Notebook
i)
I wonder which of us is ghost.
I lift you onto my shoulders and carry you out.
Your bones are light, your grip strong.
Your ragged bandages graze my calves.
I have your emergency,
packed in cold muscle under my ribs.
The trees have the cadence of your scream.
ii)
Sink here
in litter and soil.
Where this solitary stone furs stagnant
in mudwater, suffocate.
That single star will puncture you.
When you left, you left.
The door open to a terrible draught,
and me in just a shift of barbed time.
And because the door was open,
I knocked.
Six times I knocked.
All the passers-by stared,
but no one answered.
Until the postman came with a parcel.
It was a present from you, but not.
An invitation, of sorts.
I set it on the mantelpiece
and looked at it for seconds, for minutes, for hours, for days, for weeks, for months.
I wanted to be sure I had read it correctly.
In the end, what else could I do?
The clock had long struck twelve.
‘I trained as a translator’, she said, ‘before…’
sharp tang of bleach and blood as she passes the butcher’s
sudden oil on water
words suffocating as dead fish floating
breathless in the gaps where meaning
swam to
the concern of crowding shoppers the
tangle of synapse and neuron the
ministrations of St. John’s
vocabulary too blunt for ambition
folding into acid clearing the nasal cavity
soul
salvation
sanity rising,
thirsting like a sunflower calipered
with love. Always
love. Straight as a cane and turning
old newspaper, broom handles,
the detritus of life’s shape
shifting abstract and transcending.
The shot stars fallen
form now so much pretty debris made
tangible in her newly apprenticed hands.
Somewhere out on the salt flats of suburbia
modern Midas is mired.
Run aground.
Prow to the moon,
brow freighted
with salted hopes.
Regrets like driftwood,
hollowed and stuck.
He weeps
for each moment
of a life spilled starboard,
drop by drop, swelling
the weight of his gold.
I’d have wanted to crawl — to wind down
windows, witness every dirt tread
caress oilslick macadam, inhale
the black — if I were him. But I am
still a back-seat driver and here
see his callow form before headlights,
slant rain in darkness, digging
this for us. The hands that will hold
our bodies swell and burn, calloused.
Behind the wheel now, crack’d leather old,
king of his road still
he feels, perhaps, a pulse steal the arc
of his spine. An arcane twitch of muscle memory.
The weight of young passengers.
An insight of speed, time blurs to tail-lights.
It’s mid-June, 2020 —week 11 of lockdown here in Scotland— and there’s just a promise of lifted restrictions on the early summer breeze.
Whilst everyone’s experience of lockdown has been unique; fraught with its own risks and containments, challenges and opportunities, one way or another we’ve all learned a lot.
As I ready myself to emerge, blinking, from my bunker, it feels apt to pick through what I’m hoping to carry with me into my own ‘new normal’.
So far, at least, I’m lucky not to bear either of the burdens that will scar so many. Although one or two have experienced the virus, all my immediate family, friends, neighbours and colleagues are alive and well. This is the first thing I am now reminded to be grateful for.
But that’s not to deny things have been hard in smaller ways.
In the first week I lost all my income-generating work, and all of my volunteering.
No matter. I had some financial reserves, and quickly shifted my focus to finishing the dissertation (ironically on the subject of ‘time’) that was due in a fortnight. By then, we were all sure, this would be over. How convenient, what a gift.
By the dissertation deadline, it was clear lockdown was going to last much longer. And now that I’d completed all my coursework, there was nothing left for me to do. I still had no paid work coming in, no volunteering and, as the days went by and the scale of the situation became clearer, future projects and commitments disappeared, rinsing my diary well into the winter and beyond, to 2021.
There was an overwhelming sense of loss— at once intangible and yet all too tangible. I had lost my liberty, and my income, and I had also lost my space. The ‘room of my own’, which gave me more joy than I knew, was now occupied by my adult son and his partner who had locked down with us. My books, materials, projects, notes and records were now scattered through the corners and cupboards of the flat.
Along with my liberty, income and space went my purpose, my direction, my worth. I was bereft and felt numb.
Of course, I need to check my privilege here: I was not ill; no one I knew was ill; I had a home; that home had sufficient space to accommodate the basic needs of four adults; I even had access to the outdoors; I had family; I had three of my closest family around me; and my partner’s income was assured, for the time being.
For a while, this litany was enough to sustain me as I energetically rewrote my daily script. My state-sanctioned hour’s run in the local park was supplemented by frequent ‘Yoga with Adriene’ sessions. But in between these markers I was falling deeper and deeper into a kind of catalytic state. By the fourth week, I had disappeared into hibernation. I spent hours in bed, consuming uncommon quantities of sugary, carb-laden, fatty snacks.
It seems this experience was not unusual. And, apart from the distressing 10lb of ‘Coronaspeck’, was not, in hindsight, all bad. In letting go of almost everything, I gained perspective on what was lost and what was left. Something about that dip was quite earthing.
I realized much of my usual energy was, in fact, fizz— the sparking of anxiety. The absence of many of the usual environmental stimulants simply highlighted how much they frazzle me. I began to draw up a table:
(-) (+)
polluted air clean air
the growl of traffic birdsong
late night revelers silence
constant threat of injury empty roads
being bombarded by marketing messages limited opportunity to consume
ever increasing velocity slow, steady pace
the judgment of others limited social contact
the noise of others fewer neighbours
multiple newsfeeds single headline
travel as consumption closely observing one location
ambition reflection
change rest
I started to relax into new relationships with the humans and animals around me. As I began to turn a corner, I set about finishing off all sorts of small projects – darning every needy sock, embroidering that jacket, recovering that quilt, finishing that knit, some creative writing. I still couldn’t take on anything too big, too concentrated, but I was making progress. And, of course, the rest of the world was adapting too.
In dribs and drabs, some paid work has slowly begun to return. I signed up for a webinar series exploring future options for my profession, and emerged with a new peer support network. Then, having learned to navigate at least seven new work-based online platforms, I also began exploring the leisure potential of the internet as never before.
Yes I watched all six series of Schitt’s Creek on Netflix, but I was also guided to perspective-altering readings on gender, attended sessions of the Cambridge University Students Union, took Japanese drapery classes with a Berlin fashion designer, joined a ‘Me and White Supremacy’ book circle, learned about No Dig horticulture by the guru himself, joined the writing team of an online magazine, even attended a webinar on wall maintenance given by a neighbour, and— most fabulously— went to a disco in the Sri Lankan jungle where, amongst folks from all over the globe, I boogied with my friend from Japan; 2am for her, 4pm for me.
This is surely how Tim Berners Lee intended his new tool to be used.
I can’t pretend all is perfect. I’m still carrying an extra 7lbs and can’t remember the last time I didn’t pour myself a ‘cheeky’ alcoholic evening drink. To be honest, this constitutes the physically unhealthiest I’ve been for many decades. But I do feel that some mental or spiritual purging has taken place— some Marie Kondo of the mind —and I’m in no rush to fill these newly opened spaces.
From all of these shards and fragments of experience, I’m beginning to piece together my ‘new normal’, and it’s a much broader portfolio than it used to be.
Ironically whilst living under restriction, we have all simultaneously experienced a period of great political and social upheaval. These two phenomena are interlinked in all sorts of complex ways, but have manifested in both huge shifts in social order, and small regenerations of community. We seem to be re-learning that we need to look after each other.
Like most people, I have found greater connection with neighbours, local independent shopkeepers, my postie, and many others. I’m hoping, once lockdown is released, we won’t abandon our new communities.
I’m hoping not all the innovation will be online, but I’m no longer minding that much of it will be. I’m crossing my fingers I’m one of many who now clearly see that our consumption and our habits were causing harm to our own wellbeing, as well as to the health of the planet.
Life SHOULD be quieter, calmer, slower, smaller. We have the privilege of being one keyboard stroke away from all of everything. If we can stay grounded, and balance the real and the virtual, we can effect a lot of good.
As we head towards deeper economic and, inevitably, social disruption, I’m resolving to take re-entry as steadily as I can, and to try to hold on to the best of lockdown’s insights.
Let’s look after each other, and our earth.
It’s March now, and all across the central belt of Scotland, Spring greenery is emerging to carpet the woodlands. It’s time for getting out and about, for shedding the winter’s hibernation. Especially given the unseasonable warming of the anthropocene.
Since my last blog post, I’ve been investigating movements to redress the climate emergency. I had been to a couple of meetings, a couple of lectures, when my daughter sent me a link to a gathering taking place in the village of my birth.
This seemed such an unlikely coincidence that it couldn’t be ignored.
In my herbal journaling I have lately been drawn to rose (Rosa canina/ x damascena/ gallica) to ease the grief that is menopause. It seems the rose has had other ideas; drawing out and healing the wounds of sharp thorns, old stock coming to bud again. And now here was an invitation to return to more calcareous soil, to the red rose county.
My earliest childhood friend — a first love of sorts — was a girl named Sonja Cullum. What mattered initially was that she was as tall as me, and a worthy opponent in playground high-jump. What didn’t matter was that she came from a recently settled gypsy family, who spoke Romansh at home. From breakfast to teatime we were inseparable. We didn’t need much language, or much of anyone else. We played high-jump, yes, and cat’s cradle, skittle ball. We exchanged all manner of skipping games. But mostly we wandered in the great outdoors. She knew so much about plants and flowers, and used them in ways that we didn’t in my house. Still now, the sight or scent of a dog rose (Rosa canina) takes me straight back to her.
But it turned out that Sonja’s background did matter. When we were about nine years old, we were called in front of her father. This was a huge deal. We were allowed into the front room, accompanied by her brothers and mother. Her father sat behind what seemed a huge table, her brothers and mother stood, as did we. Her father explained to me that I would no longer be allowed to associate with Sonja, that she was now of an age when she would no longer be allowed out without a chaperone (I had to ask my Mum about that one), and she would no longer be attending school. I was then shown the door.
That was it.
I never saw Sonja again.
I was devastated. I think I probably still am.
A year or so later, I heard the whole family had returned to Switzerland, to be with their community.
But as a child I had no narrative that explained this. I didn’t understand, and no one helped me to. I concluded there must be something gravely wrong with me, and I was very lonely without her.
I cast around for new friends. Most of the kids in the village hung out in a pack, wandering through the woods and fields and along the riverbank. I thought this might feel the same as wandering with Sonja, so I joined them.
It wasn’t the same.
One day, down on the riverbank, waist-high in stickyweed (Galium aparine), the pack turned on me. I hadn’t taken care to notice that the other girls had gone home, I had thought I was just with friends. The boys seized me, held me down and lifted my top, laughing at my budding breasts.
I was horrified, embarrassed, ashamed, powerless and indignant. And confused when the boys just carried on afterwards as if nothing had happened. So that’s what I did too, my face stinging with tears and shame. This was probably also my fault, I reasoned— at least for not knowing the codes of behaviour the other girls knew.
And now here I am, standing on this same riverbank. When I set off from my Dad’s house to walk down the village this morning, he joked “Mind you don’t turn left, or you’ll head down Memory Lane”. In fact it’s cathartic being here as a part of such a radical gathering; a ‘tribe’ as marginalized as Sonja’s, seeking different ways to live and be. These people are trying to create equal, inclusive spaces, to dismantle the hierarchy and patriarchy that brought such an abrupt end to my childhood friendship, to reimagine futures where gender might not be a weapon.
I find I am not only able to walk the riverbank, but to walk up past the lane by the orchard, and the tumbled-down wall that leads in to the woods. The woods where, after feeding me drugs at my friend’s 18th birthday celebration, then gallantly offering to help me home, one of the village boys dragged me, raped me and left me. A punishment for not ‘giving out’ like the other girls did.
When I regained consciousness, I made my own way home. In the morning I hoped it had all been some weird dream, but it took a long time to pick the twigs from my hair. I don’t think I’ve been alone in a wood since, and even with company I have grappled every time with that icy fear in my gut. A honeymoon picnic amongst swaying poplars in Tuscany was a particular trial, when it should have been a joy.
Back in Scotland, I haven’t been able to rally a friend to come with me to walk in the woods, to identify the plants and consolidate what I’m learning on my herbology course. So on Saturday I went alone.
It was only an urban wood — heavily managed and used, and not ‘real’ to my eye— but perhaps a good place to start.
The foraging was a disaster; my ID skills so weak that I gathered samples from plants and trees that are medicinally useless, and walked straight past those that I should have been gathering. Yet I stayed on my own in the woods for an hour or so, and I didn’t panic. I even went back the next day. Then I cut my finger so badly that it will take months to recover, and again all for nought herbally-speaking.
But I know I’ll go back now, and perhaps one day I’ll get the herbology right, too. Baby steps.
This feels like redemption, like reclamation, like recovery, like renewal, like a second Spring.
Oh, and one thing Sonja taught me about Rosa canina: it’s called the dog rose because its roots can be used to cleanse the infection and recover the wounding of a wild dog’s bite.
1.1.19
As the study of herbology draws me closer, the turn of 2019 finds me wondering what future my Diploma might offer.
Everywhere I turn, it seems, I am met with more and more evidence that I am aligning with a growing movement. A movement at once local and global, parochial and political.
Radical herbalism is emerging as both act and identity of resistance amongst the U.K.’s Generation Z, and — as Gil Scott Heron predicted — this revolution will not be televised (Gen Z don’t watch tv). But it is being organized, and crucially shared, through social media.
I have been slow to recognize my own limited understanding of that digital-age verb, to share. We have not only been gifted a revolution in the means of communication (of Marxist ‘production’ in many senses), but a challenge to the entire notion of ‘possession’, and thus to the wayward direction of late-stage corporate capitalism. To share does not just entail passing on information, and even knowledge, but also opening up ownership. As I’m sure Tim Berners-Lee was hoping, the internet has given Gen Z the keys to a new kingdom. And they are busily, and mindfully, exploring the possibilities and the responsibilities with which they find themselves entrusted.
It’s not an easy task.
In a ‘Let Them Eat Cake’ moment, my partner and I were again puzzling on the enormous popularity of take-away coffee amongst younger people. Why, we wondered, would our son spend his hard-earned zero-contract pennies on some eco-unfriendly super-latte, when he could just buy a kettle and have a brew at home?
But for many Gen Z’ers, kettle ownership is not an aspiration. The cost of a decent kettle is so prohibitive, employment and housing so insecure, that the possibility of kettle, abode and electricity supply appears too remote. Especially given that climate apocalypse is predicted in the next twelve years.
Yes, 12.
This generation are not familiar with a comfortable expectation of steady accumulation; the one we inherited from our parents, the one that still blinds us to the urgency of the climate situation.
It reads like an Aldous Huxley novel, an Orwellian dystopia, a Mad Max film, Margaret Atwood’s latest — but stop, look around, and you will see that we are living it.
Desperate times call for desperate measures, as Hippocrates is believed to have said.
To escape the obvious, but corporate-controlled, response of despondent drug-addled hedonism, what seems to be emerging is a New Puritanism; one that is based not on the harsh biblicality espoused by Cromwell, but on behaviours that permit escape from the tentacles of mega-corporations.
And there are precious few non-corporate spaces left.
Corporations (with their concomitant advertising, their Project Fear, and their behavior manipulation profit-yield strategies) now influence to an unprecedented degree our societies, our bodies, and our thoughts.
Consider the state of health services — think of private drug company charges to the NHS; a service buckling under the popularized premise that we should live and be young forever.
Consider fast fashion, and the rise of image (self)–consciousness — together with its associated social atomization, and decay in mental health.
Consider the accountability of democratic structures — influences on voter behaviour, electronic vote rigging, Trump and the Russians.
So it is any surprise that a generation struggling to emerge from this foul corporate soup is looking for alternatives?
As we reach ‘peak stuff’, they are beginning to rebel by ‘cleanlining’ their possessions, and by treating clothes as their post-war forebears once did.
And they know they will need to reclaim control of food and nutrition. To do so, they will need to break free from the food insecurity of mass production, and they will need to break the corporate control of agriculture — with its blind genetic manipulation, its pesticides, and its profit-maximizing disregard for the variety of natural habitat.
As Hippocrates is believed to have advised:
Let food be thy medicine and let medicine be thy food
From plants to people to planet.
We have 12 years. The clock is ticking.
Get involved, and share in building the future.
18.11.18
Perhaps it’s one of those odd laws of coincidence, or synchronicity.
After posting about Artemis (and Artemisia dracunculus) at the last full moon (see blog 9. ‘Full and earthy’), I wasn’t intending to write more about Artemisia. But then I hadn’t planned on encountering the altogether madder, badder, and witchier Artemisia vulgaris.
More commonly known as mugwort (not the prettiest of names), she is most definitely a witchy herb.
I had no idea.
Well, I’d heard her recommended for lucid dreaming – for fair maidens to place under their pillows to dream of their true loves. The lore reminded me of Madeleine, the heroine of Keats’ Eve of St Agnes, going to bed hungry, surrounded by a great untouched feast, hoping for a vision of ‘the one’:
And turn, sole-thoughted, to one Lady there,
Whose heart had brooded, all that wintry day,
On love, and wing'd St. Agnes' saintly care,
As she had heard old dames full many times declare.
They told her how, upon St. Agnes' Eve,
Young virgins might have visions of delight,
And soft adorings from their loves receive
Upon the honey'd middle of the night,
If ceremonies due they did aright;
As, supperless to bed they must retire,
And couch supine their beauties, lily white;
Nor look behind, nor sideways, but require
Of Heaven with upward eyes for all that they desire.
So, when an herbology colleague offered a ‘shrub’ of mugwort vinegar and blackberry syrup in return for a favour, I didn’t really think too carefully about pouring a generous amount into a mug, topping it with hot water, and settling down to the day’s lectures. It tasted absolutely delicious.
What I didn’t know was that mugwort was once used as a kind of truth drug; that it is known as a great revealer; that it is usually found growing at crossroads; that it has a reputation for leading seekers to their true paths.
If I’d known that, I might have considered my action more carefully. As the old Blues saying goes: ‘If you meet the Devil at the crossroads…’ (google Robert Johnson for more on that).
So I’m there in the classroom, and after an hour or so a very strange thing begins to happen. Although I’m aware that nothing superficially physical is taking place, I have a very strong sensation of the outer layers of my self — well, I don’t know what to call it exactly my aura/ being/ personality/ energetic field/ psychic defences? — peeling away, layer by layer.
As this continued, I grew smaller and smaller, like Alice. And it did continue. All day.
By the evening, I had become so small that I had fallen entirely down a rabbit hole. Perhaps it’s fortunate that I am familiar enough with my own idiosyncratic warren of psychological rabbit holes to know not to panic when I find myself in one. Nonetheless, I wasn’t fit for much, so took to my bed early in the hope this might resolve the issue.
My cats, who had been very concerned by my countenance, followed me to bed, where they positioned themselves above my pillow so that they could purr continuously onto the top of my head — as if nursing me, or containing me. Or both. This is not their usual behavior. They continued this ‘nursing’ for the whole night.
So I rode it out and, by the morning, felt somewhat jangled but nonetheless restored.
I hasten to stress that this was in no way a hallucinogenic experience. I was entirely, and effortlessly in control of all my faculties. I could easily and safely have driven a car (though I didn’t).
I don’t really know how to classify the experience.
We had that day studied fungi, and had made hot water extractions, tinctures and dual extracts using birch polypore, chaga, usnia and jellyear — all of which we had tasted. And although it’s quite possible that these may have had some effect on me, the strangeness was beginning to happen before the tastings. In fact, I had the sense that the fungi were pretty grounding, and that things might have been more pronounced without them.
There’s only really one way to find out, and that’s to take the mugwort again.
I’m just waiting for the right circumstances, and the courage, to do it….
09.11.18
We have been tasked with using biodynamic methods on our herbal garden plots at the RBGE. I don’t know whether this is new to me or not, in that there’s a real cross-over here between the kind of old gardening wisdom I’d hear from my Uncle Ken, my Dad, and their compatriots, and the information contained in texts on the biodynamic method. Originally attributed to Rudolf Steiner (1861-1925), the biodynamic method is being increasingly granted scientific foundation by formal knowledge gains in both astronomy and horticulture.
In that sense, and to indulge in a little old skool sexism, biodynamic horticulture seems to be the masculine equivalent of herbalism, where much historically intuitive, tried and tested, mostly female folk wisdom is now being validated (and appropriated) by the scientific academy.
So whilst it seems, from our historical perspective, that much lay wisdom is now being validated by scientific findings, the inter-relationship is complex.
For example, we in the West are not alone in inheriting a rich folk relationship with our biome. Consequently, we must also consider the Western-centricity of what we currently accept (and do not accept) as biodynamically, or herbally valid. It may be that some of the considerations found in the East are simply not relevant to our climatic conditions, or it may be that so many of our equivalent forms of understanding have been lost or destroyed (by a couple of centuries of vicious witch-hunting, for example, or by the practical restrictions imposed by early transcription and printing methods).
Either way, many of us — particularly city dwellers — have become increasingly detached from the planet on which we live. On a daily basis, how many of us touch the bare earth, with either hands or feet? How many of us can decode and predict the increasingly erratic patterns of birds and weather? How many of us even feel we have the time?
Recognizing the decline of earth-centredness in my own daily routines across my 50+ year life span, I decided to begin my biodynamic gardening practice by re-attuning myself to my planetary environment.
And for that, I have found myself looking Eastward.
The Ashtanga yoga tradition seemed to offer the best option since, like biodynamic gardening, its practice is specifically tuned to moon days. The website ashtangayogacenter.com explains the connection thus:
Both full and new moon days are observed as yoga holidays in the Ashtanga Yoga tradition.
Like all things of a watery nature (human beings are about 70% water), we are affected by the phases of the moon. The phases of the moon are determined by the moon’s relative position to the sun. Full moons occur when they are in opposition and new moons when they are in conjunction. Both sun and moon exert a gravitational pull on the earth. Their relative positions create different energetic experiences that can be compared to the breath cycle. The full moon energy corresponds to the end of inhalation when the force of prana is greatest. This is an expansive, upward moving force that makes us feel energetic and emotional, but not well grounded. The Upanishads state that the main prana lives in the head. During the full moon we tend to be more headstrong.
The new moon energy corresponds to the end of exhalation when the force of apana is greatest. Apana is a contracting, downward moving force that makes us feel calm and grounded, but dense and disinclined towards physical exertion.
The Farmers Almanac recommends planting seeds at the new moon when the rooting force is strongest and transplanting at the full moon when the flowering force is strongest. Practicing Ashtanga Yoga over time makes us more attuned to natural cycles. Observing moon days is one way to recognize and honor the rhythms of nature so we can live in greater harmony with it
I took my first class on the Monday immediately preceding the new moon (on Wednesday November 7th, 2018), rested on the moon day, and practiced again the following Monday.
So far, the endorphin boost from the exercise itself is feeling great. I’ll need to take quite a few more classes before I’m familiar with the Primary Series 1 (beginner’s) sequence, and complete a few monthly cycles before I can begin to feel more attuned. So I’m off now to book my next class, and I’ll keep you posted….
