Capricorn 27° (January 18)

Probably two hours of sleep. I am getting to the point of exhaustion. We came back from A.’s house and I fell around one but was up by four. I’m just sitting here writing until eight when S. rises. I have quite the day planned and am a bit daunted, even though it is all about and at my leisure: On A.’s recommendation, I have booked a two-hour Ayurvedic massage. I don’t know what to expect but I know the place I’m going is a barge on the other side of the Thames at Tower Bridge. It’s quite cold today but I head out across Bethnal Green Road down past the Shoreditch overground through Spital fields and White Chapel across the bridge along the river. I think I know where the place is so I just sort of loll about; then I think maybe I’m not in the right spot after all, which I wasn’t. So I kept looking and couldn’t find address until I realized a large truck (lorry) was blocking the entrance to the whatever-it-is-you-call-the-metal-thing-you-walk-down-to-the-boats-on-the-river. Suj met me at the locked gate and led me down the slippery gang ways (they’re called gang ways?) to a warren of low barges. I am mainly walking on wooden planks, after a while, covered in chicken wire to make the going less slippery. (What he will tell me later on my way out is that I’m actually walking atop barges, and that the gardens’ plantings on either side of me are rooftop gardens in effect. There is even a large tree growing from the roof of a barge.) We get to his barge, a one-hundred-year-plus-old Dutch number, painted a dark teal. It takes some doing getting onto it. And then we enter this incredibly barebones kitchen behind which is the massage studio, consisting of a very old practice table covered with a towel, and a simple wooden stool, facing a mirror atop a sofa. There is a tele from which is coming plinky plunky music while images of some monk or Rinpoche glowers reassuringly. There is a smell of incense but none currently burning. I have to take a pee which requires a bit of acrobatics to “go below.” One must travel vertically, backwards, as if by ladder.

The massage begins with me naked but for my underwear, seated in the stool, as Suj says he will start with head massage. I have never felt anything in my life like this, my entire nervous system is a-tingle. Feeling as exhausted as I do I have that much more drastic a reaction, I think, than I might otherwise. This goes on for over ten minutes and I’m getting slightly uncomfortable. I’m almost aware of the nerve patterning from my head all the way down my legs, and my left one feels its age-old damage, or at least that’s what I’m imagining. Finally, it is time to move to the massage table where Suj instructs me to lie face down. I slip off my underwear for the rest of it. There are familiar elements to the massage, the symmetry of doing to the right what one does to the left; and of course kneading the muscles, but there is an extra element of covering the same territory, warming it up for starters, and then massage the same areas, over and over again, for extended periods of time. On the left side of my back all goes swimmingly, while it is usually my trouble side; but on the right something isn’t releasing, and with this form of massage, which is repetitive, the resistance is being met over and over again, which is only making me sieze up more and more, like when you try to get into a cross legged position and your hips sieze up, only it is my shoulder complex and I can’t seem to lie flat; so I riase myself off the table a bit on my right side and I’m making noises designed to tell Suj to back off but he doesn’t. I’m feeling a bit panicky, now, but it is subsiding slowly. He remarks on how tense my right side is; ad will tell me how much better my left is. He is all intuition while having perfect technique. He’s now doing those long stroke moves, standing at my head, down my back and ass which he keeps opening up on his way back to starting position. Of course the reflex is to clench and maintain integrity, in all senses of the word, but the repetition forces me to let go and now I’m worrying that my anus is actually going to prolapse. I’m exaggerating slash kidding but not really. He then changes places and starts to do my legs but on this score he will dig so far into my groin, in the process, increasing blood flow, shall we say, to the point of now all I can feel is the worry that he’s going to say turn over while I have an all but raging boner. Oh fuck. It isn’t very relaxing when you’re fretting about showing your full extended manhood. The panic is back now with a vengeance. There might also be a little leakage. Holy Hardon, Batman.

Ultimately he does have me flip over and I simply say: “okay, do erections happen?”, to which he responds, “don’t worry.” Ironically, this makes me worry more because it crosses my mind that his reassuring words carry a meaning along the lines of: I will take care of that. Uh, oh. But, no, thankfully, he had no intention of it going there. And my front now receives just as much attention as my back did; and when it comes to the legs bit, he’s digging back into where my lower body attaches to my top; at one point I think he just took my dick and moved it over as if it were an errant branch he encountered while weeding a garden. The real transcendence begins with the torso massage and ending with the face massage, which includes this move where he makes an opening motion from my third eye out, like opening curtains, over and over again. I have to say for a moment there I saw the face of some blue god, I kid you not. Two hours later and I was completely altered. I hadn’t noticed that the rocking of the barge which was minimal to begin with had completely halted. It was low tide and we were wedged in the mud at a slant. It was tricky enough getting up after this intense massage without having a dizzy spell and passing out, but the entire boat was at a major slant. My Batman reference now seems very apt as that show was so often filmed on a diagonal. I dress as best I can and am walked out back through the warren of boats getting more history of the place. I retrace my way back through Spitalfields where I purchase a reassuring pricey swimsuit, on sale. And S. is still at the flat. She soon sets off to see another friend (I should get one of those at some point) and I will have a pint at the George and the Dragon and do a bit of shopping at the Grocery before returning back to make a pasta sauce and pack up, both of which goes quite successfully.

To view the original Sabian Symbol themed 2015 Cosmic Blague corresponding to this day: Flashback! The degree pointof the Sabian Symbol will be one degree higher than the one listed for today. The Blague portrays the starting degree of for this day ( 0°,  for instance), as I typically post in the morning, while the Sabian number corresponds to the end point (1°) of that same 0°-1° period. There are 360  degrees spread over 365 or 6 days per year—so they near but not exactly correlate.

Typos happen. I don’t have a proofreader. And I like to just write, post and go!
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