After a brief Post Christmas Sale burst we closed Cottonwood Home for three weeks. Taking a holiday in Malton, North Yorkshire, visiting, Whitby, York, Helmsley and Castle Howard. Stayed with our friend Saddhaketu in Vajrasena Retreat Centre in Suffolk for a couple of days, and generally began preparing for our shop projects of 2020. On our way up to Yorkshire we stopped off in Lincoln to visit The Fabric Quarter and on our way back The Stamford Fabric Company in Stamford. We returned laden with great fabric choices for ranges of frames, cushions and bags we are now in the process of making for Spring. We can feel a bit daunted when we look at how much there is to do.
Cottonwood Home is only open three days a week at the moment, as The Courtyard has entered a succession of February 'Tumbleweed Moments.' So we do have more space available to just make in, should we want to use it. But we've also needed to take a break from the constant shop focus we've been living in for the last ten months. That's meant not rushing back into full tilt straightaway.
Future plans include finding new lines. We've already discovered another candle supplier The White Candle Company based in Suffolk whilst we were visiting Diss, on a trip down memory lane for me. The rest we are hoping to find at the The British Craft Trade Fair in Harrogate early in April. Last year we bought slightly blind when we went there, and not everything we chose has been a success sales wise. We know from experience what sells here and where our range of goods are currently lacking or weak. There are also plans to revamp our outside stalls, our jewellery stands and give some craft fairs in North Norfolk a go. All this plus promoting the shop, photographing stock, updating and marketing our online website. Not much on for 2020 then.
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Its a truism of 21st century life that once you start noticing something, you do start to see it with more frequency. Quickly becoming this proven fact constantly reinforced by daily experience. Often refered to as confirmation bias, this is how all prejuduces begin. Observations create opinions that become the truth. So it has been with White Vehicle Supremacism. Whether its a white van, a full sized truck, a hulking SUV or a petite white Fiat 500, I started to notice that many white vehicle owners tended to noticably drive more frequently in anti-social ways, as if the road actually belongs to them, it is their road so they can choose what rules of the highway they break or obey and perform the most risky driving manouvres possible whether they're on the narrow endlessly winding A 149 coast road, or the relatively straightforward A140 to Norwich. White Vehicle Supremacists rule, sometimes flying the St George of England flag as windscreen bunting or stuck on the boot, as they pass you with a metaphorical up yours.
All of these things happen more commonly with White Vehicle Supremacists than you'll see with vehicles of any other colour. Evidence may be, as yet, anecdotal, we are still awaiting clinical tests, but perhaps there is indeed an identifiable quality within the colour white that communicates a sense or superiority and entitlement bordering on the aristocratic. As if owning a vehicle painted in the most impractical of colours automatically confers on you an elevated state of self-righteousness. I assure you now I have communicated this information, you too will start seeing White Vehicle Supremacism absolutely bloody everywhere.
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I had time to kill before the beginners class at the Norwich Zen Priory so I went to The Forum library in the centre of the city. I was sat reading a book when a thin ruddy faced man sat down beside me. He chuntered to himself, as with some difficulty he shuck off his gloves and sat down to read a newspaper. He descended with an aching sigh of weariness. He was a middle aged homeless man, gently but consistently inebriated I'd say, who'd come in for warmth and some human company. Within seconds of having sat down he started to converse with the man to his left. The man rebuffed these attempts at conviviality, eventually standing up and walking off. The homeless man delivered a far flung 'cunt' into the air after him. Then he turned round towards me.
While this was going on I'd been debating how to handle this. Should I too walk off somewhere else, or try to ignore him and stare unwaveringly into my book? None of this was passing muster with me. So I put my book down, and just gave him my full attention. His speech, though garbled at times, was coherent. He didn't understand what was up with the other guy, why he'd up and left. He was asking me what my name was, when he exclaimed 'Oh, fuck, I'm in trouble now'. The guy who'd stood up and left had reported him to the library staff and was pointing out the homeless guy to them.
A female member of staff turned up, probably the unlucky one specifically asigned for 'liason with the homeless' that evening. He'd been reported for being abusive and swearing, so he'd have to leave. The homeless guy kept intoning ' can you tell me what I've done ', 'the guy's lying' ,'I was just sitting here reading'. As he became more irrate and the swearing did ripen, the woman changed tack ' Will you come outside the library for a moment and we can talk about it there?. The homeless guy wasn't having any of it, referencing me in the conversation 'I've been having a quiet conversation with this kind man here' 'can't you just leave me' 'I'm not that mentally stable, I just want to be left alone to read ma paper'.
She persisted in her request to go with her outside the library. The homeless guy got more and more agitated, indignant, his language more colourfully anglo-saxon. She calls in security, so now he's surrounded by three people looming over him. I tried to encourage the guy to leave quietly 'it might be easier for you if you leave now' but he either didn't, or didn't want, to hear this. Things were just rapidly escalating, he protested with even more vehemence, his general tone more despairing. I felt uncomfortable just being there. I wasn't sure my presence was helpful anymore, so I quietly left the situation to the library staff. So I've no idea how it turned out, but it was never going to go well for the homeless guy.
I felt sad, and some empathy for him. Yes, he swore a lot, it was habitual, so much a part of his way of communicating I don't believe he could rein it in. To me he came over as quite an affable sort of bloke who no doubt ended up in the streets because of his drink and mental problems. Asking him to be reasonable just would not register. From the point of view of human dignity, imagine how humiliating it must be to constantly be thrown out of places because you are homeless. For this man he certainly viewed it as another ejection from ordinary society, and he wasn't ever ever going to go quietly. A spirit of defiance still burned within him, suitably correscating and inflamed with injustice.
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The Norwich Zen Priory that I attend had to move premises quite unexpetedly. So the Rev Leoma ,with Sangha help, had to pack up everything and park surplus stuff in garages in order to move quickly into smaller premises. Its also kick started the idea of buying their own premises, that was being only vaguely talked about before this happened. So the current premises are viewed as temporary until a more permanent place can be found. This all feels quite an exciting prospect for 2020.
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| Norwich Zen Priory |
2019 was the beginning of reconnecting with my Buddhist practice, but this time in an explictly zen context. I'm not quite making a daily zazen practice yet, but its getting there. Ideally I'd like to try a retreat at Throssel Hole Priory this year, but with the shop taking up time and priority I think I'd better treat that as a hopeful aspiration. In the meantime I've taken to re-reading The Shobogenzo, Eihei Dogen's masterpiece of ninety nine chapters as an 'almost' daily practice. I was given a couple of commentaries on various chapters for Christmas, so I'm breaking to read through the relevant ones as I go.
Currently I'm reading Shoaku Makusa - Refraining from Evil, a typically dense piece of writing by Dogen, on the practice of ethics within a context of zazen, impermanence and conditioned co-production. The full Shobogenzo translation by Nishijima & Cross, has, to be honest, made a real hash of it. Making an already allusive text even more impenetrable. The translation with the commentary by Daitsu Tom Wright is by comparison relatively clear and more thoughtfully written. What I am noticing generally is that I feel I understand more of The Shobogenzo than I did when I first read it through between 2000-04. The following paragraph is a beautifully put description of the different approaches of faith and wisdom practitioners.
"There are those whose simple faith guides their capacity to move others and who base their practice on such faith, and there are those whose capacity to move others is based on their comprehension and understanding of good derived from the depths of their practice of the teaching of good. The functioning of each is very different. They almost appear to be teaching totally different Dharmas."
Dogen- Shoaku Makusa ( trans Daitsu Tom Wright )
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