A Sting in the Tail
Where I am reminded that attention is not an optional add-on
Belated greetings readers, whether strangers, friends, or family. I am sitting uncomfortably and I hope that you are not. On Friday, on our way by train to a big family gathering with my partner, I sustained a nasty injury. I’ve been in quite some pain since, so much so, that writing or even gathering my thoughts this weekend has been impossible. I will make a start on the planned essays over the coming week, for now, here are some related thoughts and the invitation to Saturday’s Heartwork session.
Standing up is not a problem and T’ai Chi and Heartwork seem (unsurprisingly) to help me recover. So I am looking forward to seeing any of you who would like to join me on Saturday, details are below the paywall. We’ll be looking at the Back Heart Salutation.
Reply to this email if you’d like me to comp you a paid subscription if money is tight, so that you can join us. The paywall barrier is to prevent trolls showing up to spoil a session, not to make more dosh. In the New Year I will work out a different system of registration to the online sessions. It’ll be a little more work for me but it will mean I can dispense with the paid subscription barrier.
Tigger is temporarily unbouncy
On Friday I was proofreading for punctuation on the final version of my next book, red pen in hand at a table on a very full train north from Bournemouth. It was a great feeling, seeing many months of work come together on paper. After sending an email with the last tiny adjustments, a flurry of chapter topics for the next book unexpectedly blew into my head and I spent (a probably overexcited) ten minutes getting them down on file paper. After stretching my legs I was heading back to my seat but had to clamber over lots of people’s bags to get there. In haste I misjudged where my seat was in relation to the metal arm rest and brought all my weight down onto it via my coccyx. I am not sure I have ever experienced quite so much pain so suddenly.
Completely winded and unable to speak, I sat down, thinking I’d be sick. Over the next minutes I somehow swallowed pain killers but began to feel lightheaded. By the time we were due to change trains at Britain’s busiest rail station, I could barely stand. Apparently, I fainted just inside the door and my partner was helped by a kind stranger to lift me and our bags onto the platform. I don’t remember hitting the ground, but I do remember asking to be laid down, not propped up. I also don’t remember saying ‘help, help!’, but some sensible part of me much have been running the mouth at that moment…
What I do recall is a sense of complete well-being and of being in safe hands. I remember seeing very tall figures and golden light all around and feeling no pain while I was ‘out’. Maybe my mind was just accentuating the goodness of the people around helping and the care and speed with which my partner got me safely in the recovery position, covered with his jacket. Maybe it was something else. Certainly, what could have been a dangerous situation on my own, was transformed by Jonny, by fellow travellers and by the staff at Clapham Junction.
My deepest thanks to them all.
Much to some people’s annoyance or amusement, I can sometimes be ‘a Tigger’. What I would refer to as my occasional ‘over-bumptiousness’ has been the subject of a piece on here before. If you haven’t read An Even Keel is Not the Only Way then I hope you enjoy that in lieu of a new piece this week. It is not mysterious to me that I am currently somewhat subdued, now that my actual tail bone is very sore and bruised.1 Freedom of movement is vital to human expression and flourishing and I spend much of my professional life asking people to attend to movement, tactility, connection and touch.
Depression or stress are not the only causes of lack of awareness… As is the case at least once a year for me, I was not paying enough attention to the material world of surfaces, objects, the ground and my movements around them, due to being a little too consumed by joy. That’s not me telling myself off, that’s just a statement of fact. Perched uncomfortably on a chair at my desk, favouring my sitting bones over my tail bone, I am choosing to look with humour and a wry smile at my umpteenth brush with the sheer bloody-mindedness of physical reality. Inwardly I make a small bow (trying not to wince) to the Tao, the way of things.
Something is rotten in the State of…
While recovering this weekend I had to have late evening emergency dental surgery as a tooth fell apart due to an old failed filling. The best part of a Grand, put aside for my upcoming sabbatical, bought me the pleasure of lying painfully on my back for three hours while the incredible Prof Lynch saved what was left of my tooth and built me a new one.
I pondered my now defunct tooth, which had seemed fine from the outside but which was clearly rotting from within due to a crack in a badly made old filling. There hadn’t been much pain to warrant an X-ray, just a niggling irritation around the edges that wouldn’t go away. How strange that it hadn’t fallen apart and disintegrated so spectacularly much earlier.
I lay back and thought similarly of England.
Good Things
As you can imagine, I am tired and not quite myself so I will take this week to rest and attend to essentials. Yet gratitude is piling up and I feel the opposite of self-pitying ‘woe is me!’ I am unendingly glad for almost everyone I have encountered this weekend: travellers, workers, partner’s family members, loved ones, dentists, children, trees of the Surrey Hills.
I have been enjoying very much reading and listening to a few things, which I’d like to recommend as This Week’s Good Things - bumper edition. Substacks: We Decide to Un-Witness, Amulets Against the Spirits of the Age, Concerning Demons, Against Christian Civilisation, Podcast Can We Have Empathy in the Face of Evil? (from The Sacred Podcast), and a great book, Storyland by Amy Jeffs.
My reading and listening may have taken a metaphysical turn but my viewing is still solidly SF, as I have been enjoying The Three Body Problem. Next up, the new series of Wolf Hall with Mark Rylance. We shall binge watch the Reformation drama, strangely feeling empathy for characters we know were largely villains, due to the magic brought to roles by Rylance. His Richard III at Shakespeare’s Globe was shattering, I shall never forget it. Laughing along with the tyrant was not something I expected myself and the crowd of groundlings to do so easily.
Now it is time to press send and to go and rest. Wishing you all a good week ahead.
Heartwork Session Saturday 30th November 2024
All you need to prepare is to watch the previous two recordings of lessons, here.
Below is the updated invitation and link. Any queries, just reply to this email and I will answer shortly.