And we begin with another apt business name emblazoned with pride across the side of a builder's van. This one came to me via Hubby and it is one very fine bit of word play - Mortar The Point - who is based in Weymouth.
One would think that the month that you had your HA! in would be permanently etched in your mind. On recently checking through blog posts I made at the time I discovered it was the 10th of July and not the 10th of June as I had misremembered. A strange time slippage. But my body knows what is coming, and this June 10th appears to be kicking off an emotional and physical replay, via what I can only describe as a mild panic attack. After a year, the traumatic affect of the heart attack has begun to fade around the edges. You can't live in a state of alarm and heightened preparedness forever. Also, all that active resolve of the first few months to change your diet and exercise habits tends to soften too, to not be so hard line on the self discipline. This is not a bad thing, some sense of normality needs to be resumed.
I don't think I'm unusual in finding the maintenance of an iron clad discipline difficult to sustain for anything more than the short term. And yet, its also easy to underestimate the beneficial effects of the changes made. Mentally leaving it entirely to your medications to forge a major bulwark against your premature death, is not a good strategy. Anyway, there is a good deal of apprehension already swirling around about the anniversary next month. A type of unrealistic, yet understandable fear, that it will happen all over again at the same date and time. According to Google, this is a typical response, one year on. Its not that I've now become blessed with the sacred powers of a predictive oracle - Damn it!
Most of the time this blog's monthly viewing figures potter along anywhere between 4 and 12,000. The previous high point was last year at over 24,000. But this May the monthly views reached 56,660 ,which is the highest its ever been. I cannot really take this as being anything to do with me, nor the quality of this blog, but feel free to offer your encouraging remarks. Nor is it particularly something to brag about. It is an amazing, but also strange anomaly, which remains nonetheless worthy of note. I've mentioned before that I think this Cornucopia blog maybe on some course reading list, probably I suspect a language or literature based one. A couple of years back viewing figures boomed in the US and France. Last year they boomed in Singapore and Hong Kong. This year these have been joined by Austria, Germany, Vietnam, Brazil and Mexico.
Of late there has been a shift in how I approach what I do day to day in my retired life. For the last year its all been a bit too fraught, with the aftermath of the HA! creating an exaggerated need, if not a compulsion to 'make the most out of life'. This was leading to a huge build up of frustration, welling up within me, as daily necessities and unexpected occurrences appeared to perpetually 'delay' creative projects. It was as if I was attempting to organise my life like it had this inherent work schedule built into it. That this was the only way it could maintain meaning and purpose within it. And yet, in truth, I don't have to do anything at all. However, I choose to spend my days let it be enjoyable. Let me be at ease with myself. Let it not turn my retirement into an exercise in productivity. I've spent much of my adult life doing the bidding of a job, some of which I would not have chosen to do other than from financial necessity. I'm starting to view my days now as similar to stepping once again into the free flowing stream of life and allowing myself to get caught up in the eddies of what ever is passing by, and just seeing where that leads my day. This is proving far less stressful and has a much more gentle flexibility to it.
When we were last in Walsingham, we found a small side chapel in the Anglican Shrine dedicated for use by the Eastern Orthodox Church. I was drawn to the idea of a shrine that was a screen of panels, opening doors and cupboards behind which different elements of the shrine would be contained. I want to make my shrine more like that. I've recently bought some second hand bedside cabinets as the foundations for assembling the basic structure on. At the moment the final appearance of it is really only a vague notion in my imagination, but I am excited to see how ideas for this evolve as its form gradually emerges.
I recently watched a interview (shown above) with Yuval Noah Harari led by two American Theravada Buddhist monks from Clear Mountain Monastery. He talked a lot about his two hours a day meditation practice and how that affects the acuity of his mind, thoughts and reflections. He made a useful suggestion whilst talking about the benefits of being on retreat. The need to switch off from our busy 24/7 technology never sleeps world, and to go on an Information Diet.
This is similar in effect to what in my Buddhist training we would've referred to as Reducing Input. Harari expressed the view that we input so much useless stuff these days, we really need to consciously set aside time without technology being directly in our faces, just in order to process and digest what we are taking in. He suggested this lack of time to properly digest what we see and hear from our screens, was one major contributory factor in the rise generally of heightened levels of anxiety, stress and feelings of being overwhelmed. Modern life has not enough idle time of doing nothing at all. We need more periods of being useless for as long as possible, basically.
In response to this suggestion I've recently started adjusting my morning routine, I don't immediately switch on the TV or laptop, from the moment I get up. I drink my Rose Green tea and just sit with myself for a while. At some point I'll write in my Morning Journal. These days I can't really afford to go on retreat, so I'm thinking of introducing Retreat & Digest Days into my week ,where I have no input via technology, TV, tablet or computer screen at all. I certainly need to cut back on doom watching the latest authoritarian escalation on the streets of the US.
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