Wishbone Soup Cures Everything

How does one surprise oneself?  1) By an unknown process, otherwise is it really a surprise? If you are too much under control, you may have squished your soul. You may be living with an unhealthy level of fear, oppressed by expectations, social or personal. Seek help. Try dancing, even if it’s in a locked room with no audience, it’s a start. Some would advocate intoxication but be wary of replacing control with substance based escapism. It can go wrong. By wrong I mean leading to addiction, not waking up in a tree dressed as a pirate. The latter seems fine. 2) Try something new. Preferably something that crosses a boundary (whilst drawing a firm line at anything nonconsensual). Small things, like a different route home, like having a digestive instead of a tea biscuit; mid range things, like taking up kayaking; long range things, like going to live in a different country.  3) Try something you don’t think you can do. Set yourself a goal if you like. A half maratho

Sun.  A weight of it - of the specific measure, no one cares. Absorb like leaves, all opened up. Sun on me like the nectar-dusted legs of a bee. Laughing, just because - Flowers at work: we should be this: simply to exist is to fulfil. Ah, but the floors need sweeping, they are horrid. But we can push the windows wide, and if we feel nice - work is not work at all.

Questioneer is not a typo. It is an attempt to climb, to make the summit of How To Live. Every question should have an answer, in a balanced world, but every answer can create several questions. Avalanche!! It is not easy, except to be overwhelmed. One hold at a time, we get and keep our grip. (And if ever you need to practice, spend time with a three year old. They question everything except their own spontaneity.)

This morning, early, early-ish. Coffee bubbles. Eggs are poached in domes. Air is clear, cool to touch. Buttocks press on damp bench-plank. The view, half green, half blue. Out of this protein and caffeine draw some wakefulness. Protean: this is how the word wanders up in my mind. A mix of protein and caffeine? Versatile, changeable. Reluctant to be driving. Open window. Clock watch. On time, parking is easy. Feel competent, even, yes, sociable. In the big hall, one thousand white suits, one thousand voices, one thousand techniques: or thereabouts. It sounds like one thousand, it feels like one thousand. Every one happy, breaks sweat, body moving, brain connecting - this move goes here because - aha! How to smite your enemies! All the lovely relaxing loss of tension - I would describe as ebbs in swirls - how it leaves you as you should be, happy, glowing. And for the journey home, no satellite navigational advice. Follow a whim to Glastonbury instead, decide to vis

Lacking a geopolitical stronghold (unless the polytunnel counts) I am not a true oligarch. I dream of a stronghold, as any oligarchic candidate would - a vague yet vivid dream involving wide open space, water, natural materials, a sense of sparkle… I have four hired venues for my teaching, however, in which I strut up and down waving a stop watch, issuing orders, organising, delegating , reviewing, assessing, correcting, planning, answering questions, provoking thought, promoting harmony and progression on as many levels as possible. I suspect my pay is below oligarchic average; job satisfaction, above. 

Dog's first train ride... She gets the hang of it quickly- as long as she can sit in the middle of the walkway... The round house was much admired. This says 'tree also elephant baby with hands.' Seaweed hair extensions. Crutches on sand, this was amusing. Yesterday we wrote in the sand. There was not time for any other scribing. We found a square of part pebbled beach, where the waves curled around a tall harbour wall, curled around the river currents, clear and shining. Gulls sat, iconic and thievish, watching. Here we lingered over possibilities of real estate, digesting our fine lunch, working up appetites for ice cream.  Back from our day trip in time to fly to work, home again with time to watch a film before our eyes would not stay open. Yes and No both are empowering words: it is all in the context. Yesterday I chose: no other scribing.

[Centile: one of 99 actual or notional values of a variable dividing its distribution into 100 groups with equal frequencies; the 90th centile is the value of a variable such that 90% of the relevant population is below that value.] Magnificentile: a scale on which you measure the magnificence of your life. On which you choose what the centiles represent. Today I choose bluebells, eating outdoors, the noise of bees. Measuring a full quotient, as is usual. Dog agrees. She is no mathematician, merely a genius.