Journal Entries
MAGIC BEANS
Posted Mar 6, 2005
As I take the view that Reiki is a load of bollocks, you might wonder what possessed me to book an extended session with a Reiki healer. It all started with the snow.
We live in one of the world's beauty spots, and from our house one can see a vista of crags and peaks that's enough to take the breath away. The Lord of the Rings was filmed in New Zealand, sure, but it was this landscape, our landscape, on which Tolkien based his books. This month, when it snowed on the mountains and they were all glowing pink and peach in the sunset, with their cliffs reduced to blue shadows, I was reminded yet again why I chose to come and live here.
Then the cold got into my joints. The pain was annoying, but the fact that I could barely hold a pen, when my main pastime is writing, was too much. I tried to massage my knuckles and knees and what have you, but I'd lost the strength in my fingers, so I decided to pay somebody else to do it. I already had a session booked with my osteopath, who generally hooks me up to a big machine like a giant octopus, full of arms and suckers; I cancelled this and swapped it for a massage session with someone at the same clinic. I got the Reiki healer.
I've had sessions with this woman on numerous occasions, and I usually come out feeling uppity. To be fair, she tries very hard, and I'm probably her fussiest client. I got to her treatment room to find she'd heated it up specially because I complain about the cold, and she'd brought in a blanket to drape over me; she remembered my hatred of being prodded in my Reiki-spots, whatever they're called (as far as I'm concerned, this entails being prodded in places which are not meant to be prodded, and I'm having none of it), so there was no prodding.
At the outset, I gave her a detailed description of what I wanted done. Not that it stopped her from sneaking in a bit of Reiki; I guess if it's her profession, she must believe in it. As a patient, it's easy to differentiate between remedial and Reiki massage: remedial massage is relaxing and energising, whereas Reiki massage feels like you're being rubbed (or prodded) in random spots which bear no relation to your topology, and with no discernible positive effect. I'm given to understand that some Reiki healers just sort of wave their hands about in the air above you--they must be laughing all the way to the bank.
I probably shouldn't have initiated a conversation with her, but I told her I'd been thinking about doing a firewalk in the summer. She described one that she'd done once: she thought it was her mental state that had enabled her to do it, rather than the insulating property of the charcoal. Every time I talk to her I find myself right the other end of the reality spectrum. With most people, I don't mind this at all, but therapists are different: their beliefs can be translated into actions which directly affect my health.
Anyway. By the end of the session, I admit I was relaxed. Very relaxed. I'm at my most suggestible straight after a massage / octopus session, and will agree to anything.
"Shall I mix you up a bit of oil to help your joints?" trilled the Reiki healer. "Celery seed and chamomile are good, and I can add some ginger, which is very warming."
Ginger... warming...
"That would be nice," I said, thinking how kind she was being.
"What size bottle would you like?" she asked, and the germ of an awareness that maybe I'd be required to pay for the stuff coalesced in the fog that was my brain.
"Um...," I said, trying to remember how transactions worked, "small."
So she filled a small blue bottle with carrier oil and added a few drops of essential oils from her arsenal. The fog lifted a little.
"How much will it cost?" I asked, still half-thinking I'd be getting it for free.
"Eight pounds," she said brightly. "Is that okay?"
Eight pounds! That was like a pound per drop! Eight pounds is a lot of money to me.
"Yes," I murmured, "that's fine."
So I forked out an extra eight quid on top of what I'd already paid for this *extended* massage session, for a little blue bottle of stuff that (it turned out) didn't work *at all*. Resentment began to set in on the way home. A quid per drop for a bottle of crap that smells like shit. I could have bought a bottle of Olbas Oil (which *does* work) for a quarter of the price.
The thing which really got to me was the fact that I'd spent about £1.50 on my home-made Mother's Day present--that's including card and postage--because I'd been trying to conserve money. If I had to throw away eight quid, I'd much rather have thrown it in the direction of my mother and got her something nice for Mother's Day.
Eight quid. Sheesh.
That's the *last time* I see that Reiki healer.
...And this time I mean it.
Discuss this Journal entry [16]
Latest reply: Mar 6, 2005
FLUSTERED
Posted Feb 25, 2005
I went to the corner shop yesterday to pick up some bits and pieces, and they had the radio playing in the background.
"Scientists have shown," said the DJ, "that it's possible to tell a woman's personality from the type of breasts she's got."
The young woman behind the counter burst out laughing. "Not a lot of personality in my case, then!" she remarked.
My eyes inadvertently moved to her very tight top and, flustered, I hastily scanned the display stands and tried to remember what I had come in for as the DJ wittered on. "...Sexologist at..." crisps, or was it peanuts "...University claims that, contrary to belief, women with large, rounded breasts like..." bread rolls "...are not maternally minded, but they eat a lot and they like to be pampered..." chocolate? "...and they're not very interested in sex." Four pints of milk and a TV guide. (I placed my shopping on the counter.) "On the other hand, women with small, firm..."
"Do you want anything else?" asked the shop girl in the tight top. Embarrassed, I avoided her eyes.
"...like ripe cherries..."
I remembered that her eyes were what I should have been looking at, so I looked at them and in a dignified voice said, "D-er, duh, um, no thanks," and grinned sheepishly.
She laughed again. "It's hard to concentrate with that radio on, isn't it?" she said.
I couldn't get out of the shop quick enough.
Discuss this Journal entry [10]
Latest reply: Feb 25, 2005
FLOTSAM
Posted Feb 22, 2005
I'd make a useless criminal. Everyone remembers me. I was thinking this as I was going for my walk the other day. I wander around minding my own business, and people come up to me and start talking. Aside from the youngsters and drunksters who jeer at my dress sense, I get approached by all sorts of people who seem compelled to tell me about themselves. I'm not sure whether it's the place I live in or what, but every so often a passer-by will give me a mysterious smile, as though I've triggered a memory from their childhood, or they've met me in a dream; then sometime later, I'll meet them again and they'll open a window onto some part of their private life, and allow me to look in and see what's there.
"I've seen you about," they say. Buskers, pensioners, evangelists, whoever. "I've seen you about." Sometimes they give me things, like a rare postage stamp, or a necklace, or a great grey slug.
So there I was walking past the primary school, across the road from which is a cul-de-sac of run-down council houses. My taxi driver tells me it's where the council sends all the alcoholics and drug dealers to live. A man shambled past me, smelling of booze, and he gave me one of those mysterious smiles.
Some minutes later, he appeared out of a side street and fell in step with me. "Hello," he said, "I've seen you about."
"Ah," I replied.
"How are you?" he asked me.
"I'm alright," I said, guardedly. "How are you?"
"Alright," he said, "I suppose.... Well, I could be better, to tell you the truth. I haven't been that well for a long time. But life's like that, isn't it?"
"I suppose it is."
"Whereabouts are you from?" he asked then, gazing at me like a drowning man might view a piece of flotsam.
And we strolled along the road, talking about this and that--the weather, a building site, Gothly. Like me, he seemed unable to walk very fast, and unwilling to acknowledge it. He told me he's a steelworker, "between jobs"; I told him I'm a writer.
"Poetry?" he asked.
"Yes. And other stuff."
He stopped walking. "I love poetry!" he declared. "Edgar Allen Poe: he's my favourite."
Now, normally, if someone says they like Poe, they've only read The Raven, so I smiled and said, "ah. The Raven."
"The Raven's alright," he said, but my favourite is another one."
Surprised, I asked which one. He winced as though I'd hit him, and then he whispered, "I can only tell you by saying it."
"...Go on then."
"I do believe the Lord above," he uttered huskily, and I wondered if he was about to go all religious on me...,
"Created you for me to love." His eyes screwed shut and he surveyed an internal landscape.
"He picked you out from all the rest,
"Because he knew... I'd love you best."
A tear squeezed out, and ran along the deep furrows in his face.
" I once had a heart both tied and true,
"But now it has passed from me to you.
"Take care of it as I have done,
"For now you have two, and I have none."
Another tear trickled down.
"If I get to heaven and you're not there,
"I'll write your name on the golden stair,
"So all the angels may know and see
"Just how much you mean to me.
"If you're not there...."
And he stood there in the middle of the pavement, silently crying, with the traffic hurtling past him, lost in some wilderness I could only guess at. After some minutes he drew a breath and he said,
"If you're not there by Judgement Day,
"I'll know you've gone the other way.
"I'll give the angels back their wings,
"Their halos, and those other things,
"And just to prove my love is true,
"I'll go to Hell to be with you."
He opened his eyes. The spell was broken. Not knowing what else to say, I said, "Edgar Allen Poe?" (I had thought I knew all Poe's poems, but I didn't know this one.)
"Edgar Allen Poe," he agreed. As we set off down the road I felt that some further response was required of me, so I said, "he lost his wife when he was quite young."
The man began to cry again. "My wife walked out on me," he sobbed. "Years ago. She went to South America. I've never loved anybody else. She took my daughter with her.... My daughter will be twenty-eight now."
And then our routes diverged, and he shook my hand warmly in farewell. "It's been *really* good meeting you," he said, "*really* good." And he gave me another of those mysterious smiles--as though... as though.
Discuss this Journal entry [21]
Latest reply: Feb 22, 2005
NORMALITY
Posted Feb 1, 2005
I like Gothly's parents: they're so... *normal*. So... you know, humdrum and "middle-class". I used to think such people only existed in books by Enid Blyton. They live a quiet life in a detached house in the countryside, with a conservatory where visitors can sip lemonade and gaze out at Gothmum's flowerbeds and miniature fruit trees and tomato plants (which really *are* tomato plants); they own a jacuzzi, and matching living-room furniture, and dining sets which never get thrown at the walls; they go abroad twice a year, and regularly set up a projector screen so that other family members can fall asleep to their holiday snaps of footpaths, distant mountains, picnic tables and shrubbery. They like to talk about literature, science and philosophy, only without banging any tables with their fists, or shouting anybody down, or needing regular recaps of the whole conversation owing to being too trashed to remember what they're talking about. Yes, Gothly's parents are wonderful--but sometimes, I feel a little out of place.
Three weeks ago, Gothly's sister had a baby boy, and a stream of relations came to stay with Gothly's parents in order to meet the new arrival. Gothly and I went over there last weekend to socialise. Inevitably, the conversation turned to my tarantula, and thence to other phobias.
"I don't like worms," opined one of Gothly's uncles in the theatrical baritone he uses on and off the stage. "Anything little that wriggles, I don't like; but big snakes I don't have a problem with at all."
"When have *you* had an opportunity to hold a big snake?" asked Gothdad.
"I was at a leather bar," said the uncle, "watching a man do a nude snake-dance; I bought him a drink, and he let me hold his python."
Normality.
Discuss this Journal entry [17]
Latest reply: Feb 1, 2005
GIVE ME STRENGTH
Posted Dec 12, 2004
Is it just me, or has anyone else out there got a parent who spends most of their time behaving like a pathologically naive teenage delinquent?
How does one deal with it? How does one get through to them?
Discuss this Journal entry [19]
Latest reply: Dec 12, 2004
Snailrind
Researcher U516766
Write an Entry
"The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is a wholly remarkable book. It has been compiled and recompiled many times and under many different editorships. It contains contributions from countless numbers of travellers and researchers."