Nimue Brown's Blog, page 333

Feral Druidry

Feral Druidry

 

Sunset

Feral Druid

Stark naked chanting

Feathers dark in hair

Howling.

 

Songs

Of bone

Blood, moon, ancestors

Dancing to wild rhythms

Shamanic.

 

Rapture

Rain soaked

Mud encrusts skin

Living in the moment

Ecstatic.

 

But

Unlikely to

Be invited again

To great uncle Ted’s

Barbeque.

Flash fiction

Pure wickedness

“My Debbie” he says, and in theory there is no reason for this. She is not, in any legal or technical sense his, unless the phrase is an accidental confession to an affair. But I think not. A different kind of slip, something more subtle, and not necessarily a mistake.

A warning shot across the bows, perhaps. Don’t get cocky, don’t assume, don’t take for granted. There are Debbies to be claimed. There could be Sharons, Emmas, a veritable sea of Rachels and Cecilies all available at short notice, should the need arise. There may well be a my Katherine out there, and a my Sabrina Hestlethwaite-Jones.

Perhaps the last example is a little far fetched, as I am confident that he does not know Sabrina, either in her maiden form from my school days, or her slightly annoying social media self with insufficiently plummy husband, who is the butt of her many jokes.

Even so, it is not difficult to imagine him saying ‘my Sabrina Hestlethwaite-Jones’. And she would be, because she never could resist a man in charge.

A collector, then. Perhaps a connoisseur. Or a man offering this woman up as a shield. Not a man claiming ownership necessarily, but a man suggesting that he is already accounted for, several times over, with claims upon his time and resources that it would be as well to take into account. A step back, perhaps. A cautious note.

I take these things seriously. I claim no names; not as warning shots and not as shields. Possession is not something to speak of. What is truly owned need not be mentioned.

Stepping out, uneasy

Stepping out, uneasy

 

There comes a time when life

Leaves you hungry, cold, and you say, “enough.”

I will go to the woods,

Take the dark path

To the witch’s house.

If she has me work

A year and a day

I may learn something.

I will risk her tricks

And her legendary rage

For a chance at life.

If she eats me,

I will not starve.

 

So be it.

This life leaves me hungry

And cold, and wanting.

I will go

To the witch’s house

And be turned into

Myself.

Winter Dark

Winter Dark

 

Winter dark, branch clawing

The east wind’s tattered tails,

Leaf coat swirl under streetlight.

Snow wind, swan wind.

 

Bitter night for foraging.

Damp the insidious regret.

Bitter the journey.

Bitter the hour.

 

Fluting ghost melody,

Owl claws to claw-branch

Wakeful to hunger,

Eerie evening chorus.

 

Owl song, tree to tree,

Sorrow of summer night

Echoes jaunty now,

Careless of swan winds.

 

Owl song to the bitter heart,

Winter summer alike

Such is out nature;

Affirming all seasons.

Aspiring to be less hard working

Most days I start the computer after breakfast – usually by 7.30 am, and kick off the working day by writing a blog post. It serves as a warm up for my brain, and for my hands, and guarantees that I do at least some writing every day. However, for the next week or so, the posts have all been set up in advance. There’s some new poetry and some short stories in the offing. I shall mostly be offline.

I’ve been planning this for ages, and getting everything set up so that I can have some time off. I haven’t had a whole week off in nearly 6 years. It’s one of the problems with being self-employed. To have time off, I need to have earned enough to be able to afford not to work for a week. If I want to go away, I need to have earned enough to be able to afford to go away, on top of the cost of a week not working. Like most self-employed people, my earnings are erratic, which makes saying no to work when there is any feel hazardous at best.

I’ve learned, the hard way, just how essential time off is. I’ve had long stretches of 7 day weeks – not necessarily seven long days, but it’s surprising how much odds it makes. Two half days off are not the same as one whole day. Two days back to back are not the same as afternoons off scattered through a week. Without decent chunks of time off it’s difficult to slow down, get out of work mode and clear the head for a bit. Without some head clearing it’s difficult to find new energy and ideas. This is not an issue solely for creative people. I worry about the way in which people in poverty are ending up with multiple part time jobs to make ends meet, and not getting any down time. Now might be a good moment to mention the crisis in mental health that we’ve collectively worked ourselves into.

‘Hard working families’ is a political refrain I particularly detest. Now that Christmas is upon us, though, the hard working families are expected to dutifully down tools and spend money they can’t really afford on things they don’t really need. Much that has been bought for this weekend will shortly be heading to landfill. Food waste, extra rubbish, useless gifts. But it’s all good for the economy! And if you consider the work preparing for the ‘holidays’ as unpaid work, there’s a lot of work going on right now. We are to aspire to being good little producers and consumers and the only way to keep an economy endlessly growing is to keep us all buying far more than we actually need.

I’m trying to be less hard working. It’s a big part of my agenda right now. Shorter working days and shorter working weeks, and holidays should not be considered luxuries for the fortunate few, but the key to a better standard of living for all of us. This also means paying people what they’re worth, and paying people enough to live on so that they can afford to stop and draw breath once in a while.

I shall be spending next week doing very little to help GDP. Lie ins, reading, a bit of gardening at a community allotment, a walk or two, time with friends… I hope whatever you’re doing between here and the end of the calendar year, you have a fantastic time of it.

Tiny books, big love

3 very small books this week, all from independent creators. I’m fascinated by the way in which a small book can also be an art object, especially if handmade. Small books are more likely to be limited edition, and are in my foreseeable future going to require their own very small bookcase! 2 of these are very Stroud-centric, the last one isn’t.

Little Metropolis – poems of Stroud, of small town living, nostalgia, and reluctantly growing up, by Adam Horovitz. Ideal for anyone with a Stroud connection, money from the project goes to support Stroud Fringe, and there’s also an audio version with music. It brought home to me something of what it means to be deeply rooted in a place, which having moved several times in my life, I don’t really have.

More about the project here – https://littlemetropolis.bandcamp.com/releases

 

 

 

Growing Victorians in Your Garden – by Bill Jones. Illustrated by Bill Jones as well. A mix of the mournful and the whimsical, highly recommended for steampunks, gardeners,  and people who like tiny, lovely things.

I think the only way to get one of these is by hurling yourself at Bill in the street, but it’s worth doing if you can get to Stroud. More about Growing Victorians over on Bill’s blog – http://www.hawkerspot.com/2015/12/growing-victorians-in-your-garden.html

 

The League of Lid Curving Witchery’s Guide to Peffa Oidy Witches – (which I couldn’t find an image for) this is a tiny(peffa oidy) book from Phil and Jacqui Lovesey of Matlock the Hare. They make a lot of tiny books, with gorgeous colour illustrations and extra insights into the world of Winchett Dale. Peffa Oidy Witches are one of my favourite things. Keep an eye on their website for new peffa oidy books, these are a delight to own.

More about handmade books and what’s currently available here – http://matlockthehare.com/products/302245–matlock-the-hare-handmade-books.aspx

Through the dark days

Yesterday, Mabh Savage wrote about how we encounter the dark half of the year. It’s well worth a read. I found myself agreeing with her a fair amount, and then being surprised by this, and then realising why. For many years I was one of the people she objects to – the kind of person to face the winter with dread, and sigh with relief as the solstice comes with the promise of light returning.

This year I’ve done pretty well. It has been warmer than usual, (which helps me hurt less) but also very grey (which can get to me). I’ve felt in tune with the length of the day, and have not been caught out by how early it gets dark. This winter has felt less like a desperate struggle, and that, I think, is the crux of the matter.

There can be an absolute joy in the dark part of the year, in snuggling inside, cosy with lights, food, friends and some rest after the busyness of summer. When winter is a nightmare, it’s a consequence of not having the resources to meet the demands. An unheated home, insufficient food, illness, exhaustion, fear about paying the bills… these things make for tough and miserable winters. If summer means not being cold all the time, then of course you shiver in the dark days and long for the return of the sun. Been there, done that.

It helps that I’ve invested the time in being ready for the winter. We painted the walls in the flat cheerful colours, so even on the grey days I don’t feel colour deprived. This has made a huge difference to my mood. Art, posters, plants and soft furnishings add to the cheer. We came off the boat a couple of years ago with little to furnish a home, and it takes money and time to sort that. We got new windows for the flat, and insulated the door, and I made a draft excluder, and we are warmer as a consequence. We aren’t working constantly, there’s time to rest, and the resources to enjoy life a bit more. A huge shift from boat days when we had to run the boat engine for an hour to have lights into the evening.

I own a set of fell runner’s crampons. These make it possible to walk safely on ice and on frosty ground. I’m not agile, or confident in slippery conditions. Owning spikes has made the winter a lot less frightening for me. I got them the year I lived in the Midlands and it really froze. To collect my small son from school I had to walk across a steep and entirely frozen road (I hadn’t taken him in). Any car coming down that hill would have no scope for breaking and stopping, and as other roads were clearer, people were mistakenly coming down. I set out to cross all too aware that I could fall, or be knocked down, and it was terrifying. When this is what winter looks like, it’s bloody difficult to embrace the season. Crampons allow me to walk up and down icy slopes without fear. That changes everything.

Of course if you have a tumble drier, winter laundry is no issue. It’s an ongoing struggle for me, but not as bad as it was on the boat. If you have a car, winter conditions can be less awful for travelling than if you walk. Frozen ground means a likelihood of chilblains for me. If you have central heating and aren’t obliged to keep a wood stove going, this is also a lot easier. I spent one winter in a cottage with single glazing and just the one stove for heat. That was memorably tough.

This year I can enjoy the snugly indoorsness of winter. I can rest in the darkness. I am not in a state of perpetual anxiety. I feel enormous gratitude for the relative wealth and abundance in my life that has changed my relationship with the season. I’m all too aware that for many people this year, poverty will mean the choice between eating and heating, with nothing to do but long for the spring. If you are blessed, then enjoy what this season has to offer. If you can spare some of that abundance for people who are struggling, I promise you, it makes a big difference.

Identity, gender and not fitting in the boxes

I recently read this excellent blog post about non-binary people.  There were a lot of lines that really impacted on me, this is one of them “At the end of the day, it’s not up to cisgender people to decide the language non-binary people should use to describe themselves. It is not your experience nor your place.”

I don’t talk about gender identity much, not least because the usual result is being told who I ‘really’ am by the other person. I’ve been ‘reassured’ that there’s nothing wrong with my femininity, for example, when I wasn’t looking for that kind of response at all. It’s only in recent years that I’ve had much scope to talk to anyone about my gender identity. After a mix of being silent, and being told who and what I am, I’m starting to realise just how important it is to me to be able to own, name (and rename as I feel like it) and be in control of my sense of self.

I have a female body. It does all the things – blood, baby, milk, sweat, tears etc. It mostly looks like a female body. There was a time when I was less obviously female to look at and could play more with presenting in ambiguous ways. I felt good doing that. I still do, when the mood is upon me. At different times through my life I have been more and less easy with this female body. There have been times (rare, but important) when I wanted to be male, and far more times when I wanted to be physically sexless and genderless. Some of this is to do with self hatred, and some of that self hatred was to do with not having the space to be myself in the first place.

I don’t think like a girl, or like a woman, or a mum. I reckon I may have it sussed enough to be a crazy Babba Yaga type grandmother in old age. I aspire to being really myself as a crone. I find female-centred social spaces confusing. Socially, I’ve always been happiest when I could be one of the guys – which has tended to involve music. I can’t tell you how much of this is my resistance to the social construct of gender, and how much is something else, because I’ve only ever lived in a culture that was very keen to tell me what my gender identity should be. I’m not sure it matters how much is culture and how much biology.

I’m happiest in situations where I don’t feel like my gender is an issue. I’m happiest with people who primarily see me as a person. When I’ve been able to play genderless – online and with a different, less feminine name – I’ve enjoyed that. If all people have to go on is my writing, I often get identified as male. Apparently I write like a bloke!

I don’t mind how people see me or what they engage with, or which pronouns they use. I don’t have a firm, fixed gender identity ( and this fluidity, I now realise, is my gender identity and not something I need to fix), so I’m not interested in getting anyone to identify me in any specific way. What of me people relate to is their business. But there’s a difference to relating to me in a certain way, and assuming that defines the truth of who I am. The second bit I need to tackle. Not least, I need to stop buying into it, and stop accepting it when other people think they are entitled to define my gender identity.

As a culture we default to equating normal with good. It is not unusual to respond to difference by making reassuring noises about conforming to ‘normal’ standards. You don’t look disabled/mentally ill/trans /queer /poor / mixed race / victimised… as though it would be fair to assume these things, and others like them, would all show on the surface, and that looking normal is the most important thing. These are big, unhelpful assumptions to make. They take something that mattered to the person owning it, and reduce it into whether or not your think the person matches a narrow bandwidth for normality. It treats the difference as worthless, and the conformity as paramount. The odds are if I’m telling you something about me, it’s not to be reassured that I’m normal, it is instead because I really, really want you to see me as I am.

Ideas of pilgrimage

Pilgrimage is usually understood as a journey to a sacred place. The journey itself is a spiritual process. Pilgrimages tend to be a bit epic – whether that’s Islamic people travelling vast distances to go on the Hajj, medieval folk walking to the sites where saint’s remains are said to perform miracles, journeys to The Holy Land, or to the graves of ancestors of tradition (all those people going to Gracelands to see Elvis spring to mind). There’s a sense that a pilgrimage has to be big and dramatic. You have to go a long way. The walking should be intense. Maybe your feet should bleed.

I’m a Pagan. The idea of suffering as a spiritual good is not beaten into my path. I’m not atoning for my sins, I don’t need to bleed out some imagined misdemeanour. As I’m a Pagan, I hold nature sacred. This means that my sacred places are not ‘away’ requiring a huge journey to get to them. My sacred places are hills, valleys, streams, trees… in short, sacredness is around me. All I have to do is look out of the window or go outside. Last but not least, I know that not everyone is mobile. Many people have a limited capacity to walk. Many people cannot afford long trips to distant lands where the difference between tourism and pilgrimage may not be clear cut (also true of much mediaeval pilgrimage). Could pilgrimage be re-imagined as a more inclusive and available idea?

I’ve always walked, for transport and for leisure. It’s always been a key part of my Paganism, because in walking I experience the land, encounter what’s living around me, and have time for contemplation and just being.

Last summer I started thinking in earnest about whether Pagan Pilgrimage could be a thing in its own right, and what it would mean to wander about as a Pagan Pilgrim. I’ve spent time thinking about what I do, sharing walks with other people who think about this sort of thing, and wondering how to write about walking. I’ve been reading authors who write their experiences of the land – Robert McFarlane, Nan Shepherd, Llewelyn Powys, John Clare, Thoreau, Ivor Gurney… I’m looking for others as well.

I’ve long been interested in landscape history because this is often the only trace working people leave. Left out of official records, little bothered with in the classrooms of my childhood, there is a story in the land made of pathways, earthworking, old hedgerows and place names, industrial and faming relics, that tells of the people who lived close to the soil. This is a story I am drawn to.

I want to get past ideas of the picturesque, the manufactured landscape to be pretty around big houses, the focus on the summit or the approved view, and make a relationship with the land that sees beauty in the truth of existence, and does not need to airbrush out all evidence of life and death.

I’m going to try and write something about this exploration every week – because I’m failing to make time for bigger book projects, and this is the most realistic way of getting it done. The blog will be a first draft, bite sized ideas as and when they occur to me. If there is a book, it will be a better organised, redrafted thing. In the meantime, I thank you for sharing the journey. Please do pile into the comments section, I would greatly value input, and I will be keeping track of names so as to properly quote people if that turns out to make sense.

Let’s wander!

What is nature?

Recently I’ve been talking a lot about defining Paganism. Inevitably I’ve used the word ‘nature’ rather a lot to do this, which in turn brings up the question of what we mean by ‘nature’ in the first place. All too often we define nature in opposition to culture and other human activity. That which is most natural, is often understood to be that which has least been meddled with by us. This is not my definition.

Most of the time, if I’m talking about ‘nature’ it’s because it’s quicker than listing off all the things I mean. Land, sea, sky, geography and geology, plant, animal, fish, insect, bird, invertebrate, micro-organisms, bacteria, atoms. I also mean weather and climate, the cycle of the seasons, tides, the moon and stars, the cycles of living and dying, the process of eating. I mean bears shitting in the woods. And that’s a lot to drop in to every blog where the idea of nature seems relevant.

We are mammals. We are part of nature, and I think it’s our insistence that we are somehow separate from nature that causes most of the trouble. My impression is that for most of human history, human culture has simply been a way of managing our relationships with each other and with everything around us. Culture does not need to be at odds with nature. However, we’re on a trajectory to seek ever more control over the natural world, and to escape from its realities. Somewhere we crossed a line. We stopped doing a version of the things creatures do to make life more bearable (making shelters, using tools, singing etc) and started a process that makes this world ever less habitable for us.

So when it comes to issues of what humans do, rather than calling it ‘unnatural’ – which risks perpetuating the problem, I think we need to rebrand it as ‘bloody stupid’. We have natural impulses towards ease and convenience (like every other mammal out there given half a chance). When we knowingly take the ease and convenience to such extremes that it makes us physically and mentally ill and threatens the existence of life on the planet, that’s not unnatural, that’s stupid. It’s stupid because we’re choosing it, either by ignoring what’s happening, imagining we can get away with it, or being too caught up in the idea that this is what people do, to do differently.

We’ve told ourselves huge, complex stories about how being human means being above, and separate from nature. We’ve told ourselves that the rules of living and dying do not apply to us. We’ve told ourselves that we can have infinite growth with finite resources, and that we can burn everything, poison the water, chop down the trees, count the profits and expect life to carry on serving us.

Mostly what nature does when things get out of balance, is rebalance. Get too many of something, and the things that predate it will have a few really good years, and either the old balance returns or a new sort of balance is found. Life goes on. Not all species go on, but life endures. We are not separate from this, but the checks and balances to us will come from us. If we insist on poisoning ourselves, we will be poisoned. The more we try and fool ourselves into thinking we are not part of nature, the bigger the backlash is likely to be.