SHERINGHAM DIARY 10 ~ The Unravelling Thread Of My Daily Doings

2018 has turned up like a pre-pubescent teenager, all idealistic, scruffy and naive. Christmas and New Year feel like friends who've left for a long vacation, whilst the arrival of Spring has yet to be glimpsed. In the middle of the month, after one too many cold grey skies and a working week that for a variety of reasons turned the nightmare stress setting way up high, we both of us hit emotional overload and developed a bad case of the January Blues.

There's a huge amount that's really good about our new life here in Upper Sheringham, don't get me wrong. This month, after all the costs of moving and setting up home here and buying a car,.we've saved enough to return us to the financial position we were in before moving. Neither of us, however, came here with the express purpose of doing the sort of employment we are now doing. Over the last nine months we've tended to find ourselves so busy getting things together that our real aim, the craft cafe project, has been perpetually on hold.  Leading to mental and physical strain, frustration and quite a bit of weariness.

So we've decided that whether we feel like it or not we just have to give attention to our project, or it will stay forever a nice idea. We now convene in a local cafe on Sundays for a weekly meeting to discuss, clarify issues and set aims for the following week. Our views abour Cottonwood have changed so a revamp is required to our website, our photography, and our site on Etsy. Though our main priority is deciding what type of business and premises we're looking for and where that might be. Working out set up budgets for the different options and what the pros and cons are of them. Over a number of weeks I envisage this will bring what we are striving towards back into sharper focus.

Jnanasalin's work for  has picked up momentum. He's in the process of doubling the size of the chain in the next three months, from three to six shops. The first refit was carried out by proffesional shopfitters who did the whole thing in 24 hrs at a special rate for the charity, but that's still at half the cost it would have taken to refit an Evolution shop, which often took a week or more to complete. So what with staff interviews, inductions, and seeing that the other shops stay at the top of their game, plus stuff he's doing to sweep up the last remaining crumbs of Windhorse Trading, he's got a lot on at the moment.

My cleaning at the Mental Health Care Homes, on a day to day basis stays the same, as does the residents breadth of conversation.They remain ghostly pale shadows of their former selves, stuck in a mental glitch that holds their lives in a self-perpetuating loop. Each day I step once more into a House Of Ghosts. Whoa! here comes the disgruntled lady always informing me 'there's a carpet in my room, but I always make sure I lock my door', Whoa! round this corner is the woman who'll say disconcerting things, informing me ' her dildo has broken'.  Though amusing to recount after the event, these encounters can unnerve the psyche as I travel round expunging slarts of excrement from toilet porcelain, or on rare occasions ( thankfully) scraping out shit from a shower drain.

January has then tested my ability to internally maintain stillness and calm in the midst of my daily doings. There's the daily doings and my wanting, or not wanting, to do the daily doings.  I've been reflecting on and endeavouring to practise the implications of a Japanese phrase 'fude ni shitagau' -'follow the brush'. Its about staying with and responding to one's surroundings, encouraging greater mindfulness and a sense of presence - 'following the brush' instead of 'following the mind & emotions'. Bringing yourself back to the purposeful activity of what you're doing and where you're doing it, rather than thinking about other things you'd prefer to be doing and other places you'd rather be.

During these daily doings, following the direction of mind and emotions can drag my sense of well-being all over the place. Most of the time doubts, resentments and negativity are at cross purposes with 'follow the brush'. My practice frequently is one of attempting to extract myself from resistances to just do the cleaning. Life for most people, including myself, involves striving to find what meaning, gratification and purpose you can in the unreliable fallible external world of work. I've always had a strong tendency to day dream, but there is a qualitative difference in expression and outcome between dreaming, striving and following the unravelling thread of my daily doings.

This year appears, so far, to have developed a distinctly Japanese inflection to it. Jnanasalin and I have been talking about plans for our small patio area at the back of the house. Buying a garden arbour seat, diamond trellis and planters for an area thats not at present an aesthetic delight. We inherited a bamboo that we've repotted, which we've accompanied with two pots of grasses. So this area has already the beginnings of a Japanese feel, which we'd like to further embellish with Japanese plants, lanterns and fabric covered cushions etc. Don't worry, it wont become a Nippon theme park.

Japan is also flavouring my reading, first there's been a novel by Haruki Murakami - Norwegian Wood, which reads like a series of intimate revealing conversations on love, lust and suicide. Though it made his name internationally it didn't seem to me to be his best or most original work. But it has led me to consider devoting most of my reading this year to Japanese novels and Japan related subject matter. With this in mind I...........

Revisited Junichiro Tanizaki's In Praise Of Shadows. It's his ode to aspects of Japanese traditional culture that at the time were disappearing, if not drowning, in the oncoming neon glare of modern technology. Its strongly tinged with melancholy for a world already fading.from memory and experience. This short essay is a love poem praising the effect of shadows cast by candlelight, and how darkness changes our perceptions of interiors and objects. He vividly paints pictures of interiors, laquerware, gold objects and brightly embroidered 'No 'costumes, and how what is garish under electric light, takes on a more suggestive subtlety when half consumed in shadows cast by the flicker of candlelight. It beautifully highlights the aesthetic influence of shadows in our everyday existence.

I've just started reading A Monk's Guide to A Clean House & Mind by Shoukei Matsumoto. I encountered it via a Guardian article that was satirising and ridiculing it, but it mentioned cleaning in the title, and he's a Japanese Buddhist Monk, so I was interested anyway. Essentially he's pointing out an obvious thing, that how we inhabit and care for the spaces we live in to some extent affects our mental well being. Being both Japanese and a monk, he's quite big on setting up simple routines. Nonetheless I'm finding it is encouraging me to look at,my daily routine and unhelpful habits that I've slumbered in for too long. I 've realised how dispiriting I find coming down in the morning to a sink full of last nights washing up and a living room with the half desiccated remnants of last nights tuck. Its not a good set up for the day ahead. So I've taken on Matsumoto's suggestion to tidy up before I go to bed. This book wouldn't be to everyone's cup of tea, but it is mine.