He remembered that one time. One time, about five years ago, when it had seemed that he had entered into a state of pure equilibruim with all that surrounded him. He remembered a feeling of peace, of ease. It was a moment in which he was never conscious of making a decision. Things just happened. Not separate from him and not ‘to’ him, but kind of ‘with’ him. In that moment, in that time he was part of all that existed. Just a part, not the main part or anything more than just another part, like the paint on the wall, the grass on the kerb, the people walking down the street as he drove past, the street itself.  It was all equal and therefore it was not up to him to decide what happened next, no one or no thing decided that, there was no need to decide because things just seemed to happen. Everything became like breathing, just happening without thinking. Life went on, life goes on.

Living, he recalled, in that moment, was easy.

x bhavatu sabbe mangalum x

He was able to convey his feelings through the slightest rearrangement of his features, and in this moment he once again was saying that he did not understand, and also that he was not interested in trying to understand. That he had more urgent and pressing things to think about. Con knew what those things were, Carlos was always thinking about the same thing. He was worrying, like the proverbial dog with a bone, about how many years he was going to be spending in prison, in a foreign land. His best bet was three; the worst case somewhere around six, both of which were half of what he would be sentenced to.

Con was used to Carlos being distracted, it was more common that not, and for Con it didn’t really matter. he was not here to push these guys. As long as they were having a good time, as long as they would rather be here that sitting in their cells, then his work was done. They were a mixed bunch. ‘His boys’ he called them when he was talking with Cat. She would sometimes ask when she got home from work ‘ so how were your boys today’, and he would answer – ‘always good’, there had never been a time yet in the year that he had been teaching in the prison when they hadn’t been good, when he hadn’t had an good time with them.

He had long agao given up trying to understand why he felt so at ease with men who were locked up. Now he just knew it was so, he was able to develop an easy and relaxed relationship with those who were known to be drug smugglers, thieves, rapists and even murderers. He had been around such people for a long time now, in two different countries, on different sides of the world. They were good people. He knew this. He also knew they had done bad things, but for most of the time he had spend with them, this was not his concern, not directly anyway.

There had been a time, many years ago, when it had become too much. Not so much through being with the men themselves, but rather through having to know what it was they had done. After the riots at the maximum security prison he had sat in a small interview room, sometimes seeing close to 40 prisoners a day, one after the other. Reading their files, often huge tomes of paperwork squashed into two and sometimes three brown folders. Sometimes spanning decades, reaching back to when these men were children, detailing their lives through their contact with probation officers, social workers, psychologists, prison officials, judges and others. I made for depressing reading; so much life spent in institutions. The accumulated effect of it had been too much – not that he was conscious of it, not as it built up, it was just there one night as he lay in bed.  He remembers the dark gloomy expanse welling up underneath him.

x bhavatu sabbe mangalum x

An all too brief stay in Turkey in September 2011. What an absolutely wonderful place. Caroline and I, and Tilly (her daughter) and her friend Oly stayed in Calis, near Fethiye in the Mugla province. The weather was amazing, the coast and countryside were fantastic, the 3000+ years of  history visible in ruins everywhere was truly awe inspiring, and the geographical features, such as the Saklikent Gorge, spectacular. 

However what made it such a beautiful place for us were the people. The Turkish people are the most friendly, most caring, most interested and interesting people I have ever had the joy of encountering.

So, I just want to say, ‘teşekkür ederim’. Thank you to the people of Turkey.  May you always be blessed, may you always share in my dharma.

x bhavatu sabbe mangalum x

Before I launch into this, here’s some rational justification, if any’s needed. I’m a sociologist; a qualified, certified sociologist. I’ve got the paperwork, and I’ve lived the role long enough to be able to identify, if I wish, as a sociologist. Anyway, I’m getting sidetracked.

I’ve been observing my environment quite closely for the last 3 1/2 years, and for some, as yet unknown reason, now is the time to make some of my observations more widely known. Ten in fact. A bit below I rave on about 10 things that I have discovered about the Brits. 

And while I may be a sociologist, I am also a lot of other things, too many to list. So these 10 observations are mine, and mine alone.  Much of the essence of them comes from comparing my life for the last 3 1/2 years with that which preceded it. In that comparison, and in the 10 thoughts that follow, two terms emerge that I firstly want to explain.

Brit: For me this refers to an ethnicity. For me a Brit is not defined through their national identity. ‘Britain’ as a nation has been replaced with ‘the UK’. The red and white of the national flag are the colours of ‘England’. Nationally then people with a passport are English. Being a ‘Brit’ is about your culture, the things you feel, intuite, know and do almost without thinking.

Pakeha:  Another ethnic term that refers to a specific cultural group. A Pakeha is a person who embodies and displays the Pakeha culture: the language, the terminology and symbols, the dress and attitude.

Enough of all that, here we go.

1. Brits are grounded. History surrounds you, literally. It is there, everywhere. You walk in the footsteps of you ancestors.
2. Brits have a fierceness about them. I recently watched the movie ‘The Eagle’, and as accurate or inaccurate it may have been, the images I most recall are those of the clans behind Hadrian’s Wall. Their faces tattooed like those of a Maori tribal warrior.
3. Maybe because of this, Brits do not respect the middle classes. Many Brits I think still do not wish to be identified as middle class. For this reason many of the images that dominate are those of the working class. Brits, as a group, seem to valourise this class.
4. Yet you have also this ridiculous fascination with … I’m not sure what to call them … rich people? They are difficult, perhaps impossible to define in class terms, they seem to be connected as a group, simply be the amount of money they ‘earn’. Although it is beyond my comprehension how anyone, and I mean anyone, can actually earn over a million pound a year. So it is an eclectic group that includes bankers, footballers, business leaders, TV personalities and others.
5. Any many of these people have become the gods of the Brits. Wayne Rooney, Jonathan Ross, Katie Price… Yet these are fallen gods, or so it is often reported. Their dark sides are often revealed to, and revelled in, by their worshippers. Where is the voice of the good? These rich gods do not speak as one. They do not preach or provide guidance. Wisdom is at best a whisper.
6. Often those that do speak, and act as guides, lead their followers into a world of competition. A world of combat.
7. Food. I love British food. Sausages, mash and onions. Yorkshire pudding. Jacket potatoes. Gravy. And you take it so seriously.
8. Curry chips. What better symbol of the generousity, the open-heartedness of the Brits that curry chips. This is, no question, a uniquely British delicacy, and yet in its creation and design, it combines and integrates equally, the flavours of British and Indian cultures. Brits take people to heart. They have a capacity to embrace, accept, and show respect for, those who wish to learn their values, their ways, mores, language and behaviours.
9. So how do you know if you’re a Brit? I don’t know but I think one of the questions that should be on the identity form is this:

If you were given sufficient money to design and build your own home would you make if from brick, wood, straw or clay?

I think that most Brits would choose brick. Me, I’d choose wood every time, I’m a Pakeha and we tend to design, build and live in wood. Wood, for us, is good. I have not yet embodied, as many Brits seem to have, the sense that brick is best. I am reminded though of the three pigs, and that leads me to my last observation.

10.  Brits are not great risk-takers. They admire this trait in others, but view it with suspicion when it appears within their own ranks. Perhaps this has something to do with my first observation. Brits are surrounded by, they grow up amongst, their past. They admire those they can identify with who have somehow escaped from the cloisters of the past. Australians. It’s a love-hate relationship.

x bhavatu sabbe mangalum x

This morning, for no apparent, reason, the train stopped, and I stopped with it. It stopped, I stopped, and we sat in a silence I could hear. It came to me that I have not really stopped for a long time.  How long I’d been riding that train I’m not sure, and I guess it doesn’t really matter. Not now, not now that I have this stillness. And in the quiet, I sense the wonder, the wondering of where I’ve been, and why I chose to go there.

Answers evade me.  As I chase them around and around inside my head I only become more frantic, more distracted, more distant  from the recently uncovered, rediscovered silence that lies beneath. Still no longer, the lion awakes, stirs, unfolds itself and moves so graciously towards it’s cage.  The beast does not rally against its ensnarment for it feasts on reason. In the flick of its tail, I know, I believe that in knowing the ‘whys and wherefores’, I may be less likely to return to that abyss.

I do not, I tell myself, superficially at least, feel disappointed or disturbed about the place I have been. I have been in the service of others it seems to me.  Giving of myself – or is this just an attempt to make it all seem all right?  I have not been unhappy in my exile. It has, it seems to me, to have been an absence full of purpose.

Perhaps what disturbs me, and urges me to investigate, is the notion of the separation between then/there and now/here, the difference between going somewhere and going nowhere.  In my desire to integrate the two, I sit on this stationary train, and it feels ok.  I exist in a moment that is both silent and ghostly still, and simultaneously full of purpose and intention. 

Talking, thinking, writing about this place is good. Calmly abiding in this moment is all that is required.

x bhavatu sabbe mangalum x