MEDITERRANEAN MEANDERINGS
21ST FEBRUARY 2010

Cyprus has been covered in a huge dust cloud for the last week. It has blown in from the Atlas Mountains. This means that I have not seen my beautiful purple hills all week. However, it does mean that the temperatures have been in the early 20s and therefore the damp in everyone’s apartments is beginning to dry out.

Despite the fact that you can’t see very far when you are walking it is still lovely and a novelty, for me at least, to be wandering around in the sunshine in February. I took Scruffy for our customary walk on Wednesday and as we wandered over the fields she looked gorgeous as her white body was framed against the lush green verdure of the undergrowth which, to quote a 1950’s musical is ‘as high as an elephant’s thigh and it looks like its growing way up to the sky’. When I moved out here in November these fields or waste areas were more or less completely bare after a long, hot summer, but they are now abundant with leaf and flower.

As I went out to the shops a few days ago I bumped into someone who has lived out here 6 years. She pointed out one of the caterpillars crawling up the street (of which, as I mentioned in a previous blog, there are ‘fowsands’) and said that she saw these every year and still hadn’t worked out what they turned into yet! So it could remain a mystery. They are getting surprisingly large and chunky so I don’t think they are going to be your basic Red Admiral or Cabbage White, but maybe all will become clear. The frogs, which were mentioned in the same blog, are also still chirruping late into the night but I am not tired of them yet. It is a much more conducive sound to sleep to than that of the cars on the bypass rumbling along all night; or, as was the case in Hove, listening to the drunks as they made their way home from the pubs past my flat – I will stick with the frogs and the cicadas any day.

Anyone who knows me will not be shocked when they hear the phrase ‘I read a fabulous book this week’, but I did! It was a novel but it really makes you sit up and think. It was called ‘PopCo’ and was by Scarlet Thomas. Anyway, the reason I mention it is that it is set on Dartmoor and a chapter is given over to my beloved Totnes. Those of you who are reading this back in Totnes, or who came to visit me there, will know what I am talking about immediately when I tell you she goes to buy Booja Booja chocolates from the ‘delightful health food shop at the bottom of the hill’. I did smile and immediately had a craving for Booja Booja, the most wonderful organic, vegan, but most importantly, delicious, chocolates in the world. I hear that ‘Greenlife’, which is obviously the shop in question, has moved up the hill to the market square to bigger premises this week and I am delighted for them. It was quite an incongruous feeling reading about a little Devon Town that was once my home in the bright sunshine of my new home in the Mediterranean.

I had my first proper reiki client this week. I do love doing reiki in my little flat. When I open my eyes as I move position I get to see the sea straight ahead and the sun pouring in through the windows, which makes me feel even more open to the wonders of the universe than normal! It was very successful as she said that ‘it made her feel like a new woman’ and is coming back next week. Unfortunately, she will not be telling anyone that she is coming because she knows that she will be ridiculed, as is the case when ever people do not understand something, so there goes my word of mouth! Never mind, if the only reason for my coming here was to help her feel better then that is surely enough.

I seem to be doing a shift regularly at Helping Hands now on a Friday afternoon. I enjoy pottering around with the books, although by the time I get back I am too tired to do anything else. This, along with the blip last week, has led me to realise that I spend the majority of my time justifying my life to people. This is something I need to learn to overcome. People who have never experienced that much illness in their lives have absolutely no concept of it, the same as I have no concept what it would actually feel like to be in a combat situation for example. I am asked why if I am a bit tired I don’t just go down the beach or sit on the balcony or something and I try to explain that if I had the strength to even lift my eyelids I would, but that at these times my body actually stops functioning. I know this is difficult to comprehend as I spend the time that I feel ok living my life to the best quality that I can, but the real question is why do I feel the need to explain? What does it matter to my life if people think I am lazy, eccentric, worthless, fat and so rich I don’t need to work? I am going to try from now on not to justify my existence as this is exhausting in itself! This will be a very hard habit to break and it may take some time, but now I am aware of it I can work with it. Let them think I sit on my backside all day eating cakes. Maybe one day I will!

I tend to walk everywhere these days after the constant puncture debacles with Laurenciou, but I do use him when I have to go and collect water from the water machines. I am not attempting to carry 10 litres of water no matter how good a day I am having! As I was pedalling a couple of days ago an amazing dragonfly flew into my path and carried on ahead of me all the way along the road. I love seeing the iridescent shimmer as the sun catches all the colours of their wings. I was lucky really not to cycle into the tomato field as I wasn’t looking where I was going at all, so engrossed was I by the antediluvian creature in front of me. How can humankind even think we are the apogee of evolution when there is something so intricate, beautiful and harmless in the world?

Walking along the shore with Scruffy this week we were met by a huge Rottweiler coming in the opposite direction. Little Scruffy only just reached the barrel of his stomach. I was prepared for all sorts of shenanigans, but the poor Rottweiler was absolutely terrified of Scruffy. He had only wanted to be stroked and to say hello but she was ready to take him on and barked and yapped at him until his owners took pity on him and continued in the other direction.

On Wednesday evening I went along to support my friends in the local Pool League. Not that I have any idea about the game and half the time have no idea who is winning or what colour is being hit by whom, but I have a good laugh with the team members who aren’t playing. This week the match was against some other friends of mine from my local. Now although I love the people in the team dearly I am sure they won’t mind me saying that they have not won a match yet. So, it was with great excitement that we watched their first victory this week. I was fairly uncomfortable that they beat the only other team I have any interest in, but they too are all brilliant and I am sure won’t hold it against them – well not for long anyway! It’s only a matter of time before they conquer the world now I am sure.

Yesterday we had a Buddhist meeting here at my apartment. Having gone from just being the three of us, there were seven of us yesterday, which is exciting. I realised later that the French windows were open while we were chanting and I wondered what the farmer in the fields below made of the strange noise that was emanating from within. I will tell him we are practising Japanese Opera if he asks. I do find that I am struggling with the exclusionism which seems to be advocated by some of the proponents. When people have to start dismissing other world or cultural views it is generally because they are not confident enough about the ones that they are championing. Love should be open to all, not just people who agree with what is written in a certain teaching. Saying that, we are all learning together and although I have been studying Gnostic wisdom amongst other things for many years, the stuff I don’t know about Buddhism yet fills many books. However, I will not dismiss others and wisdom gleaned from wise and fabulous teachers just to be accepted by ‘the group’. I suppose I just like making life hard for myself!

It seems that once again I have rambled on about nothing for a great deal of time, so I will leave you as always with love and the hope that you will continually choose the path of the lion and not the sheep because, as the Zen Master Osho says, ‘Society wants slaves, not people who are absolutely dedicated to freedom. Society wants slaves because all the vested interest want obedience ... only the lions move alone.’