https://advantagesofage.com/exclusives/death-gratitude/

I’m so grateful to my friends at https://advantagesofage.com for encouraging and chivvying my write. Special thanks to the very special Rose Rouse.

It is particularly poignant to be publishing this piece on the day another valiant friend’s funeral takes place in Paris. Another notch on the bedpost of depression, another precious person couldn’t stay in this world any longer.

Photo credit: Elainea Emmott

I am so very grateful to
https://advantagesofage.com
for their unstinting generosity, kindness and support to my writing. I was chivied to get on with this one, and I had to or the doorway to write it would have closed. Thank you for the chivying.

Here is my intake of breath before sixty.
https://advantagesofage.com/exclusives/a-breath-before-sixty/

I post a haiku on Facebook.

Sad has descended
Melancholy body parts
drag feet on pee walk

When I come back online, I find some very kind words in response to my haiku from friends, far and wide. I am touched and grateful. And thoughtful.

I haven’t been sending many postcards from the window ledge over the last eighteen months. This isn’t a conscious thing. It crept up on me and now I notice that I’m not writing much.

I think, now I’ve noticed it, that it’s a consequence of the physical pain in my back, hips and legs. The escalating pain from my herniated discs, that I could manage and medicate, and am now just surviving until I get to my turn in the NHS queue. Waiting to be surgically decompressed is grim.

The not writing has to do with how the direct experience of living with this kind of constant pain, mirrors the narrative of living with baseline depression. When I try to write, I find myself using the same kind of language and metaphor. Both things are fierce, unforgiving and relentless. And yet, I seem to be able to write from one and not so much the other.

Struggling to escape my depression, with emphasis on the struggle part, eventually brought me home to a place I call the Fields of Kindness.

I can’t seem to stop struggling with my ravaged body. I’m trying too hard to surrender and am attached to an idea of that, even as I try not to be. As Leonard Cohen says in one of his last songs: I’m angry and I’m tired all the time. I do so ache to soften and to lay my head down… And, maybe the real difference between depression in my bones and blood, and pain in my damaged bones, is that I am invested in fixing the latter.

That is a terrifying thing.

But, what I am tugging at here, is the crazy making, heart-breaking struggle between okay and not-okay-ness. It has taken almost all of my almost sixty years, to break out of that bloody prison.

Now I know, not with my mind, but with my breath, that I am both broken and whole, that I am already here, and that there is absolutely nowhere to go. There is poetry in this simplicity, but it is not an abstraction.  Welcoming This, over and over, is not easy.

Somehow though, I know it. I don’t mean I KNOW IT like I’m clever, I mean, I am blessed to have found a field of deep simplicity. It isn’t easy but it is simple. I am here, like this, moment by moment, breath by breath, until I get to the very last exhale. I keep on practicing welcoming it all, and every time I think I might have got a little bit good at it, I find out just how much there is to welcome, and just how much it isn’t about being good at anything.

I started this postcard because I wanted to say something about the freedom I earned from ditching the ‘okay, or not’ idea. I’ve ditched a few things along the road. Giving things up takes my breath away, and then it gives it back.

My haiku practice is an attempt to stay connected to the poetry in my heart, even while I’m ground down by pain, pain meds, and am angry and tired all the time. I still need to write a little. A haiku is a little.

Sadness didn’t decend and steal me away from happy. I am always with my melancholy feet. Depression is in the beat of my heart, and for now anyway, pain that makes me want to chew my arm off, is too.

As some of you know, I just took my sorry self to Hydra, and I was there in this most precious place, with all of me in attendance. I was touched, open, closed, closed, open, tired, angry, on a horse, on a white bed, in the blessing of the sea, in a storm, in a conversation, on the road to Leonard’s white house… each day I was defeated and healed and defeated. And healed.

Speaking simply, this is the way my days roll. Physical pain notwithstanding, I’m learning to live with the one I’m with, rather than making her not okay. She is somewhat grim and heavy-hearted by nature, but it seems that grim and heavy hearted were just waiting to be welcome. Welcome begets generosity. We all breathe more. There is room where there wasn’t before. It seems I’m a bit of a comedian and a tender beast, as well the one that lives on her knees.

What do I know? That this is my little life, and I’m always going to be saying thank you. Living on my knees is part despair, part devotion and surrender, and always prayer.

I’m in my sun filled bedroom in London, half laid down in a bespoke cradle of pillows, laptop perched on my chest. I pause for breath more than thought, one hand on my keyboard, the other resting on a warm dog belly that rises and falls beneath it. I am here. This is one of those moments of grace when this is easy. I wrote these words from such a place, one day on Hydra.

At last, I have slipped into the breathing of sea
I found a shady spot to call my own
inside vast and salty lungs
At various points 
during the course of this day
that was all

These moments come and go. It all comes and goes. I am touched by how fleeting everything is, as one who strived to get hold of things and keep them. I love knowing I can’t keep anything, except of course when I don’t. Then I try to draw on my practice and love the unlovable: the resistance, the pain, she shut off and cut off, and the ugly refrain. From here, the poems are less beautiful, if they come at all.

My holiday/retreat/pilgrimage to Hydra was food for mind, body, heart and soul. It fed me up. And, yet I struggled every day with my inner and outer world. As I do. I have suffered mightily from the hopeless pursuit of good days as a pose to bad days. Or a good life, not a bad one or a wrong one. This is an impossible dilemma, I reckon for anyone, but certainly for this one. The weight of depression is ever-present, so a lifetime of making that wrong made good days or a good life, elusive to say the least.

So, of course I love the days when I am at one with the sea, either when I’m in the sea, or in my bedroom. All the other moments though, they need to be loved too, and stayed with. And if the tyranny of right and wrong days/life has been ditched, I can just keep being here however I am. Broken and whole. Human.

Two fragments of Leonard’s writing float in through the window. He’s always singing in this room.

 I greet you from the other side 
Of sorrow and despair 
With a love so vast and shattered 
It will reach you everywhere

You got me singing
Even tho’ the news is bad
You got me singing
The only song I ever had

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

Dear Dog of my Heart
Gratitude for all those days
You keep me alive

You teach me Simple
like some ancient zen master
or comedian

You get me laughing
even though my mood is grim
You kiss my defeat

I follow you through
the days of my little life
I am so grateful

Mr. Cohen says:
Love comes how it comes. You came
to show me my heart

I could write haiku
for you, every single day
chasing the essence

Never even catching
the tailwind of loving you
It is just like This

You give me poems
You are the sweetest Dog Muse
Leonard had women

I had a few too
along the highways of life
You are so easy

to love full-hearted
My devotion is fearless
and it is massive

You kiss my eyelids
I raise up my face to yours
Blessings are bestowed

You stand beside me
You move inside me as well
I live in you too

I whisper your name
Your body moves towards mine
even as you sleep

Anniversary:
Looking for the last haiku
My gratitude Hymn

Thank you, as ever to Rose Rouse and Suzanne Noble from Advantages of Age, for the unstinting encouragement, love and support to my writing. I am so grateful.

https://advantagesofage.com/roadmap-to-compassion/

A few weeks ago, Bebe The Cat went missing. She doesn’t wander far or for long, so I knew she was in trouble. Some well-meaning people, told me stories about cats that wandered off for days/weeks/months and returned home none the worse for wear.

I knew she was in trouble because I know her ways. She had a few secrets, but was never out of range for more than an hour or two. If I stood by the back door and called her name, she’d often appear from a few gardens down. I knew she was in trouble and she was. On the morning of the sixth day, I found her under the barbeque. Her back, right leg was obviously broken. It turned out to be more shattered than broken, and the only course of treatment was to amputate. My tiny black panther is now one leg short.

We are all coming out the other side now. The light is back in her sea-green eyes, and my system has just about stopped trembling. Leonard The Dog doesn’t quite get it. He’s looking for the cat that jousted and danced with him, and doesn’t yet recognize our more vulnerable Queen.

Maybe, that’s why I’ve been slouching through my days with this title: Losing Things, sitting at the top of an empty page. My attitude to losing things is not what it was. I have lost a few things along the road: people, places and things, like we all do. It’s not only that. More like a deep curiosity and borderline preoccupation with loss and losing. I remember listening to Janis Joplin singing, Me and Bobby Magee: freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose. That song, and particularly that line would crack my thirteen-year-old heart wide open, with something like tenderness and despair.

We lose everything, and in the end, we are gone. I find this so damn comforting, and it makes me laugh that I do. I’ve written before, about simplicity and it’s something to do with that. All that, down to the bone simplicity, just waiting for me.

I had a significant ‘losing it’ moment in my late twenties. I was living in Sydney and practicing the dark art of self-hatred, with all my might. We use that terminology, don’t we? Losing it. Losing what? I had lost a lot already, but never IT, if it meant the capacity to hold on. This night, walking through Darlinghurst as dawn broke, I did lose that. I was so broken, drug addled, psychotic, homeless, loveless, empty and humiliated, that I fell over the edge. It’s so long ago now, that I only just remember the street beneath me, the lightening sky, my bedraggled body, only just dressed for dancing. I barely remember the narcissistic boy that left me there, once the chemicals had run out and worn off. What I do remember though, is the feeling of falling. I remember crying out: it’s happening… it’s happening. I remember the fall and those words in my mouth.

Of course, I hit the ground, and continued pursuing relief or communion, or whatever it was I ached for. And, for a very long time.

This falling though, it left its trace memory in my cells.

Much more recently, I fell like that again. I was so tired of never quite being okay, and from working so hard to not be depressed. I was exhausted from trying to heal and somehow failing. Even though I can’t pin down an exact day, when there was just, nowhere left to go, I went over the edge into free fall. I lost some stuff on the way down, and funnily enough I don’t miss it.

You could say my life got smaller?  Or more spacious? That’s the thing about simple: both small and wide at the same time. I love this idea: My Little Life, not as a put down, but as an affirmation. My little life. Your little life. All burning briefly, like wave after wave of tiny lights. We burn, flicker, and we die.

So, what did I lose?

Some deep, oh, so deeply entrenched ideas about what matters and what makes me okay, or not okay. Some stories about success and failure. Some notions about who I am, or should be. Yes, in a nutshell, that is what I lost in my fall, not from Grace, but directly into Grace.

Into the Fields of Kindness, rather than onto a lonely road in Australia. And the cry from my lips and heart, this time, is something like: thank you. I have found a lot of gratitude in these fields, now that I know I don’t have to fix myself, and that even if depression is my home address, I am whole, as well as broken. That we all are.

I’ve been thinking about my mother, and how her life was an epic journey of humiliating losses, until all that was left was bitterness, self-hatred and the husk of a tiny body, attached to oxygen. She taught me well: how to find myself in the mirror of all that. Her little life feels brutally small. I had to go all the way to Australia just to keep breathing. Breathing and dying on the sunny side of the world. I didn’t know she’d died for quite some time, but strangely, it happened at the very same time I started living.

In eleven months time, I’ll turn sixty. My mother died three days after her sixtieth birthday. I wasn’t there, but felt it in the realms of mystery. Maybe a death/life baton was passed from hand to hand? From mother to daughter? It has taken a lot of my little life, to find the Kindness, Mercy and Grace, that brought me home. It has taken my fierce attachment to life, in chaotic coexistence with my appetite and longing for death. And, it has taken so much help: from strangers, friends, dance floors, poets, healers and destroyers, from cats, dogs, horses, nature, and from my teachers and their teachers, and  many, many circles of courage and love.

I am increasingly, more humbled than humiliated by losing things, and that comfort I mentioned, maybe there is a kind of freedom in nothing left to lose…and, even though that’s never going to be quite true, until the very last breaths, at least I can offer up my struggles with losing things, to what is truly precious.