The sawdust firing went well. All the pots now carry various shades of smoky grey. They are not fully vitrified but significantly less porous than when they were in the ‘bisque’ or ‘biscuit’ state. I’m not sure what temperature the sawdust kiln reaches and will have to do some tests in future firings to find out.
None of the results are what I would call ‘spectacular’; they are more subtle, although I will continue to experiment with different materials and I think the copper wire has a lot of potential for creating interest effects around the outside of pots.
All my pieces for the Show[1] are now packed in the car.
It’s an early start in the morning, so an early night for me.
I keep thinking that I can hear Lydia moving about the house but of course she is in kennels this weekend.
My partner is out with a friend so I have the house to myself.
A friend from the Buddhist group I belong to circulated a list of ways that we can help our nervous systems to rest and recuperate. I’ll use this list to help me with the work I’m doing with my own dysregulated nervous system as well as Lydia’s:
Slow down
Allow imperfection
Do one thing at a time
Sense our breath and our body
Create daily rituals and rhythms
Offer ourselves compassion
Lengthen our exhales
Express our emotions
Honour our needs
Nourish our senses
Ask for help
Let ourselves be held
[source: Nicola Jane Hobbs, c/o Jilly]
[1] Aldborough & Boroughbridge Show, Newby Hall, Yorkshire, UK
Spider plants that my “supreme unchanging friend” Maxine grew for me
There were big farm machines harvesting crops in the fields by the side of the road where Lydia and I walked this morning. She’s quite used to farm trucks now and was generally quite settled as they passed.
I’m feeling generally quite settled, although I do have a dentist appointment today. I’ll just concentrate on my breathing and I’m sure it will be fine.
I’m continuing to steadily prepare for the Aldborough & Boroughbridge Show on Sunday.
As featured in yesterday’s post, I’ve planted up some of my pots, with plants that I bought, such as ivy and a heart-shaped vine, but mostly using spider plants that my friend Maxine propagated for me. Everyone should have a friend like Maxine, not just because she propagated spider plants for me – and also gave me some pepper, tomato and cucumber plants that she’s grown from seed – but because she’s been there for me at every turn through some very dark and difficult times. She’s the “supreme unchanging friend” that the Buddhist teachings talk about.
Last night’s class was the fourth on the theme of ‘Cool to be Kind’. We looked at the “mirror of dharma”, reflecting on how easy it is to see the faults of others but how Buddhist teachings (dharma) can help us to cherish others instead.
The reference book for last night’s teachings was, ‘The New Eight Steps to Happiness – The Buddhist Way of Loving Kindness’ by the Venerable Geshe Kelsang Gyatso[1].
I have a copy of this book and when I picked it up this morning, found a bookmark at page 149. This is the start of a chapter, ‘Accepting Defeat and Offering the Victory’, with the verse:
When others out of jealousy or anger Harm me or insult me, May I take defeat upon myself And offer them the victory.
This is something I’ve been working on doing, particularly over the last 18 months. I haven’t and don’t find it easy, and in fact I find it psychologically and emotionally draining. But it somehow feels like the right thing to do. It offers a way forward for me, even though I don’t know where that way forward is leading.
However, I do have good friends to share my journey with me; and a Show to go to on Sunday.
[1] Founder and spiritual director of the New Kadampa Tradition – International Kadampa Buddhist Union
It may not be the only Peace Café in the World, but it is the only one that I know, in this part of the World. And it’s a good one.
The lunch followed a morning of Buddhist meditations and teachings, on how to overcome anger and frustration.
I’ve done a lot of work on my ‘anger issues’ over the last 3 decades but found recently that I needed to do more.
The principle presented in today’s teachings is to practise patient acceptance, with a loving heart.
There are some aspects of my life where I find this easy and joyful, such as the work I’m doing with Lydia. It does require patience, to keep repeating the same training routines and reassurances, and to keep looking for further ways to provide reassurance and help her overcome her fears.
On the other hand, having let go of most of my own anxieties now about being able to keep going on a sustained basis, I no longer feel under any self-induced pressure to achieve ‘outcomes’. We just do what we do, day by day. I love my time with Lydia, and I think Lydia enjoys her time with me too.
I got another ‘wake up’ call from her at 1.30’ish this morning.
This time she did want to go outside, which I presumed was for a toilet need.
Usually, she’ll come back in quite quickly and we settle ourselves down for some more “sleepy time” but this morning I waited a while and then went out to see where she was.
It was a warm and beautiful starry night.
I’m not great on constellations but I did recognise a clear ‘plough’ and a star that shone very brightly, which I thought may have been the North Star.
Thanks to Lydia, I had those few special moments looking up at the stars.
Sitting outside now, as I write, in the sunshine, after a mellow morning followed by a leisurely lunch, I do feel a sense of personal peace that I thought for a long time I would never be able to feel. Yesterday was grief and anger; today is peace.
I’ll still have to keep working at it: meditating; learning; relaxing; growing; writing; loving.
I’m lucky to have a lot of good things in my life and to be able to have days like I’m having today. I do wish that for others too.
I don’t claim to be a dog trainer or a mind trainer – I’m just a woman with a dog who writes a blog, and has written a book, about life, and about being glad.
I don’t like a lot of fuss. I just have a wet trim, but it’s a good one.
The hairdresser is tired, almost to the point of tears. She needs a rest, a holiday.
Lydia is enjoying the return of sunshine in our back yard. She’s been an absolute delight to be with today. I’ve given her lots of “rub-a-dub” massages and she’s loving them.
I’ve booked in to a half-day retreat at the Buddhist Centre on Saturday – overcoming anger and frustration. I’ve also booked to go to the Hepworth Gallery in Wakefield on Sunday where they have a Ceramics Fair. So, a good weekend lined up and an easy day tomorrow.
Oh, sleep it is a gentle thing …
My book, Train your dog; train your mind – positive reinforcement for humans and canines – is now available in paperback: https://amzn.eu/d/eQ2sWjU.
The Kindle version is currently for sale at £3.99 on a Kindle Countdown deal https://amzn.eu/d/99yW3Qk.
Lydia enjoying a yak’s milk chew yesterday evening
Continuing the story of Lydia and Me
“Oh, what a beautiful day!”
Yesterday I sat outside on a bench, with a friend. We were watching the world go by. Our part of the world, in our village. It was quiet, with just a few passing cars, people and birds.
Then my friend suddenly burst into song: “Oh, what a beautiful morning! Oh, what a beautiful day!”* And I joined in.
It was a moment I will treasure and will always remember every time I now walk past or sit on that bench.
My friend, in her eighties, suffering from dementia and grieving the loss of loved ones from her life, gave me a great gift. She transformed my day into a beautiful one, through her spontaneity and joy; the joy of her loving heart, however sad it may be.
This morning as I woke, I found messages on my phone from members of a WhatsApp group I belong to. It’s a group called ‘Sangha Meditation’. ‘Sangha’ is a Buddhist term for ‘community’ and I really value the support and sense of community that centres around the Buddhist teachings that I go to. The messages were very simple – people just checking in to see who was planning to go the evening meeting – but it was good to be included in that very simple exchange. How wonderful!
This evening’s class will be the last in a series of four, on the theme of ‘Transforming Adversity’.
I’ve had a massive amount of support from friends and therapists over the last few years of my life, when I’ve been doing my best to deal as positively as possible with a very difficult and complex set of circumstances. I’ve also been taking on board the Buddhist teachings, as presented in these weekly classes, and occasionally at weekend and day retreats.
The practice of meditation has been and continues to be a transformative process for me. I still have a long way to go to achieve the calm and peaceful mind that I aim for. However, thanks to friends – in the village and in the wider community – I do now have moments of spontaneously feeling happy.
I think Lydia has moments when she spontaneously feels happy too. We’re getting there.
My book, Train your dog; train your mind – positive reinforcement for humans and canines – is now available in paperback: https://amzn.eu/d/eQ2sWjU.
The Kindle version is currently for sale at £2.99 on a Kindle Countdown deal https://amzn.eu/d/99yW3Qk.
I don’t claim to be a dog trainer or a mind trainer – I’m just a woman with a dog who writes a blog, and has written a book, about life, and about being glad.
Lydia and I have both had healthy breakfasts today.
Her dry food has a high protein content, with lots of different ingredients including pumpkin, chickpeas, salmon oil, blueberries, dried ginger root, green-lipped mussels, glucosamine, chondroitin, Vitamin C, and others.
These pellets form the main basis of her diet, which I top up with additional food and treats. I try to make sure that the treats also have a high nutritional value.
I hope that her diet, combined with our regular exercise, combined with our training routines, will help to keep her healthy in mind and body. I hope that the love and attention I give her will help to keep her healthy in spirit.
My own breakfast this morning took the form of half a banana, some fresh strawberries, natural yoghurt, no-added-sugar muesli and some semi-skimmed milk. Historically I haven’t always been great at making sure that I have a healthy diet, but I’m getting better at it now. I’ve previously worked through an eating disorder and body dysmorphia, so it’s taken me a while to reach a point of having a healthy attitude to food. I do now though, on the whole.
In this blog I’ve most recently been writing about life with reference largely to my relationship with Lydia. This is because we are working together, Lydia and Me. She is learning to “heel” and I am learning to ‘heal’. In fact, we are both learning to heal, and we are helping each other.
Pottery also features as part of the healing process for me.
While I describe myself as a ‘Poetic Potter’ and a ‘Potting Poet’, I haven’t written a lot of poems recently.
I used to write more poetry, particularly when I had no other outlet for or inclination towards the creative arts. I do, however, belong to a poetry group, a poetry ‘corner’.
We meet once a month in a local library. It’s the library in the town where I was born.
Each month, we set a theme for the following month’s meeting. This month, the ‘theme’ is the name of the town where we meet; the town where I was born.
The ethos of our group is one of positive feedback; it is a very gentle and supportive group, facilitated by a very gentle and supportive leader. We get a chance to read out poems that we’ve written, and to receive comments about them. This is the poem that I have written for the next meeting:
The Library
We met in a library It’s a different library to the one I meet others in, today
Since then a lot of waves have washed upon the shore and pulled back into nothing at all
I have little in the way of recall to the times between but that doesn’t mean I don’t or didn’t care
It just means I am aware of a great tidal void between then and now
Except that in this library at this time I am nowhere near the same as I was in that library, then
A fellow member of the group described the meetings as ‘soul food’.
I’m looking forward to some spiritual sustenance on Saturday, when we have our meeting. I’m also looking forward to further spiritual sustenance tonight, when I go to the Buddhist meeting. This will be for the second in the latest group of four classes: ‘Transforming Through Adversity’.
I received some bad news as a bolt out of the blue, and it hit hard.
It could be argued that I could have foreseen it coming, but I didn’t.
The calm, peaceful mind I’ve been cultivating was suddenly no more. I was angry.
I know anger is a negative emotion, and the teachings of Buddha tell me that it arises from self-cherishing delusions; having more regard for myself and my own needs than for those of others.
I do accept this, in principle. In practice, yesterday my anger arose and was a long time abating.
As I continue to learn how to train my mind – and my heart – anger is something that I need to and will address. I’m going for growth.
Today, on my walk with Lydia, I am still aware of anger. It feels like it is pervading my whole body.
I have concerns that Lydia will pick up on this, but she doesn’t seem to have done.
We are in a quiet spot with no immediate triggers. Lydia is calmer today than she has been on this same walk for some time.
She walks to heel with a loose lead most of the way, and I reinforce this with food rewards and praise.
It rains a little bit but neither of us minds. Then the sun comes out.
I’m going to visit friends this afternoon. It will be another good day. And this time I believe the good feeling will stay, at least for longer than it did yesterday.
The theme of yesterday’s Buddhist teaching was ‘Transforming Adversity’.
It was the first of the latest 4-week course, as an outreach from the Kadampa Madhyamaka Buddhist Centre, near Pocklington.
It only takes me 15 minutes to drive to the Meeting House.
A few years ago, when I was living in Leeds, I drove to Buddhist teachings and meditation meetings in Pickering, a distance of over 50 miles.
I went regularly, almost every week, for about two years, until the classes there stopped.
They helped me a lot those meetings, with the words spoken by the teachers, the benefits of meditation and the experience of a supportive group.
When I started going to the meetings that I go to now, I was in a very bad state mentally.
These meetings have helped me a lot too, to reach the point that I needed to reach, where I am now.
When I first started with my journey of mental health recovery, I was like a drowning person – thrashing about desperately trying to find something to hold on to, so that I didn’t sink. Well, I did find things to hold on to – lifelines – and I didn’t drown.
Now, I feel like I’m waving. I need to keep working at it, to make sure that I keep my head above water, but I’ve learnt a lot in different ways and I keep learning.
Today is a good day.
I take Lydia to a dog field.
Trev and I go out for breakfast.
I meet a friend for coffee.
In my book – literally, in my book – that counts as a good day. A very good day.
It amazes me that the Buddhist religion, rooted in the East, is so accessible to me here in the West, in the UK.
“Dharma” is the teaching and “sangha” is the community. I’ve taken refuge in Buddha, dharma and sangha recently and will continue to do so, as it helps me to see things differently, train my mind, start to feel calmer about things that have been profoundly distressing.
Sometimes in life it can feel like we’re faced with an impossible situation. ‘Fight’ or ‘flight’ – the reflex responses – seem like the only options and neither of these provides a way forward. But if we can start to see a problem as an opportunity – something that we can grow with rather than get angry about or run away from, there is potential for a way forward to open up after all.
This isn’t something that I’ve found easy, not now and certainly not when I was younger.
I’ve gone into flight mode at critical times in my life because I just didn’t have the skills or insights, confidence or support to help me do it differently.
I used to struggle to assert myself in any way and used to get it horribly wrong, with disastrous consequences in terms of life choices and relationships.
I was in my late thirties when I discovered Buddhism at around the same time as I found out that I could turn to a counsellor for therapeutic support.
I haven’t always found that Buddhism and personal therapy are comfortably aligned. In some ways they have seemed to me to work from opposite polarities – Buddhism teaches that I give up ‘self-cherishing’ and therapy helps me to learn to love myself (with great difficulty). However, my approach has been to not over-think, take from each what they offer and do my best to move forward in more positive ways. It’s an ongoing journey, still fraught with trials and traumas.
I’ve worked through – cried, ached and screamed through – a lot of emotions over the last 30 or so years. There were some, though, that I put to the back of my mind, locked away because they were too difficult to deal with and I had to find a way of building a life for myself rather than staying stuck. Those locked away emotions do, however, have a way of finding their way out, demanding to be addressed because they be need to be resolved. That happened when I retired.
So I’m now at the point where I’m engaging with both therapy and Buddhism again. Except now they don’t feel so polarised. I just feel very lucky to have access to all the wisdom and wonder of Buddhist teachings from the East here in the West, as well as skilled therapy, that will help me to heal, and to make the most of the life that I have.
My relationship with food has historically been a difficult one.
As a teenager I went on a strict diet – mostly made up of cottage cheese, crispbread, lean meat and fruit – to keep me at 7/71/2 stone. That was the only way I could feel reasonably good about myself and my body.
Even so, I didn’t think anybody could possibly find me attractive, and I struggled with a very limited life.
If I ever did ‘let go’ and start to eat anything even remotely fattening, my mood plummeted as my weight gained. The only way I could cope was to start restricting my eating again. I had no concept that help or support of any kind might be available; it was a very private and lonely struggle that went on until my mid-40s. After an almost catastrophic catalogue of failed relationships and career stalemate I realised that I had to push through the internal barriers, and keep going until I came out the other side.
20 years on, at 66, I believe I have finally arrived at that point.
I weigh five stone more than I did in my teens, and though I am aiming to steadily lose some weight this won’t be my starving myself – not just of food, but of life.
There are many factors and influences that have helped me to get through, not least in recent years that of my partner, Trev, who makes me feel beautiful just as I am, inside and out. That’s a great gift to get at any age!
I’ve taken on board Buddhist teachings of all kinds, with one fundamental phrase being an enduring fallback: “The mind is a muscle and it can be changed.”
I’ve had to fight and work hard to train and change my brain and was fortunate to find the fight associated with a strong survival instinct when I needed it.
That isn’t to say that I haven’t had moments of self-loathing that threatened to be overwhelming. But I kept looking for and finding ways to be positive, including reaching out to others who were also struggling in the extreme.
I still won’t try clothes on in a shop changing room, and feel no need to put myself through that ordeal. So while this may be evidence of ‘avoidance’ lingering in my psyche, it’s a minor issue as far as I’m concerned, and doesn’t get in the way of me living my life in a full way, including enjoying delicious food.
Glad About 
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