Patricia, nearing and after my mother's death I was in deep distress. This was compounded by the fact my brother had taken his own life exactly a year earlier. I had chosen to move back temporarily to the family's town that I grew up in but left nearly forty years previously. I had no friends here and only knew my mother and sister who w…
Patricia, nearing and after my mother's death I was in deep distress. This was compounded by the fact my brother had taken his own life exactly a year earlier. I had chosen to move back temporarily to the family's town that I grew up in but left nearly forty years previously. I had no friends here and only knew my mother and sister who were still in the same house. I joined a group for meditation practice. I hadn't done any for twenty years when I had experimented with Buddhism. This human group provided an anchor; the people were as important as the practice.
And just to add I grew up in a town near Liverpool until I was nineteen and a trainee electrical engineer. I made a major life change by going to Birmingham University and reading Philosophy. I later worked managing an arts centre then cinema there. After fifteen years in that city I sold my car and travelled South Asia for nearly two years. I had some amazing serendipitous events. On three separate occasions I met people I knew from Birmingham. I was waiting in a long queue in Dharamsala to register for a Buddhist retreat. The guy in front turned around to say hello and it was Jim - I hadn't seen him since he was a volunteer at the arts centre six years previously! A few months later in a small town in Rajasthan I met a female friend standing at a bus stop who was working on an archeological dig. A year later I found my former next door neighbour from the Birmingham flat sitting in the same restaurant in Penang, Malaysia.
In '96 I returned to the UK and started an MA in Interactive Multimedia Production at Huddersfield Uni. I fell between two stools; not a programmer like one half and not a graphic designer like the other. But the tutors liked my philosophical background. But I had a sort of panic attack after the first term and joined Jim in Bristol to consider my options. I stayed in Bristol as it had a thriving media scene with lots of indie film companies. I stayed for twenty years working on a variety of project work with the local government and digital infrastructure.
I'm here in the town I grew up in and profoundly unsettled. Rather go back to Bristol where friends and work contacts are and build a self-build house. It's hard to integrate these many reinventions of myself... I watched and was deeply moved by the film Drive My Car based on Haruki Murakami's story. I must read, as the character in the film does, Uncle Vanya. He states it is only possible to integrate one's life by looking at it with wide open eyes.
I fully relate to what you said about it being hard to integrate the many reinventions of yourself—I find it hard as well, especially when I'm bound to a place. I was reminded of this quote by Solnit about stories as compasses:
"What's your story? It's all in the telling. Stories are compasses and architecture; we navigate by them, and to be without a story is to be lost in the vastness of world that spreads in all directions like arctic tundra or sea ice. To love someone is to put yourself in their place, we say, which is to put yourself in their story, or figure out how to tell yourself their story. Which means that a place is a story, and stories are geography, and empathy is first of all an act of imagination, a storyteller's art, and then a way of traveling from here to there."
Thanks for that. There is the old cliché that travelling is trying to run away from yourself - 'wherever you go , there you are'. But I feel the need for a fresh perspective. Hoping to go to the mountains of Snowdonia in North Wales to realise Elliot's poem:
“We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
Through the unknown, remembered gate
When the last of earth left to discover
Is that which was the beginning;
At the source of the longest river
The voice of the hidden waterfall
And the children in the apple-tree
Not known, because not looked for
But heard, half-heard, in the stillness
Between two waves of the sea.
—T.S. Eliot, from “Little Gidding,” Four Quartets (Gardners Books; Main edition, April 30, 2001) Originally published 1943.”
I attended a festival in the UK in 2023, and one of the experiences that stayed with me is the sentiment that 'heaven is other people.' I'm so glad you found that group when you needed it.
Patricia, nearing and after my mother's death I was in deep distress. This was compounded by the fact my brother had taken his own life exactly a year earlier. I had chosen to move back temporarily to the family's town that I grew up in but left nearly forty years previously. I had no friends here and only knew my mother and sister who were still in the same house. I joined a group for meditation practice. I hadn't done any for twenty years when I had experimented with Buddhism. This human group provided an anchor; the people were as important as the practice.
And just to add I grew up in a town near Liverpool until I was nineteen and a trainee electrical engineer. I made a major life change by going to Birmingham University and reading Philosophy. I later worked managing an arts centre then cinema there. After fifteen years in that city I sold my car and travelled South Asia for nearly two years. I had some amazing serendipitous events. On three separate occasions I met people I knew from Birmingham. I was waiting in a long queue in Dharamsala to register for a Buddhist retreat. The guy in front turned around to say hello and it was Jim - I hadn't seen him since he was a volunteer at the arts centre six years previously! A few months later in a small town in Rajasthan I met a female friend standing at a bus stop who was working on an archeological dig. A year later I found my former next door neighbour from the Birmingham flat sitting in the same restaurant in Penang, Malaysia.
In '96 I returned to the UK and started an MA in Interactive Multimedia Production at Huddersfield Uni. I fell between two stools; not a programmer like one half and not a graphic designer like the other. But the tutors liked my philosophical background. But I had a sort of panic attack after the first term and joined Jim in Bristol to consider my options. I stayed in Bristol as it had a thriving media scene with lots of indie film companies. I stayed for twenty years working on a variety of project work with the local government and digital infrastructure.
I'm here in the town I grew up in and profoundly unsettled. Rather go back to Bristol where friends and work contacts are and build a self-build house. It's hard to integrate these many reinventions of myself... I watched and was deeply moved by the film Drive My Car based on Haruki Murakami's story. I must read, as the character in the film does, Uncle Vanya. He states it is only possible to integrate one's life by looking at it with wide open eyes.
I fully relate to what you said about it being hard to integrate the many reinventions of yourself—I find it hard as well, especially when I'm bound to a place. I was reminded of this quote by Solnit about stories as compasses:
"What's your story? It's all in the telling. Stories are compasses and architecture; we navigate by them, and to be without a story is to be lost in the vastness of world that spreads in all directions like arctic tundra or sea ice. To love someone is to put yourself in their place, we say, which is to put yourself in their story, or figure out how to tell yourself their story. Which means that a place is a story, and stories are geography, and empathy is first of all an act of imagination, a storyteller's art, and then a way of traveling from here to there."
Rebecca Solnit
Thanks for that. There is the old cliché that travelling is trying to run away from yourself - 'wherever you go , there you are'. But I feel the need for a fresh perspective. Hoping to go to the mountains of Snowdonia in North Wales to realise Elliot's poem:
“We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
Through the unknown, remembered gate
When the last of earth left to discover
Is that which was the beginning;
At the source of the longest river
The voice of the hidden waterfall
And the children in the apple-tree
Not known, because not looked for
But heard, half-heard, in the stillness
Between two waves of the sea.
—T.S. Eliot, from “Little Gidding,” Four Quartets (Gardners Books; Main edition, April 30, 2001) Originally published 1943.”
I attended a festival in the UK in 2023, and one of the experiences that stayed with me is the sentiment that 'heaven is other people.' I'm so glad you found that group when you needed it.