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January 28 – signs of spring

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“Jack leaves and back spring
We’re here again, here again
Dance trees and a winter bird
Flying home, we’re here again, here again”

— The Blue Aeroplanes, Jack Leaves and Back Spring (Beatsongs, 1991)


Today there is sun.  I can feel it coming through the window and, nearing the end of January, it is a welcome reminder that spring is not so far away. While I am quite fond of the dark and cold of winter, my muscles especially enjoy light and warmth.

Cailleach Bheur or Beira

In Scotland there is a folktale that the goddess Bride (Brighid in Irish myth) is held captive by the winter crone, Cailleach Bheur (literally ‘the old woman of winter’).

The god, Angus Og (‘Angus the young’) goes looking for Bride in what is clearly a seasonal tale in the mould of Demeter and Persephone.  It is not hard to see that Angus is a solar deity, and as he grows older the power of winter is diminished. At this time of year, winter still has the upper hand but will continue to grow weaker as the days lengthen and the sun gets stronger.

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January 27 – New Age thinking

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“Oh, who can see in the eyes of fate?
All life alone in its chronic patterns
Oh, swan, let me fly you
To the land of no winds blowing”

— The Incredible String Band, The Eyes of Fate (5000 Spirits or Layers of the Onion, 1967)


When I first got ill, there was a school of New Age thinking that said that illness is a decision and you are choosing to manifest it.  Otherwise, it is a life lesson which is there to teach your soul something valuable and will leave once you have learned this. 

I call bs on both.

Recently, books such as The Secret now seem to be coming up with similar nonsense, although the ‘Law’ of Attraction has been around for some time now, seemingly stemming back to the writings of Esther and Jerry Hicks from the late 1980s and onwards.  They wrote books such as Ask and it is Given: Learning to Manifest Your Desires which are said to come from an entity called Abraham who is ‘interpreted’ by Esther.  Apparently ‘Abraham’ consists of a group of entities and has described themselves as “a group consciousness from the non-physical dimension”. They have also said, “We are that which you are. You are the leading edge of that which we are. We are that which is at the heart of all religions.”

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January 24 – C is for Shiatsu

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“Rats, rats lay down flat
We don’t need you, we act like that
And if you think you’re un-loved
Then we know about that…”

— Syd Barrett, Rats (Barrett, 1970)


Despite my best efforts, my illness continues to worsen.  This is evident from the amount of energy I have, the level of pain and the strength in my muscles.  It is a slow decline but insidious.

The list of treatments I have tried is long* and I have attempted not to leave any stones unturned.  The treatments I have not tried are either too expensive or do not meet my criteria of scientific credibility or effectiveness.**  I have also had a pretty exhaustive range of  tests.***

At present I am seeing a shiatsu therapist who is very lovely and has good hands.  I don’t know if it is going to help but it feels good to have someone who knows what they are doing pressing into my muscles. 

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January 23 – local history II: death in the cathedral

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“I saw you from the cathedral
You were watching me
And I saw from the cathedral
What I should be”

— Tanita Tikaram, Cathedral Song (Ancient Heart, 1988)


In 701 CE, Augustine became the first Archbishop of Canterbury, and that position went on to become the highest in the English church.  Initially under the authority of Rome, the Reformation in 1533 resulted in the Archbishop of Canterbury being established as the de facto head of the Anglican communion.  This comes with the title of ‘Primate of All England’, to which you can insert your own monkey joke if you really must.

Canterbury cathedral

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January 22 – local history I: Celts, Romans and Anglo-Saxons

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“The moment of the rose and the moment of the yew-tree
Are of equal duration. A people without history
Is not redeemed from time, for history is a pattern
Of timeless moments. So, while the light fails
On a winter’s afternoon, in a secluded chapel
History is now and England.”

— T S Eliot, from The Four Quartets, Little Gidding


I live in an area with a lot of history.  Probably everywhere has a lot of history but being near the closest point to continental Europe means that we tend to be on the front line of wars and invasions. 

The successful invasion of the Roman Army in the first century CE began in Kent, and the aerial Battle of Britain was fought over our fields and towns during WWII.  In between, the first English monastery was founded in Canterbury, and Archbishop Thomas à Becket was murdered in the cathedral during the reign of King Henry II.  Geoffrey Chaucer also wrote his classic work of literature about a pilgrimage to the area, The Canterbury Tales. 

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January 21 – mountain fire

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“A goddess on a mountain top 
Was burning like a silver flame”

— Shocking Blue, Venus (non-album single, 1969, although included on later pressings of the At Home album) 


I am currently listening to the audiobook of Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami and the protagonist, a fifteen year-old boy called Kafka* Tamura, spends his days in the early part of the novel in a library in the Japanese city of Takamatsu on the island of Shihoku (the smallest of Japan’s four main islands).  Komora Memorial Library specialises in collections of haiku and tanka poetry and during one of the daily tours, a librarian tells visitors that the haiku poet Taneda Santōka spent a considerable period of time there.

Komora Memorial Library is actually a work of fiction, although based on the nearby Kamada Museum in Sakaide.  Taneda Santōka, however, is a very real person, living in the late nineteenth and early to mid-twentieth century. Continue reading →

January 20 – the winds of pain

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“At the day’s end I found

Nightfall wrapped about a stone.

I took the stone in my hand,
The shadowy surfaces of life unwound,
And within I found
A bird’s fine bone.

I warmed the relic in my hand
Until a living heart
Beat, and the tides flowed
Above, below, within.

There came a boat riding the storm of blood
And in the boat a child,

In the boat a child
Riding the waves of song,
Riding the waves of pain.”

— Kathleen Raine ‘Three Poems of Incarnation’ I


Today I have a lot of pain. My muscles are weak, especially in my back. Everything feels tight and I will rest most of the day.

Before this illness, I was a relative novice when it came to pain.  Most of what I experienced in early life was the acute pain that comes from a relatively soft body meeting a rather harder object in the form of tables, pavements, tree branches and even the bony parts of other human beings.  The vagaries of chronic pain were certainly an unknown quantity.

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January 17 – environmental loss

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“Into the eyes of nature
Into the arms of God”

— Swans, The Eyes of Nature (Love of Life, 1992)


There was an article a few days ago in The Guardian newspaper about how many scientists are experiencing grief in their working life, as they are face-to-face with the growing environmental impact of humanity on the planet.  Shrinking glaciers, dead coral reefs and tiny islands of remaining populations of plant and animal species are just some of the issues they are having to confront and with that comes a profound sense of grief.

As one marine biologist put it:

“I’d just recruited a PhD student to study fish behaviour, and between the time of recruiting him and getting out for the first field season, the Great Barrier Reef died – 80% of the corals where we work were gone, and most of the fish that lived there also moved on. I told him in the interview that his visit was going to be this most wonderful experience, and it was just a tragic graveyard of historic coral reef life.”

dead bleached coral

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January 16 – body work

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“Don’t you want somebody to love
Don’t you need somebody to love”

— Jefferson Airplane


I started this blog out with the intention of writing about my experience of living with chronic illness and practicing Zen Buddhism but, as you may have noted, my mind seems to have other ideas and goes off on all kinds of tangents. 

For those of you who have practiced meditation, you can probably see a relationship between this and what happens when we try to get our awareness to rest on one particular thing, such as the breath.  We can do it for a short time and then find all kinds of apparently random thoughts coming up which have nothing to do with breathing! 

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