Post 12: Elders group--Week 3

We begin with a memory of touch. This is Vicki’s story, of when she was touched in a moment of profound grief, by a stranger, and in a public place. She tells the story with exceptional grace, from a very humble place.

Becky invites us to hold hands and pass a pulse around the circle--one hand squeezing another, right to left, and passing it on, hand to hand. It is like the path of a dragonfly, alighting and tripping off again.

It is hard to wait, waiting to receive, to be pulsed, to be touched. It is hard to keep our eyes closed, suspecting indeed the pulse may not come. Why is this so hard? It is so hard, waiting.

We are invited to share our names, in different ways. Different propositions from David and Becky, and then a counter from M., insisting we do not have to fuss. She is right, for us not to fuss. And yet, a partnering happens, of those who can move, or be helped to move, moving to others for whom that is harder, Arm to arm, arms to arms, disarmoured by touch. And it is playful, fun. At David’s suggestion, we recite “Sometimes I…”/feel younger, older, remember more, remember different things. Via touch.

A great exercise. And it is only in the doing (not in the ‘not needing to’ do it) that we discover just how good it is.

Mr P seems overjoyed, propelling his partners across the room, to connect.

images: Roswither Chester

J. receives the touch of four others, a pile of hands, playing and touching. It is inevitable we play the hand-pyramid game, hands piling one on top of each others’, a scramble up a ladder that never finishes. And then J. remembers what her hands did, sometime (I think) after the war: she washed up. And washed up some more. Serving others.

Being moved by our names, across the room, to touch, to remember, to recall and renew.  Rosalind talks about revealing one’s story to strangers, on a bus, or whilst waiting for a bus to come. Someone you don’t’ know: one word back perhaps is all you need. Gets it off your chest.

And when did we begin to talk about trees? About the image of a tree. Ah… when David passed the bowl of dark, washed grapes around. Here, have one: eat. Colin found pips. Others found sweet. Others found home in their mouths. Olive found a story: don’t swallow the pips, love: a tree will grow inside you from the seeds. Many find that pleasing, the idea;  but Micky finds it quite sinister, threatening. The dark and the light; the fairy tale and the foreboding.  Significant and  interesting.

I tell the story of trees, the way they talk to themselves, from “tip to tail”, how the roots know the height of the tree because the tip tells them. This inner knowing: I am this tall, please draw up this much juice, the soil complicit in the dialogue.  It is an intimate knowing; how much we can know inwardly; how much others, humans, mostly, are unaware of.

All this knowing.  All of this knowing, all of the time [or for the most of it].  David asks, ‘who has talked to trees, when they’ve needed someone to listen’. Some admit to it; Colin observes, ‘like talking to one’s dog’. I don’t’ reveal that I believe trees have occasionally talked to me. Fairly thumped me on the back of the head, asking me to listen. Why do I not reveal this to the group? I remember the date, time and place. The colour of the sky. If I were asked. And yet they were not chatterboxes, these trees; once done, they zipped their lips. Job done. Driven by necessity, not vanity.

The importance of speaking, of listening, of being heard. Maybe plants and animals also need us --to speak, listen to them, in deep dialogue. This idea is not new. Shamans have tapped into this language for thousands of years.

Do shamans exist? –You tell me

But here we are, in a circle, eating grapes, spitting pips, talking hands, humming tip to tail; what is and is not speaking? What was the knowing of that woman who touched Vicky’s had, on the bus, heard and accepted her tears?

It is the silences that are stunning, Like last week, when Mrs P announced the arrival of her 90^th birthday, not knowing ‘how much longer’ she would be around. The hush in the room; the quiet here, we each identifying our sense of loss, longing, anticipation, and dread. How alike we all are, tho’ on different stages of journey.

I remember, once, hearing ‘reincarnation’ explained in a maverick way: you are returning to this life, so leave the world a place you want to be in. The selflessness of the Buddhist way transformed into a self-fullness and self-respect I hadn’t understood before.

We are all the same: we need the same things. Air, water, shelter, touch. Things we can rely on.

And so we finish, touching our own hearts with our own hands, breathing breath to skin, feeling the comfort of our own hand cradling our own hearts.

Such due care takes place in the room, such due observance of different needs, abilities, and hopes or desires.  Such deep multiplicities.

Zsuzsi, with Entelechy, The Albany, Deptford, June 17, 2015

c. Z Soboslay 2015.