Just Breathe

Angels and Demons

​Am not sure at what stage during lockdown you start bottling your own urine. Is it mandatory or is it just taking the piss? I’ve been working long hours this week, and when I start feeling the storm breaking on my little boat, I try to remain calm by simply breathing. And peeing. But mostly breathing. The BBC even reported about the practice in India, called pranayama. Everyone is breathing, check it out, kidz! Meditation often focuses on the breath, and there is an immense calm that extends from deep inhales and exhales. I would advise staying away from phones when you do this though. Let’s say receptions so far have been ‘mixed’

​It also helps tackle my 3am insomnia. My mind occasionally drifts to the melancholic (or downright depressing) Exit Music from Radiohead when repeating my ‘mantra’, a phrase that whole-heartedly makes me want to kick myself in the balls. But there is something in the breathing, it seems to work for me. Other than when I dream of spiders, like I did this morning. A monstrous hairy bastard bigger than a bowl gently crawling over my hand, carefully moving up my wrist and forearm, then another arriving on my pillow, climbing onto my forehead. Then my spine tries to squirm its way out of my body and scamper down the hall along with my custard blood. Waking up in a cold sweat, all the ‘just breathe’-ing in the bloody world doesn’t get me back to sleep. For about three days.

Golden Gate Bridge, San Francisco, 2020

​Am not really interested in analysing my dreams. I mean, jesus, it’s a spider, they’re frightening aliens with eight eyes, of course I’m not going to sleep. According to Freud though this could mean that I feel trapped, and that could come from the fact I’m trapped. 4 weeks and 4 days to go. The situation could only get worse if lockdown was with an actual big spider, and he watched X-Factor or something. Think my mantra would quickly become, ‘just . . . fucking give up, stop breathing!’

Before lockdown, I’d been making plans for my 40th Birthday in mid-August, with my new motorbike being prepared for a ride up to Queensland’s famous Port Douglas, a haven of white-beaches being endlessly nudged by azure waves, the gentle swoosh rhythmically blanketing the soul in a swaddle of relaxation. With a lockdown pressing until at least August’s end, the chances of a Victorian being welcomed in the other states is about as appealing as underpants mad of broken glass. Roughly a four-thousand-kilometre trip, I may be waiting a while. Unless I can bribe the guards with three hundred and twelve bottles of pee (excellent for the garden) and hold my breath the whole way. As the legendary Wim Hof would say, fully-in!

What am I reading? Just finished Ian Banks’ disturbing The Wasp Factory, my first run at his fiction. I finished George Bernard Shaw’s excellent Pygmalion, and have Edward de Bono’s Six Thinking Hats to come. Stephen Fry’s Mythos is lined up for from the library. Also about the passing of the incredible African-American campaigner John Lewis. 

What am I listening to? Graham Greene’s Brighton Rock, which is absolutely superb. And Exit Music

What am I thinking about? I wonder if Lonely Planet's Africa is any good? Also, umming and arring with a friend about a potential leadership venture. Will see what happens!