April 18 , 2008

DOWN IN ENGLAND

Diane and I have been in England since April 3rd, arriving at Heathrow in London after 9 hours on British Airways in ridiculously narrow seats, with no space between my kneecaps and the seat in front (with the mini-TV screen on it literally right in my face). Of course I didn't pack any kneepads. Uncomfortable, but not too bad compared with the next leg of our journey. Getting from Heathrow (an astonishingly sterile triumph of eviscerated modernity) to our group venue on the Suffolk coast was the real challenge: way, way too much luggage, and Diane with a bad enough back not to be able to lift anything, and too much frantic, incredibly crowded ground to cover with it all. The Heathrow express, ok; the cab ride to Liverpool Street train station, ok once we finally were in the taxi; the train ride, with an bizarre transfer in which I had to, as quickly as possible, lug all our luggage up a bunch of stairs and then back down again amidst teeming throngs, was, however, not close to ok; a final cab ride got us to our destination 8 hours after we'd landed at Heathrow.

What a long delicious sleep we had that first night! Dawn brought the sun-dappled vision of open sea through our great bay windows in our oh so antique bedroom with its geriatric radiators and superhigh ceiling. We were in a huge cavernous manor, with fieldfuls of daffodils and Beatrix Potter bunnies all before us, along with molehills and hawks with moles in their beaks, and the kind of bundled-up bent-over gardener from some fadingly genteel film of long ago. Who cared if the building was cold, creaky, and ancient? It had plenty of dark woodsy character and echoey chambers, great carved doors, and did I mention very old plumbing with water that never got quite hot? The next afternoon, we began a three-day residential group at the manor, with a group from England. The session started off dynamically, and never let up; how lovely to have participants so eager to plunge into their work! I felt really good, rejuvenated after our long travel.

But the next morning I felt awful, alternatingly chilled and feverish. My bones ached, and my skin felt painfully sensitive. I, who hardly ever got ill, was now far from healthy. I felt like staying in bed. I had no appetite. I was dizzily weak. And downstairs the group awaited. Thank God Diane was healthy, but she was exhausted. Once I was in the group room, feeling the openness and readiness of everyone there, I clicked into a very functional mode, with my fluish symptoms remaining peripheral to the work I was doing. The morning went very well, and I only felt really fatigued at the very end. Still I had no appetite, and so skipped lunch, thinking that if I fasted on water and herbal tea, I might move through this illness quite quickly, as I had done on previous occasions.

But it was not going to be so easy. I kept fasting, and kept working, amazed that I could function in the group. I felt no less sharp than usual, and did plenty of body work, which takes considerable energy. Between sessions I lay beneath our covers, shivering and feeling horrible, sure that I would not be able to crawl downstairs to do the Sunday morning session. Yet I did. The afternoon, and final, session was the most difficult, and yet it, like the other sessions, was a wonderfully healing and deep meeting for all involved.

Shortly after the group ended, I was under our covers again, shaking violently for over an hour, as if in the grip of a rabid monster. The quaking vibrated me in all directions with chaotic intensity, and could not be eased; after a while, I simply let it be, marveling at its force even as I worried about my condition. And Diane was starting to cough; I hoped she wasn't getting what I had. The next morning we had to go to Brighton, and the only way I could go was by taxi; I was really ill. I couldn't wait to get to the place we'd booked: a small “luxury” hotel with a kingsized bed only blocks from the sea.

After a 3-hour cab ride the next morning, we arrived at the hotel. It was not at all what it was advertised to be. Getting our luggage up the 4 flights of supernarrow stairs (there was no “lift” or elevator) was a painfully wheezing hell, and the room was just a little box with a double bed and a few artsy knickknacks. No phone, no functioning wireless -- a real drag, as we had a lot of business to deal with. And Diane was getting all the same symptoms that I had earlier. Our “luxury” hotel was being run by one harried young Swedish girl who disappeared once it was dark. If we'd been healthy, being in such a place would not have been all that troublesome, but we were far from healthy, and we had three consecutive evenings of work coming up in a day. Our previous visions of mixing work and a bit of a holiday quickly disintegrated. Survival was all.

The hotel was an airbrushed nightmare; the next morning we left to stay with our host for our Tuesday evening event, and being at his flat was a Godsend. That evening, with me still feverish and not eating, and Diane with bronchitis, we gave an evening talk for the Brighton Integral Salon, during which I did intensive work with 4 participants, once again amazed that I could work at all. We did an event at the London Integral Salon the following evening, during which I slurred quite a few of my words, due to sheer exhaustion, answering, with surprising passion, a number of good questions, along with a headily arcane few. I have concerns about the Integral Movement standing far from the anti-intellectual bias of its “Holistic” ancestry that it gets stranded in (and makes overly cerebral real estate out of) its headquarters, but I also see a lively, more and more fully embodied movement within the Integral community, a movement that is increasingly unwilling to substitute emotional superficiality and metaphysical cleverness for real vitality. There must be a move, a decisive move, from theory to practice, and from practice to deeper practice, animated by a naturally integral consciousness, and I am happy to see this starting to happen, especially in its more intuitive dimensions.

Thursday night Diane, now quite ill, rested, and I led a men's group in London. More deep, rich, extremely well-received work. Friday was a day off, during which we moved to a flat owned by two therapists who were out of town for 10 days. How pleasant to arrive there, and to have room and ease. Tiny tiny fridge, no dryer, no natural foods stores, but we didn't mind. It was a good place to be, and a good place to do a bunch of individual sessions.

We're still here, doing the sessions and getting through each day; I: am much better, but Diane is getting worse, coughing so hard and so often that her body really hurts. She probably has a rib or two out of place. I am exhausted with doing all of our non-England business on my laptop, missing being at home with all of our conveniences and incredibly comfortable bed. I am concerned about the fact that we have to leave next Tuesday on a 9 hour 50 minute cramped British Airways flight to Denver, and that I have to work in Boulder Wednesday night (TV appearance), Thursday night (men's group), and Friday night (a talk Diane and I are giving). That Saturday and Sunday we'll be doing a full group.

Ordinarily, I like such challenges, but I'm feeling so beaten down now that I am longing for a long break. Other teachers take sabbaticals; I take a full day now and then. Am I complaining? Damn right! I can feel the signs of compassion fatigue creeping in; I hear Diane's cavernously loud bronchial cough, and I sometimes just feel irritated and impatient. How uncompassionate can I be? There is so much for us to do here that I am having a hard time with her not able to help out as much. My mental state is far from a thing of beauty. A hacking dog with an industrial strength itch. I haven't heard myself complain so much for a long time; it's occasionally funny, but mostly it's just a dreary exercise. If you've read this far, my apologies. I mean, it has been really difficult, but there's been grace too; even as I say this, I can feel myself easing.

And I can feel myself going a bit numb, even as I fight it. Did I bite off too much in taking on so much work in England? Not if I was healthy. And I wouldn't let myself cancel anything I ‘d set up here. My attention is starting to ramble, and I ‘m in for the ride. There's lots of color and character in London, but it still mostly feels like a cold place, damp with silent desperation and pinched bustle, regardless of the occasional bursts of glamor. I have visions of quietly enduring locals bundled up through the English winter, standing as close as possible to their wall-hugging radiators, thick scarves quietly receiving the drip-dripping of chilled noses. London traffic is quite a sight; so much happening in such small, quick-bending spaces. The whole place feels a bit depressed; the empire that the sun once never set on has become colonized by what it once colonized. People here joke that the national dish is not fish and chips, but curry. Not that I mind; I love Indian food (Diane has just answered the door to get our dinner, an Indian take-out smorasbord).

Yet despite the chill and the relative lack of typical American/Canadian comforts, we are finding a remarkable openness and willingness to do deep work among most of those whom we meet. The infamous British reserve does not prove to have much substance among such people; carefully modulated tones, seemingly freshly arisen from British drawing room films, are quickly unveiled to reveal much more authentic voicings, rich with obvious emotion. I can feel what has been endured here: invasion after invasion, millennia of botched leadership, religious tsunamis, bombs pouring down from dark skies, little pockets of refuge, history everywhere, bleeding and shouting through all the bricked-in modernity. My father's parents came from here, and I can feel the place's history in my marrow.

And so here we are, not all that comfortable here, but building a foundation so that we can return for more work. We feel called to be here. Our flus and discomfort are just part of us putting down some roots here. A wee bit of a test, I think, feeling my accent getting a touch more British. And one hell of a test, too, to be sick and having to work very hard in a place that is far from home. But even as I say this, I have to admit that I am starting to feel somewhat at home here, adapting slowly but surely. I have no complaint about my complaining. Another group starts tomorrow morning, and I am glad to be up for it, ready to pile into a tiny car and hurtle down some really narrow little streets enroute to our venue, with my stomach free of the carbohydrate avalanche of yet another English breakfast I have happily bypassed.