I hope you enjoy this collection of moments from my life over the last few months. Let me know in the comments which you like most, and why.
Motherly love
The baby elephant can’t keep its feet. He gets up and falls over numerous times, slipping on the muddy floor. His mother uses her large trunk to steady him to get up again each time, and I can almost see the excitement in the baby elephant’s eyes. I know humans have a tendency to anthropomorphize, but this elephant is definitely broadcasting emotions across the park: Interest! Excitement! Curiosity! Safety! Love!
Boxes and webs
What’s it like to keep such a big secret? I asked him. He shrugged, and said he was a private person, and found it easy to compartmentalize. Yes, I said wistfully, you’re good at putting things in boxes. And your thinking is more like a web, he said. With everything connected. Hard to think of anything in isolation. And we agreed that both styles had their pros and cons.
At the bar
I look around the bar, and it’s mainly guys, who are mostly drinking. It’s been a while since I have been in this environment, an environment with which I used to be very familiar. And I’m uncomfortable. I guess the crowd is younger than me, but as I’m not drinking, I feel out of place. The noise and the merriment feels overwhelming. I stay for a while and push myself to chat to a few new people, some of whom are interesting, some of whom are self-absorbed. And when I leave, the night has been fine, but not one I would seek out again too soon.
Travelling in style
I’m driving behind a guy in his 30, who seems to have his Grandma on the back of his motorbike. I would estimate she is in her late 70s or even 80s, with her back bowed over with age. Her hands, one of which is holding a juice box, are care-weathered and her face is lined. The extraordinary thing is not just that she is on the bike at all, but that she is sitting side-saddle, with both legs to one side. And she’s sitting on the bike as if it wasn’t moving. As if she was drinking her juice in her living room, in her favourite chair. It’s balance and a casual grace I don’t even have now, let alone in 50 years’ time.
Absence
When you’ve been really ill, really sick – food poisoning lasting three days – the absence of pain on the fourth day is more like a presence than a lack. Like you’ve been filled with health, the poison of the pain that’s been gnawing away at your insides gone, replaced by blessed normality. At least that’s how I feel today, grateful I’ve been lucky enough to get just one bout in the year I’ve been living in Thailand.
Choices questioned
After 20 minutes of asking questions, I ask the Monks if they have any questions for us. We end up talking in two pairs. The Cambodian Monk (thin, silent for much of our questioning) talking to me reveals he has studied some psychology. He understands I’m a professional psychologist, but he doesn’t understand the flavour of psychology that I practice. When he finally does, he asks me, with a disarming simplicity and directness, why I wouldn’t want to be a clinical psychologist so I could help people. I stumble in trying to explain my choice of work psychologist, firmly centred in business instead of mental health.
Time Distortion
Today it’s exactly one month until I leave Chiang Mai to go back home to the UK for Christmas. A year ago, a month away was impossible to imagine. An incredible luxury. More holiday in one hit than I had taken in over 13 years. And now it seems like nothing, a flash, like no time at all. The moments here pass quickly, my days are busy. I am in flow.
Sleeping on the job
I’m sitting in another café, two Japanese gentlemen at the table next to me. I see them here a lot. There are only two tables outside, and mid afternoon we usually occupy them both. I wonder how the café survives given its lack of customers. It’s pretty mysterious. I have no idea how business works here. Especially as its main employee is quite often asleep.
Kill to cure
I hate feeling ill. This morning my body feels horrid – achy and painful and tender and sore, and I have a headache too. My body and I don’t get along too well – we’re currently working on a more civil relationship, learning to live with each other better. I’ve already been sensible and skipped one activity I wanted to do this morning, and it looks like I’m going to have to disappoint another friend this afternoon too. Sigh. The really tedious thing is that the flare up is because I saw a medical practitioner yesterday who probed and prodded and pushed and pulled and generally knocked me about, all in the name of healing – but “it might get worse before it gets better.” Don’t I know it.
A clear and present danger
I’m at Chiang Mai airport, and go through the security scan. I’m stopped after the screening of my hand luggage, and I open my bag for the person searching. She takes my plug adaptor over to the security x-ray screen and she and the operator compare it to whatever they saw. Nope. She takes my wash bag and goes through it. Nope. Another member of staff comes to help search. I feel a bit uncomfortable as we’re at my PJs now. I’m only going overnight to Singapore, so everything I need, delicates too, are in this bag. She tries something else. Nope. Nope. Nope. Finally the other woman snatches something too quickly for me to see, they turn to compare it to the image on screen and the offending article has been found. An apple. The fruit, not even the computer. It’s not deemed to be dangerous, and I am allowed to continue on my way, slightly bemused, but avec apple.
Longing
Sometimes an ache fills my soul, and I find myself longing for something else. But the catch is, I don’t know what that longing is for, so I have no hope of fulfilling it. Because, goal setter that I am, if I knew, even if it was to be an astronaut, or to find a particular deep sea creature, or to discover the origin of humanity, I’d set myself off in that direction. But this directionless sadness – longing, ache, emotional pain, suffering of the spirit – is hard to pin down. And thus hard to actively remove. Luckily, it only happens every now and then, and there’s always dark chocolate and American crime dramas to get me through it.
Yi Ping
I look up at the sky, and I can see the sparks of hundreds of orange lanterns floating serenely across the sky. Each one taller than me on the ground, looking up at them scattered across the sky they seem as numerous and tiny as grains of sand. At the main release site to the North of the city, over 10,000 have been let go, each one with hopes, dreams and the weight of secrets in their flames. Tonight they are beautiful, tomorrow they will land in gardens, trees, pavements, building sites and many other places as litter. I hope that I burn as brightly and as beautifully before I’m composted.
Meta
I sit there, thinking this would make a perfect vignette. But far too personal, and identifiable. I wonder how Niall and other bloggers like him do it, expose the very raw and intimate details of their lives to public scrutiny. And how they don’t leave a trail of annoyed friends and acquaintances behind them. But then, of course, it’s still a managed flow of information. A choice. But this particular vignette – perfect though it is in the words in my head – will stay there, inside. A reminder that my whole life can’t and shouldn’t be described in tweets, facebook status updates, reddit statements, or even vignettes and blog posts.
tess bullas says
A very interesting read El – looking forward to catching up soon! xx
ellenmbard says
Thanks Tess, see you soon indeed! x
El D says
I like the last one best. You realise that not everything needs to be shared, that we need to keep some things to ourselves. And “Longing” was very honest. And something many of us share with you. The Portuguese have a word, saudade, which means (according to Wikipedia): … a deep emotional state of nostalgic or deeply melancholic longing for an absent something or someone that one loves. Your vignette reminded me of that. A El x
ellenmbard says
That is an excellent word. If I had known it previously, I would definitely have titled that vignette with it! x
Alison says
Motherly Love, To me it says that no matter who you are ( Man or Beast ) we all need someone to prop us up from time to time.
ellenmbard says
I think it’s definitely true. We’re social animals, even those of us who are more introverted, and keep our ‘prop-er-up-ers’ to a small number…
The Daily Explorer says
I like the one about longing, probably because I dip in and out of that experience from time to time and can relate to it. Travel safely x
ellenmbard says
In comments and emails so far Longing definitely seems to have struck more of a chord than I realised. Perhaps we would all feel it less if we knew that others felt it too. Thanks Ray, and see you next year x
Maggie Mcgeary says
Interesting post – like delving into a pick n mix! I liked Longing but also Meta should be on these daily prompts – it automatically makes me think up ideas of what the trigger might have been!
ellenmbard says
Thanks Maggie! I’ve had a few emails from people who like Meta too – and also agree with the sentiment!
Chris says
I liked the elephant one best. The wild beasts are sometimes more caring than humans.
ellenmbard says
Thanks. Considering how humans treat elephants compared to how we treat them, I think they probably are….x
rachelfsinclair says
Wonderful post Ellen – hard to pick a favourite! I think Time Distortion rings very true for me, but Meta perfectly sums up that feeling when you have a great idea to share, but the desire to keep it private outweighs the desire to publish. Oh and Longing! x
ellenmbard says
Thanks Rachel! These two seem to be the favourites – with the baby elephant close behind. It’s so interesting what people pick out! x
Penny says
I really love Longing – as others have said, it resonates with my own experience. But also Travelling in Style is wonderful because it reminded me so much of my time in India and seeing a family of 4 travelling by motorbike. And Boxes and Webs reminds me of a conversation with a friend about thinking styles which he categorised as the difference between Foxes and Hedgehogs (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hedgehog_and_the_Fox). Also, the question of why do psychology for businesses/business people is something I’ve struggled with myself, and maybe partly explains my move from SHL to the charitable sector and what I do now.
ellenmbard says
How interesting. I’m definitely a fox… thanks Penny!