This page contains longer, titled posts that I have made to my blog, so as to more easily separate them from other posts that I make here. If you would like to subscribe to the feed for this page, point your RSS reader here.
Tuesday, January 3, 2023
My acupuncturist shared this poem, by Jeff Foster, with me yesterday. On hearing it, I felt as though I was being wrapped in a warm blanket. LET YOURSELF REST If you’re exhausted, rest. If you don’t feel like starting a new project, don’t. If you don’t feel the urge to make something new, just rest in the beauty of the old, the familiar, the known. If you don’t feel like talking, stay silent.
Saturday, December 31, 2022
December 2022 I write this as 2022 draws to a close. While I don’t usually stay up to see the New Year in tonight, weather permitting, I plan to light a fire outside and sit around it with some family and friends to welcome in 2023 . . . or at least stay up for a while into the night. This last month has been filled with the Holiday season for me.
Sunday, December 11, 2022
Every year around this time I look out for my first sighting of a Humpback Whale, on their return to Hawaiian waters from Alaska to calf. That sighting is usually either a spout of water or a breaching whale. This year it was a water spout as I was driving home. I find that there is something magical in having these gentle giants swimming in the waters around the islands, and I would guess that I am not the only one?
Wednesday, November 30, 2022
November 2022 Hello and welcome to the November 2022 edition of my newsletter. I write this sitting outside at dusk. I look out on the shadows of the night, as lights from distant houses break the darkness. It’s still. Very still. The wind of last week, and that which helps to keep these islands cool, has blown itself out. I sit listening to the crickets, to a distant dog bark, occasional traffic on the nearby highway (a two lane road running the length of Maui’s north east shore).
Tuesday, November 29, 2022
I’ve written about this before in relation to meditation, and it has been prominent in my mind again. As such I felt like reflecting on what the message is that accompanies this instruction at this time. Goals With any given meditation instruction I find it is very easy to imagine where I should be on the completion of such practice - that is if completion is a thing with regard to meditation.
Sunday, November 27, 2022
I am ready to share this story now. I have cooled down. Actually I cooled down once we were back at our B&B, but it has just taken me a while to get this story written down. My wife and I were in the small town of Alcácer do Sal in Portugal a couple of months ago (more on the reason behind that later, in another post). The town is situated on the river Sado about fifty minutes drive south of Lisbon.
Saturday, November 19, 2022
Since February this year I have been sending out a monthly newsletter, via Micro.blog’s newsletter feature - that is except for March where growing pains with the new system caused a hiccup in output. With each newsletter, along with the selected blog posts from the past month that I share, I also write an accompanying letter to the subscribers. I have no plan when I sit down to write the letter.
Monday, November 14, 2022
Maui is known for having a lot of micro climates. Lush tropical vegetation, barren volcano slopes dropping down to the ocean, cool high elevations, hot humid coastal lowlands. We live on the north east side of Maui, and yesterday went to a birthday party at a park on the south east shore, 34 miles away, an hour’s drive. The difference in climate was stark. We left torrential rain at home, our property is green and lush.
Sunday, November 6, 2022
While we were in Europe I appreciated that Sunday morning on October 29th when the clocks went back, and Daylight Savings Time in Europe (or British Summer Time as we referred to it in the UK) dropped away with the arrival of autumn. We had just completed a long drive into the foothills of the Italian Alps at the start of an Italian holiday weekend. This was something that I was not aware of at the time, and I had assumed that the roads were always this busy, and that the Italians enjoyed racing each other to see who could be the first to Lake Como.
Monday, October 31, 2022
October 2022 Hello and welcome to my October 2022 newsletter. I am writing this at the end of a long visit to Europe. I’ll be starting my journey home as this newsletter goes out. Most of the posts that I have shared here come from the journey of the last six weeks. My wife and I left Maui in the closing days of September and now November is just beginning. As I was putting together the newsletter, even finding time on this trip to do that has been a challenge, looking back through my blog I was amazed at the ground that we have covered, both literally and figuratively.
Friday, September 30, 2022
September 2022 Hello and welcome to my September 2022 newsletter. I am back in the UK visiting family, staying with my mother. Last night my sister and her husband flew in from New Zealand. Distractions are at a maximum. I’m grabbing some early morning hours to pen these words. I was going to say that two things have marked this month for me - post COVID symptoms and then this trip to England and onto to Europe for a family wedding.
Wednesday, September 28, 2022
Grief is a beast, I was going to call it that but will return to what it is, an emotion. Grief is an emotion that appears to always have a surprise up its sleeve. Right now I feel as though I have been hit by that wave that catches you at the beach when you are looking in the wrong direction, hitting you from behind, toppling you over, tumbling you around, sending salt water up your nose and down your mouth, before depositing you in the shallows.
Friday, September 9, 2022
This last Wednesday was the first anniversary of my Dad passing away. I was blessed to be at home for the last two weeks of his life, helping to look after Dad and just sitting with him. I might not have used the word blessed as I dropped everything and made quick plans to return to Britain following a sudden turn for the worse with Dad’s health. I was really unsure what I was returning to, especially on an emotional level.
Thursday, September 1, 2022
August 2022 Hello Friend, Well if one thing could define August to me, it would be COVID. After, how long is it, two and half years since the initial breakout? After watching COVID travel around the world. Following Maui become so quiet with no visitors allowed in. Watching the vaccines being rolled out, and tensions rise as debates raged about when to ease a particular restriction or let life return to normal (will that ever be possible?
Saturday, August 13, 2022
Kundun, or The Presence, is one of the names that the Tibetans use for His Holiness the Dalai Lama. In 1997 Martin Scorsese directed the movie Kundun, a biographical story of the current Dalai Lama written by Melissa Mathison. I remember going to see the film a number of times when it came out. I picked up a copy of the soundtrack, composed by Philip Glass, and listened to it regularly.
Monday, August 1, 2022
July 2022 Hello Friend, Sharing reflections July has been an unseasonably wet month in the part of Maui where I live. Parts of the island have been struggling with water shortages, while my family’s property is looking green and healthy. For that I am grateful, and at the same time I sense the wet weather ending and the drier weather of summer approaching. Earlier this month I was on a Zoom call with a charity in the UK of which I am a Board member.
Thursday, July 21, 2022
My analogue journaling and tracking of todo lists happens in Field Notes notebooks. Over the last couple of years I have grown to love the convenience (for me) of the size of Field Notes and occasionally will buy notebooks of a similar size but made by a different brand. While my wife and I were in Portugal earlier this year, we visited a beautiful stationary and graphics store in the city of Porto, Peninsular.
Friday, July 15, 2022
Unintentionally this post is following close on the heals of my last post. I came across the article to which I refer in that post while writing this one. I still have an image in my mind of when I left my house in South Wales about sixteen years ago. All personal belongings gone, just an empty shell, echoing loudly with that sound only an empty house has that is now just full of memories.
Friday, July 1, 2022
June 2022 Hello Friend, Well I have been quieter in my posts this month. Not that I am the most frequent of posters at the best of times, but I feel that I have been vocal in my quietness through June. I look back through the month and believe that the main thing that saw this lack of writing output was a lack of space in my life. I work much better when I know that I won’t be disturbed.
Wednesday, June 1, 2022
May 2022 Dear Friend, Following a day of interruptions and what I might call discombobulation I wrote the following in my journal last week (and posted it to my blog), It’s been hard to find time to write today. I’m feeling it. Writing is important to me, very important. I can trace the start of my time putting pen to paper back to when I was traveling in my mid-twenties.
Thursday, May 26, 2022
There is a wonderful description of meditation which describes the role that the mind’s innate spaciousness can play in meditation practice. I have read a couple of versions of this story, my retelling probably borrows from both. It goes something like this… Meditation is like trying to tame a wild horse. I could keep that horse in a small compound, giving it little room to move around in the hope that that will quieten it down.
Monday, May 23, 2022
Not my choice of title, but the title that journalist Sarah Ruppenthal used following her interview with me four years ago. I was reminded of the article recently when an old friend got in touch having come across it online. I first met Sarah when she came to do an article about the house that my wife, Melissa, and I built here in Maui. As Melissa is an Interior Designer and had done most of the design work on the house, I stepped back a lot for that interview.
Friday, May 20, 2022
Summer has arrived here in Maui, at least a preview of what summer is to bring. The last few days have been devoid of wind, hot and muggy - and has included a well timed air conditioning breakdown (hopefully that is not a preview of summer as well!). By late afternoon the air is still and feels as though it is sitting waiting for something to happen. Thankfully mornings are still cool.
Monday, May 16, 2022
I spent yesterday at the Menehune Mayhem competition at Ho’okipa Beach Park. This is a surf competition for kids established a number of years ago by pro-surfer Ian Walsh. The thin sliver of a beach that Ho’okipa is was packed, with all visitors and competitors being focused on one end of the beach where the competition was taking place. With little space to sit, I was perched on the water line, a victim to any big waves that broke that day.
Saturday, April 30, 2022
April 2022 Hello Friend, Welcome to my roundup of posts from April 2022. This is my first newsletter for a couple of months. No sooner had I re-booted my newsletter in the month of February, encouraged by Manton Reece introducing a newsletter feature to Micro.blog, my blogging platform, then I pressed pause for March. March was a challenge for me, and when it came to putting together the final touches to that month’s newsletter, the process of sharing just felt too vulnerable a move.
Saturday, April 30, 2022
We arrived at the restaurant. A sign hanging from a rope in front of the door asked us to ring the doorbell. A waiter opened the door, greeted us, asked if we had a reservation, "no," we replied. This did not appear to matter as the rope was unclipped, we were gestured to enter and shown to a table. One couple was already seated and were perusing the menu. The other tables sat empty, awaiting the arrival of lunchtime customers.
Friday, April 22, 2022
It was last year, 2021. I was back in Bristol, England. My dad was unwell, nearing the end of his life. I went to sit on The Downs, and area of public open space of 400 acres that looks out over the Avon Gorge. Wide open spaces, woodland, trees and bushes. I was blessed to grow up around The Downs. I’m at home when I am up there. This time I went up there not to just get some air, but to take a break, to fluff the feathers after time spent indoors.
Wednesday, April 20, 2022
A couple of weeks back I had an early morning Hawaiian Airlines flight to catch to Honolulu. In flight time the journey is a hop, skip and jump. Throw in airport time and it can take just as long as any long haul flight from parking the car to getting to the gate. And this was rush hour. For the flight that I was catching, to manage the commuter traffic a slightly larger aircraft is made available than the usual interisland airplane.
Tuesday, April 5, 2022
Some days something happens which changes our lives forever, even if in that moment we are unaware of what the consequences will be. Sometimes that change will happen consciously, being planned and prepared for. Other times life just throws them upon us unexpectedly and possibly, in that moment, unwelcome as well. But come what may, our life is never the same again. I can bookmark a couple of episodes in my life,
Friday, March 11, 2022
Mindfulness is available to us at all times. I say that to myself - and then I forget. The opportunity is there, and then it is gone. Too late. Feels like too much effort. Or something puts in an appearance that has more icing on the top, or at least appears to and feels easier to consume - but ultimately leaves me with a sense of no satisfaction. The ship has sailed.