Nimue Brown's Blog, page 169

Identity and body chemistry

I am both fascinated by the way in which my biology functions, and cautious about what of me could or should be explained in purely chemical terms. However, my chemical identity has been a consideration for some years now. I started down the peri-menopausal track rather early – 39. I get the mood swings, and my menstrual cycle is changing.

My experience of myself, month to month is informed by the blue days before I bleed. I usually bleed for six days and two of those are usually heavy and painful. My mood shifts around ovulation. This has been part of the rhythm of myself for some time. Who will I be without that? I’ve seen some fascinating stuff from Caitlin Moran recently about what fertility hormones do to women and what happens when those go away. How much will I change? Will I wake up one morning feeling angry and finding I need to do a PhD? It happens a lot, apparently, but seems unlikely in my case.

Right now I’m dealing with a lack of adrenaline in my body. Adrenal fatigue is not widely recognised as a condition and definitely isn’t recognised in the UK. I can say from personal experience that there does come a point where a body just can’t keep doing the adrenaline, and doesn’t, and it takes a while to recover. In the meantime, experiences of fear and panic result in something like being slapped in the face with a cold fish. It is weird and disorientating, and my emotional self has changed because my body can’t support what I was feeling.

Amusingly, I’m also having trouble with endorphins. Usually this is a diet/exercise issue, and problems mean more effort is required to support the body. But, I’ve been walking, trampolining, eating plenty of fruit and veg. I don’t even know why this system has crashed. It creates an interesting opportunity to look at who and how I am when this chemical aspect of me isn’t working.

How I think about things hasn’t changed. It doesn’t seem to matter much what’s going on with me chemically, my considered philosophical positions and chosen ways of being hold up passably well. Except where those ways of being depend on being able to show up in a body and feel stuff. At the moment it’s a bit like how I imagine being a brain in a jar would feel – disconnected and a tad unreal. Being in my body is hard at the best of times, right now, it is almost impossible to show up for anything other than pain.

There is however some comfort in knowing that I’m not going to have my sense of self washed away by the hormonal shifts of the menopause. Anything I’ve come to deliberately is likely to hold up, by the looks of things.

(This blog post is not a request for advice on how to medicate any of the above, nor any other kinds of interventions I might try. That’s in hand, this is only part of a story, and it wasn’t what I wanted to talk about today so please don’t come in with that sort of stuff as I find it tiring and it isn’t going to help right now. Thank you.)

Superheroes as Modern Myth

A guest post by Chris Mole

 

What does Hermes, fleet-footed messenger of the gods, have in common with the Flash, the Scarlet Speedster of DC Comics and a member of the Justice League? Not a lot, you may think – one first emerged in ancient Greece over 2000 years ago, the possible Greek version of a Mesopotamian snake-god, while the other was created by writer Gardner Fox and artist Harry Lampert in 1939. And yet, the first appearance of the Flash (and his alter-ego, Jay Garrick) depicted him in a winged metal helmet and winged boots that deliberately evoked Hermes, while the accompanying text proclaimed him to be “the Flash, reincarnation of the winged Mercury!”

The Flash is the most obvious example of a superhero inspired by a god, but he – along with Superman, Batman, Captain Marvel and Wonder Woman, all introduced prior to 1941 – has become much more than that through decades of comic books, TV shows and movies. In reimagining what a hero could be, the creators of these household names were (unwittingly or not) tapping into a rich seam of mythology, creating archetypal characters who would thrive and survive throughout the tumultuous 20th century and be as relevant as ever in the 21st.

In an increasingly jaded and cynical world riven by injustice and seemingly entrenched hatred, superhero stories may be the closest thing we have to modern myth – epic tales of heroes and heroines with godlike power, who battle against evil and protect humanity. Since human beings were able to describe our surroundings, we’ve ascribed characteristics and personalities to them – in shinto, local kami are personifications of rocks, rivers and other features of the landscape. Since we conceived of gods, we’ve felt the urge to tell stories about them, imagining divine societies and hierarchies that mirror our own and creating liminal spaces where our realm overlaps with the divine – sacred groves, hellmouths, even churches in the Christian faith.

We imagine worlds in which those with divine powers walk amongst us, disguised as normal human beings, and we take lessons from them – the heart of every good Superman story is not the power which Superman wields, it’s the compassion with which he treats the people around him. A Superman who knows when not to punch, but instead to simply talk – and listen.

With Brigantia (issue #2 funding now on Kickstarter!), I wanted to draw an explicit connection between pagan myth and the modern mythology of superheroes. Brigantia was conceived as a kind of ‘British Wonder Woman’ – a superhero whose powers come from a divine source, but who is based on a goddess much closer to home for me than the Greek myth that Diana, Princess of Themyscira is based on. However, our challenge was that while we know a lot about the Greek pantheon and their stories (due to their written traditions and the writings of poets such as Homer), we know a lot less about Celtic deities – Brigantia arose from a society that had a strictly oral tradition, and stories that weren’t passed down were lost.

We wanted to take what we do know about the goddess and attempt to bring her to life – to show her as a fully-realised being whose personality drew from the tribesmen and women who kept her name alive. That humanity is key to the power and longevity of our myths – we look to the gods for guidance when we face struggle in our own lives, so being able to draw strength from their challenges helps us to persevere. We see Batman struggle every day with the enormity of his Herculean task to stamp out crime, and we see him rise up again and again and keep fighting towards that goal. With Brigantia, we wanted to show her struggling with defeat and failure – a goddess previously undefeated in battle, known for her power and bravery, being soundly beaten by a monstrous foe. Failure is an essential part of any mythological story, because all of us have known failure in our lives – we can draw inspiration from how our gods and heroes battle through that failure and emerge victorious.

Above all, with Brigantia, we want those who worship the goddess to feel like this is a story that they can relate to – it might not be an old story, or one handed down through the mists of time, but the awen strikes just as strongly now as it did back then. As modern superhero stories draw on the structures and patterns of stories from the ancient past, hopefully our reinterpretation of Brigantia can be the latest in a long line of regional tales about her – not the only true story, but one of many, and maybe even help evoke the goddess’ presence for our readers. After all, myths have to come from somewhere…

 

Brigantia issue #2 is now funding on Kickstarter, with a story by Chris Mole, art by Harriet Moulton and Melissa Trender and lettering by Aditya Bidikar. Check out the campaign here: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/chrismole/brigantia-issue-2-the-comic

Landscape poetry

Marginal

 

Life is richest

At the margins.

Wood edge, field side

Light and shade.

Butterfly places

Flower haven

Alive with bees.

I eat wild herbs

Underripe blackberries

Spot small birds

Too fast for naming.

Happiest at the edges

Where wild lives

Cling to the unwanted

Land at the boundary.

Untamed, uncut, unfarmed

But not unloved.

Collaboration and adventure

There probably are ways of collaborating that aren’t inherently vulnerable, but I’ve never looked for them. Working with someone else creatively always calls for a certain amount of letting go. It means accepting that you aren’t in control of the whole vision. It is of course possible to have people working together and one of them be in charge and control the overall shape, but that’s more like getting other people to help you realise a vision. It’s not the same as true collaboration, where everyone’s vision is equally important.

Collaboration requires compromise. It means accepting that your ideas are going to change and evolve. People who want to control the whole thing, and people who want to stay in control of their own bit, seldom make good collaborators. This works best when there’s a fearless leap into the dark and a willingness to embrace the unexpected.

It’s an interesting counterpoint to business-as-usual. Our culture encourages us to stick to our guns and hold our positions, as though life and creativity are military operations we can win or lose. So often, changing is framed as weakness and lack of commitment, but for creative collaboration, it is the magical essence at the heart of the process.

Letting go is liberating. Not having to dominate, or win, or direct is a really freeing experience. Being allowed to change, is wonderful. Being able to give up on things because you’ve seen something better, is glorious. And yet, in normal life we are not often encouraged to do these things.

Don’t fight your corner. Don’t hold your position. It’s much more fun to surrender to the process, get swept away by other people’s ideas sometimes, and be open to the unknown. Life is so much more of an adventure when you do not have to be right, or in charge or in any kind of control of what’s happening.

Wherefore series one

There are now 50 episodes of Wherefore on my youtube channel. I’ve designated this as series 1 and you can find all 50 episodes here https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLd-6bmI3UuPDjEp1YqIYY6GkVTmG-1qux

Episodes are 5-10 minutes in length. It’s a bit like a soap opera although there are some underlying plot arcs, sort of. There’s a fair amount of magic and animism.

Here’s episode 1 –

Most of the reason for designating the first 50 episodes as series 1, is administrative – I think it’ll be easier to share around if I do it in chunks. I’m also considering doing a paper version because audio doesn’t work for everyone, and because I like paper. I’ll have to do a bit of an edit for that because it was written to be spoken and there’s things I’ve relied on my voice to carry that won’t come through with text alone.

There will be a series 2, and I’ll crack on with that shortly.

 

We need a tree strategy

At the moment in the UK, we are cutting down irreplaceable ancient woodland to build a high-speed railway. There are people who feel that the railway will deliver environmental benefits and that this means it is worth cutting down the trees for. There are people (me amongst them) who are deeply uneasy about the idea of the ends justifying the means in this way. The argument that we can and should trash wild places and unique habitats to save the greater whole is, I think, deeply suspect. It ignores the importance of specific places, focuses on human benefits and it turns care for wild things into a numbers game. And numbers are so easily manipulated to tell whatever story suits you.

Recently the PM announced that there are no trees in the UK over 200 years old. This staggering ignorance only increases the danger to our ancient woodland. If decisions about national projects and the spending of public money are going to be made on the basis of what uninformed people imagine is going on… we’re in trouble.

Ancient woodland is real. Trees over 200 years old are very real. You can get involved with The Woodland Trust’s Ancient Tree Inventory here – https://ati.woodlandtrust.org.uk/

The National Trust has a page on our most ancient trees – https://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/features/enter-a-world-of-ancient-trees

Lack of access to green space has been a real issue during lockdown. The evidence for the impact of trees on mental health, and the necessity of green space for exercise and physical wellbeing, exists. It’s not a controversial subject. However, we’re short of trees, short of urban trees and short of access to trees and this needs to change.

A strong England Tree Strategy is crucial. It is the plan that will determine what the Government does to protect, plant and restore woods and trees for years to come. A plan informed by reality rather than the whims of those in power, would be a great help.

There is a DEFRA consultation underway. It is split into four key sections and below is some guidance to help people write their own personalised responses.

*   expanding woodland cover: target of 18,000 ha of new native woodland.

*   protecting existing trees and woods: at least 75% of native woods need to be in either good condition or improving for nature by 2030.

*   connecting trees with people: it needs to be mandatory for every local authority to have its own tree strategy.

*   trees as part of the economy: ensure that all trees bought with public money are UK sourced and grown.

You can share your thoughts here – http://www.woodlandtru.st/x5nAg

 

There is no normal to go back to

The idea of ‘back to normal’ has appeared regularly in ideas about a post-virus UK. As though our previous ‘normal’ was a good thing. It’s increasingly obvious that many people do not want to go back to how things were, and that there’s less appetite for long commutes, heavy traffic and air pollution. For people who have had an opportunity to learn from the virus, new, exciting ways of doing things may emerge.

For many people, there is no normal to go back to. For some, very little changed – many people are isolated at home by illness. They’ve had more stress and pressure in recent months but many of the practical realities haven’t changed much, except that it was far harder to order shopping online. As the rest of us ‘go back to normal’ hopefully we can remember that not everyone has that option. We might all better understand now what being forced into isolation does to people. We might be more alert to the ill, disabled and elderly people around us who live in isolation because no one much bothers with them.

For people whose lives were precarious, there may be no real normal to go back to. Early on, the government demonstrated that they could get every homeless person off the street and into a room, if they felt like it. A few weeks later they went on to demonstrate that they really couldn’t be bothered to keep doing that. We can, and must do better.

For some people, back to normal means going back to being excluded. We’ve established that many things can be handled at a distance using the internet. We could make work, entertainment and socialising a lot more accessible for people whose ‘normal’ is exclusion.

Recent months have made me aware of what it means to have a ‘normal’ you can measure things by, and what happens if your sense of the normal is dysfunctional. The idea of ‘back to normal’ only works if what you had before worked for you. If it didn’t, if you were on the wrong end of systems, and economics, if normal was miserable and hopeless – there is nothing you’d want to re-instate. The idea that there is a normal everyone wants to get back to is, I realise, a massive expression of privilege and insulation from suffering. For the worker on a zero hours contract, for the person forced ever deeper into debt, for those facing benefits sanctions and going hungry, ‘normal’ is a terrible place.

We live in a culture that takes ‘normal’ as a meaningful measure, and never properly questions what that means or who it works for.

The Barrow People

There is a long barrow on one of the hills near my home. It is not signposted or protected in any way so it gets a lot of foot traffic. Children run over it and it is popular with mountain bike riders. I assume most of them have no idea that they’re on an ancient monument, and that it could do with kinder treatment from them.

It is a place I like to go, although I really struggle with how other people treat the site. I’ve spent a lot of time there, getting things in perspective – there is a lot of open sky on the hilltop and it tends to help. I go there to listen to the barrow, and to be with it. I’ve had a few interesting experiences there, but nothing it is easy to put into words. The barrow people do not talk much.

I realised at my most recent visit, that they only ever come up behind me and that not looking is clearly part of the deal. Pretty much all that ever happens is that sometimes I will have a feeling that someone is stood behind me. If there’s anything else going on, it isn’t getting through to me. But, my feeling is that nothing else is going on, that they want nothing from me and are not offering anything other than their presence. I find that presence very powerful, and comforting. I always feel better for spending time with them.

There was a beautiful moment yesterday when the temperature dropped. I was lying down on the flank of the barrow, with my eyes shut. It felt like a rush of energy, and people left. There was too much wind noise for me to hear them going, but I felt the land clearing, felt the descending peace of absence, and it was lovely. I’m not terribly good at being around people, and I find people who are out and about consuming the landscape as a product for their enjoyment to be especially difficult. They took their noise, their dogs, their destructive children, and they went away.

I stayed longer, and put up with the cold, and relished the quiet.

It isn’t a park, it’s a should-be-wild landscape full of small flowers in the grasses, larks, and ancient history. But most people who go there treat it like a park, and I hate that.

Temporary temples and sacred spaces

I’ve often wondered what it would be like to live somewhere that had temples I could go to. Sacred spaces that are relevant to me. There are some prehistoric sites locally that I visit. There are churches – which are not part of my faith but are part of the faith of my ancestors. I love Gloucester cathedral as a sacred space, and going there is a relatively short pilgrimage, but it isn’t my temple.

I make temporary temples – I build labyrinths that are in place for a few hours only. I’ve made ritual spaces out of circles of people, a temple constructed in the moment as people hold hands and commit to the idea of being in sacred space and time together. I’ve made altar spaces, but in this tiny flat, I can’t justify taking up much space with that. I’ve made temporary altar spaces outside working with whatever happens to be around. Sometimes my temple is made from the act of lighting a candle or burning incense. Sometimes my temple is a youtube playlist.

As a nature worshipper, I feel I should be able to hold a sense of sacred space any time I am outside. Woodlands should be my cathedrals. The hills are my temple. The sky is my church. Etc etc. And on a good day, that’s fine. On a day when I feel grounded and connected, I experience sacredness and I know how to be a Druid and it’s all good.

But, there are other days. Days when pain and exhaustion overwhelm me. Days when depression cuts off my roots and makes me small and unable to connect. On those days, I could really do with a fixed sacred space that I don’t have to make for myself from scratch. On those days, it would be wonderful to have a designated prayer space I could just go to, ideally with a friendly priest who might offer me counselling, guidance, support, or just an encouraging smile. On the days when I am threadbare and lost, I wish for somewhere to sit and admire the inspiring Pagan art on the walls, or the beautiful Pagan stained glass windows, or just the way the light falls on the stone. I crave the sound of other Pagans singing or chanting or dancing or drumming together. I just want to be able to turn up and listen to a service.

We are all our own priests and priestesses. That’s intrinsic to modern Paganism. While the autonomy is good, it doesn’t take into account how much work is involved in being even a mediocre priest or priestess. It doesn’t allow for how we all need support at times, and how we may become weary and threadbare, how life may grind us down so that we need solace and reassurance.

All I can do for now is make temporary sacred spaces. But, it has been on my mind for a long time that I would like to make something permanent. Something others can just turn up to for comfort, affirmation and inspiration.

Solitude, aloneness and landscape

I don’t need to be on my own to be lonely. Like many people, some of my loneliest experiences have been in the company of people where I have not felt I belonged.  I’m good at not belonging, and there aren’t that many people in whose company I find solace.

Solitude, on the other hand, has been something I’ve actively sought for much of my life. The peace to sit with my own thoughts, the freedom to be as I am with no reference to anyone else. Not being around people does not always cause me to feel lonely.

One of the things that lockdown clarified for me, is that I experience loneliness most intensely in relation to landscape. I don’t find wild, human-free landscapes lonely though. The kinds of wild landscapes other people might call bleak, barren or lonely, have never struck me that way. Expanses of land and sky give me a feeling of belonging, of being held and acceptable.

I am nothing to a hill. I find that immensely comforting. Skies do not judge. Trees do not want small talk. The landscape has little or no interest in me, but is also accepting of me. The loneliness of not being easy in human spaces is eased for me by being out under the sky. Finding the official guidelines when lockdown began were to only go outside for an hour each day was hell, and plunged me deep into depression. In the end I ignored what I was supposed to do, but walked at night and in the early dawn light so as to pose no risk to anyone else.

The loneliness that comes from being landscape starved is worse than anything I have ever felt about a shortage of people.

There are people I need. People I missed dreadfully when I couldn’t spend time with them in person. I know who they are now, and they know who they are, and some of those relationships have evolved of necessity. People I know it is safe to be emotionally honest with. People whose absence causes me the same kind of distress as not being out under the sky enough. There aren’t many of them.

I find the loneliness of being with people where I don’t belong is far harder to deal with in the short term than not having much contact with people outside my household. Over the long term, the absence of people I care about has been painful, but the absence of people generally has been fine, and in many ways a blessing.