A hot day back at the Sussex coast. I’m lying on a lambswool rug at the end of a long day with Lou and Mao. Mao is ridiculously cute as ever – very few creatures could piss all over your favourite things and still earn our unconditional love. Lou is pretty cute too. She’s watching “The wisdom of trauma” with Gabor Maté and actually I think that’s how I’m going to spend the next hour.
Well that was worth it. He’s a remarkable man and his work is important more than ever. We all need to be as in touch with ourselves as we can be right now. We are coming out of an event that has shattered so much humanity, driven huge wedges between people, polarised and traumatised most of the population of the world in some way. Compassion and understanding are going to go a long way in the next decade, especially as the machine is going to start to try to click into gear and tell us to forget by buying and numbing and dying. If you’re not aware of the man and his work, it’s worth catching it – as much for the intense humanity of Caroline Campbell’s photography as the content and the way it’s all been arranged. A good watch. An advert for Gabor Maté, sure, but carrying much food for deep thought, and maybe catalysing others to move into similar work.
Good to have a warm contemplation like that after such a glorious peaceful day. From one coastline to the next, we went to Eastbourne and walked through The Italian Garden and the lush littoral landscape of our neighbouring seaside town, before taking ourselves down to a quiet patch of sea near the Holy Well, far from the madding crowd, and swimming. Now I’ve got used to getting in the water I want to do it more and more despite the fact that my left ear has been half dead and full of water for the last month. We cooked and swam and cooked and swam. The well itself is a quiet spot on a beach, full of chalky fresh water, frequented by the inevitable young man with a guitar who is in a band and hitting on somebody.
I’m glad of the summer. Been waiting for it a long time. Happy to have been in familiar company like this for the whole day. I was getting to miss that ease that you get in very familiar company. The Mornington has carried with me though despite being in a single room alone. The packed lunch has adjusted my habits. It seems a month is enough. I’m eating fruit now, and I get hungry at breakfast time where I’d normally just have coffee. Then at lunch I want a snack.
I’m sure Gabor Maté would tell me that my history of bad eating habits comes out of childhood trauma. But it seems all I needed was a month in a cheap hotel.
AlBarclay 