Archive for May, 2006

  • Trying to keep it simple

    Long days and short nights are making my life seem somewhat chaotic,
    but I am hoping it will pass.
    The Mind Body Spirit Festival was pretty wild. I must confess that I occasionally ran out of Nut-Case Patience and found myself wishing it came wholesale. But I always seemed able to rise to the challenge and continue.

    There were so many interesting and rather wild people wandering around, it was quite a thing. Yesterday there was a man with a Jesus thing. I know Jesus never made it to long white beard etc, but this man really got off on his look. It was great to watch him move around the crowd. I wanted to work out if he lived up to his looks, but he was not giving anything away, sadly.

    We did well. DVDs most of all, and of course I learned too much for it to be calm and peaceful in the head. I realise that the learning is never going to stop and I will always be wondering why did I not think of that before.

    I am off to the Yoga Festival today. Getting everything done before heading south for 5 days of great food, great yoga and lots of time with the children please.

    This means that I will be out of contact, I assume. It may be that since the last year they have broadband and I can surf, but somehow I doubt it.

    I am not sure I can keep getting up this early and feel uncomfortable with wanting this time away to be a rest. I guess I am supposed to set an example and rise at 4.45 with all the others. I have to write the words for the vegetarian cooking DVD and need hours and hours of time to get through it. Please God may I find some or I will be in big trouble.

    Long days and short nights are making my life seem somewhat chaotic,
    But I am hoping it will pass.
    The Mind Body Spirit Festival was pretty wild. I must confess that I occasionally ran out of Nut Case patience and found myself wishing it came wholesale. But I always seemed able to rise to the challenge and continue.

    There were so many interesting and rather wild people wandering around, it was quite a thing. Yesterday there was a man with a Jesus thing. I know Jesus never made it to long white beard etc, but this man really got off on his look. It was great to watch him move around the crowd. I wanted to work out if he lived up to his looks, but he was not giving anything away, sadly.

    We did well. DVDs most of all, and of course I learned too much for it to be calm and peaceful in the head. I realise that the learning is never going to stop and I will always be wondering why did I not think of that before.

    I am off to the Yoga Festival today. Getting everything done before heading south for 5 days of great food, great yoga and lots of time with the children please.

    This means that I will be out of contact, I assume. It may be that since the last year they have broadband and I can surf, but somehow I doubt it.

    I am not sure I can keep getting up this early and feel uncomfortable with wanting this time away to be a rest. I guess I am supposed to set an example and rise at 4.45 with all the others. I have to write the words for the vegetarian cooking DVD and need hours and hours of time to get through it. Please God may I find some or I will be in big trouble.

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  • The last day.

    The last day

    This is the last day of the mind Body Spirit Festival and it has been a really interesting experience. Apart from a few nutcases, everyone has been delightful and charming, my assistants have been great and the selling experience has left me feeling far more positive than I have felt in months.

    It is really so clearly about being in the right place and choosing what you want to promote and sticking to it.

    I feel also that the attitude you bring to the place makes a huge difference as well. I suppose I still think there is a magic formula that everyone but me knows, although I am no longer so convinced. I walked around the show yesterday with an eye as to how others were selling their products and could clearly see that they were not doing anything different to me.

    It is now may and I know I have to have my thoughts on Christmas. I don’t really have a mountain of new products, in fact I almost have none, but the new altar frames. So my new learning curve tells me to promote those. I just need to find a creative person for the artwork and Voila!

    On top of everything else I realise that I will have to go back to India soon. Especially to be ready for the Christmas build up. I am going to be in a shop for two weeks in November which will transform my life hugely…….

    I just wish that selling well was not such a marathon of time wasting until one actually got it. I wish I could go back to all the shows where I di not make the most of my space and do it again. Not regrets, please not regrets, but I will be booking bigger spaces from now on and carefully choosing where we sell.

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  • Out of kilter

    My life is a little chaotic at the moment. It may have seemed crazy anyway, although not to me, but at the moment it has lost all balance.

    In going to and returning from New York I have missed 4 days sleep. It has not been much fun. I managed to maintain a semblance of order for a few days, getting up at 4am and writing, opening mail and so on, but now I have collapsed like a blancmange and slept for nine hours last night, waking up as if being dug out of a live burial ceremony. So deeply asleep that I actually had a cold show from which I emerged smiling and victorious.

    I am off to another day at the Mind Body Spirit Festival in Victoria. It is the biggest show we have done and really interesting. If I ever felt that I was esoteric I can now see that I have not even scratched the surface.

    Delightfully, we one the prize for the most striking stand last night. I have no idea who voted, but it was a nice reward for all the hard work that goes into doing these show.

    It has been a really busy week. On Wednesday Snatam kaur came and sang at home. That was really a Divine gift. Her voice is as clear as glass and she is a delight. Tiny and graceful. There was quite a crowd. At first, all stiff and uncomfortable, but after the chanting everyone was a great friend. Dinner was delicious and the lovely Gilly had been a glorious help in getting so much of it to happen.

    We are getting into the final moments of preparation for the Yoga festival now and then there is peace. For a while. I was quoted to from the bible whilst in New York.
    A friend telling me about Jesus and his temptation in the desert.. “And after that tithe end the Devil went away for a while.” Very ominous and a bit how I feel with all the work. I think I will have a break, but I will not…….

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  • Self control and responsability

    I am having to move into a new phase of being responsible. I am good at getting things done, but I only want to do the things I want to do. I lack a certain kind of self discipline that would get me to do the things I don’t want to do with the same enthusiasm I approach those things I do want to do.

    I am conscious of how much I resist. I don’t want to resist any more. I want to work on all that needs doing without attachment. I know, it sounds so elevated, but the reality is that I can be very flakey and then get really upset at what is left to be done.

    It has hit me know. It is exciting and stimulating to write the DVDs, filming is hard, but great fun. Then there is a break and I have nothing to do with the project for a while and in that time I move on and work on other things. Suddenly I have to get totally involved again with the DVD, like now with the vegetarian cooking one, and my mind will not focus. It needs to be beaten into submission and I have to pull myself back onto the project and force myself to sit here. Like this morning. I have to write and record onto a video camera all that I want to say for each recipe, then it will have to be transcribed and I read it again, sounding enthusiastic and as real as I can get. Sadly I have to watch myself, which I hate, and at 4am it is challenging to sound bright and lively. Here is my point. I need to beat myself into doing it. One and a half hours later I have done 3 or 4 recipes. So it has dawned on me how huge the job is and I struggle. I want to whine and complain, but it is my project. My great idea. I have to move into a different place to make sure it works. I have to move into another space when it comes to responsibility. Here I go.

    As far as being vegan is concerned, it is now more than a month and I feel so different it is truly extraordinary. I had thought I would struggle to keep going, that I would fight and rail against it, gradually descending back into eating large amounts of dairy, but no. I am very happy. We went to a gallery opening last night and brought a friend back for supper. It took a few minutes to prepare a spelt pizza base, 4 in fact because the children work up and wanted more supper. We had vegan pizzas with asparagus, artichokes, roasted peppers and for the kids, mozzarella cheese. So delicious, really good. It was a real celebration of good food, made in a flash.

    I sleep better, have lost weight, wake up feeling clear and energised, my skin is better and I am much less stressed. I am intrigued to see how long it will go on for.

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  • Jet lag and other wonderful things

    Actually there is a certain implied irony in the title of this log.
    I am very jet lagged. I fell asleep last night at a delightful 9.30pm and woke at 10pm as though I had just had a sweet nap. I lay in bed, thinking of nothing, just tossing and sighing until 3am when I slept for an hour and then got up at 4am to work.

    I feel OK, just I want to fall over with tiredness. Oh, golly gee, I remember the days when sleepless nights were fuelled into oblivion by various illegal substances. Now they are fuelled into a hard and sharp reality by two small children, the internet, the mobile phone and responsibility.

    I have been hoping to be propelled back into 1970. Not for the fashion, or the haircuts, but to see what London was like, and to have a taste of life without credit cards, mobile phones, computers and ipods. I think it would be so wild if we all had to line up in the bank and relate to each other. I suppose wandering around in the ever-so-busy, but oh-so-isolated New York has set me thinking about how far we have moved from interaction with each other.

    The other wonderful irony in this weblog is printers. I am not sure if I hate printers, the machines, not the people, or they hate me. I thought, for a while, that I had bad printer karma. Having mentioned this to a few people I am not so sure it is personal any more. It is an extension of the fourth great lie.

    I can hear you asking, what are the first three, let alone the fourth?
    1. The cheque is in the post.
    2. I will only put it in a little way, Darling.
    3. I promise I won’t ==== in your =====. (too rude).
    4. Anyone can take a great picture.

    Printers now seem to be that taken even further. I have 5 printers now wilting in my office. Three of which were expensive and took a lot of ink, phone calls, emails, tears, swearing and stress and still did not perform as promised. The fourth one never ever worked, but came from Amazon where you can never contact anyone so can never return anything. The latest baby is temperamental and likes to print random full colour pages just to make sure I run out of the unfindable ink as quickly as possible.

    Such fun.

    So the answer is, and it happens to be one of the 5 sutras for the Aquarian Age, is not to take it personally.

    So, what with my ex friend in New York and bad printer karma, I am getting a lot of practice at not taking it personally.

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  • Jet lag and parties

    It is early, it seems so anyway, but in fact it is 7am now. We were woken by a party in the flat across the courtyard. I slept so badly, waking every hour or so, wondering what time it was, and then roaring laughter, shouting and singing and when I went and quietly asked them to keep it down, total offensiveness. I am not used to people being really humiliating and awful. After, I was meditating and thinking of revenge! How awful…. I felt really horrid. Eventually I got over it, but it was intriguing to watch the ego needing to get back.

    New York was interesting. I am not sure how much fun it was. I loved seeing certain people and really did not enjoy others. I stayed in the apartment of an old, old friend. Sadly he is now so self obsessed and filled with his own importance and glory that conversation was totally impossible and he was rude. I tried to talk, even lightly, but was only allowed to listen to how marvellous he was and how successful he was and how his therapist said he was normal.
    Luckily he was away for most of the time I was there and I was alone. But I noticed how I was great alone, but when he was there I felt really lonely. I hate the neediness that comes with loneliness. The lack of self dependency.

    The body painting part was big. A huge show, classes, painting, endless talking and lots of “OhmygodIloveyourwork!” Said in breathy American accents. I got quite sad on the last day when I realised it really was nearly over. Who will I be if I am not the body painter?

    I did meet some delightful people, though. And Mr Michael Devellis is beyond charming and professional. Quite a personality and oh, so professional.

    It is great to be home. To be cuddled, loved and needed.

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  • I have realised something huge.

    Having not been included in the program for the International Make Up Artist’s Show, which I discovered yesterday, this is my last day of bodypainting.

    It is a big thing. I know it may not seem much, and as my husband pointed out, I have so much else going on, but this whole side of my life has been there for so long. 28 years. 4 cycles of consciousness. It has been the creative, quirky, addicted, adventurous part of me. That is not to say I am lacking in creativity elsewhere in my life. It is not true. But being a bodypainter is weird and unusual. It calls for dialogue, the attention needs to come my way. The stories, the pop stars, the specialness of it all will slide away and I will be a dima-a-dozen yoga teacher. Again, I know I am more than that, too.

    So I have cried. In fact I had an interesting realisation yesterday: That I don’t cry alone. I always want to find someone, usually Baptiste, to do my crying with. I need a witness to my suffering. Are we all like that? I have no idea….. But just to avoid being too hard on myself, it is usually dialogue and expression of mental processes that bring out the need or desire to cry. So maybe I am not a total exhibitionist.

    I am alone all the time here, apart from the occasional dinner with friends. I don’t get lonely, but in the alones I notice how guarded and frightened everyone is here. The moments of contact, a smile or small phrase, are almost non-existent and become all the more poingnant when they happen.

    An old man, on crutches in the lobby where I am staying. Last night he was talking with the concierge. As I took the key he was behind ma and told me my hair was like Mozart. I turned an smiled, asking if he meant the man or the music. “Both”
    Very sweet and very lonely. I became away of all the sadness and aloneness weighing down on the lobby. Such a huge apartment block, filled with people having their lives played out is such a hurry.

    Breakfast is good. I have come downtown early to avoid the traffic and am having soy decaff and granola. Then onto the nailed-on smile and at the end of the day it is all over, bar the World Body Painting Festival which is one of the most amazing things I have been to and I look forward to hugely.

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  • New York. Sunday morning.

    It is cold and grey. The cann collectors are out, marching up and down the streets, collecting cans froma ll the bins. Apparently they live off the money they get from recycling them. I have been in Starbucks checking my emails. it is open at 7am on a sunday. Wild.

    There is an interesting fashion thing here. Jean. Jeans. More jeans, then jeans. Every conceivable style, fit, length and colour, as long as they are jeans. I don’t own a pair of jeans, but somehow I don’t feel compelled to buy any. The other accessory is Hunter wellies. Youngish women wear them. All colours, marching up and down the avenues of New York in Hunter wellies. Sweaty feet abound, I should think.

    I am on my way to the Metropolitan Pavillion for The Make Up show. My assistant cancelled at 8.30 last night. I decided it was pointless getting pissed off. It will not change the situation. I will just deal with it today. I am looking forward to my retirement more and more. I long to shed this identity, although I had a long conversation with a delightful make up artist who I have been friendly with over the years. it turned out that he was younger than me, but the work I had done in the 80′s had been the reason why he went into make up. I told him I was retiring. He could not get why I would do that. Am I just supposed to keep doing it just because I can?

    More and more I think the idea of a yoga for recovery centre is a good idea. I want Baptiste to think it is a good idea and get involved as well. It would mean raising millions of pounds, but that does not seem insurmountable. I will think on it. I imagine I will have time in the next few days. There is an extreme stillness and aloneness that has come over me. Moments with other people, then off again. Alone and walking for hours. The person I am staying with is due back today. I have no idea if he will return. I am somewhat bored by his total dysfunction, but I know I should be grateful for having somewhere to stay, but I hate to be beholden. Again, the independant streak. ANd the stillness and time to think and meditate will vanish into the presence of another.

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  • The delights of New York

    I am sitting in Starbucks. I promise it would not be by usual choice of cafe, but they have one on every block, so a good cup of green tea and have internet access.
    It is a lovely morning. All the tops of the skysrapers are hidden in the mists, there are puddles everywhere and countless divine children in wellies and little umbrellas all scurrying to school.
    The amount of people on the streets is great. All walking with such purpose. Dogs all over the place on very glamorous leads and I can see the top of central park across the road. I feel very spoilt.

    I am a vastly improved person after good food and sleep, although it was a real case of mind over matter to get to sleep last night. I went to bed at the time I usually get up! I lay on a smelly, uncomfortable sofa bed with a pile of clothes on top of me to keep me warm, repeating endlessly ” I sleep really easily” Finally I did, and woke at 6am. So I am back into a normal routine of sorts.
    I found a great health food shop on the next block, all organic vegetables and my favourite vitamin powder. i am shocked that I can buy it here for 1/3 the price I pay in pay in London. I am trying to work out how to take cannisters of it back with me.

    Coming to the vegan thing. I notice I am not swolen by the flight as I usually am. I have no bloated feet of fingers. I feel good, better than usual on the next day after flying. But I went to the Columbus Street Bakery for breakfast. I was there each morning last year, and of course, now I choose not to do dairy, it was inedible. My choice was so limited as to make it a really sad experience. As I have now found a close health food store I will make my own breakfast as I have it in London. At least that way I need worry less about how I eat in the day, and then there is the 5 star Japanese over the road and they do take away! I might even get some work done. That would be a pretty wild change. Usually it is such a delight to be still that I don’t get much sensible stuff done at all.

    I need to put it down that I would love to live here. It has such a great energy. Flying in and then drive towards Manhattan is just so wild. The sense of it being an island is so brought to the front by flying in to land over beaches, then seeing the crazy size of the buildings in front of me as we drove into the city, then walking around and being aware of how full it is. There are huge food shops on almost every block because there are so many poeple. But there is also a real sense of how desperately terrifying it must have been when the Twin Towers were hit. A really apocalyptic event.

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  • An exhausted vegan in Starbucks NY

    Such glamour. I am sitting in Starbucks in New York. Tired, stressed and tearful. I know I should be thrilled and fabulous, but I not.
    I have been up for hours, have a crashing headache, the courier from London with all my stuff has not delivered, the friend I am supposed to stay with is not here, but in LA and the appartment, with one bedroom has two females staying in it. I am struggling with staying positive. I really am. I just want to cry, but this is not the place, at all.

    The flight was great. I sat next to two young men from Dulwich College on their way to the their gap experience. Totally charming and delightful.
    I was met at the airport by the delightful Ankit who I have not seen for ten years, and the last time was staying with him in Gujarat. So we have both come a long way.
    I really came close to tears in the street earlier, just from total hunger. Virgin Airlines and vegan are not synonymous. I arrived totally starving. I decided that japanese was the only way forward and in the first block found a vegan japanese restaurant. Oh my it was good. I ate so fast! But so delicious. I felt, for a while, that the Gods were smiling on me. I know they are and they always do, it is just that temporarily I do not share their sense of humour. I am sure that with sleep I will improve. I will write more tomorrow.

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