Dear friends, I'm continuing my open diary as I weave through the Luberon Valley in Donna, my campervan. I hope it might inspire someone else with their own van dreams. But more so, to illustrate how writing a diary impacts my noticing and sharpens my spirit. One of the paradoxes of busyness is that unless you step outside it, you never have a point of true orientation. Sometimes you have to step outside time to be inside time. W.B. Yeats wrote, "The world is full of magic things, patiently waiting for our senses to grow sharper." A question: do you take time for the act of noticing? What if this act of seeing is our spirit's key to unlocking our next chapter? A metaphor I like is that of the frantic man building his ladder. He's so consumed by the work that it's only when he climbs it that he realises he's placed it against the wrong wall. With our distracted modern mindset and our desire for success, we pay the least attention to what may prove the most important aspect of our lives: noticing. For this reason, I choose to spend time alone in the van. It is not a desire to cut myself off, it is the desire to plug myself in. You leave the world to reach the world. In this, Donna has become something of a spiritual guide. There is a culture "out there". And there is a culture "in here". Nowhere do I see it more than on my solo trips. Sometimes the edges are hard to lean into. But in leaning into them something shifts in me. It's for these reasons I decided to share my diary. It's where my "act of noticing" unfolds; and where my breakthroughs happen in their miniature, uncertain, convoluted ways. In this, a diary is not about observation, but a continuing act of faith. You can read it below, but here are my takeaways from the week: 1) Make time for the act of noticing; no matter how small or short. If it's a busy period, take that half hour. 2) We view culture as the ongoing symphony of life manifesting around us. We forget that it begins in the heart of a person. You are that person. The bane of modernity; that distraction has fractured our spirit. Make recovering your mind not just a commitment, but a value. What works for me is: a) writing a diary each day b) setting time aside daily to "listen". Life is always speaking to us. The only question is: are we willing to hear it? With love, Jim Monday 17th April 2023 Bonnieux I notice the pattern now. When my shadow stalks me, I move on. Is it running? If so, it's proving a rather effective defence. The shock of the new acts like a plunge pool. One's shadow is feline and detests the chill of novelty. Something is propelling me around the Luberon Valley, beyond its majesty. A complexity of motives. Funny, how groups adopt collective nouns. A pack of wolves. A gaggle of geese. A chorus of angels. A complexity of motives? Yes, I will group them as a complexity. How else can I reflect their absurd range? How a song steers me from joy to tears on the foothills around Saint-Saturnin. How the devil appears and drives my mind into the blackness at the Fontaine-de-Vaucluse. How the caress of nature embalmed my heart at Saint-Martin-de-Castillon. How the calm of Bonnieux brought unexpected peace. We neuter our emotions in the modern world. Ritalin for this. Prozac for that. Travelling solo subjects you to the rainbow of emotions that exist within you. It cascades here, arrives as a torrent there, disappears as quick as the tide or drenches you like a flash flood. It is severity and then it is absence. But all must be lived. Our devastation is that we have grown suspicious of our extremes. Yet they come to shake us out of our monotony, to reveal a repressed potential, to radicalise our lives when we believe ourselves to be set. I have known loneliness on this brief trip. It is a blunt dagger. I have also felt the hammer atomise me into the 1000 shards. Kaleidoscopes collide. You don't realise it. But you fragment to return. You etherise to understand. You are the millions that dared to become one.
Tuesday, April 19th Bonnieux I had a thought, and then it pirouetted away. I remain stationed in Bonnieux, Donna protecting the southside of the city, nestled under the brow of the Neuve-Église. On waking the sky was satin blue, as if eulogising the landscape. Then a cluster of clouds arrived like a vast enemy mist, subverting the perfection. Funny, how one moment you are ready to stay forever, the next wondering if it's time to leave. Turns out the stars do control our lives. We only notice it when the clouds blot out the sun. In any case, I am grateful to Bonnieux. It blessed me with its peace, and let me in a while. After some of the brusquer emotions of the journey, working out my recent past, I arrived in time. Yes, there are exigencies: calls with clients, the business of life, and one's unending effort to live up to oneself. But a muscle in my mind has relaxed. With its reboot, you are welcomed back into the moment: "Oh, there you are, we missed you!" Spring arrives. It asks questions of us. What seeds did you sow in the barren winter? Are you ready to tend to them? To encourage their germination? Will you cultivate new patterns this year? But most pertinently; are you ready to be in time? Whether fighting for the first germination, already in full bloom or first fading: we are in the heartbeat of things. Don't forget today. Set aside the past. Forgive yourself. Give thanks for little things. Ready yourself for growth. Remember: This life, right now. Read on for my encounter with death.
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