2010.08.13 01:00 - Afterthoughts

Wol Euler sat alone and thought out loud at this session.

Wol Euler listens to the birds.

Wol Euler: As long as I'm sitting alone anyway, there are a few things I might say about the retreat

Wol Euler: or rather, about coming back from it.

Wol Euler: Some of them involve food (sorry to be so prosaic).

--BELL--

Wol Euler: Our last day of retreating was Friday, we sat around after dinner until late in the evening, talking about what we'd done.

Wol Euler: Saturday morning we were driven in to Halifax, to Eos' house. Maxine left us there, the rest left our bags and went into town for lunch.

Wol Euler: (Tarmel was staying on at Windhorse for another week.)

Wol Euler: We ordered our lunch; Eos and I had cowburgers, the others lentilburgers.

Wol Euler: I should back up and remind you that we'd been eating all this marvellous ultra-healthy food all week, and I had enjoyed it as much as anyone else.

Wol Euler: I felt somehow *clean* after a week of that (which the caterers would say proves the point they were trying to make).

Wol Euler: Salt and pepper were not on the table at the retreat, and were not missed. I think I once put salt on something, in the course of sixteen meals

Wol Euler: Nonetheless, in Halifax I ordered meat, and french fries with it.

Wol Euler: When the food came, I immediately reached for the salt shaker and started sprinkling it on my fries. Before I'd tasted them.

Wol Euler: Habits die really hard, and they revive at the slightest opportunity.

Wol Euler: So. I've been eating gluten, dairy, sugar, processed flour and meat etc for a week. Not really by choice, not as such; it's just all that is easily available.

Wol Euler: And have noticed some effects that it has. I don't sleep as well as during hte retreat. I feel slow and sludgy during the day.

--BELL--

Wol Euler: I more or less expected that, though. What surprised me is this: I can smell the effects of the crud that I am eating on my skin.

Wol Euler: I hate the smell of my meat-and-processed-poisons-drenched sweat. My own body odour offends me now.

Wol Euler: (To be clear, I think this is nothing new, I think I smell now the way I smelled before the retreat, and that *during* the retreat my odour changed — improved — because of the clean and healthy food we were eating.)

Wol Euler: My understanding is that my body is trying to get rid of all the poisonous crud by sweating it out.

Wol Euler: So I am considering what to do about this. I don't know much about the "mechanics" of what we were eating or how it was prepared. I'll have to learn all that.

Wol Euler: And will need longer lunchbreaks to cook for myself, if I really try to carry it through.

Wol Euler: And god knows where I'll find food of that quality in Stuttgart!

Wol Euler: Anyway.

Wol Euler: Another difference that I've noticed is in my relationship to music.

Wol Euler: Before the retreat I had my iPod on all the time that I was away from home, walking or shopping or whatever.

Wol Euler: I would often wear earphones in the office and listen to music or podcasts (working my way through the "sermons" that Gaya suggested once).

Wol Euler: I haven't done that since returning. I wore my iPod to work once, and turned it off after a few hundred metres. I'd rather walk in quiet (or the big-city noise-that-I-can-ignore equivalent of silence).

Wol Euler: At home after work, I sit in silence (while sitting in birdsong in the Playgoda, or whatever) rather than turning on the CD player, as I always did before.

--BELL--

Wol Euler: I miss the retreaters, I miss our conversations and our social/spoken intimacy. And I miss the hugs.

Wol Euler: I miss the forest, which is odd because there is a forest just over there (waves a hand in the direction of uphill) that I could walk in were I not at work the whole time.

Wol Euler: so I suppose what I miss is less the forest than having time and opportunity to walk in it.

Wol Euler: Though ours is different to Windhorse Farm, it's managed and polished and very clean. The paths are tarred, they are hard underfoot.

Wol Euler thinks, and listens to the birds.

Wol Euler: I really miss the retreaters. I'm saddened to see my old habits creeping back, here too: my isolation and reluctance to reach out to make or maintain contact.

Wol Euler: It's going to take an effort, but I *will* make that effort. 

Wol Euler: I should stop before I get maudlin. It's time for work, goodbye and thanks for listening, dear Listener.