Matt Padwick's Blog

I wasn’t worried – I had a micro-flashlight with fresh batteries and a blessed shell-fish  in my back-pack – what could go wrong?

I was fifty last week. A mid-life-crisis-inducing milestone for most people but just another day for me.  Perhaps things will feel different after I’ve walked the Camino de Santiago. I’ve time off later this year and squirrelled away some money – not much – but enough to fall in step with some genuine pilgrims for five weeks, take advantage of the basic accommodation and simple food.  Maybe it’ll soften my heart and open my mind to accept the end of youth, or onset middle age, or the decades in between…

A few good friends sent birthday gifts inspired by the trip, for example; a micro-flashlight. And a scallop shell that has already made the trip to Santiago.



My wife is away so I’m doing all the washing and cleaning at the moment.
There’s not a clean plate or pair of pants anywhere.
I texted my 15 year old daughter who was at work.
“I’m going up Hungry Hill this evening to watch the sunset and moonrise. Are you in?”
“Am I in?” came the reply.
“Yeah, are you coming?”
“Obviously.  Duh.”



When she got back from work it was high tide so we went for a swim in the Atlantic. Which was warm.  We were a month into the best summer Ireland has ever known (probably) and that night it would be full moon.  
She cooked dinner – actually she made a salad from things she found in the garden – while I looked for cat food. For the cats.  And I packed for the trip; the torch, the shell, lots of water… That’s about it.


Looking at the map earlier in the day it was clear to me that we should go up-and-down the quick route which we’ve done before. But I’d always liked the idea of making a horse-shoe walk out of it so I put the pedal-bikes on the back of the car.

Not long after 8pm I parked the car where the tarmac ended and the bog road begins. We freewheeled all the way back down to the church, turned left at the main road and pedalled as far as Parc, chaining our bikes to a fence at the cross, and began walking from there.  


Let’s recap; Daddy thought that because the weather was amazing and it was full moon night we should go and watch the sunset from the top of Hungry Hill.  Coming down would be no bother, sure, the moon so bright it’s casting a shadow…


Except it was the first cloudy night for ages.




[image error]Below Glas Loch at 1am, just after we found the bog road  –  for the first time in a long time we knew where we were on the map that Daddy should have brought…


My daughter said it was a great adventure. It certainly had been a lesson in humour, presence under pressure and paternal patience for me.
We were as quiet as the dark night walking down to the car.  Quiet until in a cheery voice she said:
“I’m not sure I need to go up Carrauntoohil now.  If you’ve been on top of one mountain, you feel like you’ve been on top of them all.”






[image error]…on top of them all

I bump into someone.

He’d had a crash.

Said his recovery began when he took his hands off the steering wheel.

“And your feet off the pedals.” added his wife.

Yes, he nodded, that too.

The sun rises slowly

to a bird’s call and the goat’s bell

and the lap, lap, lap of the tide on the pebble beach.

There are no roads here

everybody sets there watch by the morning ferry

which is late again.

Standing in a vast field

row-upon-row of carrots

green-tops touching the horizon

I pull just one.

I pull just one and

put it on the end of a stick.

Out of reach.

 

From that moment,

perhaps for the rest of my life,

it’s What I Want.

 

It’s a carrot on a stick

and it’s a rod for my back

and it’s What I Want.

 

I have exchanged freedom and opportunity

for a little one thing

that is beyond me..

When Ed finally arrived at The Himalaya Guesthouse and Café in Darjeeling he was given a key and directions to his room. The door was already unlocked, the television was on, he went in.  “Hello?”

“You’re late. Eight fucking days late!” said a familiar voice. Tracy was sitting up in bed surrounded by half-written postcards and half-eaten bags of crisps and an open bottle of coke. He was wearing a balaclava.

“What’s wrong with you?”

“I got the screaming hab-dabs and a fever.” Tracy snivelled.

Ed had a cut above his eye and a grazed chin but Tracy didn’t take his eyes off the women in swimsuits who were dancing on the TV.

Ed limped over to the second bed and was asleep before the song finished.

The next morning there was no hot water for a shower so Ed and Tracy went downstairs and ordered two breakfasts with tea. A minute later the tea arrived.

“Oh, excuse me, sorry,” said Ed. “sorry, excuse me, ahem, this is coffee.”

“I know, we’re out of tea.” said the waitress as she walked away.

“Oh. Okay.”

“That’s pretty fuckin funny isn’t it?” said Tracy without a hint of humour.

“What?”

“Ed, we’re in a café. In India. In Darjeeling. And they’ve got no tea!”

It was funny but smiling hurt Ed’s jaw.

“What happened to you anyway?” said Tracy.

“I fell off my bike.”

“I’m not your mother. You can tell me the truth.”

“It is true.”

 

 

**

There was a commotion on the street outside the café. A bearded man with a red face and dressed in a purple dressing gown was having an animated argument with a woman. Someone entered the café, sidestepping the disagreement and ducking in through the doorway, taking shelter from the emotional downpour on the street.

While the door was open Ed could hear the argument. The red-faced beard-man said “I just want to know why!”

“There is no why. You can’t analyse it. It’s just how it is.” the woman retorted just before the door swung shut again. Her accent was American. The man’s gesturing was getting wilder, he was English and his face looked familiar.

“We may as well hang out here until after New Year then.” said Tracy without a hint of enthusiasm.

“May as well. Are you going to take the balaclava off while we eat?”

Tracy hesitated before removing the balaclava. He placed it on top of the half-written postcards and shivered. Ed looked out the window at Kangchenjunga, “Five Treasures of Snow”, the third highest mountain in the world. He had some postcards to send too, it was just difficult to know what to write.

tea for two is an extract from Transpose – a self-styled revolution

Some people like being in a queue, it’s comforting, somehow proving that they are in the right place at the right time, and engaged in valid activity. For Ed it was almost always the opposite. Like now. It was the middle of the night, the whole world was in bed and asleep, but not him.

He kept coming back to the silence. It was so big. And surprising. Even when a donkey brayed somewhere in the same valley – loud, long and loaded with loneliness – it did not change the silence, it enhanced it. Like jewels around a beautiful neck. Ed smiled. You can be at the poshest hotel in the country, on the planet even, but a farmer can still put a lonely donkey in the field next door.

In the same way he can’t control what arises in his mind – or appears in the world around him – but he can give it space.

silence is…  is an excerpt from Transpose – a self-styled revolution

[image error]

The cars were already travelling fast as they passed. It would be difficult for the drivers to pull over here even if they wanted to. He was sure most of them didn’t even see him. The cars were mostly big, usually with just one pale person inside; while accelerating they were steering, changing gear, drinking coffee, eating pasties (or filled rolls), talking on mobile phones and reaching into a pocket or adjusting the AC. Wow. Nobody does only one thing at a time any more.

This was a world away from his cliff-top in Ireland. It mesmerised him. Flashing by, engines powered by the Have-Not mentality. Everyone trying to make a buck off everyone else. Selling our products to make money so we can buy shit we don’t need.

“…the insistent clamour of that disgusting god, money.” wrote Everett Reuss.

Too busy to count our blessings. Or even be aware of them.

Surely, never before in the history of humankind, has my will so universally overshadowed and out-boxed thy will. And none of us are happy. It’s not working. It’s time for some collective honesty on this. And peer support to change the way we live.

If one at a time, but as soon as possible, we all slowed down and learned to relax, and cooperate rather than compete, the whole world would be a lot happier. And richer. And our salvation would be a lot closer. Isn’t it?

Ed gave up. That is to say he still had his thumb out, but he let the cars pass without giving them a second thought. Or even an initial thought. The cars came, and they went, just like before, but he wasn’t following them, thinking after them, he was letting them go.

He became very spacious; rising thoughts were mere clouds in his sky-like mind. He let them pass. He remained on the spot, in the moment. Thought free. Content.

Do we have to be falling before we grow wings? It was a passing thought. One that appealed to him. He followed it. The moment was over. Time began again. Cars whizzed by, piloted by pale people living their extreme existence.

And the thoughts came bumper-to-bumper too; there is something so deadening about a shirt-and-tie commute to a job that begins and ends at the same time each day and has a fixed monthly salary.  It’s the comfort and security we all thought we wanted. But it’s a false comfort and fake security. It’s a certain kind of certainty. The illusion of control which makes the surprises, when they come, so uncomfortable. Cruel even.

Right now Ed’s life was an open-ended journey. He was very openly and obviously at the mercy of the elements, and the subject of other people’s generosity. And spite.

He was attracted to this edge of unknowing, of hope and fear, he instinctively knew that surfing it was precondition for growth and transformation. And for feeling alive. Waking up and going out into the world not knowing what each day would hold, taking life as it comes, relinquishing any illusion of control. That’s fresh, that’s a good morning!

edge of unknowing  is a slice of  Transpose -a self-styled revolution available here.

He kept coming back to the silence. It was so big. And surprising. Even when a donkey brayed somewhere in the same valley – loud, long and loaded with loneliness – it did not change the silence, it enhanced it. Like jewels around a beautiful neck.

Ed smiled. You can be at the poshest hotel in the country, on the planet even, but a farmer can still put a lonely donkey in the field next door.

In the same way he couldn’t control what arose in his mind – or appeared in the world around him – but he could give it space.

Precious  is a moment from Transpose -a self-styled revolution available here.

Ed was reading a book in a dentist’s waiting room. “The flower grows without mistakes. A man must grow himself until he understands the intelligence of a flower.  He looked up from the book. There were no flowers, just a tank of goldfish swimming in circles.

He went for a walk. Found himself staring at trees, looking for help. Mmmmm.

The leaves came in spring when the wind and rain eased, and the sun shone, and nutrients in the soil awoke and were drawn up through the roots, into the trunk and along the branches. In fact, the tree received so much help in being a tree it hardly seemed fair to separate it from the rest of the natural world. There was a oneness there. The oneness did not detract from the tree, it added wonder and specialness.

There is an intelligence to standing your ground and receiving what you are given and giving what you can. With grace and beauty.

Sometimes it was during the breaks that the real meditation happened – moments when it was obvious that wisdom is not something you have, but a wavelength you tune into.  

 

The mathematics of wisdom:

Clarity equals

a calm mind

over time.

 

Learning to leave his mind in meditation could be compared to snorkelling, which is breathing with his face under water. Which is just wrong!  

It had taken a lot of time and nagging for his brain to get used to snorkelling – to drop all the doubt and questions. To relax and just breathe.

Learning to leave his mind in meditation was a similar challenge.  Whenever there was a gap in his thoughts, when a space opened up, to resist the temptation to immediately fill it up.  

To relax and just breathe.