 or 3 days. In some days, it was favourable to adopt practices to care for a certain part of the body or avoid operating on it (except, obviously, in emergencies). For example, as the moon passes through Aqauarius, it says that any kind of nourishing skin care, like applying oils, masks, and creams, has a greater effect than other days; or during Gemini phases, avoiding manual lifting or strain on the shoulders and hands is good.

Skeptical as always, I tried all this for myself, gradually. Working through the month and as I adopted a cleaner diet, I began to really through my body and its sensations, which planets were passing through; on Sagitarrius days, I would avoiding runs, on Aries days, I could notice a slight headache if I felt out of balance; on Pisces days, I would take better care of my feet, soaking them or massaging them before bed.  And on Aquarius days, I could perceive (whether invented or not) a luminosity to my skin that was otherwise absent. Can I say that without being an asshole? Probs not.

Like many ideas, they were replaced by others over time but one thing that stuck was New Moon cleansing habits. A New Moon is the opposite to a Full Moon – i.e. there is no moon visible in the sky (not just because of clouds cover). They can symbolise, according to the moontime beliefs, starting a new project, as well as stillness from activity from the rest of the month. Whether it’s ‘true’ or not doesn’t bother me because I like a sense of occasion. And if one day a month, we can rest, reflect, make a plan for our ambitions and challenges for the coming month, ain’t no harm in that!

Dancing Clouds & Still Water,
http://wwwparastooganjei.blogspot.com/2013/06/dancing-clouds-and-still-water.html?m=1

Here’s what I do. Adapt these practices to your own lifestyle, choose what works for you and I’m not a doctor – just a curious citizen passing on what I love. Follow your intuition and you’ll find something perfect for you. My guidelines come below the suggestions so you don’t go into these all guns blazing and forget to react with sensitivity to these delicate processes!

     Try extending your fast. “Break-fast” is exactly that. So why not extend your body’s digestive resting time, and try a 24 hour fast? “But I would DIE!” I hear you shriek. Listen – you don’t know me but all my friends would not hesitate in saying my mouth is always full aka I ADORE all things edible. However, any eating produces an inflammatory response in the body and the digestive organs take so much energy and resources. Give yourself a longer break while doing as little as possible – is no skin of anyone’s nose. Naturally, if you’re underweight, frail, or a child, avoid this but maybe enjoy something lighter, like fresh soups, greens, juices.

-          Have an enema. “Are you crazy?!” I hear your bowel-curdling objections. Well, probably. But what’s not crazy is that your bowel (and mine) like all your anatomy works bloody hard to keep you upright, clean, happy, and healthy. Why not give it a gentle wash? There’s a home kit you can use and for around £20, you can have a kit for life. They hold about a pint or two of water (or herbal tea if you’re feeling adventurous), which sounds like a hell of a lot of liquid, and dear ones – I don’t know where it goes either – but fear not cus it soon comes back out.

-          Take a salt or Epsom salt bath. Add some essential oil, like lemon or lavender, to the salt to aid cleansing.

-          Restorative yoga. I find a lot of joy by being physical but once a month (or more if I can find the time), I take a restorative class (I love yogaglo online so I can practice when I want). Every time I practice restorative yoga, I fall asleep. Which tells me I needed it and was probably a bit exhausted! Highly recommend. This can be practiced by all levels and benefits from you having as many pillows, blankets and books as you can as the practice holds you propped in a deeply nourishing position.

-          Take a look at my Instagram account @thejoyfulheron for an example of how to do uddhya banda on an empty stomach in the morning. This is a powerful yet gentle internal organ massage.

-          Imitate, to the best of your ability, a squat when you go to the loo. All this means is stand on something like a little stool your child stands on to reach the sink, or use a couple of thick sturdy books. If you encourage your body to poop this way, it ensures that the colon is completely emptied which reduces the likelihood of stagnant waste (and ultimately disease). Adopt this simple practice every time you go to the loo and remember to keep relaxed. I take a book of poetry or garden flowers in there. The first rule of longevity is never rush a poo!

Finally, I’d recommend that, if you live in a northern climate, like I do in the UK, save these cleasning practices for the warmer months – April to September, for example, unless you are very overweight and are in robust health. Naturally these practices cool the body, aid elimination and allow the body to come into balance which –for you- might be losing weight. Psychically, or psychologically, what we carry is more than what’s in our guts so you want to go gently into that New Moon because often a memory can surface, an idea, or something that we forgot about our healing journey, that requires some kind of action. After an enema, for example, rest for a while, take a warm bath, drink a herbal tea and plenty of warm gingery water. This is a chance to get to know your own rhythms, and that’s not an easy thing to do. Some of us aren’t used to letting go, or many levels. It requires skills around sadness, grief and creativity with your plans.  This is also true after a longer fast. Imagine that you’re weaning a baby and your digestion is merrily rolling along with very little to do; they say any idiot can fast but it takes a sage to break it! You could open your digestion with something like poached fruit or compote, yoghurt, thin porridge or warm rice or some sourdough toast, thin vegetable soup or broth with meat stock. Examples of difficult things to digest (and to avoid straight afterwards) are a nuts, cream, Full English, processed foods (refined or deep fried), croissants, crisps! You might crave your favourite foods – acknowledge the craving and remember that you can have that any time you want. Just not now!

These fasting and cleansing practices continue to teach me so much about my body, when I ‘abuse’ it with certain habits like over-eating, or propping my energy levels up with coffee or sugary foods. It almost writes like a cliché but it’s true. I feel a voice from deep inside nudging me towards a fast…and to be that passive about our body isn’t an easy thing to be. We are usually in control, and want to do what ‘we’ want but who are we without our bodies? Our heart, liver, lungs, digestive tract, brain…all have a mind of their own and just occasionally it’s worth asking them what they want, and sitting humbly aside while they take the spotlight.

For further conversation and inspiration, email me at the thejoyfulheron@yahoo.co.uk

Synaesthesia

I remember, many years ago, I was studying a Masters at the University of Kent. The subject was Ethnobotany, the relationship between people and plants. Earlier in my life, as a shy sensitive boy, I was lost in imagination. One time visiting my grandparents’ home - elaborate brass ornaments everywhere that my nana had dutifully polished: granddad’s cigarette holder, a jar of sweets that would bloom like a the jowls of some exotic plant, a large gun at rest above the mantelpiece, the  continuous sound of cowboy-and-indian films, the volume as if the New World should hear. There, on the mahogany TV cabinet with folding doors, a cover of a videotape, The Emerald Forest, that pictured various Amazonian people in native dress who gazed directly into the camera lens. I was seen, and those feelings that would stay with me for the rest of my life. I didn’t know why they were significant, but my body did.

My favourite cartoon film to watch repeatedly with my sister, my soulmate, was Ferngully: the last rainforest. We wept every time when the baddies went to cut down the forest. We hoped it was just a cartoon. But as we grew older, we began to see and learn that we also belonged to a society who seemed separate from nature and rather cruel towards it. We’d love to watch The Jetsons, too, and it appeared to us that even the 3D people off-screen behaved as if they were just on some outer space unresponsive and desolate planet, rather than belonging to something intricately connected and majestic. The growing number of futuristic devices that were making our lives easier, we would learn, were silencing rivers, forests, unseen birds in places we might never see, or want to.

I wondered if studying Ethnobotany, rather than just plants, would help me understand more of our behaviour within a cultural context that seemed to strangle our ability to connect to a simpler more natural life, regardless of how willing we are. Many times we debated the term nature – highly controversial within anthropology – and yet, we all knew what nature is. Was. We all understood, beyond words, that the term we’d given nature had wordless roots within us that spanned countless decades, even if a dry essay might fumble towards a sketchy conclusion that was proof to the contrary. Our bodies always knew the score.

So, when did I start to live underground? When I couldn’t watch the destruction any more. People were bombarded with news of the devastation that enormous industries were creating, and yet, still bound to and enmeshed by them, life as they knew it carried on as normal, eroding. But it wasn’t normal to me, and my heart knew it. It has always been a soft heart, barely ready for that kind of world. I retreated a lot. So being underground seemed like the most natural thing in the world to me.

At first it was suffocating, but no more so than above ground. We can come to bear hardship if there’s a pay-off and mine was rich: amongst so many companions, surrounded by so much love. And the density of our situation, its intensity, only added to the feeling of being connected to everything. Not in a booky intellectual way, but actually. We woke and slept beside each other, we listened when the other spoke, we saw what they saw, even at distance. We raised each other’s children. We were built to last. And that was probably over 25,000 years ago.

When did I last go above ground? Well, it isn’t as simple as that. We’re not encouraged to see because we’re not sure if we still have hearts, and seeing things we probably shouldn’t might confirm that we possess one because it would surely break into pieces. So we’re happy not knowing. Maybe that makes us as ignorant as those above ground except that we are aware of them; they couldn’t possibly imagine what’s happening 24 hours underneath their tarmac roads, their litter, their leather boots, their car tyres. If those things are still there. One member went up briefly, about 120 years ago, and they were asked so many frantic questions: people pleaded, what do we do? If they would be still and just listen, they’d know exactly what to do.

Gayviation

Airports suck. Is it any surprise that celebrities take private jets? In fairness, I oughtn't complain because despite snuffling out the cheapest flight and obviously selecting 'zero' baggage, my credit card began to tremble as each of every 10 knuckles scuffed the floor as I hauled a puffy princess sleeping bag and another large hessian bag stuffed like cartoon popcorn with superfoods, magazines, books, peanut butter (for the protein crashes on a 2 hour flight obvs) and naturally the forbidden 2L bottle of water. In addition, strapped to a bulging rucksack was approximately a croc dundee straw hat, Birkenstocks from the free shop* and an inflatable mattress.

UK customs: STOP! *surrounded by armed police* I scream, and next thing I'm naked, Birkenstocks busted and bent over in ways yoga could never have taught.

Yet...

Spanish customs: Cabellero, no pasa nada.

No pasa nada, indeed. Flying high, luggage stuffed like foie gras under the seat in front of me because it's approximately 10 times the girth of the overhead rack. None of the stewardesses blink an eyelid. Gotta love Spain.

HOWEVER, the gaycation of these cheap thrills stopped abruptly as I surveyed the food hall (a total mis-moniker). Gillian McKeith would not be happy. In fact, I'm not sure which celeb chef/dodgy nutrition doctor would. In front of me is an ocean of plastics (obvs) and carbohydrates and the airport pootlers are lapping them up until they're literally blue in the face. Gross.

I find a speck of a  tienda sandwiched gracelessly between an overpriced hairdresser and the back of some dodgy foodchain. A middle-aged woman disgraces her post-yoga bod by hunching over the miso avocado bowl, defying the Botox by furrowing her brow in despair at her iPhone. I like it here. It's cool. Populating the shelves are smoothies, fresh juices, salads with sauerkraut, seaweed...the freakin' works. I pause my delight as I survey the Euros. Ah actually not bad. The thickies which are impressively embossed with a singular number as well as the name of the meal that they're replacing: 1 = Breakfast 2 = Mid-morning Munch 3 = Nourish ...but my heart temporarily stops as an elegant label displays that these babies will set you back 12 Euros a piece. A 60 Euro set of pureed meals is basically another flight with 25kg of luggage. So I'm sticking to salad. I'm throw in a cheeky pack of BIO FRUTOS SECOS (dried fruits actually translates to 'nuts') which are basically organic roasted cashews. Soon after, realising that they were 9 Euros, I swallow my shame and stomp back, tell the guy there's no way on God's green kale-strewn earth that cashew nuts were ever 9 Euros. He nods in agreement and hands me the coins that exhale in my hand.

Turns out that I could have got all this stuff, in less glamorous surroundings, for half the price around the corner in the Espanol version of EAT. They are advertising sandwiches a little too enthusiastically, in gigantic type with an urgent font. Note to EAT - Spain already has sandwiches. A lot. In fact, so many, that the pigs can't keep up. Look at them - comic pig legs lining the walls of every other airport tienda, while salivating Spaniards kebab the meat off, stick it in a gauged out "home made" baguette and call it a sandwich. Colonial Brits are still pests.

How did things become so uncivilised? A few hours before arriving in Madrid airport, I was chuntling through Seville airport (layovers are the dark side of cheap flights) convinced that hunger would be a stranger to me. Wrong. About 14 minutes before the Boarding Call, a demonic hunger arose in me worthy of a mention in something like the Bible. And the only thing I could find that was approximating the logo FOOD was a cold slice of pizza topped with the bargain basement phrase, Med veg. It felt healthier as I chased it down with the old reliable H2O.

It's no wonder that when we're ejected from the flight via some craning plastic tunnel that a feeling of relief drenches us, like the inverse of vomiting. We are released from the satanic glass cage of the airport halls, the constant bonging of 3 languages that inform us in all certainty that it will not tell us the flight details. It insists - "You must check the screens". Just tell us, asshole! We're all chomping Ritalin to ease the shattered senses, the prodding, the belt and sandal removal, the compulsion of guilt as we pass under the chalk grey obelisks that may BOOP! at any moment and before we know it, a far too attractive security guard is pulling out the half digested Med veg pizza instead of the imagined marijuana, patting us on the bottom to reassure us that it's finally OK to leave.

Keep It Gay

In an attempt to alleviate the doom-laden scenes of everyone pretending this is normal - no, enjoyable - I head to the Tom Ford stand. In department stores in England, no-one would approach me looking the way I did. But happily the Spanish still know that we're human and are happy to mist me endlessly in blousy wafts of violet flowers, jasmine, tobacco and vanilla essence...knowing that the closest I'll get to acquiring these heavenly aromas is a mere scribble of Santa's wish list. She doesn't care. To make it more professional and ethnobotanical, I ask her if the fragrances are natural or synthetic. Maintaining eye contact, she offers nat-ural in that amazing syllabic way as I feebly donate sintético to remind her she's probably lying. We speak in broken English and Spanish. I want her to be my friend. Only if she has free samples.

I want flowers. I want fruit trees. I want pineapples. I want salad growing off the f*cking walls. This is what my body is screaming for as I push down the feelings with an oversized slice of flan at Paul's. And a hot chocolate that comes from a machine. I even PAY a machine as the handsome but dreadfully bored Spanish assistant gesticulates to a large black machine on my left that I am oblivious to...with a blinking red line, eager to satanically gobble my coins. Well, Mr Capitalism, I'm not quite sure why staff are still even necessary except to bark orders and swan around with fraying patience. Unless the automaton need human friends in order to work? Is the future Support Work for lonely robots? Min wage still. Forget it.

Bog Off

For laughs and being half-serious, I order the Hindu Vegetarian meal on Iberian. It never comes. I look more attractive in their loo mirrors than I ever done in ANY aeroplane toilet EVER. I love Spain. The black girl who is serving us is utterly beautiful, and I restrain myself from telling her that she ought to consider modelling as I realise that I am a model scout for no-one. I write frantically next to 2 burly Spanish men, the nearest of which oozes hair from every part of him that isn't swaddled in man-textile. He can't take his eyes off the furious motion of my nib and, suspicious that he can understand the words, I write in psychiatric doctor scrawl. When I revisit the article to upload on my blog, I have no idea what it says.

I used to buy weekend papers just for the supplements. Partially because I'm shallow with little attention span, and partially to see the ways of the rich and attempt to imitate them. That worked quite well. Now my day, except for the minimum wage part, flows like maybe a C Lister; two daily yoga workouts interspersed with HIIT, superfood smoothies on top, Paleo salad, organic produce from the garden, monthly chamomile enemas, astrology consultations to keep me on track. Off-the-scale anxiety. And I think everyone should live this way. Because it is solid and good, and makes you feel alive. Why can't airports reflect that, instead of bunging us up with all manner of carbon-hydrogen stodge that only brings horror to the colonic therapist? Those choc chips get bloody stuck up there.

Rehab

It's time to de-clog the system... starting with airports aka vast greenhouses. It's time to use all the shit and piss from air travel to do some good - feed the fruit trees that are yet to grow in the vast areas around the flight paths. It's time to get some mycelium spelunking its way underneath that tarmac and bring some beauty back to what is defiantly the largest contributor to carbon, and carb ahem, emissions - air travel. With such a genteel and light combination of words, air travel - if someone upsets you today, turn away and say air travel and your troubles will disappear - how can it be, you ask as you insert another bagel into your bouche. Airports are basically doing to the planet what the tree-ripping-out scene did to you in 3D Avatar when you hid your face so no-one could see you weeping like a kitten. You are the leader of this new world. You have a SOUL!

With your help, I need to find out who owns these airports and bring on a showdown of compost, volcanic dust, raised beds, petunias, wild strawberries...the whole permaculture shebang. If nasty skin-tight uniforms on the overweight staff can pass Health & Safety, and espresso-swigging policemen can keep their trigger finger alert and twitching, then it's time to keep it real with real food, real prices, real water, real life. The world musn't become Call of Duty. Air travel. I want more prayer rooms, more yoga rooms, a meditation pop up, a guru in swashbuckling robes that reminds us to feel in the in-breath and be as light as air in our impact of the earth. Out with the vending machines with their 4.50 Euro water and in with fountains, complete with ornate Grecian-style dolphins and lion's manes. OK, you take the point. Just say no. To Toblerones. No-one wants one although they might coo wickedly at the idea while thinking of Julie Andrews leap-frogging over cows in the Alps. They just make the roof of your mouth sore.

If you want to see the state of airports improved and for them to become future examples of stewarding the environment, offsetting their own emissions, please add your name to my petition (coming soon). Let's make Britain, and the world, GREAT again! Air travel.

Karma Chameleon

Shimmer on Water Shoshonah Dubiner                                                                                                                                                                  cybermuse.com

I live a double life. One part is enchanted with scent, songs, folding laundry, cooking, being in my garden or in a bubble bath, looking at really close-up things, stretching my body, learning the piano, tweezing. The other goes out to work, brings home the bacon, often cooks the bacon in a cafe I thoroughly dislike, or bashes away at bamboo roots outside houses whose owners pay good money for horticultural titillation. We all have these double lives, right? For so long I considered that I must be strange, peculiar, depressed. I don't connect easily with others. I rush home, or to a fitness class, after work for that lovely haven to drench me with the things I love.

I am deeply fascinated with life and what it means to be alive, to perceive, to touch, to think critically, to taste.  My body is a riddle, a vessel, and our bodies are just a drop in the ocean of who we are, full of fluid clues. I am fascinated with what makes me (and others) tick, with what lies beneath the semi-ridiculous material facade. I wonder if the material world is entirely incidental, just an accumulation of choices.

Feather Pillows

TONIGHT my bike, a gift from my dad a few years ago, was stolen. Reading a few books on angel presences that a friend lent to me, and skeptical about appearances of these angels in every day life, there it was in front of me, as my friends consoled me - another feather on the ground, defying me to remember that it's all, well, small potatoes really. How could I be angry? My body was still, contemplative. I've learnt this year to keep my cool because it's in these strange crevices of life that real life seems to lurk. What's to be learnt in the puzzle today?

Nothing Ever Happened

For as far back as I can remember, life has been such a complex puzzle for me. A supremely self-conscious child and teenager, I wondered why on earth I was in a snoozing suburb of Manchester with parents who didn't look a thing like me, or my sister. They often joked that my sister and I were found under a cabbage leaf but my child-mind wondered what the cabbage looked like and where it was. As a newborn baby, I couldn't even accept my mother's milk, neither cow's milk. My digestion wasn't ready for this, not ready to belong. Some cellular cosmic part of me belonged elsewhere. The boys at school, in the street, knew it and teased relentlessly. Unkind people still do.

Naturally, then, taking flight in the world has been fraught with hellish times, financial difficulty and a willful galvanisation to find what, where and with whom I belong. I, my body and I, exhaled, deeply, soulfully, at Sunseed , a sustainability project where I spent a year. From the moment of my arrival, there was no question of my oddness, my to-ing and fro-ing between the deeply male and female parts of myself, the bird of paradise style yellow blonde mohican hair, the colourful clothes. We were all the same, and very different and unique. I bawled like a baby when it was time to leave. The morning I left I sung a moving goodbye and my beloved community all lifted me in the air on their hands and arms as my voice clamped shut with tears of relief. For the first time in my entire life, I felt like I belonged. I belonged. Yet, I had to move on and follow the challenge of finding my tribe outside of that dreamy bubble.

From that sandy stratosphere, it's a nose-dive into planet earth again but this time, I had a voice and I had found my spirit-feet. I headed to the Algarve where I met other gay guys in Portugal who showed such kindness, a reaction among the gay community I had never felt before. The crevice of insecurity that runs in minority groups ironically can trigger such cruelty especially when one of its members mirrors those insecurities, or simply fails to conform to its brittle conventions. So for now, I wafted around, I ate small snails with garlic, cleaned the pool, worked out. I was a welcome guest. I liked so much being a guest but it was borrowed time. My feet were hovering above ground.

We often speak of trauma  as a bad thing. If something's traumatising, what follows must be something deleterious and irrecoverable. And yet, what if the scars of trauma are necessary for a hard pruning of the spirit? Where is the point at which we break? Only we, as individuals - or, adults - can know. I often justify stress because the outcome is learning all the time how to be kinder. Is it a deceit? Is kindness the same as learned behaviour on how to be polite, hidden? I was unhappy with so much and for so long, while constantly working and thankfully distracted on becoming happier. I'm happy dancing wildly to loud music. I'm profoundly happy singing jazz and blues songs. I'm very happy when I bounce on a trampoline. And written words are my world, while conversation can knacker me out. I'll do my best to make you laugh, though, cus I love to make you smile. Is happy the only gauge I have?

Future People

This weekend, I say a final farewell to my childhood home. A few months ago, in preparation, my family and I watched footage of childhood holidays and Christmas and birthdays, and I marveled curiously at the smiling boy on screen while my heart unexpectedly sunk; the colours, the indescribable browns and greys of it, the smallness of it, my mum's oversized tinted glasses. What didn't she want to see, or look at dimly? This was pre-internet, where a children's birthday party was literally your semi-detached living room with a record player which your mum switched on and off by hand for sleeping statues. I felt at once tremendously sad, and also full of gladness that the little boy I could see, me, was not bothered one single jot. The past is firmly in the past.

I serve so many seniors at the cafe and they move almost as slow as sleeping statues. They reach for their purses as if penetrating lunar dust with thick white boots, perhaps the might required against the youthful gravity of life. They quickly confuse with the jangling clinking coins in there, they wonder exactly what amount their goods came to. And a part of me wriggles again, and fights against this impatience, and bodily complains. Why? Do I envy their slow ways? How do they get anything done? Am I sad that they are dying? Here we are, face to face, occupying the same world that is planets apart. We can learn from each other. Do we?

The modern mind at once values speed and efficiency, haring around like diarised lunatics. For the thrill, to conquer, to continue, in a contemporary way, the Victoriana that my grand-dad and his brutal peers propagated almost 100 years ago. The colonial, the learned hunter, imagines that everything in-sight and on the horizon belongs to him, if only he could arrive there, even covered in sweat, or blood, even half-dead. He, we, did it. And the world, temporarily, is ours. Is mine. But it never happens that way, because there's always one more corner to turn, one more door to open. Without sugar, my morphine, I need to learn how to be softer and more light-hearted in my navigation. The stamina he thinks he has is just a nerve-gas of second, or even third, wind. Then, the stillness of my miniature pond delights and stills me, its glass reflection of the grasses that surround it and the immovable sky. I could stagnate here. I sometimes pretend that, outside of the garden fence, nothing is of much importance.

CANTERBURY this is my hymn to the mostly appalling 9 months of life that you have birthed through me. The Hebrew tarot-style cards showed me last summer, when I asked about my fate, they showed me an image of a man diving into a blue pool. They showed me the word "excellence" and "courage" and my imagination roared with possibilities of how excellent I could be. I fell at the hurdle, I didn't prosper...I scraped by, ticking or barely scratching boxes. Did my spirit survive? Barely, but I am here and only fools dismiss this as extravagant nonsense, as over-reaction. A friend took her life, my nana contracted pneumonia (recovered), I smashed my leg (fully recovered), I got tennis elbow (almost recovered), my hairline continued to recede. I can call no-one here a close friend. I have stuck to my old friends through WhatsApp and trips; I have stuck to social media, to those I admire and who inspire me. Praise be to technology, to music, to natural beauty. To dreams that keep our body alive when, darkly, the spirit whispers of a better place.

What now? Will I return to the Masters in September? Do I want another harrowing year? I considered myself the luckiest guy in the world until the end of 2018 but then the circus tent caved in on itself. Now the fun, the real fun, can begin...without masks, without etiquette or shame. My spirit reminds me that I came to conquer, not the world, but myself through an urgent and profound need to self-actualise. No excuses. What does that mean? No idea, but I guess it looks like another layer of authenticity, really looking at myself and my life and being fully accountable in a way that is alien and new to me, terrifying. Community was wonderful in its way, but it was too easy to be invisible. The masked hero is but a coward. The real one has wrinkles, scars, trauma, deep regret, a hearty soulful laugh and a veiny love for life that isn't swayed by a dose of bad luck.

Hard Work

"Endo", cybermuse.com

It's my birthday exactly a month today. I'll be 37 and by that age I should expect myself to understand what working hard means. Hard work. But I'm none the wiser.

There's a notion of swimming through the day, breath held and vision blurred by water over our eyes. Our legs push away the water behind us, arms outstretch to pull the water towards us, to affect motion and immediately realise that there is no back and forth; just a vast expanse of water that we're trying to orient in. We're not really going anywhere. Just moving, trying not to exhale.

We've chosen the elements of this gigantic fish tank, or somehow they've appeared anyway. There's the obligatory brightly coloured castle, the bridge, the fake grass, the sand and pebbles at the bottom. And we come up for air, for food. We don't know who feeds us but it tastes good and we're satisfied once we have our fill. 

Discombobulation

The bulging to-do lists that knock on our doors - insert anything relevant to you here - seems irrelevant if the basic architecture of care is absent. When I find myself grumbling that there's just too much to do or too little time, I must be tethered to another person's calibration of time. We all must take as long or as little as it takes. Sure, we could show up at the right time, rushed, out of breath, hot, flustered, de-centred...but what then are we able to give of our true selves to any particular situation? 

We weren't made for 'work' but worth. We are worth more than the demands that life places on us. The moment it all gets heavy, we can lose our ability to be playful and ourselves. And wake up when we're older, finally come up for air, glad to retire so we can figure out who we once were and get help to find a trail back to ourselves. 

I don't like the coaxing and ushering I attempt when I have an essay deadline looming or something pressing. I'm not a fan of force after many years of forcing showed me the suffocation of holding my breath for far too long; I never missed an undergrad lecture, for example. I was never late or sick for work. That brutalising voice of musts. And inevitably I woke up very sick and sad and couldn't quite remember my joy. I'm still in the process of piecing the exhausted self I destroyed back together. While I can still say 'yes' to everything that somebody asks or keep up with the infrastructure of my small life demands, I know that doing so is detrimental. 

Outer Space

Time and again, I see evidence that our natural being and selves reside in joy, in ease, in playfulness, in enjoyment of the world in spite of what is happening externally. Our processing is always internal, the dream world through sensory experience, through taste, thoughts, feelings, connection to ideas and others. Perhaps the hardest work in every day is finding that head space, the body space, to create a pool of absolute stillness - to begin with feeling, to be guided with a natural compulsion to succeed rather than a contrived one. 

Matching and correlating that internal idyll with the perceived world is no easy thing. And at times, I've felt like I could never match it. But it's made infinitely harder by forgetting or ignoring its importance; when we do, the day becomes this dreadful guessing game of what's right or wrong, what's good or bad, shoulds and shouldn't according to other voices. Looking outside ourselves because we have made clear to the inner voice that we distrust it or think it's less worthy than feeding it with outside ideas. 

We're deeply connected with each other and our environment. The authenticity and value of those connections is greatly enhanced by our ability to respect our own experience, attitudes, values and find them all a seat at the table. Only then can true innovation, creativity and easy breathing come. 

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"You're one of the most dissatisfied people I've ever met," 

said one character in Prime's Transparent last season, words that rumbled and resonated with me since. That haunting hooking quality of those unexpected occasional phrases, the jangling that they create, is being investigated by the mind way before the brain catches up. Similarly, a friend said at the pub last year, as she was approaching fifty: "You can see patterns as you look back through your life, patterns that point to who you really are".

Pavement Cracks

I'm seeing a peculiar pattern in my own behaviours that is distressing. I'm being reminded, especially recently, by this droning low mood, that something in life isn't quite constellating. I drift to memories of the summer, in a picturesque forest garden, an arch of climbing roses at the entrance. The horror hoops I passed through, the risks I took to get there. I think about the despair that took me to a cheap package holiday abroad so I could sort out my life a few years earlier. The result was the start of a life, or a chapter, in southern Spain. The final few pages as I remember, without irony, how little I wanted that unforgiving sun in November.

I look back at the time I spent at the Sunseed community, and how much bliss, amongst the challenges, was there. I think about the horror of art school before then, how uncomfortable I was, how I drifted, vaguely and drastically unable to focus. And just a few years before, the awkward stays at strangers houses while I was WWOOFing, not a clue what the difference is between a spade and fork, peculiar exchanges between hosts - one, a trained psychotherapist - where the tears wouldn't stop. What had she undone within me. And inevitably the end of that adventure to take a minimum wage job in England, to save again, to go back at it again, try again to get on the train that I liked to imagine was missing me.

Bare

I think about my difficulty as a graduate, with the flamboyant outfits, the teasing, the dis-comfort and un-ease within myself. The identity crises, the lack of boyfriends, the hours with magazines and music. The car crash year out after that, in which I gathered the odd pieces of my life after a brief stint at fashion college in the Big Smoke went disastrously wrong. Where I cried non-stop for almost 10 days. Where I couldn't look in the mirror or, rather, when I did, I couldn't see who was returning my gaze. The full-time summer of saving, serving coffee and pastries endlessly, to save for my Canada Water houseshare, all over in the blink of a banal undetectable trip back from London Euston to Rochdale. I responded by spending my last London money on singing lessons in Manchester and practised melodies from a very bleak Annie Lennox album.

The goth years at college, blank and uncomfortable. Skin caked in white make up, homemade black oversized outfits. Leather boots. The angst-ridden poetry. Where was I? Where was my spirit? An old photo of when my friend and I went to a Greek island after the exams,how I look a mess. But I tried. I tried to write, to connect, to paint, to sing, to get fit, to speak French, to be a human, more at ease. But something was never right, and I never knew what it was. I put it down to the difficulty of growing up. Stability would come soon, I knew. A job, the elusive feeling of easiness. Did I remember when I last felt that?

17 Again

Today? As always, the fine calibration of my emotions means the slightest thing sends me spinning into the ether, for days, weeks. I'm floored. The drama queen, apparently, the over-reactor, the 'old man' as my mum would call me when I expressed dissatisfaction as a child.

On an around-the-world ticket, trying to be the healthiest I could be, I was a screwed up mess. Jobs were difficult to come by. Money a constant concern. Relief, temporary, from food and occasional sexting someone I didn't intend to meet. I took up bikram yoga. I wrote astonishingly brutal, crude and long emails to friends. I couldn't bring myself to go to gay clubs. No-one was ugly there. A guy I dated firmly reminded me that I was not a pretty boy.

Despite all this terrible sequence of events, I am despicably happy when some of my smallest needs are met, namely - s p a c e. The primal frontier. Space gives me sanity. A bath (usually over 90 minutes), silence or singing, doing absolutely and utterly nothing. And then, like a wild fox cub's little snout sniffing the air to come out, deep joy from this incredible natural well uprises. And for those precious moments, like now, I feel utterly at-ease, sane, of sound mind, normal. What on earth yanks me away from this?

Travelling has always knocked me sideways for miles; when I arrived in San Francisco after a 13 hour flight from Sydney, the waitress's expression captured everything I didn't dare believe when I caught my reflection somewhere. I'm so easily dismantled, devastated. Recently, back in Autumn, I took a 3.5 hour round trip to see an exposition on British woodland. The following day, despite a lie-in, I looked exhumed. Haggard, one person said to me. Safe to say, I have minus resilience. WTF am I going to do? How can I live this way?

My True Love

Get real is advice I've often received and binned. I feel authentically real, "too" real and 'too' able to feel, to sense. It's psychic TMI. The generic advice we hear a lot is that we should all feel more, turn to those in need more, give more; but how can we turn to anyone else when we feel such distress? What can we possibly have to give? This constant feeling forces me to feel and act like the selfish one, the abrupt one, the aloof one, as I struggle to just get up and gather a feeling of normalcy. If other people share this feeling, then no wonder many of us want to be left alone, to our own devices, lost with our earphones plugged in, glued to our screens. Thank God for the internet. Some of us are magically and terribly dissolving in the presence of others, the many voices, the many priorities, the many to-do's of the day, when all we want to do is - breathe, stop. And then, eventually - ah, go again.

I'm studying a part-time Masters supporting myself with part-time work that doesn't, in any way, support my highest values. Without a drip of hyperbole, the moment I enter one place - relentless artificial lights, an unrelenting pace of work, the 15 minute pump of the artificial air freshener. The dress down Fridays, the half empty bottles of Dr Pepper on desks and empty cans of Red Bull dead in the bins, the kind smiling tone thinly veiling the relentless urgency of the tasks. I reach for a coffee, a sugary snack, anything, to push the feelings away although there've been constant promises to myself to listen and respond more attentively. For my sanity, I wonder if UBI has yet been invented and am I entitled. I commit to playing the weekly lottery.  I take some breaks in the large unused disabled loo, lights off, doing Legs Up The Wall pose, Head Down Dog and taking deep breaths. Because I have to be here, at least for a few more months, as I pay for my post-grad. Does this skew my feelings about study?

I Saved The World Today

My hands are tied to try anything more in attempts to be better at this. I've always gone out "as the actress" because I value decency and kindness and our lives here far too deeply to not show up, to not engage my patience. I pushed through every undergraduate panic attack to attend every lecture. I pushed through the unease as I imagined the other side would offer something more golden, less frantic. I get a lot, "You're so happy" and I just smile. I'm hopeful and in love with life on earth, its wonders, its true beauty. Despite our complex use of the "natural world", its presence in my life has ushered my spirit to be strong, calm, full of courage. To strive for nothing really, just sit and look. Yet the architecture of the human side I have so desperately tried to want and belong to and need to inhabit smarts on me, the constant stream of anxiety about income or rather, the value and self-worth attached to a profession, a vocation. At 36, might I have to let that go? What now?

A Thousand Beautiful Things

This weekend I'm back home visiting my sick grandma in her room as she recovers from second round of pneumonia. Just her and I, we sat side by side, her in an easy chair, a close up of her snowy flossy hair, my warm hands on hers. We said little, sometimes just before she nodded off she seemed to access something deeper within herself where I could ask more intimate questions about how well she was, if she was being 'called' by those she had lost. And that gorgeous joy of life again, the authenticity of this slow, beautiful, entirely familiar and unstrange moment, creeps into the two of us. We are connected without contrivance, without etiquette or the superimposition of any other world; no plastic happiness, but a palpable real-ness. I ask her gently, as she is half awake half asleep, if she feels looked after, cared for. And she tells me that she has the world. And for that moment, firmly, we both do.

Night Hungry

"Baby we both know

That the nights were mainly made for saying things that you can't say tomorrow day" - "Do I Wanna Know?", Arctic Monkeys

Self-portait, 2012

Before going to sleep, I enter this dream state where everything seems a little clearer than it does when I wake up. It all starts to dawn from 5pm. Now it's approaching 1am and here I am unable to sleep because I'm excited about getting ready for tomorrow's party. Trying on outfits earlier, automatically I plump for a soft Foxy Brown-esque alter ego - it never occurs to me to go as a boy. I went for a baby pink afro and leopard dress.

My Big Fat Greek

A few years ago when I was invited to a fancy dress party - the invite vaguely said, "Come as someone European" - I went as a Greek bride. It wasn't until I entered the Hall at the last moment - in my local average town - that it dawned on me that a full bride's outfit was a step further than others had gone.

A few years ago, around the same time as now, I spent the day with a treasured friend and we made videos as different characters; her a Halifax mum of two, me Beau Bow, an Amy Winehouse-esque East End girl who played Heads Up! on my phone (a digi take on charades). We had tremendous fun, laughing all afternoon, no shame or embarrassment (or similar) from me whatsoever. It felt so natural.

Heads Up

I've always had a habit of wearing hats. I've always felt super exposed without a hat on and it resulted in becoming an apprentice for 18 months to the fabulously eccentric Mrs King in Hebden Bridge then taking on a commission for a local theatre. Wigs seems like the next best thing. I've considered a helmet but that is a step too far. I wanted a big glass fish bowl, like an astronaut. Maybe next party.

Heavens Above

So now when I ask the heavens, as I am always inclined to do, to show me where my happiness lies, it asks me to surrender. And uncover the cause of my dissatisfaction, the reason to scratch an itch I can't seem to find the origins of. As a teen, I would be drawn to documentaries on transvestites and transsexuals, dated labels they had 10 years ago. Fast forward to a time where the word trans is much more in the every day sphere and the subject is no less fascinating to me. And, in conversation, my nana still refers to me as 'she'. No-one corrects her, including me. My BFF made the slip the other day and I enjoy it.

Self-portait. Mexilhoeira Grande, 2015

To be clear, it's never appealed to me to be trans. Or dress in women's clothes for sexual pleasure. My journey through gender as a child is well-documented on this blog and now as a adult, a real proper man adult on my way to 40, I still wonder about identity and its fluidity, the massive spectrum. The most brutal procedure I chose was at 18 when my facial hair began to thicken. I underwent painful laser surgery to have it removed. Once blisters healed and all the hair fell out, I couldn't have been more content as my fingers stroked a smooth face. But it soon returned and I couldn't face, or afford, more treatment.

Earlier, on holiday at 14 or 15, horrified at the sight of my legs getting hairier, I just felt humiliated, somehow. As if my body had let me down, that's the closest I can describe it. I feel very differently now and appreciate body hair but what a peculiar turn around. And what the catalyst? I really have no idea. But if my niece were to feel out of sorts and "like a boy", for this reason alone I would advise waiting, seeing how those feelings transform so the physical body doesn't have to undergo life-changing surgeries or lifelong medications.

On the badminton or tennis court, or when I am weight lifting, the hilarious thing is that I feel my most aggressive, the most cis-gendered. My muscles respond very quickly, I am super competitive and I bellow despair and victories. And then, off-court, a transformation - the elegant dancer, maybe, the studious reserved reader, the loner.

I'm still dangerously in love with the myth of the man. Recently, experiencing a friend opening the door for me, holding my shopping bags, paying for lunch...I was absolutely thrilled. I have never experienced that and I felt so in my role, he so in his. As much as I question the Hollywood-fed love mythology around us in films, storybooks, theatre, I am its victim well and truly. Not intellectually, but hormonally, bodily.

In relationships, the EQ levels of the partners I've had had altered, depending on the moment and the person as it will with opposite sex couples. In the last serious relationship, coming out of the shower with a turban towel around his head and another bath sheet pulled up under is armpits, I was forced to laugh then become to the archetypal man. I felt genuinely moved to care for him and treat him tenderly, and vice versa when I entered a softer mode. Beautiful, really.

Self-portait, Lancashire 2017

And so I continue to be in love with the idea of love, of the 2 doves, the swans, the elegance and intimacy of 2 people together, the private nest in the sky as clouds pass by. Tomorrow night, I will boogie with my girls as a the foxiest girl, absorbing all the attention that falls on me from the men who for one night only will hold all the glamour and restraint of the vintage men from the Fitzgerald books I cherish so dearly. And as the morning must come, so will reality again with its shattered slipper and stack of books and pdfs to read for uni; the soil, the flowers, the seaweed will call again to a person dressed simply as a man who no-one would suspect is still a girl underneath, somehow. A 2-4-1 Human Being. How cool.

I Guess That's Why They Call It The Blues

"when are you gonna come down / when are you going to land?"
- lyrics from Goodbye Yellow Brick Road by Elton John

I've had a glorious 12 month honeymoon period in the UK. Central heating, warm trains, badly varnished doors, strange voices that all sound the same, freedom, fairness, bamboozling requests as a barista, getting my yoga classes off the ground, existential and exquisite chats with a plethora of taxi drivers, diamond friendships, being metaphorical about eating again - pizza as a vegan cus I worked in an Italian restaurant and wanted to live that myth for a while. Train travel generally, magical. I don't think I ever took a train in Spain; a car is preferable and the roads never end, the traffic in rural parts only exists in the imagined future. Mhm the showers in the houses I live in are heaven, a shower and its glory will never cease to amaze me. And I will resist understanding engineering (if that's what allows this magic to flow above my head) so I can always see it as magic.


"Goodbye yellow brick road....you can't plant me in your penthouse, I'm going back to my plough"

And STUFF...stuff, everywhere. You can have organic wholefoods loveliness from delightful places, or you can eat trash from packets that you probably can't recycle, depending on which Council takes your waste. It teaches one not to be so binary. You can have it all. Heaven yeah. The delightful mammothian skeleton of St Pancras with everyone going everywhere (but where? how can it be...) and whirring around the City, everyone occupying their own mythology about what they believe to be true, the values they hold. And, as Harari points out, unlike primates, there are thousands of us constantly sharing a space with so few incidents, relatively speaking. There we all go - up escalators, on bouncy castles, chatting incessantly to people who mostly hang up, defeated young girls with disheveled makeup propped up and sobbing or shouting at a friend cus Mr Right Now said something disagreable. Mind-boggling.

And later this year - a return to academia, where everyone imagines very seriously that putting ideas in order, dissecting them, then continuing to dissect them and the argument skeleton in which they exist to re-arrange and re-see...will somehow continue to be read or heard by someone who also wishes to study the same, and continue it all, tearing it all down, and re-building...ad nauseum without the nausea. Ad infinitum. Jesus freaks, out on the street. And for a moment, at least, in the academic sense, it will all make sense.

There are still people who believe in God which I marvel at. Mostly because I've always had an internal device that, if something gets popular, it computes as repulsive. Or at the least suspicious. I call it discernment. No-one was vegan or sugar-free when I was. And I think I liked that. The struggle made me build muscle and be a northern working class bastard fighting the forces. Now everyone is virtually vegan so gosh-darn-it I will eat burgers and hotdogs, and teach 'em a thing or two. It's just that there's getting less unpopular stuff to do. Less forces to fight.

I left the UK to find more folk interested in living off the land somehow and at least trying to be more literal. But then when after a dozen or so engaged me about it, I felt the device activate and immediately lost my passion. And I didn't trust them. I become a lawyer. Devil's advocate and argue against myself. Or maybe rather, another constellation glows - a pattern, being fleshed out by words. A pattern means that what we are saying, thinking, in that flow has impressed itself enough so that we can use it in a formula in a higher order of REASON! Hmm. Thank God I found academia.

"I should have stayed on the farm..."

GRAMMAR is a great word. I remember just being so happy when I discovered a band that uses it in their name. It's the original "paradigm". Now we can't move for paradigms; if someone wants strawberry rather than raspberry jam on their croissant at a Pumpkin when their train is late, it's asserted as a paradigm shift. I let them off cus words are usually insufficient, right? It's a paradigm shift in the making. Emojis, anyone. You'd be pressed to not find a paradigm shift. There goes one right now.

Anyway 12 months on, Englishness is starting to grate on me. Not in a spectacularly obtrusive way but just in that way that started to tinkle the chimes in a previous life which brought to mind to go Elsewhere. When we go elsewhere, we don't think of churros, or palm trees, or cheese baguettes, or alien registration plates - although they feature in the imagination - but we just want something...else. Like those idiots we all know (you might be one) who are sold cus something it's "different". Well, it's different in't it someone might say and then proceed to forage for their purse and buy it. We like different things cus they are not what we have. Like the lovely negating squiggle in philosophical arguments. I want ~(that). Could be anything. A raffle. We all love a raffle. Except we win what we could have bought online for half the price. Or we actually gave it away last week in a charity shop. Because it's something different.

I'm sorry, could I just put the Reservation sign there?...as my friend and I leave the table. Sorry. Whoops. It's a thing in ASDA. I love Whoops. As a low-earner, a poor student (see my funding page) my innards are illuminated by a Whoops! sticker. It's unmistakeably English cus it's inherently sorry. I'm sorry could I just - sorry - get passed. Sorry. This is NOT a thing in Spain so I have to not be dense and literal and accept that fact, and smile graciously. But it irritates. It's detritus from colonial I just invaded your land and called it my own and probably everyone's dead so what I am saying I am saying to my alive people. Sorry about that. Thanks.

My Honeymoon hasn't come crashing down (as long as I refuse Smooth FM and its 6 songs) but it is evolving into intolerance of things. Is this adulthood?? 12 months is giving me patterns, rising like cream on the milk of life. Sorry. And the pattern that is apparent now is that I need to be inoculated into something else. Oh shit, something different! I'm a dead man. OK, once again - with feeling.

I am slowly reaching through the detritus of difference, botany Masters being mastered ....with a skeletal ~(vegan) hand to be a Treasurer of a veg coop, write for a corporate governance website and start spreading 2 year rotted manure on my home garden. I also just found a permaculture place a stone's throw from Canterbury (ish) so I want him to want me on his place in the New Year and show me why pigs don't sweat and why they deter foxes away and why soil is just the best yay. Because being around that world, as much as I am not that world, I'm more of it than being in a bright lecture theatre room or a bright aisle metal trolley Whoops! or central heated call centre world filled with Celebrations and smelling of diabetes and despair. Or, just boredom, that rots one like cowardice.

"and I think it's gonna be a long long time"

-Rocket Man, Elton John

Count the headlights on the highway..you had a busy day today. So I could invent a new business, or App, or strip for my Instagram and snog a trans person, or vote Brex-in too late, or I could learn Python or continue to invent a CV on LinkedIn and pretend to be employable or sing in a densely populated mall with just my toes or Google how to make a million..but I'm defeated just summoning these superficial frivolities. Which is why I will do none of these things and just stick to what I know about chickens, and feeding soil, and reading well-written books, hoping to be as articulate on at least one paper, learn how to regenerate landscapes with David Liu (please God), keep reducing packaging (sorry), flossing my teeth...and seeing patterns. And watching Elton John on YouTube. And wondering why I have always been fascinated by olde Hollywoode glamour. And keep wondering... as I improve the soil that people might remember not just in 20, 50, 80 years but is actually fun and needs doing. Right now.