Yes people are suffering. The rain has started again. Sodden furnature llining the streets. And one bright spark sees the funny side. Even in the midst of it all.
Retaining a sense of humour helps everybody maintain a sense of proportion. Which isn’t easy given the scale of the wtecking rain in the English Lake District.
Your best thoughts…..
Tour of the old town. Walking and walking. Looking up at the amazing buildings while looking down so as not to fall over. Something to learn here, about taking care not to lose ones ‘footing’ in the scramble of daily life. While ‘looking up’.
Flying West to
Eastern Europe
A culture
Shift – a shock.
Looking at normal
So called – but whose?
Normal questioned
Humbling – humbled.
Blocks of grey flats
Soot blackened walls
Sadness for eye
Heart – break.
Cathedral turret
Gleaming bronzed.
An Eastern confection
Renovation – restoration.
From West to
East with refreshed
Eyes and mind
Disturbed.
Good to be disturbed, to have ones cultural norms thrown into sharp relief. Jigger – jagger! Moving around can loosen ones foundations. There is no permanent ‘place’ to lay ones mind. The Soviet past is like a particular perfume mixed in with a swipe of eye watering cleaner. Mixed in with pre Soviet grandeur. This is all a challenge to the mind that, has views. Not to be held on to. Acknowledged here? Yes.
We have a full schedule of activities organised for the next few days. Our host is a Latvian born American monk here establishing herself to teach the Dharma. I’m impressed already.
As we passed this car last Saturday my companion commented, as much to himself as to me, ‘That’s your worst nightmare right there’! Take my ‘wheels’ off and render me immobile? How would I be? Just fine I am sure. When I broke my leg in late 1999 I ended up enjoying enforced immobility. Although I have to confess to being ‘difficult’ at a certain point in my recovery.
Now I’d better find out where exactly Latvia IS! Before flying there tomorrow. A very heavy world atlas is calling to me.
Mobile – Immobility
Moving – Stillness
Walk on – sit up
Lay down
Sleep.
Wake Up!
How fortunate we are to be born a human being, to have found a path and to keep walking on. No matter what.
Walking on sometimes means not moving though.
Today I am driving to the village where I lived, on and off, from 2010 to 2014. Which belonging to the late Iain Robinson and his wife. Iain and I went and saw the house about this time of year in 2009 and he instantly felt it was for him. Unfortunately the house has not sold since his death in 2011. But fortunately for me I am able to pick up the items I didn’t have the room in the car for last July. Which is when I packed up and left – heading towards Canada and the US. The books are all gone and the one refered to in this post is in Japan now. It will be interesting to visit the house and village after a year or mores absence. Maybe I’ll be able to take a walk in the hills while in the area. Or not.
Of all the great cities of the world you will not find one that has had so romantic a beginning as Montreal. The stories sent home by the Jesuits had stirred all France, and made the more pious and enterprising spirits more than ever resolved to teach the wicked redskins (ahem!) a lesson in Christianity and plant the fear of God in their hearts. The French said they did not believe in treating the savages (double ahem) of the New World in the cruel way the Spaniards had done in Peru and Mexico; They preferred to win them over to civilised ways by kindness and the force of good example.
There we have it. What can I say? Sorry Canada. If we knew then what we know now, things may well have turned out differently. Hopefully.
When Iain returns to his wife and home in Japan at the end of the month I will come back to the books, and house. If all goes to plan I will manage to carve out about six weeks of rest/renewal/retreat time before flying to…Canada! So my labours of the past week are of mutual benefit.
This post is for Tom in Canada who loves books.