Is it mad to think The Spirit exists in this tree

So few grains of happiness

measured against all the dark and still the scales balance.

(Jane Hirshfield) 

How do I escape with my dog, there is only one space in the pod. He does not eat dehydrated potato either. And how will I find the ocean? I cannot see it from out here. Shall I just let go? Step out and fall through the void, trusting we fall where we are meant to be.

I have to take this dog, his coat threaded with fire, soft brown eyes and goofball heart. He is sleeping with a feather stuck to his nose.

He has no memory of the ancient contract between wolf and man but wonders if I really believed Shane Macgowan would never die.

I continue to simplify. I remain running, the purist and simplest thing I know apart from love. Down old twisted trails with glinting roots, running by faith, blind eyed by the Winter sun swung low and stopping by a tree. Is it strange to speak to a tree with a trunk gnarled, lichen covered and old? Or a tree of any age, a rock, a river, a mountain? I do not care, I do it anyway.

“Ja Baba Inkosi tree. Bayete!” I shout, my hands up in front of my face, palms out, eyes downcast. Is it mad to think The Spirit exists in this tree, that it hears me and extends benevolence and love to me? There is no madness because I feel it, feel the vibration in my heart, the low frequency of the ages and infinity. I feel the hum of The Spirit that hovered over the deep before things were. I see it too, a white butterfly as fragile as Sinead, buffeted by the wind before being swallowed by the sky, the sun burnishing its wings as thin as the filament between madness and sanity. This dance against the inter lapping clouds having soft collisions above my head, forming continents, animal shapes and creating dreams before drifting away into new fantasies and thoughts. I know it because we are precarious, only a breath away from love and death. We are born with the sacred in our hearts, this thing too big to give a name that has placed the compulsion of creation within our bosom but grappling with huge emotional energy to keep the whole house of cards from falling.

When will we learn the simplicity of letting go? I run the length and breadth of my scars on elongated limbs amongst the whirlpool of the trees. I measure the soft chime of the time I have left. I don’t want to waste it. 

Always running is the mirror I use to examine my life. My intention is to choose the narrow path, to let the run choose me. This way I am always a pioneer, am often surprised, always learning. I am teaching myself to treat my life in the same way. As often happens in running this has given me a new tangent to explore. It is the Japanese philosophy of Uketamo as practised by the Yamabushi monks. Uketamo means I humbly accept with an open heart. Life will always dish up crap, the fairy tales are few but the ogres are real. How we choose to deal with that is what counts.

I am slowly learning that our trauma remains forever. We enable it, allow it to bind us. The first step out of entanglement is to forgive and let go. I have learnt that I can step back and dispassionately observe it, diminishing its power and thus magically shrinking it. I know it may have brought me to this place but it does not define who I am. I find that healing. It is renewing and through that my perspectives change. Uketamo guides my response to the reality of the grind, acceptance rather than resistance brings peace and with peace comes great power. I no longer want to slaughter people with my eyes, with clicks of the mouse or by voting red or blue. I don’t want to be part of the geopolitical balance identifying as West or East or reading one Holy book over another. Those narrow things are for the deranged and those who will exercise power over us. I will not be mindbent for someone's amusement or influence. I don’t want to be tribal, don’t want to hold on to things. All I desire is to keep space open in my heart for what is beautiful, hold my children close and value my life. I will continue to inhale the earth.

“Where am I going? I don't quite know.

Down to the stream where the king-cups grow-

Up on a hill where the pine-trees blow-

Anywhere, anywhere. I don't know

AA Milne

I am going to slaughter a few sacred cows.

And you may find yourself living in a shotgun shack 
And you may find yourself in another part of the world 
And you may find yourself behind the wheel of a large automobile 
And you may find yourself in a beautiful house, with a beautiful wife 
And you may ask yourself, "Well, how did I get here?"

Letting the days go by, let the water hold me down 
Letting the days go by, water flowing underground 
Into the blue again, after the money's gone 
Once in a lifetime, water flowing underground

(Once in a Lifetime, Talking Heads)

Trauma, until we work it through, keeps us stuck in the past, robbing us of the present moment’s riches, limiting who we can be.

(Gabor Maté)

Social justice. Justice. Equality and inclusion. Freedom. Family, love and identity. Especially love. Being seen and valued. These are the things that count in life, that have importance and meaning. None of these things are comfortable, none of them are safe. They are the counter point to the ills in contemporary society, rampant capitalism, elitism, cruel politics and the violation of climate.

Recently I watched my son perform Once in a Lifetime by Talking Heads in the same dry, dispassionate fashion as David Byrne. This is a classic about the meaninglessness of pursuing empty things that have no lasting value. It is a song about life ebbing away in unconscious fashion, without impact or legacy and his intelligent interpretation of the song gave it meaning that a facsimile would have failed to do. This is the power that art has, it asks difficult questions and forces a response.

On a hot day in Africa I watched a bird. It was flying dead centre between two lanes of cars, a metal canyon smelling of heat and frustrated dreams. It flew straight and low, its wings beating soundless like a pulse, longitudinal waves in the air, its beak thrust forward, resolute. And then it soared up, over the ocean, over the Whales in the bay and into the sun, its escape effortless, elegant and clean. 

I don't want to wake up seventy empty and angry. I knew the bird carried a message for me. The warning was stark, stay on the forbidding path you are on or die choked and crushed by the pollution in your life. Get altitude and you will find your way.

There is a Swedish idiom that goes, “varmt hjärta, kall hjärna, is i magen” – a warm heart, a cool brain and ice in the stomach. In other words go forward with love, logic and courage.

I tolerate my life as it is because it is a comfort zone or the illusion of one. It is the life of the frog in the slowly boiling pot of water. The Gospel of St Thomas states whatever you bring out of yourself will free you and whatever you don’t bring out of yourself will kill you. This is the klaxon of truth, the shattering sound of the fire alarm while we are asleep. It is disorientating but it needs a response. I am slowly beating myself to death, the people around me know it but are either unwilling or unable to intervene. Only I can.

It is time to change direction, to do something different and uncomfortable. 

If it were just me I would go back to Southern Africa, that was the beginning, the root, it is where I fit best in my skin. I am not saying the answers are there but it is where I am home, I am myself.

This was reinforced during the latter part of 2022. In my wildest dreams I never imagined that I would be running on the rims of two great continents bordering the Indian Ocean just months apart. Twice this year I slept beneath the Southern Cross, Australia in April and South Africa in October. I ran full of emotion in the humidity of Durban, alongside Southern Right Whales, the air thick with salt and the sun burning my back. I stepped over lizards and Choongalolos and chattered with monkeys. I smelt the rain and watched from my balcony, the Rainbow Nation noisy, colourful and full of life. There is so much that is still wrong there, so much poverty, so much decay but also abundant evidence of the green shoots of growth and hope. I still have a passionate love for this place and it's people. My people.

Tonight the moon is a marshmallow. In one hour it will be impaled upon the church steeple, in the morning it will still be there like a sad balloon, partially deflated and tangled in the weather vane. My family surround me. Themba the ludicrous Labrador is chewing a bone at my feet. He is the next instalment in my lifetime lesson of grace. Dogs love. They set no condition for this, they just give their hearts holding nothing back. There is no future or past. By doing this they transcend into something divine and elevated beyond themselves, they free themselves from the constraint of their species. In turn, if we respond to it this transcendence lifts us beyond ourselves, they heal the deafness of our spirits. We cannot help but become richer and more loving for it. 

I need to live. I need meaning. I need change. Vicktor Frankl once quoted Nietzsche: “He who has a why to live can bear with almost any how.” Existentialist philosophers argue that life is meaningless and we must come to terms with that. Frankl disagreed, he thought to make life worth living we each need to find our own meaning unique to us. I think of all the meaning only love remains.

There is another quote by Sanober Khan. "Whatever you do be gentle with yourself. You don't just live in this world or your home or your skin. You also live in someone else's eyes." That sobered me up, it means we carry a lot of responsibility to be kind to ourselves on behalf of others, especially those we love. 

I do not know what I am going to do but it will be an adjustment of heart and mind. I am going to slaughter a few sacred cows. This is my final blog post. I have loved writing this blog. It is patronising and self indulgent with recurrent themes but I hope it has contained a little fun. It has reached its end. I considered taking it down but I am going to leave it drifting like a piece of space junk in the digital universe. If you do happen to collide with it I hope you come out unhurt and on top.

Be gentle with yourself.

Sala kahle, Hambe kahle.

bhundu.

 

I wonder if dogs are from Mars?

What if God was one of us

Just a slob like one of us

Just a stranger on a bus

trying to make His way home

Just trying to make His way home

Like a Holy rolling stone

back up to heaven all alone

Just trying' to make his way home

Nobody calling' on the phone

'cept for the Pope maybe in Rome

It has been hot putting me in mind of Geckos, translucent and chirping and other lizards, of Themba with his coat the colour of wild honey and cinnamon, his kohl lined eyes and black lips those of a goth, his heart goofy and huge. We both look to the sky and catch an aeroplane pinned against the moon like a moth, we see birds and dandelion seeds, bees and sometimes the cat on the wall. We are philosophers. The dog wonders what it must be to be a bird and I wonder if dogs are from Mars? Maybe Cats too. I consider the possibility they have been living here with us all along sending uploads back through space, pointing their muzzles upwards like antennas? Perhaps they have been sent to save us from ourselves, their mission critical and the hour getting short but their optimism and faith undimmed, their patience endless. Look at us they say, we will teach you how to love, to be open hearted and generous, to live for the moment.

I have made an attempt, living in my garden dressed only in shorts and leaving only to run. There has been no rain and the ground is dry, my feet sounding like drumbeats, the soil hard and like parchment. The sky has been the colour of bronze like a giant gong, it is silent and expectant waiting to be struck. The heat has stripped me not only of my clothes but also exposed my authentic self, languid and laid back, my humour dry and my heart at peace. My binnetuin, my internal landscape has become of place of sunshine and cool breezes, my anxiety sedated and stuffed to merely murmer in the dark cracks. I have only today so I run shirtless in the woods, lupine and loose, practicing the velocity of loneliness, thinking about the deep need for affirmation, the void of rootlessness, of being rootless. I wonder if this will ever resolve or whether I am simply nomad. Running, enjoying this looseness and lucidity I think how easy it is to run across the ground when the years and miles have taught you, subconsciously you read the micro contours and choose the best places to put your feet. It is smooth, efficient and certain. No sooner do I think this I catch my toe on an exposed root and fall opening up a deep cut in my knee. There is an immediate trickle of blood like a song because blood always sings, always has a song, always tells a story. With the release of my blood, this song I roll onto my back and laugh joyfully and unrestrained, the lessons of dogs and running converge, the moment pure and my face full of dust. 

Ayikho inkomo yobuthongo.

 Living for that peace of mind

When the feeling stays the same

Over explain and you try to understand

When I tell you that I love you babe

And you're never gonna pull away

And softly falling down keeping it kind in your way

And it's sweet like that

(Valentina, Lonely Nights)

We casually bring children into the world without a lot of thought or planning and then launch them off to grow up beneath fairy lights, expectation and hope. We require them to navigate the societal jungle with the most rudimentary instruction and operating from our own brokenness and flaws, our scars and limp passed down like a baton. We are madly and recklessly in love with our kids, and this is the one beacon of light, a reference point they can find space to explore within and grow. It is a safe harbour that they can return to as many times as they like and it should give them the confidence to ask big questions of themselves, their parents and life. And all the time we cling to them like the life raft of our lost youth, floating amongst the wreckage of our lives. We try to remain cool and relevant wearing distressed cargo shorts and old Talking Heads shirts. We watch our kids perform in edgy subterranean venues while trying to convey the impression that these are not alien places to us or that the music is sometimes incomprehensible. Nobody is fooled apart from ourselves, our hair grey, reading glasses dangling from the collar of our shirts and drinking expensive cider the colour of blood.

Despite us they find their way. There is a Zulu saying, Ayikho inkomo yobuthongo (sleeping never rewarded anyone with a living cow) which applies to our young people. They never stop asking questions or being curious and they bring energy to those endeavours which catapult them forward. The challenge if you are young is not to lose that momentum and energy of curiosity, to not lose your tribal or individual identity, to never fall asleep.

What a time to be alive.

Last week I ran deep in the Kent forest. There is an urgency to my running now that I haven't experienced for a couple of years, my body is demanding and responding to intensity and focus. I followed my feet and my instincts, trusting that I would find my way. I ran down twisting defiles carved into the earth like a signal over time and along a broad valley floor, the humidity producing the smell of fermenting vegetation, the trees archaic and massive, rising up the valley sides in terraced ranks. I ran up again, and up, climbing steep rocky trails that hurt my legs and lungs. I love the familiar, I love my home trails, those paths I know so well, they love and forgive me but they demand little from me. It is important and necessary to try new paths, new terrain that is less friendly and more stretching. These are the places where we do most of our learning, where there is discomfort and rigour, the challenge of the ambushing ascent. This is where we drink the sweetest nectar and become joyfully drunk on life's possibility. I'm getting older but I am still asking questions of myself, still curious and strangely hopeful of a living cow or two.

Today I am in my garden, this tiny patch of earth where I invite the sun. Shirtless and shoeless I feel as if I am the human connection between the earth and the sun, grounded through my feet and wearing the sun on my shoulders like a mantle. The people who are important to me are here creating because that is a high calling and we reach for the stars. Together we are crafting, painting, moulding and writing, making something out of our imaginations and histories, building our tribe and making memory and tradition. We are talking, exchanging opinions and points of view. There is music and there is laughter. I am Dad, I am bhundu, I am African and I am alive. 

I'm pouring another glass, I'm drifting, been left to drift.

 Moods that take me and erase me

And I'm painted black

You have suffered enough

And warred with yourself

It's time that you won

Take this sinking boat and point it home

We've still got time

Raise your hopeful voice, you have a choice

You've made it now

(Falling Slowly, Glen Hansard)

I'm drunk. Well halfway there at least. Red wine, I love it. 

I'm grieving. There is so much hurt in the world, so much pain, so much damage. There are so few answers, so little we can do, so many layers of damage. The world feels heavy tonight. In all honesty the world feels fucking heavy most nights. How do you tell a child who has been brutalised that she matters, that she is worthy and loved? How do you communicate that she is stronger than she thinks, that she is beautiful? 

Sometimes there are no words.

I should go to bed soon, put what's left of this bottle of red away, sleep. At my right is Themba, he is sleeping with an anxious frown on his face. He is wine free. Themba is my dog, a blonde labrador sent to save me and he has failed. I still love him because the fault is mine and love is unconditional and full of forgiveness. He's easy to love because he has a massive generous heart. He has a Zulu name because I love the Zulu people. Themba means hope, trust and faith. 

I've been listening to music. Glen Hansard, Bird of Sorrow. Tom Walker, Leave a Light on. A song about suicide. Joan Osborne, What if God Was One of Us? The Brothers Osborne, Dead Mans Curve. Jeremy Loops, Idles, Black Midi and George Michael. Others.

Music scrubs our soul, it has the power to abrade the barnacles that we collect as we journey through life. Karen Blixen who wrote Out of Africa said that all sorrows can be borne if you put them into a story and I see music as essentially storytelling. Music and running go together, not to listen to through expensive and trendy bluetooth EarPods but because of the shared rhythm. Music has a beat. Running has cadence. Close family. Music is vibration and running is vibration, both send positive waves through our bodies and spirits. In every run I reach a point between half a mile and a mile where I exhale, it is a long drawn out release of tension, weight and shit. It is the moment that my run really starts and it can't be forced, can't be rushed. It happens when my spirit is ready. I wait for it, when it comes I rejoice in it and sometimes I fly.

I'm pouring another glass, I'm drifting, been left to drift.

I came back from Australia, the ancient land, in May. It's not Africa but I love this country still beneath the Southern Cross. It is hot and laidback. There is space and the sky is big. You sense the heft of Aboriginal history on the land, it is Dreamtime. There is time to think. I had three weeks of sunsets and bush, of rivers, wild birds, sleeping on a mattress and my beloved family. I ran searching for dolphins, mostly out past Quinns with the sea on my left as it should be. I came back through the bush wary of snakes. If they were there I didn't see them. I sat for hours on the tiny beach that is hidden from people, watching the Silver fish and listening to the surf. I did more than listen, I felt it in my deepest core. Music scrubs our soul but the rhythm of the waves goes deeper, reaching the primal recesses of our being. The longer you sit, watch and listen the more you become part of the ocean, it begins a deep massaging work within you loosening and breaking up the detritus and damage that life creates. My heart began to beat in symphony with the waves, slow, meditative and regular. I didn't feel peace I became it, became cleaner and lighter, floating away from and back to myself. In this moment I knew it was time for something new, for change, a shifting away from the known. I know that change is coming, I have dreamt it into existence beside the waves and with a lone Osprey for company. It may be slow like the shedding of a skin but it is going to happen, is already happening.

This glass is done, the bottle almost empty. I need to decide whether to make coffee or drag myself to bed. The Child Who's Face Eclipses the Sun has just arrived home. Maybe we have both been drinking. I know this day will not come again and neither will tomorrow. We need to live.

“The trouble is, you think you have time.” - Jack Kornfield 

"There is a time when it is necessary to abandon the used clothes, which already have the shape of our body, and to forget our paths, which take us always to the same places. This is the time to cross the river: and if we don’t dare to do it, we will have stayed forever beneath ourselves."

(Fernando Pessoa)

 

Time and miles pass and these shall never pass again.

Some days you just wake up with hope and expectation, there is a feeling in your heart that is telling you that it is a day of new beginnings and you feel that anything is possible. Running through the graveyard the sun was out and my accusers the crows absent. The path was clear and the headstones silent and lacking reproach. I got a lift with my shamwari* before my run, "do you want windows open or the air conditioner" she asked? It has to be the windows I said, it is more bohemian, more beatnik, I like to feel the wind sliding over my face, teasing the tears from the corners of my eyes and leaving little shiny rivers on my cheeks. She looked at me for a moment and I wondered if she found me odd before nodding once and starting the car. Don't worry I told her, I have a plan and the music has stopped anyway. I am going to roll and run in Umber and Olive, still in the woods and over the common, crushing ankle high grass and meadow flowers, creating a small trail. Foxes, badgers and other animals create these indents in the grass and by doing the same I am joining with the communion of nature. I shall go

 on steps of air and leave behind me the grey ghosts, watching from behind trees and splashing invisibly in the streams, their power fading and the sun rising.

 I have a plan to create my own symphony and invite everyone to dance. 

I shall break the ropes running and keep running. I told her

 about t

he words of the Indian mystic Kabir who said, If you don't break your ropes while you're alive, do you think the ghosts will do it after? I was gone before she could reply.

Sunrise is important either physically or metaphorically. As children the Navajo, people of the 

First Nations are taught to wake up and run. They run to the east, where the holy creator is awake and out at the birth of a new day. I like the idea of the creator being out at dawn, it makes sense that God is there in the beginning. The Navajo run to celebrate life, believing that running gives them the tools to be successful in all endeavours. At dawn the sun pours from the East with a purity and quality that is supernatural. It is molten gold, with streaks of fire and almost humming with electric intensity. It floods every dark corner of the tired space that is my heart, lifting it out of it's poverty and making it a palace where God and the greedy would feel at their ease. This is the rare light that points toward a revolution in heaven where the angels mount barricades wreathed in smoky clouds and hammer down the gates of hell. It is the light where the only response is worship and the reverential realisation that life is a gift that must be enjoyed in stillness and peace. 

I have fallen in love with the idea of Wabi Sabi, the Japanese concept of finding beauty in unexpected places and flawed things. Although it is a life philosophy it fits perfectly into the frame of running, It values simplicity impermanence, incompleteness and transition, the passage of time and it's subtle degradation on people and objects. Richard Powell wrote in his book Wabi Sabi Simple that Nothing lasts, nothing is finished, and nothing is perfect.

Importantly for me it celebrates the natural world and natural things. It teaches you to look for and appreciate ever changing landscapes, oceans, rivers, sunrises and sunsets.

I run on with my thoughts floating past the Silver trees with their Silver leaves and Silver bark. I hear in the wind the voice of Black Elk, "And while I stood there I saw more than I can tell, and I understood more than I saw; for I was seeing in a sacred manner the shapes of things in the spirit, and the shapes of all shapes as they must live together like one being."

As I run I discard my dark soul in its dark hell, with its black birds and the deaf. Time and miles pass and these shall never pass again.   

It is in this passing of time and miles I experience Wabi Sabi. I encounter a man sitting on a fallen tree. His face is brown, too brown to belong to this climate and he is hunched over a guitar. He is wearing a wide brimmed hat and a gunslingers coat, his fingers weaving through the strings creating scattered notes that die on the breeze. As I pass he smiles, his teeth brilliant white in the afternoon sun, his face reshaped by a dozen deep creases. It is benediction from a holy monk. 

*Shona for friend. 

 

My cheeks are hollowed out by the drums in my head

“I don't feel particularly proud of myself. But when I walk alone in the woods or lie in the meadows, all is well.” 

(Franz Kafka)

I am idle, a little sore from yesterdays run and I am thinking about colour. I love the colour of Rust. Of Ochre, Umber, Sienna and straw, head high and Yellow. For Blue give me big sky. Beneath my naked feet I want the squirt of Red dust and sharp bone White thorn. For rain I'll give you Silver. Unless you are a dove you can keep Grey, I'm not fond of it. These colours are the pegs where I hang my nostalgia, textured hooks full of comfortable old clothes.

These are the extent of my thoughts. I’m sprawled in my garden, my cheeks are hollowed out by the drums in my head and a lone dove is staring at me from the neighbours garden. Above me are the clouds of my enemies and the universal sun. I feel it burning my legs and wonder if I can take my shirt off. The Cherry Blossom sighs and there is a single white feather between my feet. I have been lazy, held back by the snakebite of pain in my right Achilles but I need to run now and stop thinking and writing. I especially need to stop thinking. Time is invisible, sliding silently towards me, the year slipping through my fingers, transparent and unrestrained. In my eyes the stars are winking out one by one.

Winter has been dull and I have become anxious. The world is mad, probably no more mad than it has ever been or shall be but I seem to be thinner skinned. I need control. Pain is my remedy but perhaps instead I will find it in Spring. April is the cruellest month, TS Elliot wrote, breeding Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing memory and desire, stirring dull roots with spring rain. It is the month where we are crucified with outstretched arms between the seasons, dying but not yet resurrected. 

In my dreams I am always hung between worlds, belonging to neither one nor the other.

I hope my body is on the mend. My six mile run yesterday was the easiest I've felt over any distance for nearly a year. This is the moment to build, the woods are drying out and the temperatures rising. I need to prove that the rumours of my collapse are exaggerated. I have only one skin and it is rarely comfortable, it is either too loose, getting caught on irrelevance or too claustrophobic and I cannot breath. My answer is to start again. I have been thinking that the keys to a simpler life are minimalism and self reliance. 

I am at ground zero in so many ways so I will start again, with my body, with my friends, my job and my soul. I am going to reduce the noise in my life, the things that distract. I shall have less, do less and pursue colour.

Marcus Aurelius, Roman Emperor and stoic said that the soul becomes dyed with the colour of it's thoughts. Do my thoughts contain colour or do I think death? It is an interesting question, my thoughts being powerful enough to define me. I have knelt too long beneath the tattered flag of a monochrome landscape that I was told flowed with milk and honey. 

They lied.

I have been running, my beads bouncing like rain against my throat. I follow the spoor of the ancient Anglo Saxons who once lived in these stony woods, leaping dongas filled with tiny trickling tributaries, sticks and mud and choose narrow paths between earthy banks and fallen mossy trees. I gather the sun and hold it against my breast like a child, seeking clarity in the midst of natures poetry. I am a captive on the conquered earth, running with deliberation and open eyes. Like the Stoics and the Aboriginals I live in each moment as it happens, rooted in the colour of the natural world surrounding me. I cast off the rags of my endeavours, breath on the embers of hope and drown in grace. Beneath my naked feet I want the squirt of Red dust and sharp bone White thorn. This is my only way out.

Outside it is dark but my heart is light.

What is to give light

must endure burning

(Victor Frankl)

A conversation with a friend has sparked my thinking about trauma, disconnection, identity and what those things do to us.

I have been watching the trial of Derek Chauvin, the Minneapolis policeman accused of murdering George Floyd by kneeling on his neck.

I hope I'm allowed to explore my own history and experiences in the light of what happened to George. I was listening to the emotional testimony of one of the witnesses, who said that he was probably the last person to have a sympathetic conversation with George Floyd as he lay pinned on the ground and it cut me in two.

When I was in my 20's I was talking to a man I knew when a pickup drove up and two men with guns jumped out. The man I was talking to turned to run away and they shot him in the back.

I've heard a fair amount of gunfire but I still hear that shot. I have vivid memories of how bright his blood was and how it leaked out of his stomach. While he lay in the baking sun the police arrived and I asked the sergeant if they were going to call an ambulance but he replied that the only good black man was a dead one and turned away. 

I often think about him, his blood and profuse sweat and how his eyes sank into his skull.  I have never been able to forgive myself for not intervening or giving him comfort before he died, I was too afraid of the police. Up to now it never occurred to me that the last conversation this man had was with me.

It's made me feel worse.

I told a friend that I am seeking space and adventure. She asked me if I plan on heading out of the Shire with Gandalf, as she sat curled on her chair with a book and a sealed bottle of shampoo. As I ran I considered her question seriously, stopped between the trees as still as ghosts with their whispered sounds because she demands serious consideration. In a space full of green and silence I decided that the idea of leaving the shire for adventure is attractive but irrelevant to me. I am less interested at this moment in my life of Frodo's journey to destroy the ring. Rather I am drawn to his state of mind when he returned. 

I have juxtaposed the probability of traumas that I have endured and the possibility of being Autistic with those of Frodo Baggins.

Wherever Frodo went and whatever he experienced he never left the Shire spiritually and He returned emotionally and physically damaged, changed forever by the torments that he experienced.. He suffered from PTSD and was ultimately unable to heal. He no longer fitted in. He no longer felt at home and his only option was to leave The Shire forever on one final journey.

I find this helpful. I left Africa but I carry it in my heart. I listen to Makeba, Masekela and Clegg. I eat Sadza, Biltong and Boboti. I mix Shona, Zulu and Afrikaans into my language and I dream of dying men and burning girls. I looked into the reptilian eyes of a man I could have shot in the face and probably should have.

Am I damaged?

And then there is the question of Autism.

Am I or am I not? 

I was recently sent an article by the brilliant young photographer Alfie White.

Alfie is just 20 and he is Autistic. He is currently exploring this part of his identity. In his article he writes that, "operating as an Autistic person feels like you’re an alien pretending to be human" He goes on, "In social environments it’s one challenge: you learn the basics and attempt to navigate yourself through social hierarchies, cues, and constructs which you cannot see. Kind of like that scene in The Pacifer, where Vin Diesel is worming around the lasers—except imagine they’re invisible. Like that. 

In work environments it feels like you are on the run and there is a searchlight after you. You dart from one dark corner to the next, avoiding situations which might put you in plain sight: conversations surrounding relationships, debates, areas of personal interest (as paradoxically this is where one can most easily find themselves blinded by the searchlight, usually after going on an obsessive, passionate monologue about said area of interest. Hands up! We got you now, alien)."

You can find him on Instagram, @alfiewphoto.

I relate to all of that. There is an awfulness in not belonging. I feel worse because It makes me angry. I feel that I do not fit in. I am accepted and even tolerated but subtlety excluded, uninvited and sidelined. The fault is mine entirely and I own it.

I can't decide if Frodo was fortunate to come back to The Shire or not. He probably had to in order to discover that it was no longer home. He came back changed. He was still a hobbit but part of him was destroyed and he no longer belonged. He had to move on because if The Shire is a place of peace and serenity but we have neither then we can no longer live there. This is because we have become alien and offensive, always angry and a bit odd.

If we carry The Shire in our hearts I'm not even sure that a final departure across the sea to the West will bring healing. There is debate whether Frodo left the Shire to die or if in leaving he became immortal. I believe that he left to die. It is the only and final way to peace when all else has failed.

Albert Camus said that we should always go too far because that is where we will find the truth. I am trying to go far, I honestly hope that you will sail with me but if not I will sail alone. I will be a meditation of one, smiling as I run, stopping only to think, breath and observe the spiders weaving death shapes between the twigs.

Outside it is dark but my heart is light. When Frodo pitied himself he became depressed, he died inside and lost hope. His name is derived from the word Fróda which means wise by experience. That is me, I am Fróda, wise by experience and I cannot afford to lose hope. I am rising, I will not pity myself and I promise to catch you somewhere in the day. Until then I am always running In the woods where the mud is slowly drying. Spring is here insistently poking through the clouds with exploratory sunny fingers. It is agitating the wind which seeks escape. It will go South soon to sulk across the equator. I will be nosing through the trees while I wait, bhundu running with my solitary shuffle, short strides and loose, my body dropping away from my face and shoulders, my fingers spread. 

I am stronger than a dead fish.

"You can't erase a dream, you can only wake me up/ My mind is turning slower, never to accept defeat/ it don't matter where I stay, I still got a house to heat"

(Peter Frampton) 

I've been re listening to Peter Framptons beautiful song "Lines on my face" on repeat.

I still own the classic live album and this song is one of my favourites. Frampton brings a lot of nuanced emotion to it both with his guitar, especially the liquid fragility of the intro and his vocals. It is sensitive, deeply felt and beautifully conveyed. It's essentially a heartbreak song of loss and bewilderment, a person shouting up a deep mineshaft of pain their voice futile and echoing off the deaf ears of the hard walls.

Last night I was struck by the words toward the end of the song though. Maybe I'm stating to feel the light and the warmth of my own fledgling return to mental stability but when Frampton sings, "You can't erase a dream, you can only wake me up/ My mind is turning slower, never to accept defeat/ it don't matter where I stay, I still got a house to heat" I sat up a little straighter and had another listen.

I'm always going to tell you what I think so here it is. My interpretation is that our dreams are indelible unless we erase them ourselves but they can be held up or lost in the maelstrom of our lives. I think we need to slow down sometimes and take stock. We have to find our priorities and ourselves again when we get lost and our dreams buried. It is up to us whether we accept defeat or not. And when Peter sings, "It don't matter where I stay, I still got a house I got to heat" he is telling us that life goes on regardless of our position. I think that is a call to movement, it's a choice, we stay in the mineshaft or we start to climb. Either way life is still happening to us. Doctor Martin Luther King said that faith is taking the first step even when you don't see the whole staircase and he was correct. It takes courage but it has to be done or we remain where we are. Either way we still got a house we have to heat so it makes sense to go on an adventure. We either die in glory or we die in the mineshaft.

Life is always about choice which births change. Everything we do or experience immediately becomes history but history that throws itself forward into the future. Each person we meet, each triumph and tragedy, each scuff mark on our spirit becomes a part of a patchwork that we become. We literally embed these things into our souls and become the entity known as (insert name here). Consciously or not we pass it on, the good and the bad. We are social beings who are endlessly communicating both verbally and non verbally and we project what is inside us to others. I am morally incontinent but I can say in grace that we are responsible for what we project, whether we hurt or heal so therefore we need to be mindful of the choices we make.

We are all dreamers, some of us have just forgotten how.

The indigenous people of Australia have a beautiful belief system that enables them to keep hold of the centre of their lives. They have no word in their language for time and have a deeply held spiritual belief called The Dreaming which at it's core holds the concept of moving from dream to reality. It is an act of creative belief that they hold within themselves always and places great significance on nature and human interaction with it. The Aboriginal Australian belief is that the ancestral spirits created everything during a time known as the Dreaming as well as the relationship between people and nature, and once they had finished they transformed themselves into rocks, stars and water and thus remain which means The dreaming is never ending. Because of this places and nature have enormous significance and are sacred. There is a continuous link between the people and the earth.

I guess running is when I do my dreaming.

Each time I run I take something of the running experience and build it into my life. I take the dream and give it shape and substance and it takes on a spiritual form.. I posted on Instagram recently that I am odd and I feel like a social misfit but that I know I am home when I am running synched with nature. I am alone with myself, I have nobody else's expectations or demands to be subject to. I am rarely constrained by time. I can just be and interact with my surroundings. When I run I allow my mind to roam. The by products are things like resilience, self confidence, clarity and a deep respect for living things. I feel a strong connection between myself and nature.

               

My goal for the spring and summer months is to carry these things forward and just be. This is my current dream. To be simple. I am exploring the idea of existing, detached from the issues of the world and life as far as possible. As the poet Walt Whitman said " I exist as I am, that is enough" Running wise the last ten months have been hard. I have suffered two debilitating foot injuries but even worse I have found running hard and almost joyless. It has been a colourless grind. I honestly think it has been a reflection of my ghastly mental state. I love the simple runs where I am light and harmonious. The dreaming runs. I want to slow down and love running as I always have, simply for what it is and gives to me. I want to give back to it. I want to keep running the way I always have, not overthinking but floating free and gently engaged with my surroundings and then return to my garden and sit still in the sun. I want to read interesting books and let the ideas they contain ferment in my spirit. Someone once said that when we are tired, we are attacked by ideas we conquered long ago so I am going to take this time to retreat from tiredness toward peace. I shall become my own oasis. Both through running and sitting I am going to rediscover my thoughts and ideas and make my choices and decisions. It is said that only dead fish go with the flow and I am stronger than a dead fish. I am going to dream myself happy.

Whoever you are and wherever you are, take care. Make great choices. Keep it simple. Remember to dream. Talk to good people. I'm out there somewhere, I hope to see you around.

Life is change

We move on

And where you go

I hope the summer goes along

And in the trees

The autumn breeze

The winter's cold

But summer's soul is underneath

(Goo Goo Dolls, Autumn Leaves)