SHERINGHAM DIARY 37 - Nothing Happening But Bluebells

We take our half hour daily 'end of the road walk' down to the bottom of Weybourne Road, our morning coffees travel cupped in our hands. Opposite the end of that road is the sign photographed above. Just to leaven that sense of having our ability to travel restricted we imagine which direction and place we'd like to go to, run across the road, jump up the bank, touch that place on the sign then return to the end of our road and then back we toddle. Our small imaginative lock-down rebellion complete.




The Bluebell Path

The path to the gate
is short, of adventure
we crave, the novelty
of being, somewhere else
takes possession of the heart.

Vidyavajra 28/04/20

I had a birthday card to post urgently, so one morning we both walked not in our usual direction but to the post box then along Cranfield Road away from the village. About halfway up we discovered ,just to one side of the road, a really lovely section of Sheringham Wood we hadn't encountered before, here, close to our doorstep. This 'woodland walk' has now become our regular alternative to 'the end of the road' walk. each time trying to explore a different area or path. At the moment with spring and the bluebells in full flower it has a particularly elfin quality to its beauty. Without the lock down we would probably be unlikely to have had cause to come across it.

We have well established week and weekend routines, and this can help us keep mind and body busy and sane. But we nevertheless have moments of emotional exhaustion. This week it was a jaded weariness with working from home that descended upon us for a day or two. Normally, to change the energy, we'd just jump in the car and go somewhere we're fond of like Wells next the Sea or Walsingham, but we can do this only in our imaginations at present which never quite cuts it. It was Hubby's birthday this month, so to make his day I bought him a book he wanted on pattern making for menswear, made him a lovely Genoa cake and we bought in a local Indian takeaway with lots of nibbles and alcohol free wine. So we did our best to make it special.



I've reflected lately on what we are currently experiencing, that its all about staying put, looking out for your neighbours, not venturing far from the place and locality in which we live. Until the industrial revolution in the 19th century, that was most people's way of living, with perhaps a once a year trek to Norwich, if that. With additionally no TV, social media, phones, radio, theatre, films or fast cars to distract themselves with. They also had to learn how to spend acres of time not just alone with themselves but cooped up in small houses with many generations of relatives. Which is not to say people didn't become bored, restless or frustrated with their lives, anyone whose reads Jane Austen will know that's not the case. They too probably went for a walk in the woods if things got claustrophobic, But if we rediscover one or two of their abilities and personal resiliences it may not be entirely a bad thing.

We've had the £10,000 grant from the government come through which will help tide Cottonwood Home over the lock down, hopefully. We can't claim any other support, largely because we are in our first year of trading and having not submitted any yearly accounts we can't prove what loss of income we've incurred. So this grant alone will have to do. Continuing to make products in a vacuum without any idea when we can take the shop out of being mothballed provides its own moments of motivational lethargy. Once we know when we can re-open then I suspect we'll be re-energised and focusing on what needs sorting out before normal retail service is resumed. I suspect this may still be a good month or so away. 

MUSIC REVIEW - Richard Dawson - 2020

How would I describe Richard Dawson's music? For a start, it appears to be beyond accurate categorisation, it has in a way carved out its own category. But what you'd call that I couldn't say. You only have to listen to the sixteen minute long The Vile Stuff from 2014's Nothing Important about a teenage school trip gone wrong, and its accompanying hallucinogenic video, to realise this man works off the usual beaten track.

The current album has clearly arisen out of his earlier folkish origins, but it now occupies newer territory where folk can only be used in its original sense of 'of the people'. By 2020 he's evolved a style of guitar playing that builds in clumsy execution, embraces dissonance and veers wildly from grungy riffs to an anarchic atonality. Lyrically his subject matter is frequently the day to day inconsequential details of ordinary people and their lives. His words often sounding as though they're verbatim transcripts of actual conversations.

Open your eyes, time to wake up
Shit, shower, brush your teeth, drain your cup
Wolf down a bowl of Ready-Brek
Fasten a tie around your neck

All over the city we arise, arise
For a job we despise, despise, despise

I don't want to go into work this morning
I don't think I can deal with the wrath of the general public
And I don't have the heart to explain to another poor soul
Why it is their Disability Living Allowance will be stopping shortly

Bus fulls of meat slumped in our seats
Staring at phone screens and our own feet
Shuffling off at the business park
Let's linger awhile in the smoking bubble

From every direction we arrive, arrive
With a swipe of the fob, the fob, the fob, the fob

I don't want to go back to that seething viper's nest
I can't listen anymore to the bleating of the terminally depressed
Or the stream of opinions from the creep in the office next to mine
I dream of bashing his skull into a brainy pulp with a Sellotape dispenser

(from Civil Servant )

His subject matter is, local football matches ( Man On ), the agonising resistance to doing a job you hate ( Civil Servant ) and the anxiety depression and paranoia you can develop when you either lose or no longer can do your job ( Jogging ). This could seem on paper to be all quite resolutely grim and gritty, but he is attempting a more truthful representation of the lived reality of a lot of people's lives. Much of this one assumes draws on Dawson's own experience. There is always a good deal of humour, sometimes gallows, sometimes self-deprecating, but frequently touched with an affecting poignancy, as in 'Heart Emoji'.

Dawson would readily admit he's not in possession of a great voice, but a characterful one, which, like all the best singers of this type, he uses with an honest passion, bellowing away as though singing uninhibitedly in the shower. He's not trying to be anything other than himself. Take him flaws and all. Because of this I guess Richard Dawson will never be hugely popular, he's one of those artists existing on the periphery of popular music, garnering critical praise and slowly growing a band of followers.

2020 is his most accessible album to date, moving on from the contemporary medieval inflected tales of 2017's Peasant. Whatever he does I find its usually worth bearing with, because here is a person with a rather unique perspective on music making and life, even if his appearance does resemble an out of work extra from Lord of the Rings.

My entry point into appreciating Richard Dawson began with the video for 'Jogging' so I'll leave you with that to savour.

200 WORDS ON - Boredom

'boredom, is the desire for desires' Tolstoy

Boredom arises when we become distanced from, or disinterested in, the familiar litany of our desires. What we really want is harder to fathom. The nature of desires is their transience, ceasing to satisfy us shortly after achieving them.  Does boredom mean we’re essentially boring? Quickly we switch the existential focus around, it’s the world that is boring and we who are bored with it.

It’s perfectly possible to be alone and not be bored, we desired to be alone and now have it. When isolated not through choice, because a pandemic makes it necessary, we become socially distanced from a variety of things, one is having our desires fulfilled. Isolation from this was never a desired outcome. We become frustrated not just with the situation, but with ourselves for being bored.

We can do little about the current situation, apart from be patient within it. Can we also be patient with our boredom for a few minutes, without hurling ourselves towards what pops up on Instagram? We are capable of being bigger than mere vehicles for the fulfilment of our desires, and this is what fully experiencing boredom can face us towards.

POEM - For Now

FOR NOW

I open my door onto a world
even quieter than usual, still
on my doorstep I can stand and consider
the christmas tree field opposite
hear birds, distant geese,
and the thin thrum of traffic
on the A149, though today
I feel more like a milk bottle, transparent
and clearly resonant with the milk
of a semi-skimmed form of kindness
souring under the stress
of too much information with nowhere to go.
any empathy I hold, floundering
to be enough, not fully matured
or sufficient,
for now
who could hold societies hand whilst it is lost
in the swamp of a new disease? when
everyone’s lives flicker like nervous candles
isolating in their TV rooms,
friendships confined to rectangles on Zoom
the sting appears to be everywhere, except here,
invincible to the invisible
for now.
I think a few voodoo thoughts then retire within
shut my door on the infected world
there is nothing else to do
for now.

Except to imagine
those unnamed casualties
the total unknowns
whose lives are all but clinker
rolling down the steep precipice towards
whatever and wherever the ineffable is
after the lungs filled with fluids
eyes fixed upon bland ceilings, beseeched
their chest to keep heaving, to catch
the last train of breath, these
expired lives
are not just some cold statistic on an elevating line
upon a graph
they are point in time worthy of grief
packaged in bundles, with each private moment
posted on Instagram, XXX
the chained curtain, heavy on the swags, 

framing the lounge window, are pulled too,
shutting out the light of the world, loss
invites memories round for a weak cup of tea
and whatever biscuits they can stomach
for now
relatives cannot cluster
commemorate, recollect or
stare blankly at each other, bewildered,
not knowing quite what to say to the bereaved,
for all this mournful Greek tragedy, in three acts,
is put on hold,
closure will be paused at death,
for now

Stephen Lumb
14/04/2020

SHERINGHAM DIARY 36 - Retreat Then Press the Reset Button

As Buddhists of long standing both Hubby and I are used to periods of solitude and time away from the usual stresses and distractions of daily life - we usually call it being on retreat.  I've been approaching the lock down as though it was a retreat, which generally has worked, but has one flaw - retreats usually come to an end. At a week or two in length, by the last few days of a retreat your mind can naturally drift into dwelling on what you'd like to do once full liberty is restored. By day eleven of the lock down I was finding myself physically restless. On some level I knew this wasn't really a retreat, its a lock down, currently without any definite end point. I became bedevilled with resistances and a fed up tone came up and sulked with me whilst I sat on my meditation stool.

As the first 'phantom fortnight retreat' came not to an end and I was still 'at home' I had three or four sleep spattered nights. This unsettled feeling settled down again. On my four month ordination retreat your mood would slip through similar peaks and troughs then cycle back through them again, if you were lucky diminished in intensity. This is how you respond when circumstances restrain your liberty to make choices, one chafes and baulks at the boundaries. I suspect this is what the lock down will be like. Some days OK, some days with a bit of a struggle going on.

Our usual walking route

However you're view of the current situation, staying at home and going out for a half hour daily walk, plus a food shop in town on Friday, will never provide enough human contact for even an introvert to feel overwhelmed by. The ambience in town you can cut with a knife, everyone guarded and on a mission to get the hell out again as soon as possible, preferably with their magic protective bubble intact. It's understandable, but it feels and is weird. It is hard not to get a bit freaked when you are out amongst it all.

The media is just a wildly speculating machine at the moment, of all sort of impacts the pandemic might have upon the fabric of society long after Covid 19 becomes a curable disease. These all appear to be jumping the gun a bit as we are not at the peak of infection yet. so this looks and is wishful thinking or doom mongering being re- presented as if from a sage like oracle. No one can know, everything is a shot in the dark, too many factors are at play. We all wish for it to be over and everything to return to normal, if indeed that is at all feasible. But if it doesn't, then who knows what may ensue? Please press the reset button and retire to a safe distance. This might take some time

May the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas bless the winged messenger of Zoom. I've been through my learning curve with it, and I'm beginning to take for granted there will always be someone who's broadband turns human speech into that of a gobbling chicken. At the Norwich Zen Priory, once any teething problems were ironed out, they're pretty much running the usual programme of evening classes, plus morning meditations and devotional rituals. My usual circumstances mean I cannot physically attend more than one evening class a week. Now, with Zoom, I can be at all of them should I wish. I'm also getting to see and know more of the Sangha than I did previously. So this aspect of the lock down is proving a real win win situation for me and for anyone else who lives outside the Norwich boundary.

We've started watching the National Theatre Live. The first one. One Man, Two Governors, even though it had James Cordon performing in it, was actually an enjoyable and thoroughly excellent production. It did begin to slightly outstay its welcome halfway through the second half, and the final scenes was a bit clumsy and felt perfunctory. But it still got a big thumbs up from us.

The second play was a transferred Bristol Old Vic Production of Jane Eyre. I respect them for choosing not to take their adaption down the easier route of a more traditionally staged production. Initially I thought 'well this is unusual staging' that quickly progressed to irritation with the constant climbing up and down ladders and walking meaninglessly up and down ramps and all the way round the houses. To be honest it resembled an up-scaled version of a hamster's play frame.

It was an overly fussy and fidgety production with the stage often resembling Kings Cross in the rush hour. Narrative was constantly being sacrificed to the theatrical staging and novelty tricks, hurtling the small cast about from scene to scene, and making it feel bitty and episodic as a result. In all this motiveless kerfuffle any emotional connection you may have had with characters became clinically neutered. But this was not Brecht it was Bronte. At 4 hours the original production was the length of a Greek epic tragedy, though it was shortened by an hour for the NT production, this still made serious demands upon ones bum. We lost patience with it by the interval. Oh, yes, some of the Yorkshire accents were really very dodgy with a capital D.

*******************

The wisest and most human piece of writing I've read recently was a short article written by Rev Master Daishin Morgan. He is the former abbot of Throssel Hole Zen Priory and is I've found quite an inspirational figure. It was written in response to the national lock down, its theme is loneliness and the opportunities as well as the difficulties feeling a sense of loneliness presents us with. Here is the link to the full talk to download.
https://throssel.org.uk/author/rev-master-daishin-morgan/article-by-rev-master-daishin/

 I'll end with a short poem he includes in the article.

Space is a poor analogy for emptiness,
It is the lightness of things being free.
Being in a room is the same
If the door opens easily or I am locked in
But so completely different
remorseless positivity is only pretending;
The cries must be heard, you must enter the room.
The lightness is not the condition of the door.

200 WORDS ON - Thoughtless Consumption

'the time for thoughtless design, for thoughtless consumption is over'

I came across this quote from Dieter Rams recently. I'd been looking through Netflix for any film not already seen or wasn't a piss poor duplicate of a more famous film, finding nothing. The genre lists appeared to hold the same roster of films but in different order. I became quite frustrated at the empty-headed distractions offered. I wanted something that could offer a more thoughtful level of engagement.

It's clear the film industry loves thoughtless movies, they produce a good return. Lots of fast moving action, dramas and high tech Science-Fiction films which, enjoyable though they are, are basically hollow entertainments. Easily half watched on the sofa whilst eating food, making out, checking what else that actor has been in or film gossip about its production, all from the comfort of your I Pad.

These films put minds and emotions on pause, to be mildly entertained by experiences that leave no trace upon us afterwards. They leave little in the form of substantive meaning, depth of emotional response or mark upon our human imagination. Once the consumption is over we are still left hungry for a richer form of sustenance.