The View From Inside My Head

tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-62044964006456814742024-12-19T16:24:20.470+13:00The View From Inside My Headmelancholy mindfulnessPeterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09164072459313479734noreply@blogger.comBlogger177125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6204496400645681474.post-29062372454035446482011-04-05T12:47:00.002+12:002011-04-05T12:50:11.326+12:00From outside in to inside out

Whilst already awake, I awoke again, to a thought. I talk to much. And I am tired of listening to myself.So I had a little chat with my neuroses and in an effort to talk less we decided to take a break from blogging for a while, or not from blogging as such because we’ll be hanging out here, but from talking so much. Because the less I talk the more I listen and the more I listen the more I

Peterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09164072459313479734noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6204496400645681474.post-62150824013818240072011-03-27T19:46:00.008+13:002011-03-27T20:20:36.990+13:00Dancing with Death

When I die I would like to be ready. Ready to dance away hand in hand with death, eager to experience whatever may come next.And to be able to dance whatever way I want to, free finally of all the inhibitions and later recriminations that have been such a part of my life so far.Life is never dull when there are still classic movies to watch . . .Oh, and as an afterthought - The photo above has

Peterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09164072459313479734noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6204496400645681474.post-65652272484933496862011-03-16T17:33:00.005+13:002011-03-16T17:43:26.535+13:00This State of Independence

Five to nine in the morning. I sit in a cafe looking out of the window at the rain. A slow drizzle floats endlessly down, warm and quiet. Outside it smelt of green things and growth, inside it is coffee mixed with deodorant from the business people surrounding me. The quiet clink and hiss from the counter mixes with the surrounding conversation. They talk in upbeat words like return on investment

Peterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09164072459313479734noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6204496400645681474.post-44263854038228570142011-02-20T12:05:00.003+13:002011-02-22T08:01:38.776+13:00Solitude and Loneliness

I drove home yesterday saying these two words to myself, thinking about them. They mean nothing if you say them quickly, you have to draw the words out as you speak stretching the vowels out like an endless Sunday afternoon.At first they seemed to mean the same thing - being alone, and they do, physically but the difference is emotional. In solitude are happy to be alone, if you are not, then

Peterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09164072459313479734noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6204496400645681474.post-61261958802298519622011-01-31T19:55:00.011+13:002011-01-31T20:32:47.432+13:00Friends Reunited

Well, it may have taken almost a year but I am ready to listen to Tom Waits again.But how could I have doubted I wouldn’t be - he is an artist I have never seen live but have listened to regularly for nigh on 30 years. There is no way I could live the rest rest of my life without that driving rhythm, the words that fit together like a beautiful puzzle, the occasional hint of spaghetti western,

Peterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09164072459313479734noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6204496400645681474.post-79519456963336698622011-01-25T11:21:00.003+13:002011-01-25T11:30:19.579+13:00Questions

Tuesday morning, a quarter to eight. I need a car today so have dropped Nicola off to swim before work and now I am in Starbucks waiting for the shops to open at nine. It’s quiet, peaceful, grey. Distant, distracted people pass the window absorbed inside their own worlds. I am here with it all, calm, relaxed.I think about work and the feeling changes. MY heart beats, butterflies flutter inside

Peterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09164072459313479734noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6204496400645681474.post-30631084377282962772011-01-23T07:42:00.006+13:002011-01-25T11:28:14.497+13:00The Comfort of Rain

Unusually, it has been raining now for two days here in New Zealand, this is the third day. Approaching the hottest part of the year the sun should be shining and the ground should be baked hard and dry, brown. Instead it is raining, and the view is much more British, all green trees and fields and a grey sky. Inside in the dry, the sound of the constant rain surrounds me. There is a constant

Peterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09164072459313479734noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6204496400645681474.post-29153364987835571372011-01-09T13:30:00.004+13:002011-01-09T13:36:11.076+13:00Schrödinger's other cat

If you try to put a cat into a box, it never fits. As soon as you try, the cat somehow doubles in size and sprouts another twelve legs. You keep detaching them from your jumper and pushing them in but as soon as you get close to closing the box another leg pops out again.And yet if you leave a cat alone in a room with a box , the cat will go into the box.What does it all mean?Would it be easier

Peterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09164072459313479734noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6204496400645681474.post-2011096139398104912010-12-31T19:17:00.010+13:002010-12-31T21:02:52.247+13:00The Ghost of Syd Barrett

Of all the things endangered by modern society, silence must be the most at risk. I have noticed it more lately, silence is the space between things like the white paper that surrounds the black lettering, defining it. I love to sit quietly somewhere and just listen. Sound surrounds me - call it what you will, noise, music, speech it is all there like a shell surrounding my silence. Yet as I sit

Peterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09164072459313479734noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6204496400645681474.post-45640244460239135622010-12-16T09:43:00.003+13:002010-12-16T09:55:06.440+13:00Life 101

Do you ever feel that you are missing something? That if you could only see the world as it really is everything would make sense. When I am learning something new I’ll struggle for ages reading and listening and eventually, overnight often, it suddenly sinks in, I understand how it works. Sometimes all it takes is a different explanation or the clarification of one small point and then I get it.

Peterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09164072459313479734noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6204496400645681474.post-5532620525744374682010-12-12T08:54:00.003+13:002010-12-12T08:56:05.677+13:00Alice

When I was little we would occasionally visit one of my grannies. Apart from the stilted conversation and the strange warm sweet smell of old houses, what I remember most is the bed. Usually very tired from travelling I would wearily climb the narrow creaky stairs and turn the corner into the bedroom. There towering above me on spindly iron legs would be the bed. The mattress was firm but not

Peterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09164072459313479734noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6204496400645681474.post-62021733674322984572010-11-04T17:06:00.003+13:002010-11-04T19:43:48.398+13:00Ripples on the Sea of Life

Happiness comes and goes. I have been watching myself recently and my mood changes more quickly than Nicola changes her clothes in the morning (yes that often!). I can wake up at six and be happy. By eight for no apparent reason I can be unhappy. If I leave for work early I am happy. When I see the roadworks ahead I start worrying . . . and as they magically clear before me I cheer up again.

Peterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09164072459313479734noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6204496400645681474.post-38105242857128252662010-10-27T19:13:00.003+13:002010-11-04T17:12:01.911+13:00Relapse . . . again

6am. Suddenly it all seems so pointless again.I wake up and my tummy is slowly writhing, my body cannot settle and my hands shake. In my anxiety my brain works overtime searching for a cause. I am surrounded by bills. They keep coming in and yet I am not earning enough to pay the ones I already have . . . I will lose everything . . . various comments a couple of people have made recently about my

Peterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09164072459313479734noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6204496400645681474.post-65534935945815574242010-10-05T09:59:00.005+13:002010-10-05T10:08:05.708+13:00Those pesky kids

I awoke early with a strange feeling. My belly was tight, tensed, surrounding a swirling pool of deep nothingness within.“That’s strange” I thought “what’s going on here?” But as I concentrated on the feelings trying to pin them down they moved away and the more I looked the more distant they got. Then they were gone.So I went back to sleep and as I did so I realised something - what a difference

Peterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09164072459313479734noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6204496400645681474.post-31349066558956476802010-08-27T21:25:00.000+12:002010-08-27T21:26:52.902+12:00Vampire Reflections

Am I the burning in my fingertips as I cradle my early morning cup of tea? Just too hot, sitting on the edge pleasure, while the warmth penetrates my body. Or am I the pale grey light of dawn that creeps into the bedroom, mesmerisingly slowly whilst I sit enveloped in silence, the only one awake?Sometimes I am no more than a list of things to be done one by one, becoming each one in turn. At work

Peterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09164072459313479734noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6204496400645681474.post-53705184923482064042010-08-10T08:09:00.003+12:002010-08-27T21:29:26.703+12:00Winter Sunshine

I feel the Sun most in the Wintertime. When the Sun is low in the sky and the shadows are long and cold so that walking through them is like walking through another world. A world of fairies dancing on your grave and years passing by in a day. Coming out of the shadows the Sun welcomes me back wrapping me in it’s warmth like the softest of soft blankets. So soft that I can feel it but when I try

Peterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09164072459313479734noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6204496400645681474.post-20715365375974759082010-07-26T13:48:00.012+12:002010-07-26T14:10:20.402+12:00Happy Pills

If I had a million dollars in the bank I don’t think I would have to take the antidepressants. I don’t. But I do have a wife and family and house that I love and would very much like to keep around me, so I take the tablets. Their purpose is to get me functioning again as quickly as possible in order to maintain those things that are important to me. They help restore my Serotonin levels and

Peterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09164072459313479734noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6204496400645681474.post-4281198150842574342010-07-12T10:49:00.004+12:002010-07-12T10:58:25.944+12:00We can cure you . . .

“You will get better” my doctor kept saying on that first visit, “We will cure you”. I know that he was just being positive to balance my negativity so that hopefully I would not throw myself off the nearest cliff (a possibility not as far from the truth a you may think), but afterwards as I sat in a cafe thinking about it my first thought was no I don’t want to be cured. This was something new,

Peterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09164072459313479734noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6204496400645681474.post-51527641106360130052010-06-24T12:16:00.005+12:002010-06-25T08:05:50.196+12:00What is depression?

If you have ever lost somebody close to you be it person or animal, and been left feeling deeply empty and lost, and that life is pointless or too painful to continue with . . . that is depression. In the case of a loss that grief is a natural process and must be worked through in it’s own time. You will always feel it to some extent afterwards, I remember fondly all the cats I have lived with,

Peterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09164072459313479734noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6204496400645681474.post-76412372555075437182010-04-05T13:00:00.003+12:002010-04-05T13:07:54.064+12:00Life in Black and White

Imagine waking up in the dark. Not the usual darkness though this is close and black like there are walls surrounding you, shutting everything else out. Looking up you can see a small circle of daylight way above you and hear everybody else up there. The blackness is pressing in and you need to get out. You could call out but people may just point and laugh at the daft situation you’ve got

Peterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09164072459313479734noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6204496400645681474.post-69334977021732385352010-03-03T09:32:00.003+13:002010-11-04T17:10:16.458+13:00The illusion of freedom and choice

Cattle trucks sadden me. Be it cattle, sheep or chickens, the sight of a truck load of them heading for the slaughterhouse touches upon a deep sorrow that lies within my soul. These creatures, the same as you and I that have hurt no-one and ask for nothing more than to live as they should do spend their last hours before death crammed together in an alien environment cut off from the natural

Peterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09164072459313479734noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6204496400645681474.post-13411106521180481292010-02-19T08:50:00.003+13:002010-02-19T08:53:41.951+13:00Memories

I have been looking at old photographs. I think it is good to look back occasionally to remember where I have been, the people I have met and the things I have done. I am lucky of course that nothing truly tragic has ever happened to me but even if it had I think like Dr Phil that we should still remember, should accept what has happened because it is these things that make us who we are now.On

Peterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09164072459313479734noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6204496400645681474.post-4134957959655567362010-01-31T19:14:00.004+13:002010-01-31T19:34:52.168+13:00Van Gogh

All is green and grey today. But so many greens and so many shades of grey.Wet and wild as well, everything above and around is moving, swirling . . . full of life.It is on days like these that I feel I see the world as Van Gogh did.

Peterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09164072459313479734noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6204496400645681474.post-73448976650544523662010-01-15T15:20:00.003+13:002010-01-15T15:27:55.319+13:00color:#99bb2a;

Call me strange (most people do) but I get a small shiver of pleasure everytime I write “colour” as opposed to “color”.Is there a sense of national pride that I did not realise was in there? . . . Possibly.Just being awkward? . . . Much more likely I think.My favourite colour is green by the way.

Peterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09164072459313479734noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6204496400645681474.post-40229946475821219102010-01-02T07:49:00.005+13:002010-01-02T07:57:39.140+13:00Green

Saturday 6am6am. The sunlight squeezed between the earth and a thick blanket of cloud just catches the treetops. The whole world is green. There is a wind too, warm and heavy with the promise of showers. Summer showers of big raindrops that briefly drench everything before turning to mist and silently return upwards and move on.It must be 20 degrees already.In Scotland it is 2 degrees and snowing

Peterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09164072459313479734noreply@blogger.com1