I've decided to merge my two blogs into one place and to do that on Wordpress mainly because I like the tag cloud widget.
If you're looking for me, from now on you'll find me here
Saturday, 27 December 2008
Wednesday, 17 December 2008
Vivir con miedo es como vivir a medias #2
So after the DOOM of my last post, I thought I should write something about the exhilaration of being alive. A couple of weeks ago I spoke to some people who have done some extraordinary things by overcoming their fears. One was Sara Campbell, a former yoga teacher who realised she could hold her breath for a really long time, took up free diving and broke three world records in 48 hours when she was still a beginner. Another was Shaun Baker, an extreme kayaker and Glenn Singleman who holds the world record for the highest ever wingsuit jump.
They are living proof that humanity is capable of achieving quite extraordinary things when we don’t let our fear cripple us. None of them are without fear. In fact, Baker talked about having panic attacks and flashbacks to accidents every time he gets into his kayak. But they go ahead and do extraordinary things anyway.
So here’s a couple of their stories:
Baker:
‘I’ve never felt more exhilarated than when I know I’ve cheated death. There are two distinct ways of getting away with it: when you nearly have the accident but don’t and when you have the accident but survive it.
I kayaked over a waterfall in Iceland whose name in English is Waterfall of Thieves because they used to drown thieves under its force. I reached the bottom and was held underwater for more than a minute. I hadn’t taken a full breath before going under and I was being swirled around thinking “I can’t believe I’m going to die this way”. I thought if I was going to die kayaking that it would be quick – smashing my head on a rock. When I surfaced I was so surprised to be alive. It brought it home to me how important my friends are. I had a real feeling that life is special.
Another time I was doing a 19.7 metre waterfall and needed to land between two basalt rocks. I thought I’d cleared it but I hit it, my helmet came off but it didn’t undo the chin strap and it cut my wind pipe. The pain was so intense I thought my head had been ripped off. The only pain I could feel was in my head not my body and I thought “This is how it feels to be decapitated”. I saw the crash helmet and thought “That’s my head”, and the realised I wouldn’t be able to see my head if it was floating away from me. That was a pretty exhilarating moment.’
Campbell:
‘There is one dive that will stick with me for the rest of my life. I had pre-announced a 73 metre dive. You pre-announce how deep you are going to go, so your buddy can wait for you at 20 metres. They need to know how long it is going to take you to get down so they can meet you and hold their breath long enough to bring you back up and carry your weight if you lose consciousness. After you’ve declared your depth, you mark your rope so you can’t dive any deeper.
I was mid-dive when I thought “This is quite a long dive”, but I concentrated on equalising my ears and I stayed calm. When I came back up to the surface my safety diver said she’d been about to pass out. I looked at my depth gauge and I had set it wrong in the computer and done ten metres extra. The world record at that time was 88 metres and I had just done 83 with relative ease. I had achieved that dive without very much effort at all and that was when I realised I was capable of breaking the world record. I had this amazing excitement but I didn’t want anyone to know, because there were other people there who were training really hard to try for the world record.
I had the childish excitement of knowing I’d done something amazing but having to keep it secret.”
They are living proof that humanity is capable of achieving quite extraordinary things when we don’t let our fear cripple us. None of them are without fear. In fact, Baker talked about having panic attacks and flashbacks to accidents every time he gets into his kayak. But they go ahead and do extraordinary things anyway.
So here’s a couple of their stories:
Baker:
‘I’ve never felt more exhilarated than when I know I’ve cheated death. There are two distinct ways of getting away with it: when you nearly have the accident but don’t and when you have the accident but survive it.I kayaked over a waterfall in Iceland whose name in English is Waterfall of Thieves because they used to drown thieves under its force. I reached the bottom and was held underwater for more than a minute. I hadn’t taken a full breath before going under and I was being swirled around thinking “I can’t believe I’m going to die this way”. I thought if I was going to die kayaking that it would be quick – smashing my head on a rock. When I surfaced I was so surprised to be alive. It brought it home to me how important my friends are. I had a real feeling that life is special.
Another time I was doing a 19.7 metre waterfall and needed to land between two basalt rocks. I thought I’d cleared it but I hit it, my helmet came off but it didn’t undo the chin strap and it cut my wind pipe. The pain was so intense I thought my head had been ripped off. The only pain I could feel was in my head not my body and I thought “This is how it feels to be decapitated”. I saw the crash helmet and thought “That’s my head”, and the realised I wouldn’t be able to see my head if it was floating away from me. That was a pretty exhilarating moment.’
Campbell:
‘There is one dive that will stick with me for the rest of my life. I had pre-announced a 73 metre dive. You pre-announce how deep you are going to go, so your buddy can wait for you at 20 metres. They need to know how long it is going to take you to get down so they can meet you and hold their breath long enough to bring you back up and carry your weight if you lose consciousness. After you’ve declared your depth, you mark your rope so you can’t dive any deeper.I was mid-dive when I thought “This is quite a long dive”, but I concentrated on equalising my ears and I stayed calm. When I came back up to the surface my safety diver said she’d been about to pass out. I looked at my depth gauge and I had set it wrong in the computer and done ten metres extra. The world record at that time was 88 metres and I had just done 83 with relative ease. I had achieved that dive without very much effort at all and that was when I realised I was capable of breaking the world record. I had this amazing excitement but I didn’t want anyone to know, because there were other people there who were training really hard to try for the world record.
I had the childish excitement of knowing I’d done something amazing but having to keep it secret.”
Friday, 12 December 2008
Notes on hope #1
Dignity.
From the Latin dignitas, meaning worth.
The title of songs by Deacon Blue and Bob Dylan.
A word often paired with death.
A right asserted in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
A value inseparable, according to Immanuel Kant, from the nature of humanity itself.
To be human and alive is to have dignity, or worth.
I’ve been thinking a bit about dying with dignity recently. Not that I am planning my death. It just seems to keep cropping up in my thoughts.
I thought about it on Wednesday when the Crown Prosecution Service announced it was not going to prosecute the parents of 23 year old Daniel James, and when they debated the rights and wrongs of showing the assisted suicide of 59 year old Craig Ewart on Radio 4’s Today programme.
I thought about it on Tuesday when I heard that one of the young people I used to work with tragically took an overdose and died, aged 17, after battling clinical depression throughout his teens.
I wondered if there is ever any dignity in suicide, regardless of the reason?
I thought about it a couple of weeks ago when I read about 13 year old Hannah Jones who won a court battle to refuse a heart transplant and live out the rest of her days with her family.
I wonder how someone so young could make such a firm choice about how she lives her life.
I thought about it just over a month ago when I spoke to Denise Cooper about how her terminally ill husband was nursed through the final stages of brain cancer at home.
I wonder how much more dignified it is to die surrounded by your family than surrounded by machines and monitors.
I thought about it on Armistice Day, and wondered whether dying for your country retains any dignity. Did the days of patriotic sacrifice end with the realities and indignities of modern warfare?
Like I say, I’ve been thinking about it for a while.
And the conclusion I’ve come to is that dignity in death doesn’t come from the way you die, where you die, how you die, or why you die. Dignity in death comes from the life you live until you die, the worth you believe yourself to have, regardless of what state you find yourself in. Which rules out suicide in any form as a dignified end, or the impersonal death of a hospital ward, or the death of a soldier in a meaningless war.
Because dying with dignity doesn’t mean going with a good quality of health, or in a grand gesture, but dying with love for others and having been loved, being full of hope rather than despair, believing your life had a purpose and a meaning that had been fulfilled.
To believe there is no purpose or meaning to your life is to lose the will to live. To believe there is no hope is to lose the will to live. To believe that no-one could or does love you or that you have no one to love is to lose the will to live.
So these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.
From the Latin dignitas, meaning worth.
The title of songs by Deacon Blue and Bob Dylan.
A word often paired with death.
A right asserted in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
A value inseparable, according to Immanuel Kant, from the nature of humanity itself.
To be human and alive is to have dignity, or worth.
I’ve been thinking a bit about dying with dignity recently. Not that I am planning my death. It just seems to keep cropping up in my thoughts.
I thought about it on Wednesday when the Crown Prosecution Service announced it was not going to prosecute the parents of 23 year old Daniel James, and when they debated the rights and wrongs of showing the assisted suicide of 59 year old Craig Ewart on Radio 4’s Today programme.
I thought about it on Tuesday when I heard that one of the young people I used to work with tragically took an overdose and died, aged 17, after battling clinical depression throughout his teens.
I wondered if there is ever any dignity in suicide, regardless of the reason?
I thought about it a couple of weeks ago when I read about 13 year old Hannah Jones who won a court battle to refuse a heart transplant and live out the rest of her days with her family.
I wonder how someone so young could make such a firm choice about how she lives her life.
I thought about it just over a month ago when I spoke to Denise Cooper about how her terminally ill husband was nursed through the final stages of brain cancer at home.
I wonder how much more dignified it is to die surrounded by your family than surrounded by machines and monitors.
I thought about it on Armistice Day, and wondered whether dying for your country retains any dignity. Did the days of patriotic sacrifice end with the realities and indignities of modern warfare?
Like I say, I’ve been thinking about it for a while.
And the conclusion I’ve come to is that dignity in death doesn’t come from the way you die, where you die, how you die, or why you die. Dignity in death comes from the life you live until you die, the worth you believe yourself to have, regardless of what state you find yourself in. Which rules out suicide in any form as a dignified end, or the impersonal death of a hospital ward, or the death of a soldier in a meaningless war.
Because dying with dignity doesn’t mean going with a good quality of health, or in a grand gesture, but dying with love for others and having been loved, being full of hope rather than despair, believing your life had a purpose and a meaning that had been fulfilled.
To believe there is no purpose or meaning to your life is to lose the will to live. To believe there is no hope is to lose the will to live. To believe that no-one could or does love you or that you have no one to love is to lose the will to live.
So these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.
Thursday, 20 November 2008
His Eye is on the Sparrow
‘Consider the birds of the air, they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they?’
The verse that inspired many songs with the lyrics ‘his eye is on the sparrow’ has thrown me into something of a panic. The news today was that the sparrow population has decreased by 68 per cent in the past thirty years, in London by 60 per cent just between 1994 and 2004.
Dr Will Peach of the RSPB said every pair of house sparrows must raise at least five chicks a year to maintain the population, but many were starving to death in their nests or were too weak to live long after fledging.
‘Peanuts and seeds are great for birds for most of the year, but sparrows need insects in summer - and lots of them - to feed their hungry young,’ quotes the BBC news website.
Which begs the question – if the sparrows are starving, has God taken his eye off them? And if he’s taken his eye off them, is he still keeping an eye on me?
Friday, 11 April 2008
Vivir con miedo es como vivir a medias
"Fear is an emotional response to tangible and realistic dangers. Fear should be distinguished from anxiety, an emotion that often arises out of proportion to the actual threat or danger involved, and can be subjectively experienced without any specific attention to the threatening object."
wikipedia
Imagine the scene. I am eleven years old and I am away for the first time on an adventure weekend in, of all places, Nelson, East Lancashire. I'm excited about being away with a whole group of older teenagers, feeling a little bit privileged to be there and part of a 'cooler' older crowd. On the Saturday afternoon, we are taken on a minibus, to a rock face somewhere Penine-esque. I vividly remember sitting behind the girl I really wanted to be like who was snogging the face off her boyfriend the whole journey.
The plan was that we would climb up one section of the rockface and then abseil down and if we enjoyed it, we would walk back up to the top and abseil down a longer stretch.
We all got harnessed up and given the talk about how safe we were, how we were attached to someone and to the rock itself, how we couldn't plummet to our deaths.
One by one we climbed up the rock until it was my turn. It wasn't massively high, even in my memory, but there was one section where there was a large boulder that we had to reach over and find a handhold to pull ourselves over. The nack to this it seemed was to let the guy at the top pull you up slightly so that you could reach.
But, when it came to my turn I discovered that my harness was trapping a very sensitive small piece of skin right in my crotch and it hurt so much when he tugged that I cried.
Everyone thought it was because I was afraid of heights, someone climbed up behind me, helped me down and I sat and cried at the bottom, partly from pain, partly from embarassment that I didn't do it. And because I didn't climb up I didn't get to abseil either. The assumption was, and everyone told me, that I was afraid of heights, and it was okay, because no-one would force me to do anything.
Therein began my 'fear of heights'. I believed what they said, completely swallowed it and have been scared ever since of climbing and abseiling or anything similar. I have abseiled and really enjoyed it, but it never occured to me that I didn't actually have a fear. Of course I did. I was just being brave and getting over it.
This week, the company I work for took us all out on a team day to a Go Ape high ropes course in the woodland round Leeds Castle, in Kent. I was understandably anxious. You have to climb up things, dangle from heights and keep your balance and then at the end throw yourself into the air and whizz down a zipwire. And I'm scared of heights, right?
There were others in the office who were also feeling anxious about the day so I felt slightly reassured that we could all bottle it together. Until, that is, I was set to write about how many calories you could burn while doing the course. Which meant I would have to do the whole thing wearing a heart rate monitor. No get out, no chickening out. I had to do it.
Two nights before we went I had anxiety dreams about falling off tree platforms and ropes.
But then weirdly, I felt completely calm about it. I don't know if it's because I wasn't the most scared person in the office. Or whether it was because I knew that I had to do it, so I just got my head down and didn't think about it. But when it came to it I felt surreally calm.
I did the whole course and only felt scared twice, once when I got stuck on a high wire bent the wrong way like a banana because I lost my balance, and the other time climbing the last rope ladder up to the next section of course when my left leg went into spasm and I couldn't move it. What I enjoyed the most was stepping off the platform into nothingness. The one thing that you would think would be the worst part for someone who is scared of heights.
There were people who were genuinely terrified and either did everything with a slow, methodical and silent concentration, or who gripped every tree for grim death and at some points cried.
I just didn't feel that fear. Not at all.
Which leads me to think that actually I'm not scared of heights.
What I'm scared of is failure and looking foolish in front of other people. What I don't like is having my weaknesses pointed out to me. And because I'm not the most physical or agile person, perhaps adventure ropes courses, climbing, bouldering and abseiling etc are things to avoid for that very reason. It all began that day when I was eleven, but it wasn't fear of heights that I gained there.
And because my workmates are nice and not bullies I actually really enjoyed myself. It's not like it was when I was a teenager anymore.
I feel amazing that I'm not scared anymore.
After all, 'a life lived in fear is a life half-lived'.
Sunday, 30 March 2008
The Kindness of Strangers
A couple of weeks ago, Gayle, my housemate, and I went for a drink to catch up with each other. We might share a flat but that doesn't mean that we're ever in it at the same time. After having drunk some large glasses of wine, I had the munchies and decided to go around the corner to Pizza Hut and buy garlic bread.
The guy in the shop was a bit nonplussed by the request for garlic bread (with cheese) and nothing else but nipped off into the back and rustled it up for us. Out he came with it in a box and I got out my card to pay and he said 'Don't bother with that, just take it' and then walked off so that we had no option but to accept his kindness.
We were very very pleased with ourselves.
It seems to me that the world works alright, but that kindness oils the machinery and makes everything turn a bit more smoothly and without any annoying squeaks.
Around the corner from where I work is a dank old man's pub that we seem to end up in for drinks some Friday lunchtimes. In the streets around are various restaurants and cafes and they all deliver food on plates to this pub, which doesn't serve food of its own. I've never seen anything like it, but it clearly works for all concerned. It would be so easy for them all to say 'This is our business and this is yours and we'll keep it that way' but instead they have a nice neighbourly reciprocal thing going on that seems to benefit all concerned, particularly us on our lunch break! They don't need the kindness for their businesses to work, but it helps everything run much more smoothly.
With all this in mind, when I was driving home from my parents' a couple of weekends ago, I spotted a couple of lads, students, in matching t-shirts, trying to hitch to Prague for charity at Stafford services. Their whiteboard said: South. You can't get more general than that, but it didn't seem to be getting them anywhere. They'd left Manchester at nine that morning, and had only got as far as Stafford by seven in the evening when I saw them. I know it's reckless and outrageously dangerous for a woman on her own to pick up hitchers, but I just felt so sorry for these guys that I offered them a lift. They nearly turned me down, thinking that London wasn't Dover and therefore no good. I pointed out to them that London is further south and nearer to Dover than Stafford. So they accepted the ride. The Prague Hitch happens every year, but these guys had found that lorry drivers wouldn't give them a lift because of insurance and that that left them pretty much scuppered. It turned out one of these lads had a brother living in Clapham so I brought them all the way back with me.
When I dropped them off, this guy, who was a Geordie, just stood on the street and kept repeating to himself: "I'm in London, I can't believe I'm actually in London." So sweet and innocent, I was loving it!
You can track the hitchers online to find out how they are progressing in their travels and these two ended up giving up in the Netherlands and catching the Eurostar back. It's a shame that the kindness wouldn't flow far enough for them to get to Prague. But then maybe kindness is meant to be a surprise, rather than something you rely upon as a means to an end.
The guy in the shop was a bit nonplussed by the request for garlic bread (with cheese) and nothing else but nipped off into the back and rustled it up for us. Out he came with it in a box and I got out my card to pay and he said 'Don't bother with that, just take it' and then walked off so that we had no option but to accept his kindness.
We were very very pleased with ourselves.
It seems to me that the world works alright, but that kindness oils the machinery and makes everything turn a bit more smoothly and without any annoying squeaks.
Around the corner from where I work is a dank old man's pub that we seem to end up in for drinks some Friday lunchtimes. In the streets around are various restaurants and cafes and they all deliver food on plates to this pub, which doesn't serve food of its own. I've never seen anything like it, but it clearly works for all concerned. It would be so easy for them all to say 'This is our business and this is yours and we'll keep it that way' but instead they have a nice neighbourly reciprocal thing going on that seems to benefit all concerned, particularly us on our lunch break! They don't need the kindness for their businesses to work, but it helps everything run much more smoothly.
With all this in mind, when I was driving home from my parents' a couple of weekends ago, I spotted a couple of lads, students, in matching t-shirts, trying to hitch to Prague for charity at Stafford services. Their whiteboard said: South. You can't get more general than that, but it didn't seem to be getting them anywhere. They'd left Manchester at nine that morning, and had only got as far as Stafford by seven in the evening when I saw them. I know it's reckless and outrageously dangerous for a woman on her own to pick up hitchers, but I just felt so sorry for these guys that I offered them a lift. They nearly turned me down, thinking that London wasn't Dover and therefore no good. I pointed out to them that London is further south and nearer to Dover than Stafford. So they accepted the ride. The Prague Hitch happens every year, but these guys had found that lorry drivers wouldn't give them a lift because of insurance and that that left them pretty much scuppered. It turned out one of these lads had a brother living in Clapham so I brought them all the way back with me.
When I dropped them off, this guy, who was a Geordie, just stood on the street and kept repeating to himself: "I'm in London, I can't believe I'm actually in London." So sweet and innocent, I was loving it!
You can track the hitchers online to find out how they are progressing in their travels and these two ended up giving up in the Netherlands and catching the Eurostar back. It's a shame that the kindness wouldn't flow far enough for them to get to Prague. But then maybe kindness is meant to be a surprise, rather than something you rely upon as a means to an end.
Sunday, 2 March 2008
Maximum Black Festival
Stick it to the man. When Owen Pallett found one of his songs had been gratuitously plagiarised in theme music for an advert for the Viennese Public Utility company what did he do? Sue? No way - he got them to pay for three festival nights, one in London, one in Berlin and one in Vienna, so that good people of these three nations could be filled with joy at the resplendent sound of beautiful music.
Well some of it was beautiful - the stuff by Stephen O Malley and Alexander Tucker Duo was frankly the most overindulgently, self-absorbed half an hour of hippy transcendental out of tune strumming I've ever been subjected to in my life. It seems most of the audience in Kentish Town's Forum agreed since they started to clap halfway through in a terribly British attempt to get them off the stage so that we could just please listen to Owen.
He was worth waiting for.
His voice is so smooth and sublime and the way he orchestrates his pieces demonstrates his accomplishment on the violin without being at all pretentious. What I loved is that the parts his songs that always make me smile with anticipation also made him smile. For example, he went straight from Hey Dad into the CN Tower and burst into a full beaming grin as he looped the violin riffs. It was joyous. His music is so full of joy and you really get a sense of the pleasure that he gains from playing, from singing. Check out Blogotheque for a sense of what I'm talking about and a couple of tracks.
(By the way, blogotheque is one of the cooler websites for music I've come across although it does make it tricky that everything is in French - have a look at some of the other people featured on there)
He didn't play and couldn't really have played for long enough although he finished at midnight with This Lamb Sells Condos.
Ace on sticks.
Well some of it was beautiful - the stuff by Stephen O Malley and Alexander Tucker Duo was frankly the most overindulgently, self-absorbed half an hour of hippy transcendental out of tune strumming I've ever been subjected to in my life. It seems most of the audience in Kentish Town's Forum agreed since they started to clap halfway through in a terribly British attempt to get them off the stage so that we could just please listen to Owen.
He was worth waiting for.
His voice is so smooth and sublime and the way he orchestrates his pieces demonstrates his accomplishment on the violin without being at all pretentious. What I loved is that the parts his songs that always make me smile with anticipation also made him smile. For example, he went straight from Hey Dad into the CN Tower and burst into a full beaming grin as he looped the violin riffs. It was joyous. His music is so full of joy and you really get a sense of the pleasure that he gains from playing, from singing. Check out Blogotheque for a sense of what I'm talking about and a couple of tracks.
(By the way, blogotheque is one of the cooler websites for music I've come across although it does make it tricky that everything is in French - have a look at some of the other people featured on there)
He didn't play and couldn't really have played for long enough although he finished at midnight with This Lamb Sells Condos.
Ace on sticks.
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