Day 28b: Magisches Theater

A cold morning - frost ferns on the car as I load it with numb fingers.  Then bowling down to Dorset, with nothing but some roundabout works on the A31 to slow me down.  I'm mildly apprehensive as I drive. Will it be dormitory accommodation?  (If so, will anyone snore, or whistle-breathe?)  Will the process match my expectations?  Will I behave?  Will I 'get it right'?  And what will the other people be like? 

I stop off in Lyme Regis on the way.  Dear little Lyme.  That picked me up and dusted me down back in October.  It's a place that moves to the beat of its own drum - a far slower rhythm than I am used to.  The Christmas lights are up.  Old-fashioned strings of fat coloured bulbs, zigzagging down the main street to the sea.  There's a mobile disco van parked by the big Christmas tree, pumping out festive tunes accompanied by a single rack of flashing lights, and a woman dressed up as Mother Christmas, handing out mince pies in exchange for donations to the Rotary Club charity fund.  I leave my wallet carelessly in a cafe.  It sits there safely, for the hour it takes me to realise what I've done. 

As I'm walking to the car to leave, I find a second-hand bookshop - one that was closed when I was last here.  There's a notice on the door that reads 'Magisches Theater.  Eintritt nicht für jedermann.'  So obviously I have to go in.  It's a warren of nooks and alcoves, cramped and crammed floor to ceiling with books, and in any spare space, waist-high piles standing like stalagmites.  Not just books, also artefacts - framed butterflies, faded toys and games, old toys, ornaments.  There's a man in a dusty panama hat, sorting battered Ordnance Survey maps.  I ask him about the notice.  He is minimal and gnomic in response, but I get what I need.  It's a quote from Herman Hesse's 'Steppenwolf'.  And the Magic Theatre is metaphorical - a place that exists in the mind.  (At this point, it feels like the start of a film.  Seriously.)

I leave Lyme and head for the meditation centre.  A beautiful three-sided building, made of plastered straw, with soft organic curves to all its edges.  A big, warm kitchen with squashy sofas and a wood-burner.  An onslaught of new faces and names.  A bedroom each.  The meditation room is across the courtyard.  Shoes off.  Calm, pale, softly-lit.  None of the ascetic bare-boards and discomfort that I expected.  Cushions, chairs, fleeces.  Focus and breathe. 

Overture and beginners, please.