I’ve just written a list in my notebook. I put a date, July 2017, and gave the the list a title, ‘A list of things one might do’. The list has seventeen items, the first being ‘Nothing’ and the last being ‘Stop’. Having written the list I came from the sofa to the computer and began searching for a scheduling template which I could fill in with plans and timings and keep a record of what I was doing. After a few minutes I realised I wasn’t actually looking, I was doing nothing. But it was the wrong sort of nothing.

Doing nothing is very important, the right sort of nothing. I went swimming the day before yesterday, splashed about in the pool and watched the serious gym people through the glass running and rowing and cycling, pumping weights, you know, all that stuff. The pool where I go is too small for proper swimming, so I splash about and do some water yoga. The right sort of nothing. I have no particular objective.

And yesterday I went swimming in the sea with Louise. The absolute best sort of doing nothing: being with someone you love. Which reminds me, when I got home I looked for the description in Dr No, Ursula Andress coming out of the water. That moment was a formative one for me, and there I was, fifty years later on Selsey beach, and she walks out of the water, her golden hair flowing, her fabulous body dripping with water. Life is a strange and wonderful thing.

I’ve been struggling to write this blog lately, and yesterday I realised why. I write from my heart, and the thing that is filling my heart is Louise, so unless I write about her first, I can’t write about anything else.

Doing nothing is about feeding yourself fully. It prepares you for everything else. Last weekend I was in Derbyshire at the Biodanza North Festival, the second one. This was doing nothing of the highest quality. It was entirely surrendering to the moment and listening and speaking with my body. Dancing. I’ve just looked at my list and dancing is not there. This must be because it comes under item 1, Nothing.

Here are a few notes I wrote while was at the festival, slightly mischievously, and not quite reflecting the blissful time I enjoyed, but rather indicative of a moment of leaving the space of doing nothing to try to write my blog:

Well, I’m writing this in the lounge at Unstone,  in Derbyshire. Almost Yorkshire. The wilderness of the North. I was listening to Norse myths as I drove here; as I crawled up the great congested artery that rises from the southlands where I live. Out of the window the marquee where we dance lists dangerously.  I think Loki pitched it. I suspect he will tip it further as the weekend proceeds, until we are all heaped at the bottom, a writhing mass of connected humanity. All in this wild northern waste.

Loki is the God the other Gods turn to when some mischief has occurred. Either he is responsible for it, or he knows how to fix it. When Sif’s hair disappeared in the night it was Loki who had taken it, when Thor’s hammer was stolen it was Loki who got it back. I will look to Loki for help dancing on a slope, and find out what I can learn. Maybe it will question my stability and maybe it will teach me to ground myself more fully.

My ragged train of thought is interrupted by crazy conversation, mostly about Milton Keynes. I’m not sure where Milton Keynes is, I’m actually not sure what Milton Keynes is. One of the things I always wonder about when conversations are rattling along is what people are actually talking about. Now I know. They talk about crows flying, and Milton Keynes, and having an encyclopedic knowledge of the road system in Britain. 

Back home now I can reflect more objectively. It was strange and wonderful to be dancing with someone I love in my heart. The memory of that overpowers other memories. I’m thinking. Remembering. Ingrid’s soft Welsh voice, teaching Creativity, telling us she had to cut the record short because we were all late, then delivering a wonderful vivencia. Catherine dancing a fabulous demonstration dance of being completely alive, Gail swinging from transcendent bliss to a desire to kill a horsefly

But how, if that fly had a father and mother?
How would he hang his slender gilded wings,
And buzz lamenting doings in the air!
Poor harmless fly,
That, with his pretty buzzing melody,
Came here to make us merry! and thou hast
kill’d him.

Titus Andronicus, Act III scene 2

and then transporting us with gongs and beautiful music. And of course Vitality from my friend Rupert, giving us a flavour of his version of being alive, with his hair in a man bun, being looked for by Helen, just Alive.

Then on Saturday night Paola, with all her Latin femininity, teaching us Sexuality with such clarity, such honesty, such passion; teaching us to belong to ourselves, to own ourselves and all our desires; teaching us that pleasure is our birthright. And somewhere in amongst it all bringing Affectivity and Sexuality together, a perfect marriage, so that when we danced Affectivity with Catherine on Sunday morning we could fully engage with the sensuality of it.

And finally Maria. Here it is hard to find the right words. I want to find words that will pierce through her shield and reach her heart. From dreamtime sometimes a person arrives on earth to change something. To make the world a better place. To create joy where there was no joy, to connect people to each other where there was no connection. Maria is one such person. She created this festival and it is a creation that any Goddess would be proud of. There is now a Biodanza Festival Family of the North, and it was not there before.

So, I’m writing about the Biodanza Festival, and loving Louise, and not really about lists at all. But that’s where it started, and number 16 is ‘Blog’. I’m doing that. I’m not entirely sure of the point of the list. It has, however, got me back here and writing again, so maybe that was the point. I can now round off this little story with a final thought. I did not expect to fall in love. This has been a wonderful year. It started at the beginning of May when I attended Philippe Lenaif’s course, Sparkle of the Divine, and began to understand what it meant to love myself, and do it. That beginning enabled something magical to happen, something quite unexepected, I met Louise and we fell in love. And here I turn to Nat King Cole for the last words, because, Louise, you are

Unforgettable in every way
And forever more, that’s how you’ll stay
That’s why, darling, it’s incredible
That someone so unforgettable
Thinks that I am unforgettable too