Nimue Brown's Blog, page 105

Resting Hard

Over the years I’ve had many rounds of getting ill and/or exhausted, being obliged to rest and then having to try and rebuild strength and stamina. This spring has already been really tough, with the impact of heavy bleeding leaving me anaemic. I’ve spent a lot more time horizontal than I wanted to, and of course it has cost me in strength and stamina.

In the past, when I’ve got to the rebuild stage, I’ve focused on the physical activity I could add to the mix. I have an indoors trampoline, which is great for a number of things. I have small weights, and resistance bands, so even if the weather isn’t good enough for walking, I could still exercise. Before I messed up my previously hypermobile shoulders, I used to swim as well. I did Tai Chi. I danced.  That I’m not very fit, or strong, or slender is not from lack of trying – and I mention this because so many people assume that body shape is just about your lifestyle choices and really it isn’t.

This time, I’m going to try something different. I will of course get back to all the active things I can do, and I’ll try to do at least something every day. However, I am also going to try resting hard. I have been doing all sorts of things to try and improve my sleeping – with some success. I’m working out what kinds of things are good for me as down time – reading and crafting are particularly important. Also cat snuggles. I’m putting more of that into my day. 

It doesn’t work to try and go flat out all the time whenever I’m well enough to get away with it. Sooner or later, I get ill. That may be going to happen anyway, but I think I can be better resourced if I plan more rest time into my life.

All too often, activity is framed as an unequivocally good thing while rest is treated as lazy, indulgent and unproductive. I’m going to change my language use. I’m going to rest hard. I’m going to have rest plans for building up my health. I’m going to be highly motivated to rest regularly. Resting gives me more resources, and if I pair it with things that feed my brain, I am ultimately making myself into a more functional and probably more productive person anyway. 

Exhaustion and burnout are hardly efficient, nor do they result in good thinking, wise choices and quality output. Working people to exhaustion isn’t about productivity at all, it’s about subjugation. It’s time to reject that relentless work hard, play hard model. Work wisely, play happily, rest hard.

Druids do it in threes

It’s hardly a new joke, but you can usually raise a snicker – even in ritual – by mentioning how Druids like to do things three times. It comes up a lot around ritual repetition. Three is enough times that by the third time, enough people will say the thing confidently. It’s not so many repetitions that it starts to feel silly or meaningless.

On the history side we have the Welsh triads – clever groupings of things into threes in ways that are easy to remember. Which is about as much detail as I feel moved to go into on that aspect! There is also the lure of the three drops of inspiration from the cauldron of Cerridwen.

Threes, and multiples of threes create rather satisfying shapes and forms. Triskels, the awen symbol itself, three is enough of something to make clear that you really meant it, without it getting tedious.

I’m interested in the way that stories can be told in three beats. It’s something I’ve poked about in with little cartoon strips. You have to strip an idea to its essentials to convey it in three beats, and that can be revealing and interesting as a process. Three beats to tell a joke also works well. 

Over on instagram, walls display images three at a time. I like to put my pictures up so that they group in threes – there’s something decidedly satisfying about it. I like the process of working out how to tell a small, visual story in three beats. When I’m working on a craft project, I have to think along the way about which stages of development I want to share. For bigger projects, there are often revisits, sometimes with weeks in between them. For craft, I want to show the story of developing a piece, three beats at a time. Sometimes I share the development of art in the same way. Three images from a walk, or from an event to try and capture something.

Frames can be really helpful for shaping work. Often, the challenge created by the frame itself contributes to the richness. Creativity without boundaries can be messy and ineffective. I like the structure of sonnets, the restrictions of short stories and flash fiction, the limitations inherent in comics pages. I like the necessity of keeping blog posts short and focused. I like the way posting trios to Instagram requires me to structure my ideas.

Me on Instagram – https://www.instagram.com/nimuebrown/ 

Degrowth and the joys of shrinking

For some time now, countries have been run on the assumption that there would be infinite growth. It’s pretty obvious that on a finite planet, this could not work, but no one in power has thus far seemed keen to look at that. 

The UK is a mess at the moment, and is likely to remain so. Our economy is shrinking, the cost of living is going up and suffering is already widespread. As far as I can make out, the political responses do not include squaring up to the problems growth itself causes.

We can’t consume our way out of this. More importantly, we can’t consume our way out of climate crisis and all of the many threats that poses to us. Our wellbeing as a species is going to depend on degrowth. We need to use less, cause less pollution, cause less destruction. Ideally we need to turn ourselves around entirely as a species to become regenerative – focusing on the growth of plants, eco-systems and all life rather than destroying life for the idea of economic growth.

It’s a marvellous opportunity. Imagine if we only made and used things we needed. How much less work would we all need to do? Imagine if we just accepted that everyone needs a home, shelter, clothes, clean water, clean air… and started deploying resources accordingly. Without growth and a growth-orientated economy, there’s much less scope for a small number of parasitic super-rich people to dominate everything. Having what we need is not going to support gratuitous wealth or obscene consumption. Everyone should have nice things, no one should behave in ways that are eco-cidal.

Economic growth fuels competition and exploitation. It requires an underclass of workers. It creates waste and pollution. There’s no reason at all why we have to live like this. Politicians have long been afraid of shrinking economies because no one really knows how that would work. But, here we are, and it’s happening anyway, and is bound to happen as we run out of cheap fossil fuel options. We could choose to do this well, cleverly, kindly and for everyone’s benefit.

As an individual, there’s not a vast amount we can do, but there are some things. We have to let go of the story that business as usual is desirable. We have to stop believing in the idea of eternal growth. We could go further and let ourselves be excited about how much good we could do by shrinking economies. Politicians may be in charge, but most of them don’t lead. They simply follow the social trends they believe will get them re-elected. 

Adventures in Poetry

I’ve written poetry since childhood. Child me was very much a nature poet. Teenage me wrote a lot of angsty emotional stuff – which wasn’t that original of me, but there we go. The habit of using poetry for catharsis and processing stayed with me. These days I try to work it into something another person might find interesting or entertaining before I put it in front of anybody.

For some years, my writing poetry has depended a lot on having an audience for it. I put the odd poem on here, and there’s one on Patreon most months. I was at my most prolific as a poet when I had a local, monthly poetry event to go to. There’s nothing like the promise of an audience to focus my thoughts and get me interested in writing. Making people laugh is deeply attractive to me. Just occasionally I managed to spellbind hard enough to get deep silence in response to my words, and I find that highly rewarding, too.

Of course lockdown meant there were no poetry events to go to. I rapidly discovered that Zoom events with more than a couple of people stressed me to the point of malfunction, so while there was a big online poetry scene during the pandemic, I wasn’t part of it.

I’m currently in the process of reviewing the poetry I’ve written in the last two years, to see if I can make a viable collection out of it. When I’ve pulled it together, people on Patreon will get first dibs, and then later in the year I’ll put it in my ko-fi store – https://ko-fi.com/O4O3AI4T/shop – where I already have a number of ebooks, and two poetry collections. You can pick any of those books up for free, or pay what you want. I’m a firm believer in gift economy, so if you have limited resources, please help yourself to the free stuff with my blessing.

If you have resources, throwing a few coins in the hats of creators you like is a really good choice. It makes a lot of odds. It doesn’t have to be my hat – if you’re able to support other creators then that’s entirely cool so far as I’m concerned. I also benefit from other creators being able to afford to keep going.

Encounters with wild things

I’ve had two wonderful encounters with wild things in recent days. With all due reference to my recent post about getting closer to nature, I want to be clear that both times I was somewhere it would be reasonable to expect a person to be, and I did no more than stop and look.

The first encounter was at twilight and I was on a cycle path. Various songbirds were alarm calling, so I stopped to see what had upset them. There was an owl in amongst the trees and the smaller birds were doing their best to see it off. Owls will take chicks as well as rodents. The owl called several times before heading towards the fields. We’ve had owls here all the time I’ve lived in this flat, they hunt in nearby fields and raise chicks in the trees on the edge of the cycle path.

My second encounter was in daylight. I was on a pavement, passing by some semi-wild land. I suspect some part of my brain registered that I was being watched. There was a fox cub sat at the edge of a bramble patch, catching some sun. The fox cub stayed there while I pointed it out to Tom, and then trotted back into the undergrowth. The cub watched us the whole time and seemed relaxed – we were some distance away and on the other side of a wall, which probably helped.

I didn’t get photos in either instance – both were brief encounters and unexpected, so no one had a camera out. I’m conscious with foxes that posting pictures of them in identifiable locations can bring them trouble anyway, so it may be best not to make clear public declarations about where they are.

Story Compass – a review

Story Compass offers the reader an interesting and original set of tools for self discovery. You could use it as a workbook, or as the basis of a set of retreats, read it flat out and take what suits you, or dip into it.

I think there are several kinds of people who would particularly benefit from this book. It’s very much aimed at the reader who wants to explore themselves in a contemplative way, and who needs tools and maps for this. It assumes that you’ve not done a deep dive into your ancestry, or the water you swim in, and that you have yet to figure out how your culture, background and life experiences have informed you.

It’s designed for people who are not squaring up to massive trauma legacies. If that’s you, then this probably isn’t the ideal book and you’ll need to find something more trauma informed.

I think this book also has ideas to offer to new bards. If you’re starting out on a creative path and figuring yourself out in relation to the work you want to do, there’s a lot here that’s usable. The relationship between self and creation, history and inspiration, how we draw on experience and work with the material of our own lives is all highly relevant.

Taking control of your own story, and being the teller of your own life can be an incredibly powerful and empowering process. The stories we tell define us, and if that is something you have no idea how to engage with, this is a book, and a process, to consider.

The writing style is easy going and enthusiastic. If you like the idea of taking your inner child on an adventure, then you’re going to love this. There’s a playful, open hearted tone to the whole thing – which isn’t for everyone. If you suspect you might find that patronising rather than engaging, you might well not get along with this book.

The work outlined in Story Compass can be approached in a number of ways. You could be fairly pragmatic about it and go for imaginative journaling and creative thinking. You could use it as a guide for visualisations and journey work and really go for that – depending on your needs and preferences. One of the things I liked is how unprescriptive the author is when it comes to these kinds of inner journeys. You’re given the gist of where to go and what to do, but how that plays out is very much down to you. It made me realise how normal it is to see this kind of practice described in a lot more detail, where you are told what spirits or ancestors are going to say to you. I found it refreshing to see such open ended explorations.

I came to this title as a book reviewer interested in working with story. It’s not come to me at a time when I could personally make much use of the contents – although twenty years ago it would have been a divine gift to encounter something like this. It means that a lot of what’s here is not material I’ve felt moved to test – I’ve already done this sort of work, in my own ways so there’s not much for me to delve into and unravel. However, I think the whole approach is useful and fertile, and likely to be worth exploring for anyone who is setting out on a journey of self discovery.

More on the publisher’s website – https://www.johnhuntpublishing.com/moon-books/our-books/story-compass-journey-discovery

The trouble with murder

To be clear, I have no issue with self defence. I also have considerable sympathy for anyone who kills to escape unlawful imprisonment. It happens – and it tends to be what’s going on when women kill their abusive partners. Otherwise, the standard reasons for murder are really crappy when you look at them. Jealousy, greed, revenge. For the domestic abuse escapee, the point at which you get out is the point at which you are at most risk of being killed, because loss of control over a person feels like a reason for murder, for far too many people.

As a starting point then, I have problems with books that present murderers as interesting or sympathetic. I have a particular distaste for the ‘clever serial killer who toys with the police’ trope. I’ve read and watched enough murder mysteries to have developed a certain amount of unease. I also struggle a lot with the ‘amateur detective who just happened to be there’ model, with all due reference to Murder She Wrote, and things of that ilk.

I am perpetually uneasy about the way murder can be presented as a mental health issue – as is often the way of it in the news. On one hand I think a person has to be a particular kind of unhinged to think that killing someone is a good option in most circumstances. On the other hand, stigmatising mentally ill people is cruel and unhelpful. Most people with mental illness are a danger to themselves and not to anyone else.

It has therefore come as a bit of a surprise to me to find that I’m co-writing a cosy murder series. I like a challenge, and it’s a good opportunity to look at my beliefs and assumptions around the genre and to also consider whether I could do this on my own terms. I do want to explore what the hell has to be going on in a person’s head to make murder seem like a reasonable choice. Not to validate that choice, but to make people question the kinds of thinking that might take you there.

I don’t believe that the inclination to murder is innate, or that it comes out of nowhere. The choices we make, the beliefs we adopt, the entitlement we feel and the way we justify things are all going to contribute to a trajectory. If it isn’t an accident, and it isn’t in self defence then there’s been a journey to the point where it seems like a good idea. That’s something I’m interested in exploring.

Of writing and magic

Any act of writing can be a spell. Simply putting words into the world is an act of will, intended to cause change. It is a process that can change the person undertaking it, as well. I write things on this blog because I intend to cause change.

Sometimes I write in order to understand. I find it a powerful tool for processing. There have been many times when insights have come to me as I was writing, rather than having set out to write about insights I’d already had. Even when I think I know what I’m going to say, the process of writing often opens unexpected doors and allows something new to come through.

By this means, I can take ideas out of my thoughts and place them in your mind. Thanks to the additional magic of the internet, I can do that without necessarily knowing you. Written words travel freely through time and space, connecting us with people in ways that go far beyond what many of those writers could ever have imagined. I can sit at my computer and read in translation the first known novels from around the world – something I doubt those authors could have imagined would ever be possible.

Anything you can do through meditation, trance, visualisation or similar inner working, you can do by writing. It’s all about the kind of states your mind can enter and how you choose to explore that. For me, if I want to know about something, my best bet is to try and write about it. The headstates I sometimes enter when writing are much akin to those other, more obviously spiritual states. 

Much of my writing is deliberately constructed by me, in a conscious way. Much of what I do depends on knowledge, experience and years spent learning technical stuff and honing skills. However, every now and then, something else seeps in. Not always when I’m trying to court the numinous, sometimes when I’m being entirely silly, even. Some of my best animist writing is in Wherefore – which was written to be an amusing distraction during lockdown. 

Opening up to the flow of words and ideas always makes a space where something else is possible. Just occasionally, something else comes through that is more than I expected, and takes me to places I did not know I could go. Sometimes, the act of writing is one of being enchanted – not being the spell caster, but being the one on whom the spell is cast.

Getting closer to Nature

The chances are you’ve seen art and photographs of people with wild things. You’re a Pagan, a Druid, and the idea of wild things coming to you is deeply attractive. It would affirm how attuned you are to the natural world. It would prove your Druid-ness. Maybe you could rescue something and raise it. Maybe you could tame something.

It’s a temptation I entirely understand. Wild things are deeply emotionally affecting. There are few experiences more powerful and affirming than having a wild being look back at you and not just run away. These are usually experiences I have at a distance. I don’t try to handle wild things unless they genuinely need my help – getting hedgehogs out of roads being the thing I’ve done most of. I won’t rescue wildlife from other wildlife because everyone has to eat. I will move creatures who are at risk of being harmed by humans.

Without knowledge, skills and the right resources, bringing a rescued creature home is really risky for them. It’s better to get them to a professional, or an established rescue centre if they really need help. It’s always worth considering leaving them to let nature take its course – thus providing someone else with a meal. Decisions about who to help and who to leave hungry should not be based on cuteness. For me, whether the species itself is endangered is going to be my biggest consideration.

If wild things get used to humans, this can make them vulnerable. We can put them in danger if they start thinking humans are safe to approach, or a good food source. We can frighten them, disrupt their lives and cause them harm by trying to get close to them. Often the kindest and most respectful thing to do is to stand still and let the wild thing do as it will if that doesn’t put you at risk either. Enjoy the moment. Wild creatures who seek food from humans can end up being killed for being aggressive and invasive.

The situation is different with semi-wild things – feeding the ducks on the pond in the park is not really going to impact harmfully on them. Birds in your town centre are not going to be compromised, probably. It’s worth noting that seagulls in particular can become aggressive in their dealings with people if they think they can get food. It is important to know what you’re doing, and to know what is safe and appropriate food for any semi-wild things that move towards you. Don’t give dairy to birds. Don’t pollute the water by throwing in loads of bread that just sinks to the bottom.

If we genuinely care about nature and about wild things, one of the best things we can do is not impose. Humans put a lot of pressure on nature as it is, without Pagans trying to live out fantasies in invasive ways. Stay on the path. Don’t interfere with wild lives. Don’t try to feed them your lunch. Don’t steal their babies – leaving young unattended is normal. Don’t deliberately get close to their homes, nests, or dens. Watch them from a distance that keeps them safe.

No one should be considered disposable

One of the hopeful things to come out of France re-electing Macron as president, is his promise that ‘no one will be left by the wayside’. France, like many countries, is facing a cost of living crisis. I am in no doubt that this crisis is fuelled by the way politicians have pandered to the desires of the unreasonably rich. 

Nothing drives people to political extremes like poverty does. The rise of the far right at the moment has everything to do with the widening wealth gap, and the way in which far right politics offer simple solutions to slightly more complicated problems. Rather than deal with the inequality, the far right encourages people to hate and abuse minorities, misdirecting justified rage towards people who are not the cause of our problems. Moving towards the right in this way means giving more power to those who are invested in further widening the wealth gap.

When more extreme groups get political traction, the result can be that previously more moderate groups move towards them. This has certainly happened with the Tory party in the UK, who may have successfully dealt with parties like UKIP by moving into their territory. Leaving the EU has made us a nastier and more racist country, as our treatment of refugees clearly demonstrates.

I hope that Macron is serious about tackling inequality. I hope that we will see moves towards fairness as a way of responding to the rise of fascism. People don’t make good choices when they’re under-resourced and scared – those conditions make all of us more vulnerable to manipulation and less able to make good decisions. We all need food, shelter, and basic security, and we urgently need political approaches that are about dealing with basic needs rather than treating most people as disposable for the sake of the profits of the few.

Billionaires are not successful people. Billionaires are total failures. They are people who have taken too much and do not know when to stop. Their compulsions are toxic to all life on the planet. To have so much when others are suffering, is a state of failure. That some people have been allowed to skew everything so badly, is a situation of political failure. That we treat these disasters as success is a collective failure of understanding and compassion.

We urgently need to do a lot better.