The Fourth Monkey Is Not Here...
After running seven miles, and swimming much further than we have been doing - maybe the sea really is warming up - Anadi and I sat down for breakfast just as Jane arrived....
Fruit salad, Greek yoghurt and honey, orange juice squeezed with oranges fresh from the tree... An americano with the perfect finish...
More food arrived, a cooked breakfast for Anadi, water, toast; omelette for me...
Lucia contemplated the 'banquet', moved us to a bigger table, and then looking at Jane's open computer on the seat asked... 'Is that you and "what's his name"...'? Gesturing to Anadi...
Yes...' I said...
'You got married in a blue dress...? Of course you did! It's you....' She carried on....
Jane was showing me the finished design for the cover of 'Girlfriend for a year...' The amazing work that she and Hannah have done to create my beautiful book cover....
I love it...
We are so nearly there.... It has been a brilliant process over the last two years and the birth of the book is now imminent....
The whole of the journey has been fun....
Fun is the way forward, the legacy of my mother 'Oh darling, have fun... Life is supposed to be fun...'
I am half listening to Athena Jane and Anadi as I write... They are talking about having fun... We all have a Long Island tea cocktail in front of us.
It seemed a fun and fitting end to our creative day...
Each of our cocktails has a little plastic monkey perched on the edge....
Are they embodying the proverbial principle to "see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil"...?
Mizaru, covering his eyes, who sees no evil; Kikazaru, covering his ears, who hears no evil; and Iwazaru, covering his mouth, who speaks no evil....
It is certainly more fun to live life accepting ourselves, accepting one another, rather than seeing hearing and speaking evil of ourselves and others....
Sometimes there is a fourth monkey depicted with the three others; Shizaru, who symbolises the principle of "do no evil"....
But I have discovered that in another variation, the fourth monkey is depicted with a sulking posture and the caption "have no fun"....!!
But that fourth monkey is not here, and we are having fun...!
Anadi has been programming all day long... And while he 'programmed', Jane and I have been working together, stripping back layers, uncovering, discovering... Through writing, chanting, guided meditation; and talking.
We drove to Paliokastritsa for a different venue for our work together, after breakfasting with Lucia this morning.
Athena Jane is here in Corfu to clear anything that might be blocking her way to expressing herself fully and truly in all areas of her life...
She has given herself the space and time to work more intensively.... Although I do hesitate to use the word 'work', as it has so many associations....
Perhaps instead, we might say that she has given herself time and space to be more truly with herself, and to thereby discover how to take her self, more fully into all her creative endeavours....
We decided to drive to Emerals, the amazing cake and coffee shop once we had spent a couple of hours in Paliakastritsa.... A new venue to finish an 'exercise' we were working through....
Somehow we either missed a turning or took a wrong one... The result was us driving a very, very big loop to eventually find our way to where we wanted to be....
It dawned on us slowly that we were on a different route... The road became wide and the scenery expansive, the mountain ranges changed position significantly.
'Definitely not in the right road' we agreed..... ' going into the unknown' Jane said 'this is very significant ....'
'The road less travelled...'
'It's the first time I've got into fifth gear since arriving here' she remarked....
Change, real change can be very challenging.... We can be so stuck in our patterns and our scripts that we often might commit to change, commit to a new direction, to clearing the old, inviting in the new....
We move into neutral gear, nothing planned, no script... Clear, still, ready for something new.....
But - very often we return to the gear we knew before, and do the same thing all over again, even if sometimes with different characters...
We kid ourselves this time it is all new and full of possibility, until we find that the new people are speaking the same lines, making the same moves.... And more surprising and confusing than this, so are we....!
We are stuck in a groove, the story of our life living itself out in faster and faster cycles... Different this time. Oh no.... The same....
Until we find ourselves on a new road, the unknown, uncharted territory and we dare to shift gears and go into fifth....
This time we are speeding to a new unknown, unnamed land...
And back to now....
Anadi and I swum in the sea together at the end of the day... As we waded out I said 'I fancy a cocktail....'
We dried ourselves and crossed the road to Dwight's....
'Two Long Island teas please....'
Jane appeared at that moment, across the road, back from her run along the front to the boats at the end....
'Would you like a cocktail'?
'Oooh, yes please....' She called...
