Season of bonfires

As the northern hemisphere celebrtes spring and looks forward to May Day or Beltane, we here in Africa are attuned to the coming of winter, the autumn bonfires of Samhain. I found myself standing outdoors in the garden this morning, looking at dark birds’ feathers and falling leaves, thinking of my Scottish grandmother of whom I know so little.

 

She was posibly alcoholic. The only reason I have for thinking that is because alcoholism runs through my family the same way reddish-fair hair and freckles do. And because my father never spoke to or contacted his mother once after he left home and sailed for Africa. There must have been great distrust and bitterness between them.  I asume she is dead now and I have no idea if she ever knew I existed or wondered about me. My father had another brother and sister. His brother went to Canada after World War II and his sister married and stayed in Scotland. Beyond that I know nothing.

 

So I have done some genealogical searches on the Internet and found nothing. Jean Hamilton from Lanark who married a man from Linlithgow right back at the beginning of the 20th century has vanished into the obscurity of history. Her married name gives no better results. I know she was widowed young while living in France, her husband killed in a [drunken?] car accident in about 1933 and that she brought up her children in an apartment under the shadow of Holyrood Palace.

I know her youngest son (my father) was one of 31 000 small children evacuated from Edinburgh in 1938, their names tied on billet cards around their necks, boarding steam trains from crowded platforms and not knowing if they would ever see their parents again. And I know that my father spent nearly two years living on a farm in the Scottish Borders countryside. I wonder how Jean lived with that separation, I wonder if the estrangement began then.

I know it is likely she resembled me in certain ways and that our characters may have shared a Celtic feyness or Scotch stubbornness. My father was a clever articulate man who chose to stay silent on most topics and had a wide streak of cruelty running through his complex nature. I don’t know if my grandmother was a harsh Calvinist or a gentle lost sul unable to stay away from the sherry bottle.

 

In African traditions, people consult with the ancestors all their lives. I am not sure that it would be  an unmixed blessing to hear from my Scottish grandmother. My questions might remain unanswered and there might be new and troubling questions. But as the autumn twilight gathers in the garden, I think about her and what we would have to say to one another. On life and parenting and sobriety. And the question of place and belonging.

Gratitude to the particular

Which is a line taken from poet Gary Snyder in interview. The dense and rewarding specifics of our sober lives interests me.

 

When the authors of the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous say that their recommended actions are just ‘suggestions’, I think they mean just that. We are meant to apply certain principles or attitude shifts to the specifics of our lives whereever we find ourselves historically or geographically and it is up to us to find authentic and creative ways of doing just that. It may be easier if one has an AA meeting on every street corner and a car and a cell phone, but the principles are simple and clear enough for most of us to make them our own wherever we may find ourselves, however isolated or beleuguered it may be. Last night I heard about a young South African from Soweto township who has stayed sober over in Afghanistan (there are thousands of locals working as recruited soldiers and support providers over there) through correspondence with somebody in Dorset, England. Heart to heart and modem to modem.

It is a gritty and grey morning. My dogs have stopped tunnelling to China after I sprayed their little rabbit holes with citronella spray which prickles their nostrils but does them no harm. Hot weather has been predicted for the weekend so I dare not take cuttings of pelargoniums or cistus and begin potting them up. I have to wait until the cold weather really sets in.

I believe that if I stay sober today, the future will take care of itself. Keeping things simple works for me, especially on days when I feel lonely and unmotivated. I have work to do. I have friends to call. I am sitting at my desk watching clouds move across the field and just letting the feelings come and go in me.

 

Gratitude is the bedrock, always.

In the dark you had no shadows

My neighbour Thinus brought around an antique chair to show me, his latest purchase. It is not a chair in terms of function because you cannot sit on it. There is lacy raffiawork and fretting, ornamental carvings that jut and poke out from the back rest, a narrow seat and spiky arm-rests that would not provide a resting place for arms. It looks like something created by a Freemason trying to replicate Solomon’s temple in chair form. There are cherubs and demons and carved numerals all all the place. It is hideous.

 

Of course I admired it with complete mendacity. My neighbour is a tenderhearted man with an eye for trash. I would not hurt his feelings for the world. He is going from door to door showing off his antique monstrosity of a chair and everyone in the street is blanching at the sight and lying like a horse thief.

 

I invited Thinus for supper to thank him for helping me with the leiwater all summer. He blinked at me ( he is incapable of a hite lie) and said: ‘I will come so long as you are not cooking. No offence, but your food does not agree with me. Too much green stuff and I have to chew too hard.’

 

So Una will make sweet potatoes with butter and pumpkin mash and a lamb bredie. The kind of food that was unfashionable before the end of WWII. And I shall have to admire the gruesome chair all over again.

 

This morning I went out to a nearby prison to facilitate a literacy class. I had two university researchers with me and we all found the prison appalling, the dirt and stench of urine in the passages, the over-crowding. The warders were very suspicious when I let the prisoners do most of the talking — they felt we were not ‘teaching’ and keeping order. The poor inmates drugged to the eyeballs and begging for sweets and cigarettes. I doubt we will be allowed back. I asked if AA ever came there and a warder said that somebody from AA had visited but then been banned. The authorities claim there is no drugging or drinking which is nonsense. I could smell neat brandy and dagga all over the place.

 

One of the researchers said to me as we left: ‘You are not middle class at all are you?” He is from the UK where preoccupations with class continue as they have done for centuries. I puzzled over this. No, I suppose I am not, if being middle class means oblivious to the plight of the poor and marginalised. How I wish I could get an AA group in there and let hope in amongst the shadows and locked cells.

Shedding light on obscure places

Sometimes I find my daily sitting practice more of a chore than anything else. I get my large and somewhat lumpy pillow, place it in a corner of the room, sit myself down while keeping my shoulders straight and then sit for 45 minutes each early morning. That is the best time of the day for me to do this.

I sit and pay attention to my breathing while 1 001  distractions and agitations arise and pass away and come back and scatter in all directions. There are shards of dream. Envy about others, incidents I didn’t notice at the time but which made me envious, that carping bitter little feeling within. There is the desire to argue with others in my head, well out-argue them, leave them small and defeated by my forceful if arbitrary arguments. There is the creeping and many-faced fear coming in through the back door. There is regret — that ‘if only’ sensation of loss for what we never had, the self-reproach for under-achieving. So many of my failings have been sins of omission, things I failed to do. There is the same yellow-faced creeping fear sneaking up on me again. There is the odd fantasy about success and fame and money and doing something magnificent and superhuman all by myself. There is that old creeping shadow of fear again. And there is the quiet breath coming and going in my body.

This is one way of investigating the cogitating, feeling body/mind we call self. One way of doing an inventory just by sitting still and observing what comes up. Sitting practice is one of the best ways I have found to investigate what is going on in my Unconscious while stayed rooted long enough to feel the discomfort and pay attention to what causes it.

 

Today is a public holiday in South Africa and if the weather clears we might drive down to the coast and watch Atlantic rollers flying  in to smash into spray and foam on black rocks. Two oceans collide off the bottom of the peninsula, Indian and Atlantic, cold currents meeting warm. Which makes for turbulent waters, hence the old name given by navigators, the Cape of Storms.

 

Sobriety takes patience and commitment. I’m hoping to walk along cold beaches looking out to sea, a briny wind clearing cobwebs and, as I walk and gaze at sea birds, gulls and sandpipers,  taking time to slowly process the morning’s observations through the Steps.

Fellowship in spirit

A lovely mild autumn day out here in the mountains. Freinds came over for lunch, sober AA friends, bringing brioche and plums rosted with star anise, armfuls of flowers, chocolates, Camembert cheeses, books and newspapers from the city. Such wonderful friendship and togetherness I get all wet-eyed to think of it.

 

After lunch we went for a walk through vineyards and up the mountainside to look over the valley. We talked about doing Steps 6 and 7, very openly and exchanging gut-wrenching stories. I have not felt so safe and loved in months. Willinness, Trust. Surender.

The philosopher and thinker Erich Fromm wrote that one of the key dilemmas of our life relates to the core question about freedom. Do we want freedom with its pain and responsibility and growth, or do we want to escape freedom and settle for the unlived life?

Some days I think I know the answer. Some days I just have to close my eyes and leap towards the abyss. And trust I am not alone.

Nostalgia in autumn’s little death

When I woke up it was raining heavily and I lay listening to rain like crazy percussion on the corrugated roof of the stoep. No al fresco brunches or vineyard rambles.

 

So we drove out to friends and sat in a canernous 18th-century kitchen with hearth and mantel and black cast-iron pots, nibbling on incernerated croissants and fighting over Bircher muesli and lightly scrambled eggs. How talkative we all are out in the countryside! We read until late at night ( no television reception in many valleys) and walk dogs through lonely woods and dream by woodburning stoves.

 

Then the rain stopped and it was a pleasure to head up over the Elandskloof Pass with the dammed river like a steel engraving far below, woods turning yellow and ashen and burgundy. Smell of apples all over that valley, inexplicable. It is a place of hidden farms and steep hillsides and towering mountains and arching gentian-blue skies.

 

This mellow season, the vines reddening and flaking off against the weathered fences, the old roses soft as butter, the pin oaks bright as copper coins — it is a season of nostalgia and I resist nostalgia these days. I often feel that alcoholics in recovery cannot afford the luxury of a broken heart and so I put certain memories out of mind. The sentimental has lost its appeal.

 

What matters is the moment and the slow death of that former self with her reactivity, tears and grievances. I do not mean this harshly — but here and now is all I have in sobriety, the sacrament of the present moment, the encounter with now. So autumn has come to represent a kind of slow graceful dying to what has gone before.

 

And waking up to the present, the possibility of just being here in a valley full of birds and apple groves in the blue shadow of high mountains. Friendship, work, togetherness with others  doing it one day at a time.

Pink cloud vivid as a flamingo

 

Gratitude is the most vivid colour in my paint box. My own private pink cloud is like a rainbow some mornings, to wake up and realise I never have to drink again. For years I just drank because I just drank, no feeling of choice or decision or enjoyment. To be spared that terrible compulsion is a great joy.

At the moment I am engaged in tricky negotiations about attending a zen retreat in June. The retreat centre staff mention yoga blithely. I have little experience of yoga and don’t want to feel like a fool among yoga adepts. They are vague about the fees for the retreat and I need to know if they want a deposit. They are vague about food but assure me it will be delicious. Most Buddhist vegetarian food is heaven to me, as opposed to the lovingly prepared but unspeakable boiled veg, frozen fish and brisket or salt beef served up by German Dominicans at Catholic retreats. I can’t afford to do a Catholic retreat because they are now luxurious establishments that cater for tourists. Ditto AA retreats run by rehab centres and also geared towards tourists who want five-star facilities and pay in euros or dollars. But the Buddhists still retain some notion of service and accessibility, so  this is where I am going.

Brilliant frosty weather, the garden full of birds. Most of our exotic species have left on the long journey across the Atlantic to summer in Europe. My eye is hurting less and I am rereading the 12×12 to keep my mind aligned with AA. As I sit in meditation each morning, distracted by bird calls, I notice how tired I am and how in need to some kind of renewal.  I miss the service opportunities I used to have while able to attend regular AA. Service erodes  natural selfishness and that is a great help for me.

Wild iris dropping silk

 

Thrilled to receive a LOVE YA blog award from Steve. If only this blog was less self-aggrandising! But befriending is what it is all about.

LOVE YA blog award:  ‘These blogs are exceedingly charming. These kind bloggers aim to find and be friends. They are not interested in self-aggrandisement. Our hope is when the ribbons of these prizes are cut, even more friendships are propagated. Please give more attention to these writers. Deliver thsi award to eight more bloggers who must choose eight more and include this cleverly written text into the body of their award.’

 

In no particular order because they are blogger friends befriending others in the recovery community, Hope, Trail Boss who has had a rough week,  Boston’s Gratitude, Atiyanna, Eli’s Addict, Jess, Pat of Journey into the Past and my lovely Gabrielle. I’ve tried to focus on some of you who might not have received this award eight times already and you’re charming if I say you’re charming. Feel free to pass this by  if you don’t do awards.

Yesterday I had lunch with my friend Charlotte who has no deep understanding of the nature of pasta. Charlotte boils pasta until it is soft and squishy, not al dente. She does not welcome criticism from hungry guests while she watches the pot boil and boil and boil.

 

So I went into her immaculate shade garden and watched African wild irises (Dietes grandiflora) dropping their blue and white silks on the gravel. The Celtis africana tree was crowded with tiny white-eye birds ( witoogies as we call them) all singing their hearts out. Pots of grey echeveria and aloes, a  protea spiked in pink and black feathery tufts. Charlotte is a very neat gardener, her garden is really an outside room. I sighed over my own great messy sprawl but there is more than one way to make a garden. Even her cat is demure and well-behaved. Pity about the pasta.

 

After lunch I went and stood in a long long queue full of elderly people with arthritis, crying babies and youngsters singing Lethu Mashin Wami, Jacon Zumas theme song Bring Me My Machine Gun. Slightly paranoid Americans really want to try living in Africa to get some perspective on uncertain times. But everyone in the queue was gentle and couteous and we took turns to hold snotty babies and lend pens and share flasks of tea. My eye hurt like hell in that cold wind but I was glad to be able to vote. For years the only party I supported was banned.

 

Then I went home and had a bowl of hot butternut soup and put myself to bed early. Very glad to be facing the future sober and with a non-violent heart.

Changing places

I had a very bad night, some pain but a terrible anxious restlessness and something of the old ranting and fighting with ghosts. Got up and struggled through 45 minutes of meditation. Breathing deeply and then raggedly. Handing over and snatching back.

 

No reports of violence or intimidation which makes me very happy and  I am going out to vote in a cold gritty wind. Voting here is a tremendous privilege — for more than 60 years the majority of the population were not allowed to vote. These elections have something in them of unhappy compromise but that may be part of the process we need to work through.

 

Change is always a constant. For weeks now I have found my morning meditations to be filled with micro-movements and agitation and a need to go deeper, to shift consciousness and become more aware, more compassionate, to reach out more. But also to be less afraid to look inward, unflinching at what is there.

 

In September last year I decided on a whim to do a vipassana retreat. It ws not a particularly significant decision. I had worked with a Theravada therapist and had spent time at forest monasteries in Vietnam and Thailand. And I had done retreats for almost 25 years, on and off, mostly in Catholic monasteries and retreat centres, working through the Ignatian exercises or Carmelite meditations on St John of the Cross. The year I turned 30 and was first arrested as a political activist fighting apartheid, I spent a month at an ol Catholic retreat centre, planting a tree and feeling as if I was munching my way through a sand dune, reading Jean Vanier.

The vipassana retreat was only 10 days but it was the toughest and most distressing experience I had ever known. There were retreatants from Nicaragua and Botswana and Rwanda. The lodgings were less than minimal — we slept on mats on a concrete floor with snow on the mountains, showered in icy waters. The teachers were distant and very unsympathetic. They only wanted to know if we were paying attention, if we were sitting upright and not falling asleep. We sat in a draughty hall in meditation for 10 hours each day, beginning at 5am. We had gruel to eat, sometimes vegan dishes and only hot water after noon. We went to bed at 11 pm.

 

And I felt a complete failure at the meditation. I suffered back ache and cramps and terrible headaches. I had tears in my eyes from trying to keep still. But the worst aspect was that inwardly I was in a rage and utter despair. I could not let go of old grievances or hurts, I raged constantly about my old miseries and bitterness. I could not stay focused for more than a few moments at a time. I hated the teachers, wanted to go home. No reading, no writing, no supportive encouragement or feel-good experiences.

 

When the retreat and Grand Silence ended, I  felt a failure and confused. Some things had happened in those long painful hours of sitting that had startled me, insights into my own breathing and the fact the pain dissolved after a while and that my physical boundaries were permeable and a flux. I had never known this before but it did not feel with my world-view at all.

 

Then on the last day we were allowed to talk, in that rainy cold valley under snow-capped mountains. When I began to speak, I was aware the timbre of my voice had changed. And there was a clarity and depth of feeling I had not known before. The hardest and most distressing retrat had been experienced by a hidden part of myself as blessing. And those who had suffered and sat there in silence beside me, many with cancer or Aids, were experiencing the same change.

 

I still don’t know what to make of that. Retreats were always feel-good experiences for me, insghtful and  only now and again endurance tests. Retreat directors were gentke and considerate guides. This was something that stripped me to the core. And there was no core there.

The world’s rainbow

This morning, the world looks new-minted and bright, almost dazzling. I can see the  shades of yellowing leaves on distant trees, spot mole hills on school playing fields.

 

For those who like facts — I had one or two email queries — this is what happens. The posterior capsule at the back of the eye  goes opaque from scarring after removal of a cataract.

The wrinkling or cloudiness which can develop later is a result of scarring (a normal healing response) and can interfere with vision in ways similar to the original cataract. If the clouding of the posterior capsule interferes with your vision, your ophthalmologist may suggest opening the capsule to restore normal sight.

This is done with a procedure called YAG laser capsulotomy, whereby your doctor uses a laser beam to punch through the iris and make a tiny hole in the posterior membrane to let light pass through and restore clear vision.

 

It is not complicated in most cases but in my case there is a fragmenting retina and other kinds of scarring so the risk is increased. And this is the second time the posterior capsule has reformed.

 

But here I am this autumn morning, admiring the bright new world and grateful for modern science. For months now I have known that the details of my surroundings were fading and any thing in the distance lay behind a grey curtain, a very familiar sensation. As I was leaving yesterday, the eye specialist very gently warned me again that the retina is deteriorating and there may be a need for more retinal work in the near future. I tried not to hear him — years ago I would go ‘deaf’ when eye surgeons talked to me gravely about the prognosis and not recall anything from consultations. Denial is such a strong force in human nature.

 

And last night I phoned  somebody in AA and found her considering a drink or two because she may need a mastectomy and dreads ‘disfigurement’, as she terms it.. We cheered each other up and I waited on the phone while she poured out the bottle of liquor and made herself a hot milky drink before bed. Some body said to me recently that false pride — the reluctance to call and ask for help — is often more of a stumbling block than resentment.

If we cannot be ourselves, fallible and honest,  in AA, then where can we be truthful and vulnerable? It is of course much more meaningful in face-to-face encounters where there are real hugs and tears and laughter, but if that is not possible then phone calls or even emails must suffice. Heart to heart, modem to modem.