Cornwall

Last Sunday we decided, despite the weather forecast, to go camping in Cornwall for a few days. Big mistake! It was very, very, very wet... However we did get some sun as well as showers, hail, strong winds, rain-battered noisy nights, low temperatures, etc.

We stopped just inside Dartmoor (Devon) for the first night on a camp site which had its own hydro-electricity - this meant it had the warmest shower block I've ever been in! And there was even a bath available too. The drinking water tasted horrible - all chemical - but the other facilities were amazing. However our goal was Cornwall. And it hadn't rained much yet... So on we went.

Nearly eight years ago we got married in Cornwall as a way of marking it as our future home. Recently I've been wondering if it was time to move there. (See my Looking at Houses in Cornwall blog). But the first real question is whereabouts. Most of our visits have been to the far South-West. I love St Ives as a centre for art and Jim has climbed on the sea cliffs, especially near Sennen (actually so have I but never again, thank you!), which is even further South-West than St Ives.

But thinking about living there means different things from holiday-style living. So this trip was partly to visit Truro, Cornwall's only city, to check out what it was like as neither of us had been there before.

We had decided to camp as this is so much cheaper than staying in holiday cottages - even looking for last minute "bargains" I found plenty of vacant cottages but no-one willing to do a decent discount. (I even asked nicely... but only got a meagre £50 off offer.)

The site we ended up at was mostly a retirement park. There were quite a lot of caravans and camper vans there too but we were the only ones foolhardy enough to be in a tent!

Truro turned out to be a lovely city for shopping so that's good and means we won't feel too cut off from "civilisation as we know it" if / when we move to Cornwall. On the downside the road layouts in Cornwall seemed to be getting worse and the drivers much more impatient and rude... incredibly so... worse even than Bristol!

I was so busy looking at Truro that I failed to take any photos worth showing you here! We also visited Falmouth and St. Mawes - photos of those to come in another post. And on the north coast St. Agnes and Perranporth.

St. Agnes is a place I was vaguely interested in because one of the houses I'd noticed in my house searches was an eco-house there. I'd already worked out that it had no garden to speak of so wasn't suitable for us but I was still curious about the village.

Having visited though I think I can safely remove St. Agnes from the list of possibilities. It just wasn't our sort of place. Whilst there though we discovered that we really ought to have been there for this weekend, the weekend following May 1st. As there are lots of celebrations of St. Agnes and the Giant Bolster, (that's a giant called Bolster, not, as I first thought, a big pillow!) over the weekend. Including a Beltane fire on St. Agnes' Beacon. Its a celebration of one of those strange local legends that Cornwall has in plenty.

After St. Agnes we headed for Perranporth and lunch. Another place neither of us had been before. Perranporth has a surfers' beach. There are lots of places in which to eat and loads of tourist shops too. It also has some pleasant gardens to sit in. Fun to visit. Too touristy to live in.

I loved this tile on the side of someone's house near the beach at Perranporth.

Aren't the terracotta seahorses fun!

One of the main reasons I'm interested in Cornwall is that the air is so much cleaner there - as its a peninsular there is a sea-freshness everywhere. I've always thought that living there I'd be a lot healthier. The downside of Cornwall is its tremendous inequality - the born and bred locals are often very poor and have to put up with much wealthier incomers buying up all the houses... house prices are falling there, as they are in most of the UK now, but it will take a much bigger fall to make them affordable by those on the "average", very low, wage in Cornwall.

On our way home we visited a Tortoise Garden at Lower Sticker. They have over 400 tortoises there. Jim was in his element.

A balloon on its way up

Jim and I were just in time to see this balloon being prepared to fly. It was a bit of a dodgy take-off... it was tethered to a Landrover and the wind was gusting quite strongly... at one point it looked like the Landrover was going to go up too... but in the end the balloon went up properly with everyone aboard and just gave the Landrover a bump as it was rising... unfortunately causing a dent to its bonnet (hood), and a crack to its windscreen (windshield). I asked the ground crew if this was normal and they said no...

Sorry about the slightly odd photo I was shooting into the sun.

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Yesterday after an accumulation of synchronicities I made my first two SoulCollage® cards in a year. I've only just noticed how close that was. On April 14th last year I made this:

Collaged from these: lotus flower by wayfaring stranger silence by Mario Scorza On the pink by hexion

I put it up on flickr but didn't blog it. And yesterday, April 15th I made these:



For more about them, including all the relevant attributions see this posting on my card blog.

I've no idea why I've not made any cards for the last year except that I just wasn't motivated to. I love making them when its time to make them.

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In one of her comments Joy Eliz seemed surprised that I'd finished Wyrd Allies... and yes it would be a surprise if I'd done all the exercises... I'm still working on the loops... more and more keep on revealing themselves to me.

When I'm in the mood for reading books I tend to have more than one on the go. I'm still slowly reading 7 Years in Tibet, I've got Positively Wryd started but currently stalled whilst I'm processing the loops from Wyrd Allies, most of my reading attention is going to the book about the history of Trance that I mentioned before - Trance: A Natural History of Altered States of Mind - which I'm finding very interesting but needs to be taken in smallish bites to relish it. Then there are the New Scientists that we have lying around the house. Who else reads like this?

Back to the Trance book - did you know that in trials with women who wanted to increase their breast size most managed to using hypnosis. Indeed one stopped before all the scheduled sessions as she'd got sufficient increase. A completely drug-free, pain-free way, and relatively inexpensive too. Not something that the cosmetic surgery industry would want you to know...

Quick check-in

I just realised I hadn't posted in over a week... sorry. Its probably that I've not got anywhere worth reporting with Carla's challenges and somehow I've been forgetting that there is more to this blog than those..

Maybe its time for a more general where am I and what have I been up to sort of post...

I've not been up to much... a little painting (and no I'm not showing on here yet... though at last I think I know what they are about!)... the odd walk in Bristol's various nearby green spaces... collecting Jim from the airport and getting horribly lost (how? I've no idea... I was the one that got lost...) but still getting there sufficiently early that I had to pay to park... you only get 10 minutes free parking there and it takes most of that to walk to and from the terminal... so hard to avoid at least the £2.50 charge for the next 20 minutes. If I hadn't got lost I'd have been much too early and been stung for the £4 charge (30 min - 1 hour) instead. I was a little impatient to see him after his adventures in the snowfields of Norway :-)

I've been reading a book: Trance: A Natural History of Altered States of Mind by Brian Inglis - its fascinating. I haven't finished it yet but am both appalled and amazed at the way scientists were reluctant to investigate hypnosis in the 19th century because of the damage it would do to their reputations!

Sharp Twists of Fate

Image: "Clerical Workers Sharpen Pencils in the Death Star Library" by ShellyS
Quote: "Meetings are indispensable when you don't want to do anything."
John Kenneth Galbraith

I'm getting behind in doing Carla's exercises on wings4you... on Sunday she posted: You are on a Mission. I've been having a hard time even beginning to do this... I used to work for the kind of company that had mission statements... and as an employee I saw no value to them whatsoever. They were too abstract and took too much time, far too many meetings, and no feeling of direction or other benefit came out of them.

I do realise that doing my own mission statement the only person I need to have a meeting with is myself and as Jim is away this week I've no interruptions. I can also choose what level of abstraction to pitch it at.

Then I found this image of the pencil sharpeners. It puts all that past stuff about the future into context. Provides a wyrd twist on it all...

I've finished a first read through of "Wyrd Allies" and although I've only done a few of the exercises I think I've already noticed some effects... the first was bumping into one of my neighbours - she was the only person who lives around here that I knew before we moved in 12 years ago - and yet during that time we've hardly seen each other, not got to know each other any better at all.

When we met on Tuesday she apologised for being so focused on her own stuff and said we really ought to get together... so we arranged to meet at a local coffee shop the next morning. Later that day I was on my way to a hot stones massage and of course I bumped into her again... and she was off to a massage too... We met up the next morning and had a lovely time.

The reason I connect this with the book, is that to go to the shops I have to choose which way to go, I specifically felt for which was the wyrd way to go and then she popped into view - both times. Of course before reading the book I'd have called this following my nose... or my heart... or whatever part I was attaching the feeling to. So this isn't really new, just a different way of looking at what already is.

One of the more emotionally draining aspects of the exercises I have undertaken is in looking at the things which repeat over and over in my life, where I end up in the same role, the same position, even though I'm with different people each time it happens. I'm finding this useful but tiring! Some of the patterns are very frequent repeaters and definitely weird... by which I mean the things that are happening are not ones I could possibly have consciously arranged... so although I'm the only common element it is odd that the world, the wyrd, the whatever has put me into this situation over and over, given me the chance to replay it over and over... with enough variations to keep me guessing of course... like my very own Groundhog Day (the film)... though mercifully not quite so predictable!

For instance, when I went to my first school I knew no-one there - I lived 5 miles away from it - the others were all local and already mostly knew each other and could see each other after school and at weekends.

By the time I was 10 the year I was in was ready to go up to the next school. However you couldn't do that unless you were 11. All my classmates went up to the next school and I had to stay on an extra year at the primary school. This was all the more difficult as I was already 5' 6" and more woman than girl... I looked like an adult (couldn't get child fares!) but was held back because my birthday fell a month after the cut off date.

The next year I went to the next school. I'd made a good friend during the year stuck at primary but she was put in a different house from me and a very different timetable. I was all alone again.

For a more recent example of this continuing pattern see IF - Wind & more on Zero Balancing where despite the fact that we all started off as strangers and there were only 3 of us - I was definitely the odd one out.

Have you got any situations that repeat in your life that do seem strangely familiar but also ones you couldn't possibly have caused consciously?

W is for Wyrd, Weird, Wierd, Wired?

Book: Wyrd Allies: harnessing the chaos in your relationships by Tom Graves.

Yesterday I was in the Amnesty Bookshop. On Saturdays its much busier than on weekdays but I had a strong feeling there was something in there to find... I looked in all the usual places... but I wasn't finding it... I did notice though that quite a few books were very much not where they ought to be... so I had to follow my nose... I found this book, Wyrd Allies by Tom Graves, on top of the history books! (It ought really to have been in one of: self-help, esoteric or psychology - all of which I had already looked in, along with natural history...)

When I picked it up I had an internal struggle part of me was keen and part very not... how interesting... early on in the book he describes this weird feeling, the one where we have a real choice. And yes this book tackles exactly what I've been fretting over here recently the interweaving of fate and choice.

Something I especially like about this book is its list of further reading. He has 4 sections the last of which is fiction with only three books in it:

Bryan Bates - The Way of Wyrd
Marion Campbell - The Dark Twin
Alan Garner - The Owl Service

These books map onto my life like this:

The Owl Service was read to us at primary school, on Friday afternoons, sitting out under the big walnut tree in the playing field.
The Dark Twin, was a book I borrowed from the public library several times in my teens.
The Way of Wyrd, was a book my ex-husband had, and that the next man in my life said was the reason he'd gone out with me (thinking it was mine of course)...

Good enough reason to pay attention to the book itself!

I'll let you know how it goes...

"Easter Snow in the Brecon Beacons" by jim_r

Last Monday Jim was in Wales going up Pen-y-Fan with friends. Now he is in Norway and is learning to snowshoe!

There are only a few wolves in Norway so he probably won't meet any. However in Bristol I keep on bumping into them:

Even the wine I bought yesterday was from Wolf Blass! Must be the little red riding hood effect...

Update: You can read some of Wyrd Allies by Tom Graves on the web.

Values

Man is least himself when he talks in his own person.
Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.
Oscar Wilde (1854 - 1900)

One of the things about blogging is that when you read someone else's blog you have no idea how much of what they present as themselves is real... there are people who enjoy pretending to be different in all sorts of ways... and suddenly reading Oscar Wilde's quote I realise that my problem is that I've been attempting not to pretend. Does that make sense?

Dru commented on my Real Illusiions post --- "dodgy things, facts. I prefer truth, so usually only read fiction." which is another way of putting this.

In a past relationship I found the only way to get real emotions out into the open was if we both used glove puppets to speak through.

And so in the light of this here are the values I've finally come up with, though through a different process from the one Carla suggested:

Synchronicity - I just love synchronicities and though I don't necessarily ascribe "meaning" to them, some do feel quite meaningful... on Tuesday I was in a charity shop and wondered about buying this scarab paperweight. I didn't. I went in again yesterday and was glad to see it was still there what's more it was half price so I bought it:

This may not be a "golden scarab" but as a scarab its a good representation of synchronicity.

Today I saw this fridge magnet and I'd bought it as it's message is to "follow your bliss". Maybe a value in itself as well as the message that came through loud and clearly, via synchronicity, the day I first visited Carla's wings4you blog. (And doesn't it fit this metal pencil tin well!)

If you like it you might like to go to the website mentioned on its back: www.papayalicious.com. Where there are lots of other things apart from magnets.

Other values that come up for me:

Self-governing - as in the freedom to make my own choices, assuming freewill does exist, if it doesn't then this is moot. However the make-believe I had to play to do this exercise required me to use the model of freewill existing, otherwise there was no point to values (see Monday's post for where that tangled line took me!)

Non-belief - to be as free from beliefs as I can be. One of the difficulties of language is that describing an experience is almost impossible to do without using words that I and other people put down to beliefs. In general I attempt to work with different models and chuck them out when they aren't working for me. Provided I notice... and am not over-invested in them... so yes I value non-belief, I just don't always manage it.

Seeing one's self in the reflections of others - and the complimentary aspect of that is realising that other people are mostly seeing their own stuff when they react to me! I mean here the tendency one might have to like or dislike certain people, or things about them, when really its one's own's stuff being projected outwards.

Oneness - I was reading yesterday one of those things about how every breath you take is likely to have molecules in it that have been breathed by most of the famous, infamous, people in the past, as well as all the rest of course... that's one physical example, another is the sheer interdependence we all have on one another and the ecosystem that supports us. On a more spiritual level there is also the, occasional, experience of really being one with everything and everyone. I first had this when I was 8, but unlike many more mystical people it hasn't kept me all good and saintly... its very easy to let myself be pushed back into the shell that is me and to forget this.

Facts and Fiction - well that's how I've got to here so I suppose it must count as a working value for me today!

So there I am with 7 core values, or at least things that might be values.

100% Hits: The Best of 2007

My crop of "Reverence?" by seeks2dream

After getting nowhere fast this morning I happened on Imelda's posting about a woman who has been told she's only a year left to live. Imelda asks: If this past year had been your last year on earth, what in it would have left you glad at the end?

One thing - learning to smile even when in pain and finding that a true smile (not a grin and bear it grimace) really does ease the pain. Especially the half-smile of the Buddha.

Real Illusions

This is a photo Jim took of the back of my camera after I'd taken a shot of some wet rooftops that were shining brightly yesterday. His new camera has a supermacro mode which worked well - we had to shade everything with a cloth, like the users of really old fashioned cameras, to keep out as much external light as possible. He managed to capture the rainbow moire patterns that I'd noticed had appeared on my screen - they make it much more interesting than the original!

This week Carla's challenge is about "Finding Your Core". Leah mentioned another site, Creative Therapy, and they are on week 2, their catalyst this week is "A place you go to find your center. It can be imaginary or real or anything in between." So centre or core? Real of imaginary? Hmm... tricky one!

What if there really isn't anything in the core? Its all just an illusion showing up in everyday life? Like an interference pattern... That's how I feel today... and its not as negative as you might think! I'm smiling and happy as I think it. Or perhaps I should say the body that writes this has a smile on its face and a twinkle in its eye...

Carla suggests looking at peak moments - but there is no peak beyond now. This moment. All the rest is simply memory and from what I've experienced and what I've read about memories they are rather unreliable!

There was an interesting experiment after 9/11. Some memory researchers got various eyewitnesses to write up their experiences immediately afterwards. Then some time later they went back to them and asked for their accounts again. When compared the two naturally showed inconsistencies but the strange part was, the part the researchers didn't expect, was that the participants said their current versions were the most accurate! (And sorry I don't have a reference, this was on the radio one morning and I'm relying on my memory of it...)

In my own past I used to do what was called "knowledge acquisition" this was where we found out specialist knowledge and then formulated it in a way that a computer could use to make "expert" suggestions, decisions, analysis etc. Many experts were entirely unaware of what their expertise was really based on.

When learning how to do this I was told about the classic case in the development of a system that was intended to tell when a cheese was mature. The expert did this by pressing it and could then tell if the cheese was ready. The system developers made things with which to press the cheese and measure its elasticity, etc. Later it turned out that the expert was unaware that what they were really doing was sniffing the cheese - it wasn't touch that was important at all, except to release the smell!

So this exercise isn't really working for me today...

I'd got to this rather unsatisfactory point when I took a break.

I turned on the radio and the programme was about pubs called "The Black Boy" and the history of it as a name. With lots of theories mostly connected to Charles the Second and not the slave trade as one might expect. The programme ended up in The Black Boy Inn on Whiteladies Road in Bristol so bringing it as close to me as it could!

It certainly illustrated how meanings can be other than they seem and in this case the most likely answer really is a conspiracy theory - that of the royalists drinking a secret toast "to the black boy over the sea". A constructed illusion to deflect suspicion from them.

Looks like I'm going to have to sleep on this one!

Little Red Riding Hood

Yesterday after finishing Carla's Zen Luggage exercise I noticed she'd posted something more on Wings 4 You Coaching. Its a fascinating insight into the difference between self-esteem built on one's own self-perception and that built solely on other's approval. She says that she's often encountered self-esteem written as self-of-steam! This seems like a wonderful eggcorn (Jim introduced me to these last month and I've still to entirely disentangle them from malapropisms) but Carla called it an oronym - yet another word with probably yet another subtle difference in meaning. What's more she provided a great link on oronyms.

I confess I only read the beginning of the link she provided at first... but when my first attempt at commenting on her post was refused by typepad (and indeed the whole post had disappeared too) I went back to the link and read it properly. At the end is the story of Little Red Riding Hood written out in oronyms (or homophones). This is Ladle Rat Rotten Hut. (I've provided the wikipedia link to it there). And here you'll find a spoken version.

And so another string of synchroncities begins...

I was struck by Ladle Rat Rotten Hut because in 1986 (±1) I narrated this at a works do. The rest of the team I was in played the parts. I've not seen this strange variation on the story since.

I've mentioned fate and my struggle to understand how much or indeed whether its fixed and one of the books I've been idly reading is the one in the photo above - Chance, Luck and Destiny by Peter Dickinson. It was written in the mid-70s and came, as so many of my books do, from the Amnesty second-hand bookshop, a few days ago.

Last night I got to the third section - Destiny - and he gives this diagram of possible alternative happenings for Little Red Riding Hood:


I'm wondering what the moral of this is...

Don't trust a wolf dressed up in your grandmother's clothing?
Only interesting versions of stories are told, the rest are ignored or forgotten.
Don't wear a red hoodie.
Don't trust the wild things...
All the better to see you...

Any more suggestions?

360 degrees of freedom

This is my collage for my affirmation board the final step in the exercise Carla set this week.

See my previous posting today for the affirmations themselves.

Carla called this exercise Your Zen Suitcase™ - I called it Zen Luggage saying I objected to the trademark - but then I realised the real reason why... on March 5th (the day before Carla started her "Wings 4 You Coaching" blog) Jim and I had been to the zoo. In the centre of the collage, carrying, not a suitcase but a rucksack, and acting as my sherpa, is Jim at the zoo. He is proving that his wingspan is wide though not quite as wide as the biggest birds - behind his head the sign says "Spread Your Wings" - his head is covering the Y....

I am glad I spotted this synchronicity!

Jim's support is one of the things I'd like to acknowledge and affirm, something that I value very much. I'm very glad that he is in my life.

I've also included: chocolate, a Zen zafu with art supplies on it and a magnet, someone else's lucky old shoe, a photo taken using a fisheye, a faceted bead that creates another effect, a completed crossword (mostly done by Jim!), a camera and a few other things that seemed appropriate.

P.S. This is my 360th post on this blog - hence the title of this post.