Put those things that naturally go on a high place
onto a high place,
and those that would be most stable on a low place
onto a low place;
things that naturally belong on a high place
settle best on a high place,
while those which belong on a low place
find their greatest stability there
DOGEN
A visit to the Acupuncturist is like entering a neutral space that is calm, unhurried and clinical, without being antiseptic. I don’t know what they’re like in the Far East, but here the practitioners are truly part of the white coat brigade. It is a phenomenon of Western Life that you would deliberately choose something because it is not conventional medicine. Acupuncture is bundled in with all the other weird, and sometimes dubious, practices that are labelled ‘alternative’. Yet, despite this outsider label, we also want it to be respectable, reputable, hence they all dress like pseudo hospital consultants without stethoscopes. My Acupuncturist’s room is not at all institutional. A Chinese print or two on the walls, a treatment couch, two pillows in wheat coloured slips ( read ,organic, natural, balanced and calming ) a table and chairs, a nice understated carpet and a wooden cabinet that houses needles and puncture related accessories. Generally it has an aesthetic feel of simplicity, ordered, but not too regimented. Everything has a place, and there’s a beautiful place for everything.
This week’s treatment, following on from the fortnight of back pain, was quite minimal. He said my symptoms were not the usual response to the back procedure he did last time. He didn’t rule out that they might have contributed, but was unlikely to have instigated such a dramatic response. Now, I don’t know whether he was just covering his back here, but I have no reason as yet to mistrust his judgement. We did a lot of talking, focusing on my breathing pattern and the lung channel. He placed two pins, briefly, on each hand and wrist area, which are apparently connected to lung function in some way. I'd either respond by feeling very energetic or very tired, its turned out to be the latter.
Apparently I’m not using my full lung capacity, I’m holding something back. He’s not the first to remark on this, my osteopath said something uncannily similar. I’ve also been aware for years in meditation that my breathing is rarely fully relaxed, something always remains taught, or highly strung. Internally I’ve just felt restrained from fully inhaling myself.
We discussed why this might be, and why I’ve not wanted to meditate on a regular basis for years. My homework this time is to reflect on this, particularly on inspiration ( this is the Lung channel we’ve been talking about ). When I met Ato Rinpoche a few months back I suddenly found my desire to meditate returned. Until the recent resurgence of back, shoulder and arm pain this had been going well. Now this was entirely to do with feeling reconnected to inspiration. I wanted to become as calm, gracious and equanimous as Ato Rinpoche, I wanted what he had. Though I’ve met many admirable spiritual practitioners, some of whom I do look up to, they are not quite in his league.
Though I’m not quite sure how to proceed with this reflection on inspiration. I’m currently looking back and seeing what inspired me to become a Buddhist in the first place( why do I meditate ?) and how that has changed over the years. I think it’s way too early to write about this, so maybe next time.
For the last week and a half my back pain has been really acute. I had an acupuncture appointment on the Monday after we returned from Torquay. He did an acupuncture procedure to rebalance my back. On Wednesday, I’d arrived at work and was just reaching over for something in the car, when something shifted. The moment I stood up I knew something wasn’t right. As I walked, sharp twinges accompanied my every step. I made it through the day. The following day I thought I could probable work just so long as I sat down at frequent intervals. The entire muscles around my back and hips still felt tender, or raw in someway, though the twinges were reduced in frequency. It didn’t seem as bad, but by the time I was home in the evening it was much worse. I didn’t go to work the next day, the discomfort was now surrounded by a mind numbing fog resulting from considerable lack of sleep. As it was a Bank Holiday weekend I took what opportunity I could to rest. At the same time I didn’t want to stiffen up, so I did go out a bit. I ventured into town on the bus with David, and drove to Wimpole Hall with Saddharaja on the Sunday.
This last week I’ve been back at work, but being in the Cremation Room I was able to sit down. A few days were a bit stressful on the back, but I have seemed to manage OK. Next week I’m on Chapel Attendant duty, I’m hoping it will have improved further by then. Anyway, I’m seeing the Acupuncturist on Monday, so I’ll give him the low down on what pain his pesky little pins have released.
NO 2 – ON DOING IT YOUR WAY
It used to be that a Cremation Service consisted of a Christian service of Committal, a few hymns, an address and personal recollections of the deceased. Though this continues to be the standard form for most of the services, there are changes in emphasis as more and more of the deceased and the bereaved are only nominally Christian. The generations that were brought up knowing hymns is fast disappearing. In effect it’s reduced to a handful of tunes – The lords my shepherd, - Abide with me – All things bright and beautiful – Amazing Grace – The Old Rugged Cross – Love Divine. Some of these we will hear two or three times a day, seven days a week. The sickly sentimentality of All things B&B now causes a barely suppressible gag reflex in myself.
A growing number of services are Humanist, Civil Services or family run. The style of these services varies, but a common trend is to use the choice of music to somehow capture aspects of the decease’s character. I’ll warn you now, that if you want specific music played at your funeral stipulate it in your will. Otherwise you will be pray to the musical whims of your remaining relatives, which may not accord with your own. I’ve born the coffins of ninety year olds in to the accompaniment of tunes by Metallica or Iron Maiden. Now even in enlightened and liberally hip Cambridge I find this incongruous and hard to believe. Ministers have entered the Chapel reciting the opening lines of the Christian Committal, drowned out by the sound of Status Quo’s –Down, Down, Deeper and Down. Irrespective that I’m a Buddhist, I found this disrespectful not only to the minister, but to a sense of what is appropriate or dignified. Though I did also find it funny, because it was so patently ludicrous.
Leaving the Chapel after the service seems to provide an opportunity for ranking up the emotional volume or for a defiant concluding statement. The soulful power ballad, such as The Power of Love, by Jennifer Rush, anything by Queen, Tina Turner or Eva Cassidy singing Somewhere over the Rainbow, occur with astonishing regularity. Now a funeral is an emotionally fraught occasion, it doesn’t really need this level of emotional manipulation. As the curtain goes round the catafalque, the air of finality, the final moment of parting is all too palpable. I’ve come to the conclusion that a sort of self pitying sentimentality reveals itself in this choice of closing music. The cloying aspect of grief is made public in musical form.
Other music is more a two fingers up to death, a defiant gesture of the bereaved towards death. We regularly get Monty Python’s - Always look on the bright side of life. I think its thought irreverent, but actually, these days, its just sad and predictable. The all time most popular choice for leaving music is Frank Sinatra’s – I did it my way. Almost every day we get it. I was saddened to hear, on the radio, that it was played at the late Alan Ball’s funeral. Now Alan Ball may indeed have played some of his life his way. Most of us rarely do so, life is often a painful choice between what we’d like to do and what reality deems possible. The choice of – I did it my way – really is saying even though death got me in the end, at least I did life my way. I doubt that most of the deceased were really that fulfilled as men ( yes, it is largely men who have Frank’s aged crooning ) I sincerely doubt they did much their way, but I guess it’s comforting to think of what might have been, or just being remembered will do, surely ! Is there something wrong with being remembered for simply being caring and kind. Death really is not the place for valedictory statements – no one does it entirely their way, unless they were a completely insensitive bastard of course.
I’ve come rather late to admiration of Amy Winehouse. Her publicity, as a somewhat wayward and unpredictable drunken starlet, preceded my exposure to her music. I saw her interviewed on TV recently, and was impressed by her self-assurance, she feels no need to apologise for who she is, or what she does. The subject matter of her songs ranges over relationship difficulties, drugs, drugs within relationships, sex, and dicks.I’ve just bought her first album, its musical style is like a
more ballsy Norah Jones and its much clearer what her musical influences are. Jazz greats such as Sarah Vaughan and Soul chanteuse Minny Ripperton, explain the vocal authority and assurance in style that Winehouse effortlessly displays. I guess many an intoxicated evening has been spent singing along to her idols. It’s a very individual voice she has, subtle, pointed and poignant to order. Amy Winehouse is much much more than a size 00 clothes horse with tattoos and stacked black hair, she’s an extremely gifted song writer and consummate singer too.
Barely eighteen months after their startling debut album, we have the Sheffield combo’s second serving. At this rate, the Arctic Monkeys might have disbanded due to irreconcilable difficulties and gone off to develop solo careers before any of them reach 21. Favorite Worst Nightmare, displays all the signs of a growing musical maturity, with increased sophistication and instrumental dexterity. With their first album they seemed to be the latest streetwise inheritors of the punky tunefulness of The Buzzcocks, infused with the poetic heart of The Smiths at their best. Alex Turners versatility as a lyricist, avoids the maudlin sentimentality of Morrisey, yet maintains a grudging sympathy for his subjects/victims plight. He Manages to pull off impressive verbal word play and insightful social comment, whilst mixing it with the earthy sardonic humour of a northern stand-up comedian. The poet John Cooper Clarke comes to mind quite frequently. The subjects on their debut release was quite closely observed, drawing, to some extent, on their own upbringing in a northern town that lost its industry, and its way, a few decades ago. Constant touring since then has considerable tightened them up as a band. Musically this album shows expanding musical horizons and adeptness. Lyrically Turner has had to broaden his social sphere for his observations, to include comment on celebrity culture, for instance, in Teddy Picker.
I’ve had the album for only a few days, and whilst the first albums originality and authenticity hit you right between the eyes so you could hardly ignore it, this album slowly impresses itself upon you.
The instant hits being Florescent Adolescent, Do me a Favour, Old Yellow Bricks, and 505. Here their trademark use of abrupt changes in vocal style and time signature work seamlessly together. There are a few tracks that fall short such as Balaclava, and most notable - If you were there, Beware - where its hard to tell what they’re trying to say lyrically or musically, time signatures shift from quiet introspection to teetering dangerously on the edge of heavy metal bombast. But then, their first album was not without tracks that missed their target either. Either way, I’m already becoming fond of these musical sweeties, and look forward to their next bag of allsorts.
David and I have just returned yesterday from a weeks holiday in Torquay. David’s Brother in Law owns a house there, which he kindly allowed us to use for free. The driving down went OK, we stopped overnight 2/3rds of the way, which broke up some of the monotony of motorway driving. Torquay is styling itself these days as The English Riviera. It certainly possesses some, but not all, of the characteristics of a Mediterranean resort. The impression it leaves is of a re-branding project that is not yet completed. With the accelerating pace of global warming the style of weather might arrive before the architectural ambiance is finished being constructed. Houses, in price and quality, are already escalating in anticipation.
As a town, it still reveals its working class origins through its shopping areas. Even the main streets and malls are bog standard and quite ordinary. Esplanades of 'kiss me quick' shops and award winning chip shops are mixed in with Weatherspoons and Pizza Express. Quite a few converted banks, chapels and merchants offices have become designer wine bars. From which, in the height of summer, the noisy money of men and women will spill out and vomit onto the paving of its rejuvenated streets. Yet there are also quite a large number of quiet retired people living here, with surplus income to spare. We counted at least four Chinese Herbalists/Acupuncture Clinics, which must be something of a record. The divide between the style of the Have’s and the Chav’ Nots is very noticeable.
We largely took a leaf out of Gilbert and Georges book, and ate out for breakfast and lunch whenever possible. The Veggie Breakfasts, these days, are quite a standard mix of fried egg, tomatoes, hash browns, mushrooms and baked beans. They were, like the Cafe Latte’s, variable in quality and execution, depending on the cafe, though we found our favorite, called Fresh, with our first breakfast . Say what you like about the national cafe chains they have raised the quality threshold. So the best coffee in town was still to be found at Cafe Nero or Costa. Torquay, thankfully, has no Starbucks, Hurrah !! There is only so much frothy milk with a vague hint of having once been placed near a coffee bean, that I can stomach.
Abandoning the car, to be parked for the week on one of Torquay’s numerous
severely inclined streets, we took a bus to Brixham. Brixham is still a working port, with one of the largest remaining fishing fleets in the country. Though these days, that can’t amount to much of a claim to fame. It does have its own practical worldly charm, and an appearance of not tolerating any pretentious none sense, its a port and small tourist attraction, OK ! In feel it is very like Whitby, with its high cliffs, tight little bay and steeply rising terraces. House prices to buy or rent are lower, the shopping area is slightly grubby and run down in places. So far, no one is rushing to gentrify or push it up market, its too earthy for that. Though the yachting set park there boats here, they choose to live elsewhere.
We also took a sea cruise to Dartmouth. A very beautiful place, hidden almost secretively in a high sided river estuary. With the Royal Naval College looking down and the Royal Yacht Club moorings at Kingsmear, we were in a different social climate altogether. Expensive shops, cafes and well maintained old properties, some selling for prices in the millions, indicate that the heart and wallet of The English Riviera is really cloistered here. It feels so conservative, safe and protected from Gerry U Boats and the liberal ravages of urban Britain. A place at peace with itself, harmonious, with a degree of homogeneous integrity, based as it is on the triple buttresses of yachting, class and money. We left having really enjoyed our visit, but knowing living there would be an entirely different experience. Still, it felt somehow comforting to know a place like Dartmouth still exists.
This week I went to see the Propeller Theatre Company twice, once with David to see Shakespeare's Taming of the Shrew, and then with Paco to see Twelfth Night. Both were excellent, but the latter was a quite awesome experience. Very physical in style, blending wit and poignancy with great ease. All the cast play musical instruments and at times become part of the stage set, seemlessly blending action, song and baudy humour into an energetic and life enhancing performance. If they are coming your way, please go and see them. You' d be a hard hearted person if you were not rewarded with two hours of real delight and pleasure.
We talk sometimes within Buddhism, of ‘going into the cremation ground’. In India this was, and still is, a spiritual practice; to literally go to the cremation area surrounding your town or city, and contemplate the stages of decomposition of a corpse. In 21st Century Europe, cremation, along with most aspects concomitant with death, are removed from daily view or access. Working in the Crematorium, obviously, brings me into regular contact with the bereaved, with death and the process of cremation. Since December, when I went full-time, I’ve found it has demanded more of me emotionally than I ever anticipated, disturbing the murkier sediments of my dream life, and unsettling my usually buoyant and stable equilibrium.
In India, you would go to the cremation ground only for brief intense periods. It required the development of some degree of mature spiritual practice and warm, positive regard towards ones self. You’d also be able to walk away from it should it become too much to handle, or simply back off in order to gain renewed perspective or reflect on your experience in less intense surroundings. Now, what I do is a job, I’m paid to do this, this is, after all, a slightly different set up. Nonetheless, I do try to make some kind of practice from it. I attempt to remain aware as my moods change, hour-by-hour, minute- by- minute, as they shift from ease - to tenseness, from noticing the nature and form of my distress - to feeling myself emotionally drifting into alienated autopilot. I cannot walk away from a cremation oven and the body burning within, just because the blackening skull and eye sockets of the deceased stare forbiddingly back at me, every time I turn the peephole to check on a cremations progress. I have to stay with it, and with everything that results from it. Lately, there has been some disharmony between the Staff and our Managers, and I have, in addition, been struggling with my own irascible internal conflicts. There have been times when the job has felt like it really was too much, that I was on the very edge of what I could cope with physically, mentally and spiritually.
I know, as a Buddhist, this job creates slightly different difficulties and emotional challenges, than it would have for my fellow Chapel Attendants/Cremation Technicians. This week I’ve been reflecting that working in a ‘cremation ground’ does require some degree of spiritual perspective and resilience, and you have to feel free to step away from it. If I struggle, then how do my fellow workers, who don’t have this perspective cope? Well lets just say each has developed his or her own way of handling it, that in some way deadens or damps down the emotional impact.
It has become clear this week that, as much as I’d like to believe otherwise, I am only just keeping ahead in negotiating the turbulence emerging from my psyche. How much longer before I get thrown overboard? I don’t believe physically, mentally or spiritually it would be beneficial to commit to being here in the longer term. My body and mind are already echoing my unconscious rebellion and desire for spiritual sustenance.
So, this was the week of my first Acupuncture session. After a series of questions about the qualities of my ailments and frequent measuring of the various pulse points in my wrist, he finally got around to puncturing me with a few pesky little needles, first into the flesh of my back, and then into my feet. Apparently, I have an imbalance in my system, the left hand pulse not being in balance with the right. As most of my complaints occupy the left side of my body, this does have a certain sense of being true. He also said that this, and a tendency in my body to overheat, were symptoms indicative of an internal conflict. I thought 'tell me about it', since teenage I’ve felt internally at war or in a constant turmoil, restless and frustrated with myself and reality. I've been feeling particularly tense recently. It's like not really wanting to hold a hot potato, metaphorically being tossed and passed from hand to hand, hoping it will become cool. So, there is a lot of heated internal debate going on in this area. My Buddhist practice has barely scratched the surface of it. I've learnt how to contain it, remain aware, but still not really grasp what the central issue is. The Acupuncturist asked provocatively ‘did I think I was risk averse’, to which I sheepishly replied ‘perhaps’, which was really a feeble face saving way of saying ‘yes, I am, and I'm not proud of it’.
I went to see the film ‘300’ with my friend Andy, who has recently moved to Cambridge from Bristol. After reading a few reviews, and seeing the trailer, I was eagerly expecting it to be camp, which it was, in all its full gory glory. It was also quite a good heroic romp, with a well-written script and, how can I put this, the best in over the top costume design. Spartans dressed in leather underpants, huge red cloaks resting on broad well oiled shoulders, each with a six pack to die for. I’m sure Xerxes was never, in reality, quite so heavily made up with fake tan and eye liner,or bedecked in so much ‘bling’ that he looked like a deranged curtain rail. But then historical fact and this film parted company a long long time ago. And,yes, its true, some of the Spartans were played by actors hand picked from the- In Your Face Brian Blessed School of Acting, but that did actually suit the style of the movie. Having seen ‘Sin City’ made by the same team, I’d also expected the film to be nauseatingly gory and without any moral compass. The film was, however, so stylised you hardly felt the pain as a spear made a awfully big tear in the pneumatic torso of yet another Spartan, or one more leg was casually lopped off a Persian minion in mid air.Andy, quite rightly pointed out the moral hypocrisy of the Spartan’s position, supposedly fighting for a decent clean living, slave free, republican democracy. Lets just say they bypassed the United Nations and went to indiscriminate slaughter without saying please. It did not go unnoticed that this film did appear to become a historical justification for the current actions of the US and its cohorts in Iraq. One more manufactured international incident and they’ll actually be in Persia by Christmas.
Last weekend I went to the optician, the blood shot and sleep-deprived eyes needed a check up. In their fiftieth year they’re not doing too bad, so the optician said, ‘they’re holding up pretty well- considering your age’. But then that’s me all over ‘holding up pretty well – considering my age’. I’m not blind without my glasses, more slightly fuzzy around the edges, but they do help with reading. Since my teenage years it is my left eye which has been the weaker, ‘lazy eye’. Which is just shorthand for - you’ve got one eye that bloody well can’t keep up in the short race of life. I was quite shocked during the test how poor it actually was. There was one test where the optician alternated from one lens to another, whilst I’m looking at a circle composed of dots. She wanted to know which looked clearer, this one ,or this one. With my right eye the differences were distinct, ‘first one clearer’, ‘the second’. With my left eye it was ‘the same’ ‘hardly any difference’, ‘the same’, ‘the same’, ‘the same’…..
There has been some small incremental improvement in my shoulder pain, but then that hasn’t helped the sleeping. I’m still switching from the left side, to on my back, to the left side and barely staying a minute on my right side before twinging resumes and I’m awake. Lack of good quality sleep is finally made physically manifest in my tired old left eye, which has started weeping and flickering in my peripheral vision. It’s become a trifle annoying. Wearing my glasses helps, but otherwise there are no drops or ointment to ease its weary winking. So it joins the ever-growing ranks of minor irritants that I begrudgingly accommodate. I wont list them all, lest you think me a stereotypical gay man, completely self-obsessed with his own bodily frailty, and the special sensitivity of his physical aches and pains. How much is just the on going bodily deterioration of a human body, and how much I can do something about, is the subject of great internal debate at the moment. Though it seems to me most of these physical discomforts arise out of mental stress, which you would assume I could do something to alleviate. It’s just a question of what?
Work, with the lack of good sleep on top of the back, shoulder, arm pain, has been just about endurable. I’ve noticed that I’m not really springing out of bed, ready to meet the day in quite the way I used to. It feels like I’m dragging myself along behind me like a dead weight. There have been days, when if I heard yet another half hearted eulogy, encompassed within a misguided (though well meant) theology, spilling from the mouth of a Christian minister, I would gladly have screamed out ‘don’t believe a word of it, he doesn’t, he’s just mindlessly reciting it out of a book’, right in the middle of a service. There has got to be some change in the approach to my work soon, or I really must change my work. I can feel it, bit by bit, dragging my spirits down. But that always brings me back to what to do about it. At the moment I’m a bit at a loss what to do about it. Twas ever the same. I’m finding myself wondering whether leaving Buddhist Right Livelihood a year ago, was really the right decision.
The Birthday Party's - The Friend Catcher, began with a despairing wail of a lead guitar( courtesy of Roland Howard) , screaming angst, fear and horrific loathing. Into the musical sphere of the early eighties stepped one of Nick Cave's first lyrical monsters. Now, we have a new configuration Grinderman, a side project, so we are informed, the Bad Seeds still a force to be reckoned with, but resting. Cave's accomplices on this CD are the threesome he toured with last year; Martin P Casey, Jim Sclavunos and Warren Ellis. I mention the track 'The Friend Catcher' because with 'No Pussy Blues' on this CD, we have a lead guitar sound that would strip paintwork, this time coming from Mr Cave himself. This is, however, not just a return to form, he's never really lost it in my book, just grown in musical/lyrical strength and sophistication. So whilst his early work was primal,intense and overflowing with frustrated emotion, his recent work lyrically insinuates its way in, subtly unsettling our expectations. The focus on this CD seems to be sexual frustration - No Pussy Blues, Go tell the women and Depth Charge Ethel being fueled by foxed desires.
