Nimue Brown's Blog, page 317

The year turns round again

There I was, a few days ago, picking raspberries and mange tout at the community allotment. It struck me that I’d done these same jobs last year, and that I had therefore, on and off, been going to said community allotment for more than a year. Sometimes it’s the little, physical activities that come to define a thing.

I’ve never been much of a gardener. Perhaps the women of my family gardened with enthusiasm, there were few tasks my awkward child self was allowed to do, and as a teen I was too busy with music, school work, boys… In my twenties I had a garden, but it was heavy clay soil and the only thing I was any good at growing, was slugs. I was popular with the hedgehogs though. 2 years on a boat with the odd, hardy pot plant, 3 years in a flat with no garden. The community allotment has been an opportunity to get my hands in the soil.

This year we’ve started putting pots outside the flat, getting some greenery going on an otherwise sterile corner. I remain a talentless gardener, but at the allotment there are always people who know what needs doing, and I have the fiddly fingers for harvesting.

Here is a song, because this is what popped into my head when picking the raspberries.

Authoring and inspiration

I generally avoid writing about writing because it’s dull, and the internet is awash with it, but there’s an issue I think needs tackling. One frequently offered piece of advice on blogs about writing, is that you should do it every day, or often. The impression given is that waiting around for inspiration is unprofessional, it’s the approach of the self indulgent hobbiest. I read the opening to an interview with Hilary Mantel a bit back in which she said of course she writes every day, she wouldn’t want anyone to think she was one of those people who just does it for fun (I paraphrase). I did not feel inspired to read any further.

Call me old fashioned, but I think there’s a role for ideas, imagination and creativity in books. I’ve tried it the other way, and I can reliably grind out words to meet both word counts and deadlines, but it’s rare these are my best words. I’m not at all sure the world will greatly benefit from more books that were written in a disciplined, professional way, without any inspiration in the mix. I have a suspicion this is how a fair amount of fiction is written, and I know the majority readership picks up books that conform to predictable shapes. It’s certainly what we’re telling each other to do. Books are more perspiration than inspiration, of course, but without inspiration, what are they? Painting by numbers?

For the person who wants to be An Author – published, recognised, and with decent sales figures, it makes sense to go after the markets that pay, and the dependable readerships. Give them what they want. As a reader I’ve never been attracted to those books (give me Matlock the Hare, give me Sheena Cundy and Carol Lovekin…). More than anything I want to be surprised, I want to be caught up in the imagination and vision of the author.

No doubt one of the (many) reasons I’m not very successful is that I was always more interested in the creativity than in being An Author. I wanted to write books that weren’t like anything else out there. I wanted to have ideas that would surprise, delight, blow other people away. I wanted to say something of substance about life and the human experience, but do it in a way that is readable and doesn’t require a degree in English Literature. I live in hope of achieving some of this one day.

I can’t do that without having ideas. I can’t manufacture ideas, I have to wait for them to turn up. I need time to reflect, to research, to experience, to gather material, gather wool, weave something in my head. At the moment, the balances in my life aren’t delivering the space to think creatively very often. I can and do sit down and write pretty much every day – I write this blog – but I wouldn’t create a novel this way.

Coping With Fear

In the aftermath of Brexit, I see a lot of people frightened for the future. The feelings of uncertainty, the not knowing what could be lost or how they might be affected. Then there’s the grief compounding it – grief for the loss of the idea of Europe. I admit that what happened with Greece had already left me questioning my idea of Europe. The loss of a dream is always a painful thing.

I’ve been coping with anxiety for years, and I’m finding all the things I have to do in other aspects of my life are just as relevant here, and so perhaps worth sharing.

You have to manage your thoughts. This means noticing what you are thinking in the first place and not letting thoughts run wild and cause distress. It is important to make time for whatever emotions are coming up – fear, anger, resentment, disillusionment – whatever you’ve got. But the trick is to give those feelings time without letting them take over. Perhaps the best way to do this is to watch out for and avoid the idea that how you feel justifies certain actions. I am afraid so I can run away. I am angry so I can lash out etc. Not only does this cause trouble out there in the rest of the world, but it gives power to your feelings. Run away because you were scared, and you’ll stay scared.

There are physical situations that need running away from to stay safe, but that’s about changing your relationship with the rest of the world. If the problem is your own emotions, running away doesn’t work.

Denial doesn’t work, either. Complex mental loops that allow everything to be for your higher good can leave you unable to process, or handle, your actual life experiences and their actual emotional impact on you. Self honesty is best, but self honesty doesn’t have to get so involved with itself that it becomes dysfunctional.

While looking at how you are feeling, it is important not to escalate things. Those of us with more darkly creative minds can see a thousand and one ways to go to hell in a handcart. There’s a technical term for this in mental health, it’s called ‘catastrophising’. If you take how you were feeling and imagine the worst possible ways it could play out, you will feel much, much worse about things. The emotions you were feeling will grow to unmanageable proportions and you’ll make yourself ill. It is possible to control your own thoughts, and if you’re feeling overwhelmed, it is very necessary indeed.

If you can stay in control of your own thoughts, it’s a lot easy to work out what you need to be thinking about. What, realistically can you do? What might be a useful investment against more likely troubles? When your head isn’t full of imagined disaster, it’s easy to get on with reducing the scope for actual disaster.

There’s a fairy tale about a bird who is so afraid the sky will fall on their head, that they aren’t paying attention to other things and end up eaten by a fox. Hold that thought. The sky probably isn’t going to fall, but there are plenty of hungry predators to avoid.

Neu!Boots DAY FOUR – Adam Horovitz

A fine piece from poet Adam Horovitz.

new boots and pantisocracies

Rule Britannia

Rule Britannia! Britannia rules the not waving
but drowning, rules the say hello wave goodbye, rules
the mickey, the goofy, the plutocrat.
Britannia rules the hope for the best, the vote for the worst.

Britannia rules the Farage sale,
the Hitler-has-only-got-one-balls-up.
Britannia rules the carefully kept heads,
rules the all-about-are-losing-theirs.

Rule Britannia! Britannia rules the wave machine
in the leaking paddling pool.
Rules the win some, the lose some.
The game of thrones, but not the ace of spades.

Britannia rules the friendly bombs, the Slough,
the Pandora’s Ballot Box, the corpse-stench of hope.
Rules the rough beast, the slow crawl to Bethlehem,
the not knowing what the hell it is that’s being born.

Adam Horovitz has been writing about the small corner of England he grew up in (amongst other things) for most of his life, having adopted and celebrated Cider with Rosie country with the sort of…

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Searching for owls

Walking at twilight is something I’ve always loved doing in the light half of the year. We tend to do small walks, usually in the same place (longer walks in the day go elsewhere). One of the consequences of repeatedly walking in the same place is that you build up a knowledge of how things happen there through the seasons, and changes become apparent.

The first time we heard the blackbirds shouting warnings, we knew there was something going on. They were concentrated in the trees at the top of a bank, and we were unable to see either them, or the cause of their alarm. The next time we were out that way, the same thing happened in the same place, and we knew something was coming out at night and worrying them. On this second occasion, we heard the very distinctive ‘p-cherp’ of an unfamiliar bird, and started looking for it in earnest.

The p-cherp turned out to be a fledgling tawny owl. At that point, it could just about hop between tree branches. We saw a parent bird come in and feed it a rodent – a stunning thing to witness.

Since that night, we’ve gone out whenever time, energy and weather permitted, searching by sound. With a dense, leafy canopy to hide in, and fading light, the soft colours of an owl do not stand out. We rapidly discovered a second p-cherp, although it took us a lot longer to actually see baby owl number two. Our first owlet became bolder and more capable as the evenings passed. We watched it eat what I think was a rat, delivered by a parent bird. It’s clearly been aware of us, and watches us without alarm, and some apparent interest, while the second owl seems far more nervous when it’s been seen.

There is something very powerful about finding some aspect of nature is gazing back. We’ve been treated to the rotating head dance owls do when they’re considering something. Their eyes are too big to move, so to assess a shape they have to move the whole head. We’ve learned that we must have two breeding pairs of tawny owls in proximity to where we live, and we now have a pretty good idea where they are hunting, so will be going out to try and see them later in the season. We’ve seen barn owls and a little owl in the same area so we know there must be a good rodent population too.

Us and Them

I’ve been in too many internet arguments where people have attempted to position me by race and religion – thinking that to side with moderate Muslims is to support terrorism, or that voting one way or the other is anti-British and so forth. The logic of us and them, where ‘us’ is defined by some apparent commonality and ‘them’ by some kind of difference that I find irrelevant.

As Brexit brings out the worst in my country in terms of racism, hate, and twisted thinking, I find I too need the language of us and them. I want to draw my lines in the sand.

Us. Co-operative and willing to negotiate, open to diversity and willing to listen. Inclined to get on with our own things, peaceably and feeling no need to ram our beliefs or lifestyles down anyone else’s throat. Perfectly happy to accommodate anyone else who is quietly getting on with their own thing. Absolutely intolerant of hate, violence and any kind of activity largely designed to make other people miserable and/or force them to conform to some spurious standard.

Them: Driven by hate, greed, fear, resentment. Happy to blame vast swathes of people for the actions of the few, but often not willing to take the action that would curtail the violence of the few (see American gun law as a case in point). Unable to bear difference and wanting to hurt, punish or control anyone not like them. Willing to use violence to this end. Happy to see other humans, other life forms and the planet as collateral damage when it comes to seeing their agenda through. Devoid of compassion and empathy. Likely to announce that they live in the real world and that the rest of us are stupid, naive and need to grow up.

This is not about skin colour. It’s not about who you’d like to rub genitals with. It’s not about your religion or the absence of religion. It’s not about whether you are ill, or well, where you were born, what political party you support or anything else of that ilk. It’s about how you treat other humans, other life forms, and whether you want to co-operate for peaceful coexistence with the peaceful coexisters around you, or whether you want to do it the other way.

If your preference is peaceful co-operation, I stand with you, because the rest is just detail.

If you are all about hurting, damaging, disempowering, killing other people, you are my sworn enemy. I will fight you in every way I can think of – with words, and at the ballot box, with action, with any reasonable means at my disposal, and if you pose a real physical danger to someone, I will do whatever I can to stop you by whatever means are at my disposal at the time. And no doubt as I do this, you will wail about your right to free speech, your human rights, and how you are being oppressed, because you’re quick to co-opt the language of decency to protect your indecency.

But the thing is, tolerance is not the key thing for me, co-operation is the key thing, and co-operation is active, discernible. I’m not tolerating anyone in the ‘us’ camp because I don’t need to. I’m co-operating with them. And I’m certainly not going to tolerate the hate-based bullshit and the whinging used to try and justify it.

Democracy, Druidry, Dissent

What’s the difference between democracy, and mob rule? Part of the answer is the safeguarding of dissent. The other part of the answer is all about inbuilt checks and balances, but I don’t want to get into that today. Without dissent, what you have is a tyranny, a majority rule that crushes difference. As a Druid, a member of a minority faith group, I feel very strongly in favour of anything that allows a peaceful minority to get on with its own things even when that’s not what the majority wants to do.

Dissent keeps us healthy. A government of yes-men can’t examine its assumptions and actions terribly well. This is one of the main reasons democracies include opposition parties in the decision making process. Criticism, doubt and scrutiny help keep politics more honest and more reasonable then they would otherwise be (consider how all-powerful monarchs have tended to behave). A government that is not dealing with robust opposition gets arrogant and ignores or even abuses segments of its own population.

Radical change in a country does not, and should not happen overnight. For people who are largely oblivious to politics, the whole Brexit thing may look like sudden drama, but it isn’t. The Brexit vote was made possible by years of dissent and disagreement, and by people who did not agree with previous democratic votes and choices being entitled to keep grumbling about that, keep agitating, keep campaigning. I might not like the outcome but I absolutely support the right of people and parties to act in this way.

There are a lot of people who have been drawn into UK politics by Brexit who would not normally be involved, and they do not have much idea how democracy works. This is clear from the number of them who are saying ‘we won so you have to shut up and accept it’. This is not what democracy means, and democracy needs defending from this fundamental misunderstanding.

Imagine what would happen if once a vote had been taken, on anything, it could never again be discussed or re-voted on. We wouldn’t be leaving Europe, for a start. Assume that ‘one vote decides everything’ politics was in place and most of us wouldn’t even have the vote. It took years of dissent and campaigning to get votes for women, and to get rid of the land ownership requirements that excluded many men.

We have to be able to change direction at need. We have to revisit ideas, and challenge established thinking all the time, because the reality around us – physical and political – also changes. A hundred years ago, the politics of what happens when the fossil fuel runs out was not an issue on people’s minds. What will we have to think about a hundred years hence? Who knows!

Whatever your politics are, I call upon you to defend the systems that make democracy work. I know democracy barely works, I know it’s a flawed, problematic, clunky, questionable system, but right now it is the best system we have. If you can think of a better way of doing things… what a good job we do still have an option on dissent.

Unity in Difference

What do we do next? How do, as ordinary individuals take a stand to do things that are meaningful and good? There are no easy answers on the large scale, but in this blog, Kevan Manwaring offers inspiration, and hope.

The Bardic Academic

Many of us have been left reeling by the result of the EU Referendum – and perhaps find ourselves going through the stages of grief: shock, denial, anger… The mood in Stroud, the small Cotswold market town where I live, transformed dramatically over night – from a sunny Thursday with Remain campaigners on the High Street feeling positive at the response they were getting from passersby (one of them said, ‘if it’s like this across  the country, we’ll walk it.’); to a brittle, traumatized ambience as Stroud folk walked around in shell-shock at the victory of the Leave campaign. The fact that we in Stroud voted to Remain (80% turnout) provided little consolation. John Marjoram, our Green Party councillor called it a ‘tragedy’. But whatever the result we now have to live with what is (although over two million have signed the petition for a second referendum, asking for at…

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The emphatic YES

Reading Pagan Consent Culture recently (fantastic book, do check it out) I ran repeatedly into the idea of the emphatic or enthusiastic ‘yes’ as being a key feature for consent. There is no ambiguity with an enthusiastic yes. Rather than inferring consent from any noise that isn’t clearly negative, we have to look for the unmistakably positive response. This is not just an issue for things sexual.

It’s easy to go through life accepting the mediocre, the half hearted, the people who weren’t an outright ‘no’ but frankly weren’t keen. We can sleepwalk through situations of apathy and carelessness, through beige and grey landscapes of nobody really cares either way. These are drab ways to live, and they will suck the joy and enthusiasm out of life. Put your soul into something and have it met with a ‘whatever’ and you will feel much smaller.

What happens when we look for the enthusiastic yes in our social circles, workplaces, in our creative exchanges and everything else? What happens when we step away from the ‘whatever’ spaces and stop putting energy into them?

It makes a huge difference just to spend some of your time where you feel wanted and valued. I’ve been experimenting with this one a lot over the last few months, and the consequences are vast. It’s not easy to let things go, especially for me, with people-pleasing a definite part of who I am. But things change when I am more selective about who needs pleasing. The ‘whatever’ people will never really be pleased with me. If I focus my energies on the people who really want me in the mix, really need me, are really excited about what I’m doing and what I can offer, there’s every chance these people can also be really pleased. If that happens, everyone gets to feel better.

Sometimes, the ‘whatever’ people are unavoidable, and that’s ok, but if you want to offer heart and soul and the very best you have and the most you can do, then the people who give an enthusiastic yes to that are the ones to be working with.

Midsummer Prayers

Midsummer elderflower heady

In bloom, in honeyed mead

Wood silk goblet passed

Friendship hand to hand

Fingers brushing affirmations

Red sky in the river

Moon vast in the trees,

Thyme on the barrow.

Time.

 

Falling in love all over again

With the bee orchids,

Sky lark songs,

Poetry to the heavens,

Shimmering river magic.

All is enchantment here,

Aching, tender and wild.

Prayers for wisdom

Answered in twilight

By the effusive glow

Of a cheerful insect

Irrepressible life.

 

A gleaming bottom beacon

Hope in unlikely places.

Lights to follow,

Faerie-like and unruly

Through the long grass.

Going to Elfland,

Or going home,

Or both.