Trust

I apologise for my long absence. The difficulty I have been having is getting out of bed in the mornings. Left to my own devices I can sleep until lunchtime. I dread waking up and coming back to reality. My first waking thoughts are “How has my life gone so wrong?” followed closely by “What is going to go wrong next?”

Sheldon phones me at 9 a.m. every morning. “Lily, are you out of bed?” It’s a great help, not only because I sometimes actually get up but also because a quick conversation with a friend derails my negative train of thought.

Getting to sleep is equally problematic. To divert my attention from my own head I often listen to the radio. Last night, being Sunday, Radio 4 broadcast a quasi-spiritual-religious-philosophical programme called Something Understood. The topic was trust, or the lack of it. There was discussion of how, as a society, we have grown less trusting of one another. Yes, there are a lot of unscrupulous people out there and it is wise to take care. Only last week a friend of mine nearly fell victim to a rent deposit scam. But our own actions go a long way towards promoting this atmosphere of fear and suspicion. In our pursuit of a ‘me first’ life we seldom consider how our actions may be damaging those around us. Do we stop and think: is what I am about to do going to destroy another person’s trust? Yet trust is the cement that binds friends, families, couples, businesses and institutions together. Without it our society would disintegrate.

The presenter summarised: “Loss of trust is corrosive. It leads to despair.”

Anyway, this is all a long-winded way of explaining how I come to be teetering up the gangplank of a houseboat moored at Chelsea Reach on the river Thames. I have come to visit Suzanne Thomas, a highly recommended hypnotherapist and counsellor. I duck and enter her sanctum, minding not to hit my head on the ceiling. Once safely sitting down I tell Suzanne my story and the source of my despair. Having been so thoroughly let down, first by my body and then by the man I loved, I have lost trust in the world.

“This is not your fault Lily,” Suzanne reassures me, “You’ve experienced a huge shock and a terrible betrayal. Really cruel. Your ex-boyfriend sounds like a classic case of a man suffering from Narcissistic Personality Disorder.”

I have heard these very words from many different lips yet I still need to hear them again. And again.

Anxiety, Suzanne says, is living in the future, constantly obsessing about “What if...?” Depression, on the other hand, is living in the past. “If only...” To be healthy and happy, we can only operate in the present moment. What Eckhart Tolle calls the now.

But how do I do that? “Wiggle your toes,” says Suzanne. “When you’re anxious, trying to live in the future, or depressed, trying to live in the past, actually you’ve lost touch with your body. So wiggle your toes. It immediately drags you back into the present. Then notice all your senses one by one. See what you see, hear what you hear, touch what you touch, smell what you smell, taste what you taste. It will root you in the present. It’s a much less scary place to be. I can see that lamp. It’s orange with green bits. I can hear the traffic. I can feel my elbows resting on the cool arms of the chair, my hand holding this coffee cup. I can smell that the air is warm and fresh today. I can taste the coffee in my mouth.”

“Another rule to remember,” says Suzanne, “is that the true opposite of fear is love. The two things are mutually exclusive. You can’t have love where there is fear and you can’t have fear where there is love. So surrounding yourself with as much love as possible is a very good idea. Some people are in the middle of a circle of loving friends and family. That is fantastic though it’s got its definite drawbacks as well. But for many of us that is not the case. You may be doing this more or less by yourself but that doesn’t mean that you can’t receive love equally.”

Suzanne’s exercise to bring love into your life.

Sit in a chair. Imagine drawing around you at arm’s length a golden circle. Trace around and around that golden circle. Know that this is no ordinary golden circle. It’s a golden circle of love and protection. You’re in the centre of it.

As you trace around and around you notice that, high above the centre of your golden circle is the source of whatever you think of as your higher power. From that point golden light is pouring down on you. You are bathed in love and protection.

As you trace around and around your golden circle you see that there is a stream of blue, travelling in a clockwise direction, just inside your golden circle. Going around like a stream. Make any adjustments to the colour or the speed until you’re happy with it. That blue is drawing strength to you.

You remain in your golden circle, with golden light pouring down on you. You notice that if you look a little wider around you, you can see for miles, to the horizon, all the way around.

From every point on the horizon, figures are approaching. People. Animals. Maybe too far away to recognise at first. But as they get closer you begin to see who they are. Friends, family, animals you may know or have known. And the more they come the more they come.

There are people here who you haven’t seen for years. People who may have died. People who you’ve had serious and deep relationships with, other people, maybe an old lady at a bus stop who you once had a chat with or your best friend at primary school. And the more they come, the more they come.

They’re forming a circle around you. Not too close but close enough. And that circle is added to and added to. Now you are in the centre of your golden circle. You don’t need to do a thing. Your heart receives love all by itself. And love flows back to them. There’s nothing you need to do. Just let that happen.

Once you do this exercise from time to time, you can start to recall it when you’re just chatting to people or waiting for the train. “Yes, I’m in my golden circle.” You can’t possibly feel stressed when you’re in it. Wherever you are, whatever you’re doing, you’re always in your golden circle. And that’s wonderful. You can just enjoy it.

Je t'aime... moi non plus.

                                                                photo thanks to: intermezzo.typepad.com

Friday morning.

Text to Iris:

Would you like to see Gainsbourg on Sunday morning at the Electric?

Text from Iris:

God brilliant finally a reason to live

Sunday morning.

Text from Iris:

J’arrive. Jus sui va au café plant

Text to Iris:

Dix minutes.

Text from Iris:

D’accord

I love going to the Electric for their Sunday morning screenings. It’s like an extension of one’s own living room, except way more comfortable and posh. John who works there always makes me feel welcome and at home. We stock up on coffee and croissants then settle into the big leather chairs, kick our shoes off and put our feet up on the footstools. “So how are you feeling?” asks Iris. “As if I’ve been trampled by a horse,” I reply. “How big is the scar?” she enquires. “About that big,” I say, holding my hands six inches apart and then indicating a straight line running down my side under my left arm. “Like a zipper,” observes Iris.

Iris tells me about her day as a trainee volunteer with the Friends of Highgate Cemetery. She tagged along on all the tours to learn the history of this famous burial ground. “That must have been interesting” say I. “Not half as interesting as the history they don’t tell you,” says Iris, her eyes ablaze. “Like for instance it fell into decay in the 1960’s and was inhabited by a nasty vampire. By the 1970’s its original owners, the London Cemetery Company, abandoned it completely. The dilapidated necropolis became a top spot for Satanic worship and at one point the graves were desecrated. Bones were strewn about all over the place and a woman’s corpse was dragged out and staked on the path.”

“Really?” I ask, my eyes wide with horror. “Really,” says Iris with a sombre nod, “And they don’t say a thing about it on the tours.”*

The lights go down and the film begins. Yay, we have two hours of snuggling into our seats, real life being subsumed by a stylish simulacrum of Paris between the 1940’s and 1970’s. And it is stylish. “Now we have to move to Paris and paint all our walls black,” Iris declares, “it just doesn’t work in a London council flat.”

The cast is excellent. Eric Elmosnino as Gainsbourg is convincingly charming, self-pitying and sleazy. Furthermore he looks just like the man. But I’m afraid that I cannot warm to Serge Gainsbourg even though he is a committed smoker and an alcoholic. “What I’ve just seen,” I tell Iris, “is the story of a narcissist who, as a small boy, was rejected by a small girl because he was ugly. He spends his whole life trying to get over the fact that he was born with a large nose by having sex with loads of beautiful women. He then tries to make himself feel like a bigger man by being unkind to them.” As a child, Gainsbourg (then Lucien Ginsburg) is portrayed as funny and clever but by the time he is in his twenties he has become bitter and cruel. Throughout the entire film he is completely self-interested, showing neither love nor empathy for any of his wives, girlfriends or children. Put simply, he is using them to punish and take revenge on all beautiful women everywhere.

“A bit close to the bone for you right now,” says Iris. I suppose so. But then again, Gainsbourg is marginally redeemed by having had a molecule of creative talent.

The French hero-worship Serge Gainsbourg. His songs were mediocre, gaining cachet by virtue of the fact that they were dressed up as poetry. His biggest hit Je t’aime... moi non plus (I love you... neither do I) is, I admit, very funny. Yet it is hardly a love song. Whatever sweetness the song manages to evoke evaporates for me when I learn that he wrote it for one girlfriend (Brigitte Bardot) and then recorded it with his subsequent girlfriend (Jane Birkin). Totally mercenary.

I suspect that Gainsbourg is held in high regard simply because, in France, they do not have the likes of Keith Richard, John Lennon, Dusty Springfield, Ray Davies, Brian Eno, David Bowie, Marc Bolan, The Sex Pistols, Ian Curtis, Jarvis Cocker and Amy Winehouse, talents that Britain seems to produce on a regular basis.

*I may have got this all a bit muddled, what with the painkillers and the general anaesthetic. I suggest that you keep up with the latest graveyard news and gossip on Iris’s blog.

Examining Narcissism

The Killer Inside Me, based on the novel by Jim Thompson, is an examination of the behaviour of a misogynistic sociopath. The violence portrayed is grotesque. But what I found truly horrifying is the cold, narcissistic indifference displayed by Casey Afflek in the role of Lou Ford and the desperate addiction of the two women who love him, Joyce and Amy (played by Jessica Alba and Kate Hudson). Maybe my view is jaundiced. Maybe Lou is just a charming but misunderstood fellow with a few deeply rooted mummy issues. The film is stylishly directed by Michael Winterbottom. The acting is brilliant. It leaves me feeling deeply depressed.