Looking round a room, a building, an expanse of fields and mountains, peering out to sea there is always something I feel that is somehow lost in transit. I know I have all the different documents to cross borders, orders and officialdom writ large but still there is always something I feel lost in transit.
I could spend all my time trying to discover that missing element, scouring the horizon for that tell tale whiff of smoke or putting my ear to the earth to listen for the pounding of hooves but if I have done anything in the last almost four months of silence here it's to understand once more that the something I feel is lost in transit is not just beyond the horizon, round the next bend or at the bottom of an abandoned well. It is in any place I find myself, any moment I stand in and is there each morning when I look up in to the small mirror next to the basin where I brush my teeth and smile wryly at the well worn face that greets me. There, here, is that something I feel is lost in transit...me.
Somewhere between and betwixt I feel tentatively along a ledge that is the only path between oblivion and existence though leads to neither. My wandering is of mind and heart as well as footfall it involves both inner and outer state but most of all it needs to involve a deliberate organisation of my life. Not just the boxes bags and piles ordered sorted filed and flung but of my intent, my energy, my imagination, my creativity, my wholehearted undiluted commitment to living my life as fully as I may.
I know organisation needs planning, preparation and practice to positively happen, so, each day needs to have those three elements as the base colours for the picture I will have been part of at the end of the day.
For the last four months I have tentatively tried out some scenarios for daily life, have embarked on some learning – through internet and have begun to draw up a study/learning ‘programme’ for myself to explore philosophical and spiritual thought alongside gaining further skills in weaving, sewing, felt making, printing plus to re-engage with other practical skills in garden and home.
I have looked at my diet, eating pattern etc and tested ways and means; some have been real run for the bathroom moments others have made me smile and scratch a plus sign next to them. I have explored fasting as this has been knocking at my brain and heart for a long time and I have felt unable on oh so many levels to even begin to entertain it even though there was a time in my life I fasted regularly and remembered in these last four months just how much joy and peace that built in to my life and so I felt really pushed to explore this once more.
I have some limitations that I didn’t have when I fasted in my twenties and on in to my thirties; a somewhat compromised physical body needs to be negotiated with gently I understand even if my frustration and annoyance bubble and spurt from time to time. There is also the mental side of the equation. I know that I could all too easily take fasting beyond a joyous affirming element of my life and living, to a stick that grows larger by the day to beat myself with, pain after all is a reminder of being alive as much as pleasure.
So the fast is not to be a state of lack but a state where space time and me can touch in quiet understanding of connection, creativity, and constancy. Yes it will mean nothing to eat but will mean lots of water, ginger and lemon tea, even a milky (soy) coffee when needed to boost the speed that medication kicks in.
I’ve tried different scenarios and have discovered that eating three meals a day in this way - Breakfast 8.30am, Main Meal12.30pm, Light Meal 4.30pm and not eating anything between 4.30pm and 8.30am my body responds well to the rest. When I looked at this I realised I had created a ‘fast space’ every day of 16 hrs.
As of today I began the first longer fast 4.30pm to 4.30 pm to 8.30am. So Friday to Sunday it will be lots of fluid intake but no food as such, except the milky coffee if needed.
Saturday has been stay at home day for a long time as I find crowds difficult to contend with and Saturdays so many people it seems have a mission to push all before them be that in a shop, museum or garden and I find that very exhausting so now Saturdays will be a day to really reflect on life in this small cottage and the life internal I suspect. It won’t mean washing won’t get hung out on the line or soil be weeded or dug but will mark a moment of space and time shaped by a having rather than a lacking.
I have also looked at my need or not for connection and have been reminded just how much connection really is an essential not just a passing wave in a rush to the next ‘great thing’. Connection not only with other human hearts and minds but connection to the Earth, the life held in rock and soil, bird and beast, a leaf a raindrop a sigh through the trees. From the majestic to the microbial all have connection to me and in me and I suspect that I have felt this nudge to ‘fast’ because I needed space and time to repair and renew those connections as this life which I have always seen as a voyage of discovery became stranded, beached, pummelled by rocks and generally wrecked.
I have as long as I can remember often lived on the edge beyond reaching but have found joy wonder and love in the knowledge that accepting, forgiving and embracing all that and much more means that my core belief ‘All life is precious’ encompasses everything including me.
In the wasteland that I often visit this has been the pennant I have guarded to fly again one day, the message to my heart I have wrapped safely and the final echo my mind picks up when all else has disappeared in to the blackness.
Being lost in transit could I suppose be awful but I think being lost is never that if one remembers where one stands is where one is so how can you ever really be lost. Lost in transit speaks to me of intent open to detours and adventures not distress or disaster so I begin this blogging affair once more with sense of adventure for my self.
If you have read this far, welcome fearless traveller:0) As the blogs name says I am a wanderer but what it doesn’t say is that I most definitely ramble too though almost always I reach my destination even if I might take the scenic route to get there.