The Secret Garden

This is how it feels

"Venus is all sweetness and light when she's in your sign, persuading you to take a softer line in any conflict and trying to bring balance and harmony into your life. That is until she hooks up to mighty Pluto, which she does early this week. Issues that are deeply buried erupt under these aspects, which may mean that you are suddenly made aware of how deeply you feel about someone or something or events could bring a secret into the open, leading to some profound changes. Relationships look to be the centre of the storm, whether you realize how precious someone is to you or because an incident bears all the hallmarks of the straw that broke the camel's back."

Venus moves into Libra on Sunday.

"Both the First and Second World wars were begun with Venus in pride of place... "

I could've done with reading all of this at the start of the week. It has felt a little like WWI this week. I have been at battlestations since early on Monday morning. My Nanna has gone into hospital, and the prognosis is poor. We thought she'd be home on Wednesday but she wasn't, then Thursday, today, and finally it looks like she will stay over the weekend. Everything else just pales into insignificance really.

Still, she's still her old self despite the pain. All the nurses knew her by her given name by the end of her first day. When my father arrived at the hospital asking for Mrs Wood, the nurses at the desk said "Oh, you mean Lily" and showed him the way. She's like that, my Nanna.

Here we are again

Here we are again. It is gone midnight and I am in my pyjamas packing up a box of goodies to send out to the US. Every time I do this I swear never again, so why the sense of deja vu?

These beauties are for a swap. I send ten items to a hostess, and so do nine other people, and lo and behold, I eventually receive a box filled with goodies, one from every contributor. It's so simple, and yet, such an immense pain in the arse that each and every time I participate I find myself wondering why.

I'll tell you why.

I'm actually quite proud of my contribution this time. I get a sense of achievement from making something new (I always make sure that I do something new - I like the challenge) and I get a warm fuzzy feeling from knowing that I'm spreading the love. It's that baraka thing again. I also learn a lot. Like how far my stubbornness to complete a task outweighs my need for food or sleep, how hard I have to wrench to free my arm from its socket (just a tad harder than I did wrench to get stubborn soap from its mould), and I learn new skills and techniques for improving my craft. That, afterall, is the main goal of the exercise.

I am always blown away by the items I receive. They range widely in skill of execution, but they are always somebody's best effort. And so I always give them my best effort. This time it is herbal eye masks made from vintage Japanese kimono silk and filled with organic, tea-grade herbs. I'm rather proud of them, now that I have got the feeling back in my sewing hand. I may even make them again. But not tonight. It is pushing 1am and I can barely keep my eyes open. Perhaps I should have made an extra one for myself.

One craft I won't be trying anytime soon

Is raising my own silkworms.

Have a look at this worm-raiser's blog. I actually felt my stomach contract as I read it. It's not just the worms that are so unappealing, but the off-hand way she talks about caring for them. They're delicate, and squishy, and in her household apparently quite short-lived. She has even tasted them, you know, just to make sure she wasn't missing out on anything.

OK, this last one is probably excessive, but you have to understand - this is a woman dedicated to her craft.

I'm allergic to stoopid

It has been a disagreeable, scratchy couple of days. Work in the soap mines has come to a standstill, and there are wolves on the lists baying for my blood. People, especially stupid, arrogant, self-important people, are arseholes.

It is under pressure like this that new soap is born. People often ask where our soap names come from, and it is not always easy to say. Some soaps, particularly those made with a purpose in mind, seem to take on a personality all of their own. Two Finger Soap is one such soap.

Take juniper, sage, cayenne, iron oxide and salt. Mix up lye, boil your oils and throw the herbs into the brew. Stir widdershins and focus, focus, focus.

(If those herbs don't speak to you, check out Scott on page 217, and you will see what I mean.)

It is important to have a creative outlet. It is great that I can take my frustration and turn it into soap. Particularly if I can make soap that washes off people, as it washes off the dirt.

There's treasure everywhere

I have had a fantastic few days. It's my birthday, so I've been catching up with friends and having a good time. Vinopolis on Saturday was great, and a lesson for me: you find what you look for. The place might be slick and ultra-mainstream, but if you open your eyes there is treasure everywhere.

He said, she said

It has been an interesting week by all accounts. The arrival of a new bloke in the office has set a cat among the pigeons. Not many men would be brave enough to announce to a room full of women that they are white, middle class, male and proud. Or then again perhaps they would?

Talking to this guy, and listening to him speak (there is a fundamental difference in the way a woman gets ICT to fix her PC than the way a man approaches this largely masculine enclave) has made me revisit the stuff I did on linguistics while I was studying for my MSc.

The bottom line is that English is a man’s language. This is a structuralist idea – that we use language to codify thought to express ourselves and make ourselves understood to one another. Essentially: I think something, open my mouth and say it, and you hear it and understand. Very direct, very masculine.

But this presupposes that I have a word to express my thought. What if I think something that I don’t have a word for? How do I explain myself to you? This turns the structuralist argument on its head, because I am constrained in what I say by the words I have to say it. The words are changing the way I think.

Words are powerful things.

This is expressed beautifully in a book called the Native Tongue by Suzette Haden Elgin. Suzette has created a language called Ladaan, that is specifically designed for women to express the thoughts not yet codified in any language. Having a way to express their perceptions allows them to communicate fully with each other and makes them powerful.

I am totally in love with this interplay between words and thought, because with the right words, anything is possible. You can create. You can change who you are. If that is not a spell, then I don’t know what is.

Day trip to India

I knew that I was travelling a long way from home today, but I didn’t think that I would slip into another country. Today I travelled from Richmond to India and back in the space of an afternoon. Bex and I went to visit the Hindu temple in Neasden.

One road looks very much like another around the North Circular and it is uniformly grey and uninviting until from behind a drab concrete terrace looms the other-worldly Shri Swaminarayan Mandir. Even the sun seems to shine more fiercely over its marble domes.

The temple is set within a large enclosure and guarded by high fences, and we had to pass through a metal-detector to enter. I was told extremely firmly that I had to cover my shoulders NOW, before I was allowed to even approach the temple outbuildings. I was taken aback, as I had dressed as conservatively as I could this morning to avoid offence. In a floor-length skirt, twin-set and bead necklace I was the WI personified, I thought.

We stumbled into the entrance hall, removed our shoes and looked for somewhere to wash off the street. Washed and covered and feeling properly prepared at last, we walked in the direction of the Mandir, feeling every male eye turn our way. I felt suddenly naked, and ashamed of my nakedness, and it made me understand what ‘skyclad’ really means. It struck me as ironic that I have never felt naked in my birthday suit, yet here I was naked as a child despite my clothes.

As we walked through the “Understanding Hinduism” exhibition I had the sense of a people fiercely proud of their religion, of carving out their place of worship that would stand for a thousand years on British soil. I felt slightly oppressed by the un-Englishness of it all, and the endless catalogues of their achievement, of setting the historical record straight. 

We gladly left this feeling behind as we entered the Mandir. Within this inner sanctum I felt a comfortable sense of awe and reverence. Hindus believe that the spirit of God is brought into their idols, and so the place where they rest is truly the house of their god. Each day the statues are fed and their clothes are changed, and I felt privileged to witness their daily rite. Even their holy men are revered in this way, and as I walked past the statues of the spiritual forefathers of the Mandir I could sense something more than cold hard marble. They seemed to breathe.

Outside the temple, we visited the SAYA café. This was another assault on the senses, and we browsed aisles of exotic herbs and oils, spotting occasional familiar names. This was as much of a highlight for me as the temple had been. I have backpacked in Africa and Asia, and I love to feel a place through all of my senses, including taste and smell. I have no idea what we ate, since the names were in Urdu and regardless of what we pointed to I think the chef served us what he wanted to serve. But as we ate, and felt fire burn in our bellies (clearly we and the chef have differing opinions of what constitutes “mild”), I had the feeling that I had stepped outside of my home-country, and was a visitor in another.

Take me for longing

Don't choose me because I am faithful.
Don't choose me because I am kind.
If your heart settles on me, I'm for the taking.
Take me for longing or leave me behind.

I would be, for you, a fire in a rainbow,
I would be, for you, an opening door.
Time and hard lessons are one kind of wisdom.
Try to forget them or love me no more.

I'm not asking your heart to believe me.
I'm not asking for promise or pledge.
Whatever the answer, it's yes that's the question.
I am the fool dancin' over the edge.

Don't choose me because I am faithful.
Don't choose me because I am kind.
If your heart settles on me, I'm for the taking.
Take me for longing or leave me behind.

~Alison Krauss & Union Station

Long term storage (emotional baggage)

In November last year I started a life laundry. Not the kind you see on reality tv where vapid people chuck out last season’s tat to the delight of millions of viewers worldwide, but an emotional life laundry. Out came my emotional baggage and into the skip it went. It was heavy going. I spent four months just writing everything down – vomiting verbally onto the page. I finished one 12-month journal in only six months.

Then in February, I decided to spring clean and I spent three weeks trawling through the detritus of the last decade of my life. I threw out ten black sacks of crap – all the disappointments, all the betrayals, all the scum that gathers in the corners of a life that isn’t properly kept. It was immensely cathartic. I looked at my Spartan room and I thought that my work was done.

But it wasn’t.

I was somewhere between the rinse and the spin cycle, where the drum rocks back and forth gaining momentum for that last sickening spin. As I tumbled and crashed the last traces of my former life were thrashed from me. Still giddy, I now feel I have come to the end of the process. It has taken ten months, but I am at last packing up in tissue paper the neatly pressed remnants of that life. Layer upon gossamer layer, garments are being prepared for long term storage. I won’t need them again in this lifetime.

Steve Irwin died today

Steve Irwin died today. I think this story says it best "Daredevil Irwin dies doing what he loved". Love him or hate him, he brought us all a bit closer to nature. What a way to go - doing what you love best.

This quote is from The life and times of Steve Irwin [transcript]

JOHN STAINTON, MANAGER: Today the world has lost a great wildlife icon, a passionate conservationist and one of the proudest dads on the planet. He died doing what he loved doing best. And he left this world in a happy and peaceful state of mind. He would have said, "Crocs rule".