14:40 
I've been thinking about this idea of going walkabout. I'm not keen, as I've already said, and at first I thought it was because I was afraid of my own incompetence, that I wouldn't be able to cope alone. But that's rubbish, really. I spend heaps of time alone. I've spent whole weeks out of contact with anyone with whom I would want to be in contact. It's not an issue of capability, although I admit that being ill means that hiking alone is more risky.
It's a question of the need to share. When I stand on top of a mountain and gasp at the view, it means that much more to me if there is someone I can hold and share that moment with. If I am traipsing across rough terrain in foul weather it actually makes it fun to have someone to share the whinging. When I am forcing my knees to carry me up a steep hill with a pack on my back it is good to have someone slogging up too, so that I can tell myself "If they can do it I can too."
But mainly it's about the good things. Mainly it's about knowing that someone else had a good time, that someone else will have happy memories of beautiful things and goals reached. Mainly it's about being able to share the experience. That's why empaths don't do well alone. For the same reason that when watching a funny programme I will look round to see that others are enjoying it too
Is it possible to share one's experience of the Land with the Land itself? I like being up at the Stones alone, but I prefer being up at the Stones with one or two people with whom I want to share the experience. What would going hiking alone for a week teach me?
Of course I could just get someone to hang me from a tree for nine days and see if that does the trick.
Maybe the sharing is the point. Maybe that's why it is necessary to do it alone, so that the experience is a personal one, not shared by anyone else. So that anything that happens happens to me, not to some putative "us". I don't know. I am alone so much of the time you would think that I'd be able to have that sort of experience anyway.
The idea still scares me. But I do need to find this trigger.
12:08
Stuck at home today. Vision is badly blurred, full of ghosts. It's like watching a TV channel when the reception isn't quite right and you get ghosts of another channel wading through the picture. Didn't think that driving in this condition would be a terribly brilliant idea. Besides, the stones were absolutely dead quiet yesterday, only a measly 60 people turned up. I think they all went to visit on the Monday, which was heaving. I feel a bit bad about not being there as it was New Moon last night and I'd have liked to be there in case anyone was up to anything last night.
Odd thing happened on Monday. In fact, this week is getting gradually weirder. I was doing my warden bit and I looked across at the gate and saw a flash of a man. He was fairly tall, but bent over a little, leaning on a shoulder high staff that he held in his right hand. Actually, I think he was holding it with both hands, but he was holding it on his right side, in a right handed sort of way. He looked a little like Iggy Pop, actually, with shoulder length, straight, naturally streaky grey hair and an etched face. He was tanned, almost leathery. He was wearing a hawk feather cloak that seemed to catch the colour of the sun. As soon as I saw him he vanished.
He wasn't the only thing I saw on Monday that didn't hang around. There were animals too. I think I might even have seen a leopard. Quite a few ghostly people. The stones seem to be "talking" to me again. I don't feel like they are turning a cold shoulder or just treating me as if I'm not there any more. I do feel like part of the furniture, like the grass or the trees. It's not that they're used to me, they've been used to me for ages. It's more than that, I can't really describe it.
The little robins have started getting their adult plumage and have become much more wary. Or at least they were yesterday.
Dreams have been weird, but I can't remember them properly. Just echoes of the context. I know that Karin was in my dreams last night.
The week is dragging by so slowly. I got a book on Mountaincraft and Leadership for the navigation section yesterday, and a map of Jura. I need to get a map of the Kilmelford area as well. All my thoughts are turning to getting out, getting away. Not just this next week, but the rest of the year as well. We're going up to Scotland next week, Andy and Frood and I, to spend a week with my other brother. There was a bit of a scare when it looked like Frood wouldn't be able to come because of work, but that's all sorted now and we're all terribly excited.
That reminds me. Must see if I can get some meths today.
I'm terribly sorry. I seem to be totally disjointed today, completely unable to put my thoughts in order. Although I should mention that those twins have been given sanctuary by the Archbishop of Ravenna. I did make a plea to the void for something to be done for them, for someone to pay attention to what they wanted, if they were capable of having an opinion at some level. I didn't think anyone would listen, as no one is talking to me any more. Of course, it might well have been nothing to do with me or what I said, but Ravenna? It does seem as if Dad is arseing around. Maybe because I asked, maybe it was something that was going to be done anyway.
Of course, it could just be coincidence. I remember reading about Austin Osman Spare. It was in some book that Peter loaned me once, about Crowley and his cronies. Apparently Spare made the decision to take the path in which he treated everything happening around him as being a message to him from the universe. In other words, he made a conscious decision to read too much into everything. He was a total loon. I do occasionally worry that I am inadvertently taking that path myself. How much of it is coincidence, how much of it synchronicity, how much of it is what Andy calls the 2CV effect?
The 2CV effect? Well, if you have a particular thing about green 2CVs you'll notice far more of them on the road than someone who hasn't. You see more of them because you have a pattern matching program in your head that picks them out. You notice them more because they are important to you. I wonder how much of Spare's approach could be seen as an overlap with the Zen concept of mindfulness. Everything is important, everything should be done with mindfulness. Be mindful of everything you are and everything around you. From a not-very expert position, over here, it seems as if the two could be related quite closely.
But I'm rambling again.
My point was, I am sensitive to anything to do with conjoined twins and corvids. The little girls I was talking about before have been offered sanctuary at Ravenna. In some senses that could be the 2CV effect, it could just be a big flash in my pattern match because it has both twins and Raven in there. But that's two big hits. You can drive yourself mad thinking about this sort of thing. Well, madder.
Sunday, August 27, 2000