Greensborough.
Trip Start
Nov 20, 2007
1
4
12
Trip End
Jul 31, 2007
Melbourne,
Australia
Thursday, February 7, 2008
The past couple of months have been crazy, particular the last month where the intensity of my experiences has left me reeling. I'm sat in my pad at Greensborough using Graces' computer. She's been away at her parents who live near her brother, Lifeon, who has just become a father of his fourth boy. They are a lovely family I spent my Christmas with them in the sun eating fish, drinking bubbly stuff, singing, playing my reco-reco along to two eukeleles. I have no idea how you spell it, it's a tiny little guitar things with four strings.
Yes so here I am in Greensborough in Australia. My head is a little bit swimming at the moment. I've come home to recoup and re-evaluate. I've very much spent my time going with the flow, saying yes to whatever is presented before me. A couple of big Festivals, a short road trip where I got some fantastic Koala shots. (My apologies I still have this real mental block when it comes to getting pictures off my camera on to a computer etc, I'm figuring I'll shove them all onto a disc cos I need to free up some memory) I've got a great recording of it eating. I climbed a tree and hung out with it for some twenty minutes. That was a bit naughty of me cos your meant to leave them alone but I couldn't help myself it was so lovely and cuddly, we held eye contact for ages and ages some ten minutes or so and it felt so soothing and comforting looking in the Koalas eyes. that memory will always retain a real depth to it. That was down the Great Ocean Road a place I plan to travel down again, perhaps soon because my trip was only a few days and never really hung out anywhere. . . . Shared meals, love interests, hanging out, visiting places, loads of tree climbing.
I met a wonderful woman over the New Year and we had a beautiful sharing. Lots of energy exchanges which some people would call healing. We kind of did the falling in love thing....the "your so beautiful and wonderful and the way we interact is incredible" which was superb. However intensities like that change and I'm not really in a space where a relationship is what I need to work on. What I need to work on is myself and my direction. I've had heaps of what people term healing, heaps and heaps and those of you who know me well will know that that will have dredged up a lot of stuff to do with my childhood and the community. It's been pretty full on!! Some of it great wonderful superb other parts make we want to scream shout cry. Much joy and much pain.
There is something I'd like to share with you. Over the past five to seven years I've had moments where my body goes into spontaneous spasms. In the beginning I managed to keep it at bay fairly easily, through the use of cigarettes, alcohol and occasionally the old mary Jane, or alternatively it was through running, Capoeira, cycling, theatre. When I got to Uni it became more persistent and I'd have to put more effort into keeping my hand, arm leg foot from twitching. Most commonly it was in Lectures and social situations. Social situations I put it down to nervousness and would drink or smoke more which seemed to do the trick My heart would stop entering some sort of panic mode and the shivers up my spine would cease. I used the booze and fags cos I found it preferable to experiencing these spasms of movement in public. You know when you get a real fright or shock and the spine tingles twitches maybe the body leaps of the ground, it was kinda like that. I didn't really know why it was happening and certainly didn't want to have to start explaining myself. so yes I utilized beer, fags....and Pool played a lot a that at Uni. Of course I couldn't do that in lectures. No you can't sit there with a pint taking notes...lol....I utilised another technique which worked pretty well. I dug my nails into my hand, if that was threatening not to work I used my legs or belly because I didn't want to leave marks that others would see. This pretty much worked and got me through lectures without my whole body spasmsing, occasionally I would forget and my whole body would jolt up off my seat my thighs crashing into the desk, arms would kind of flit in the air. Pretty weird stuff. Physically it didn't hurt at all, in fact it was very relaxing but I didn't want to be taken for a weirdo so I kept my mouth shut and employed what tactics I knew.
When I came back from Ghana, a bit of a physical wreck, couldn't study or anything barely get myself food and stuff, I had incidences where I was lying on my bed and for ten fifteen minutes at a time my whole body would be spasming, even thoughn I weas lying there horizontally 'out for the count' as it were.....my body was twitching like crazy...so vigorously that half the time my body would be off the bed entirely. Once again I'd like to mention that physically it was extremely comfortably and extremely relaxing even though it was unnerving, afterwards it felt like I'd had the best shake out in the world. Sounds would also erupt out of me and I was glad the house was empty. If I tried to stop the twitching.....my head would be lashed with pain, hard shooting pains smashing out from my brain to my skull...Like so Youch!!! it was better to twitch. Throughout the process of my fatigue this twitching carried on sometimes mild sometimes jolting my whole body off the bed. Generally I didn't talk to anyone about it. It was weird but it didn't feel dangerous..in fact it seemed friendly, but at the same time I wanted it to stop because I felt it wasn't normal.
I began to recognise that emotions were associated with it, it took years to hone in ...at first I just start getting the inkling that some stored memories were being released but I wasn't sure it seemed to occur for loads of different reasons. However over the past couple of months I am beginning to feel stronger and stronger that I have some stored memories that my mind has stuck behind a blank wall. I still have moments of shaking and spasming, now they generally happen when I'm extremely relaxed or tired...my body just kicks in and when I feel I have to stop it, (which most of the time I can) it hurts....mostly psychologically and emotionally. It it from those thoughts and feelings there texture and sensations, that my reasoning has honed in on events around the community as being some sort of trigger. This realisation has been shaping itself much more clearly over the last year or so (which is also approximately the timescale in which I have had enough strength to return to full time work). I get into states where I'm saying "no no no no no no" over and over again In states like that I cry a lot ...and if I stop crying I go back to twitching.....sometimes from the crying I want to scream and shout and basically go ballistic but with the exception of Buqi healing and a couple of other episodes I didn't, stopping myself from shouting and basically expressing some serious deep animal hurt via basically holding my breath for a ridiculously long time...over and over again..that would lead me back to the shaking.
Just recently a friend offered me some Kinesiology and ...wahoooooee the twitching started off.....the "no no no no" started going round in my mind...as though I was saying it to some one.....and then scenes from the community would kind of appear in my mind, I couldn't say they were clear...but they were there...and the more it occurs the more vivid they have began to appear. Basically scenes of violence towards myself or others. In the kinesiology session I started experiencing new words rattling round my head and blurting out my mouth..."get off me get off me get off me" in this crying little boys voice. simultaneously my arms were flying up in front of my face....
It was so emotionally painful....I felt on the edge of letting something go ...letting something out that I've felt for several years that I need to do in order move forward. This Kernel of stuff is most definitely linked to my reactional self-defensive modes, to my negative framing....to my cutting everything apart and my difficulties in maintaining a positive view about basically absolutely everything about me myself and others. I'm massively better now or I wouldn't have been able to crawl...drag ..fight...climb..leap out of the state I was in that some termed M.E some termed Chronic Fatigue without making some big headway on this. Nevertheless it's still there. It seems to me that it's a long stored habit of preparing myself for when everything goes wrong or when the smile turns into something much more malevolent. A habit I feel I no longer need but am finding hard to let go. I have to do more than psychologically recognise that I need to let it go....that that lens no longer serves me in a positive way. I have fully accepted that psychologically on a conscious rational level but nevertheless I'm still reacting from that space. Lovers become threatening..imposing.....hobbies become useless pointless..nothing seems to matter...I become wary of friends and family in quite extreme ways. panicking that they are going to shun me...It seems so absurd yet it happened and it happens still. I am fully fully convinced that all this behaviour is related to the twitching which is related to the crying which is related to this raw animal stuff which is related to my childhood. Over the years my emotions and psychological states in the twitching the near twitching and my relationships with others and the external world I have come to see that it's one and the same thing. My personal experiences gathered over the years show me that the eveidence is overwhelming in drawing these links. It's moved beyond a theory which is just another bundle of words and opinions in the ether of what might be but is built upon observations and recognitions that this is so.
Why has this come up in a travel log. Well you've all heard the saying that you can't escape from nothing from running away......or the saying that you can't learn anything travelling that you couldn't at home....Hmmm very incorrect quotes feel free to correct me......Anyhow Wherever you go...whatever you do....Whoever your with you can never get away from your own internal processes. They will come up....There is no doubt. Either they come up and get worked with and undergo a transformation or they get rammed back down. I know you'll all have skeletons that pop up that a) you don't want to except or b)are so painful, confusing, and bewildering that you concsiously push them away or c) your intuition tells you something so far fetched that you cant possibly accept it to be true.
We know several ways of ramming them away....WORK WORK WORK becoming work obsessed so one never has to listen to ones internal self....DRINK DRINK DRINK well we've all seen alcoholics spouting their issues whilst extremly drunk....SEX SEX SEX always needing somebody there to give the body a rush a wave of emotions and adrenalin that takes them away from listening to themselves. EXERCISE EXERCISE EXERCISE Never sitting still and experiencing the emotions.....Feel free to throw your examples into a reply. As you can see none of the above is essentially a bad thing. Work is essential to provide us with food and housing transport and leisure. It gives us a sense of purpose and a satisfaction of accomplishment. Alcohol loosens the tongue, the constraint on emotions and thought and can bring a great dose of laughter to a group. How have I heard it termed as?..Oh yes a Social Lubricant. Sex well sex is beautiful...it creates a space of exceptionally wonderful and intimate sharing... and has the ability to enable conception which creates our future generations. So they are all marvellous but as with anything can be used to excess.
So what's my point? Well to start with my swimming head has disappeared. The process or writing which I intend to share has made me feel a lot lighter and it passes through my head that a few of you might have something useful triggered in yourself from reading this. It is also important for me to share. Partly to share with friends but also partly to share of myself and my personal experience because it is through others opening up and sharing their essence of experience that helps and inspires us. My humble opinion.
The experience of living, being alive and what that means is still a huge unknown to a gigantic amount of people. What is this life? Why are we leading it? If anything exists at all does it not follow that anything you could possibly conceive could occur too? I've never had much time for boxed in realities the idea that I or anyone should spend there life earning money having children, paying taxes and then die is laughable....That doesn't mean that one shouldn't earn money have a lovely house do altruistic work and have beautiful children ...it just means that there is so much more to this marvel of existence. Pretty obvious huh? Yet these are the golden goblets held up high by so very many of us.
I suppose I should make a conclusion. Loads of internal messy stuff has been bubbling up. I'm being given a great chance to work with it, the skills learnt over my lifetime are coalescing to help me in this process. I place a profound importance on this process in order for me to become a stronger and more wholesome being simultaneously for my own experience and my interaction with others and the planet. I truly believe the ability to love oneself is such a remarkable gift to the world. I have always been most inspired by those in who love shines outwards. sometimes it's just been in moments, perhaps from their work or their hobbies, perhaps through intellectual stimulation. For me there is nothing like the childlike enthusiasm that exhibits itself as a state of love for what one is doing. When I was in my teens this is what I wanted to be able to offer people, a glow that resonates and is picked up by others. It's a dream and a dream well worth having.
I'd love to hear stories from people, about dreams, cosy moments, family sharing, the glow from a child, the passion your work gave you, a picture of the seasons where you live. It will really make a difference and help me feel connected. Either post an entry on my blog or write to me personally sam.miles@gmail.com.
Oh yes something splendid and marvellous. My wrists have been mending themselves fantastically and I am beginning to be able to play on my hands again. Oh yes Joie de vivre. This body is ready for play and new ways of moving. My Ki for life exercises have been re-integrated as part of my daily life and they are constantly teaching me something new. Oh and I've clocked the 720 jump. Very Simple. If you can do a 360 you can do a seven twenty. Stand with one arm out to the side and the other bent at the elbow forearm going across the body, jump the 360 then whip your arms across your body so the bent arm is out and the straight arm is bent. Let me know if you succeed!! ?It's great fun and highly satisfying.
A friend was telling me of their dance teacher who was in his eighties who could still do a triple twist whilst showing no effort. This reminded me that is is all about technique, and gave me stimulation to attempt to work it out again. I quickly discovered that whipping the arms across just after you leap is fruitless, and so I decided to try it at the end of the jump. and hey presto it worked. I worked that out in October whilst I was out visiting my daughter. She was asleep having an afternoon nap and I was out on the Balcony. It made me smile over and over.
And!!! Let's not forget Dolly, she is having a wonderful time, she has been hanging out in the living room,watching social events seeing the room change about....virtually every week. She's met a couple of friends, a lovely boy wit golden blond hair and a red smile, he looks like a bright bubbly lad who grew up on a farm and along with him is a lovely pink pig so proud of her jacket who looks up adoringly at Dolly with her long long auburn hair. She's taken to wearing a feather in her hair, a habit the lads taken on to. They're communning with each other on a lovely soft woolen poncho (courtesy of a forgetful person at the St Werburghs City Farm Cafe, it was there for months until I decided it would be great company) So there they are perched in the living room adorned with crystals. Nice chunks of Rose Quartz and Danubrite, with broken Bismuth scattered around. It looks beautiful. She is ready for a road trip soon. She keeps whispering to me that she wants to make a book about the Great Ocean Road, which I think is a wonderful idea. It's funny last time she didn't want to come she told me that she was very happy having lovely dreams with her crystals and her new feather....and now she tells me she wants to write a book...it's a lucky thing I'd like to go there again. We have collected photos and notes for a small book about Tasmania. She had great fun there. She suggested that she could say one sentence for the child that conveys emotion and enthusiasm about the place and then I could throw in an interesting fact for the adults. We thought the book could be for 0-5 years. A hard book that a baby could chew on, but also something that could intrigue an older child, who might ask a question that the adult themselves would need to research, and to help this out we came up with the idea of putting some weblinks on the back page and if something drew the readers interest they could go and find out more about it. It could be Geographical, geological, related to flora and fauna, even social issues like logging,
I'll give you an example of a page..........in due time.
Thank you for reading....I've been thinking about my log for a while....not particularly wanting to sit in front of a computer screen. A couple of times I'd gone to log on and got a huge headache, something that in ReverseThereapy is called a signal, telling me something about my present situation and what I need to do. So I patiently waited for the right time. It has occurred to me many times that if I hadn't become so out of ease with myself then I wouldn't take things like that seriously, well I never used to I would have forced myself. It's pretty tough sometimes because I still get signals, as Kyle said I'll always get signals, only I don't always know how to respond to them. But the difference is , is that now I take them a lot more seriously again not as a theory but as something that has proven to be invaluable to my life and quite detrimental if I just go on ignoring it.
Thanks for your time in reading my rambles. I hope your able to navigate my somewhat random links and inconclusive thought patterns. It's somewhat a mirror of where I am, not everything makes perfect sense and at times I'm greatly confused but there are also many splendid moments where my love shines forth. Here's to moments where our love shines forth . Blessings on you all. I wouldn't be writing this blog or living my adventures as I am if it wasn't for each and everyone of you. And a special loveliness to all those who have children. It's always worth dreaming in a world of harmony and striving in our little ways to make it achievable. I feel blessed that the majority of people that I know hold this as an integral part of their life. It's beautiful and should give us all hope.
