Cycles

I feel it is important at this stage to ask all men to look away now, as enlightened and modern as you may be.......

Yes, this is a delicate one, I have (you may have noticed) been putting it off, but I feel as sensitive as this might be I need to raise the subject of the cyclical pattern of unfortunate events (sorry Lemony).

Even went as far yesterday (pantheist me!) of buying a rather gorgeous chunk of labradorite to wear around my rather chunky neck. Aye, therein lies part of the root of this story...... My life, like most womens', is ruled by cycles beyond my control, although I have read all the literature I can stomach (which is a LOT) on more soya, less sugar, more unrefined foods, less fat, more wine, more chocolate, more dumplings...... ok, so I didn't read enough - I think we are more pulled and pushed by the waters within us that I ever heretofore believed (that is a word apparently).

For example, at the ripe and cynical old age of 45, I begin to get prancy and flighty every 28 days or so, it is true, I start thinking of boys I have known, pulling my tummy in in a rather exaggerated way, conning myself that I still look good for my age and all that cobblers and feeling quite upbeat and yes, dare I say it, even saucy! Then of course, the brain kicks in and I realise, my god, I must be at that scary part of the cycle when one is (reputedly) ready for anything, 10 - 14 days after the onset of the previous period. How can this be that this many generations into evolution and we are just little creatures, ruled so strongly by moon and tide?

Then the inevitable resultant slide takes hold, and the other stuff in one's life that feels a bit difficult and stressful on a normal day, starts to feel overwhelming and intensely complicated, resulting in a few days of such a horrid feeling of all one's emotional worries becoming insurmountable. I also feel a strange furnace start burning in my centre, and have a few days of as few clothes as possible while everyone else is cool and calm - this is physiological as well as psychological, perhaps a precursor to a new phase. Everything is just a bit louder and a bit brighter but not in a good way, and I find that a cool breeze, being out of doors and a soft-focus, long-distance view over some trees or fields or the beach is the best way to diffuse this intesity. Town life with it's noise and dust and close-up work is very taxing, nay, trying, nay, immpossible.

And then the earth spins a few more times and then you feel 'normal' again, and unlike when you are young, the whole period lark is so neither here nor there and uncomplicated without all the attached embarrassment that it passes in a flash and you wake up one morning and think, I quite like being alive, why did I think I didn't? I can't remember why I ever felt so bad, did I ever really feel so low? And order, of a sort, comes into your brain again, and determination to eat more healthily and do more exercise and see that friend that you have meaning to see and deal with that admin you have meaning to deal with and suddenly, I am practical, capable me again! Hurrah!

And I presume that I am so buoyed by my own strength and confidence that 10 days later I become silly and dizzy and ever-so sexy again!

The critical thing is to accept the link, not just to think that one is mad, or strange or possessed. The kind thing is to realise that technology has outstripped biology and we live in an environment (I know I do) not conducive to calm and rest and perspective, we ARE the rats in the 1970s maze, watched by men in unflattering white coats and those matching black-rimmed glasses, with the chunky clipboards and biros! We have been dropped by an acceleration of technology into these things called towns and cities where strangers miles and miles away grow food to feed us for which we hand over meaningless representative material called money.

So, labradorite at the ready, I will attempt this month to remember that we, Homo sapiens, are only 150 000 years old, which is too young to expect my body, and yours, to have forgotten it's place on the planet that once was.