I’m going to turn 60 in the Autumn. Last summer, when I was feeling miserable and angry about not be able to go on holiday, I talked myself down from financial acting out, partly by starting to plan this trip to Hydra, as a sixtieth birthday gift to heart and soul.

And now I’m here.

Over the last few months I’ve spent far too much time in Headfuck Central, about should I or shouldn’t I cancel the trip. My life has become increasingly reduced by escalating back/hip/leg pain. When I say pain, I mean the kind that makes me want to scream all the time. If it wasn’t for the constant love of Leonard The Dog and the love and forbearance of the ones that know and love me well, I’d have eaten my own arm off. Or killed someone. Maybe myself.

I have hunkered down. Surviving. Getting through days on dog kisses, prayer and swearing. And boxsets. I’m waiting for disc surgery in an NHS queue. I was scared to leave the comfort zone of BedWorld and home, and navigate the journey to another country. I know it isn’t so far, but when your borders have closed in, it is.

And I came, because I couldn’t not. I did kind things on route, like an airport hotel, a port stay in Athens, taking the ferry in the morning. It took three days in all. And, not shaming myself for needing that. Epic.

I’ve been here a few days, three and a half to be exact, with ten and a half more to go. The very fact I just wrote that makes me cross. I’m such a warrior for Being Here and This is It… and Welcoming IT ALL, that it’s so very painful to find myself struggling so, with this THIS. I don’t want to be counting days in an anxious tone, and worrying about whether it’s alright to lay on my beautiful white bed in my whitewashed room, this much, when I’ve come all the way to Hydra to be Here. I absolutely know it is nuts. And, it is often comedy and tenderness that get me through the days of my little life. So, none of this is driving the car, to use a favourite metaphor, but it is making a lot of noise in the damn car, and I’ve had to pull over so we can all take a few good, slow breaths.

Writing like this is part of how I get back to the earth. And in this case, the breath of the sea. I am here already. I just forgot, as I do, and then if I’m lucky I remember again without too much suffering.

I’ve discovered a few things through this bloody pain. For example, that it can sometimes make the ravaged landscape of my depression look like a walk in the park. Please forgive me, my fellow depressives, as I know it’s not any kind of park you’d want picnic in. It’s just that for me, I’ve been beaten down by this physical pain. I don’t know how to lay down with it, although I do lay down a lot. When I couldn’t escape my depression , I gave up and I fell into the fields of Kindness. I want that fall, and of course we cannot chase such things down. I know that poems, tears, orgasms, falls and fields, only get further away if chased.

I am here and it’s this, This, and I still can’t help kicking and yelling and wanting it to be like an idea I didn’t even know I had, about this trip. We are funny, us humans. I am funny and I’m always glad when I can feel connected to that. When the very serious, and not very serious business, of my little human life can make me laugh. And, I am laughing now, at how hard I try, not to try, and how I fail every time… and how the grace of that will bring me home. Everytime if I let it.

I’m signing off this postcard from Hydra. I’m in bed early after calamari and gin and tonic by the harbour. I’m in the landscape of my little dog’s namesake, Mr. Leonard Cohen. A pilgrim for my heart and soul, not to forget the broken body that keeps going, albeit more and more slowly.

Worry will probably rise and fall, as will every damned and beautiful thing. As Leonard wrote: Here It Is. Here it all is.

May everyone live,
And may everyone die.
Hello, my love,
And, my love, Goodbye.

And here you are hurried,
And here you are gone
And here is the love,
That it’s all built upon