Nimue Brown's Blog, page 338

November 8, 2015

Authors who walk

In recent months I’ve read a number of writers who are (or perhaps more accurately ‘were’ as four of them are dead!) walkers. Thoreau, John Clare, Nan Shepherd, Anthony Nanson, Robert McFarlane, John Powys. I’m looking for more, especially women writing about walking, so do please make suggestions if you have any.


Go back as little as fifty years and walking for transport was a good deal more normal. Read some of the older writers on walking and it’s obvious that while people walked when they had to, most would do no more than was necessary. These different walking authors have, in different times and places, walked because they had to for reasons of a different kind of necessity; because they felt a need to move in open spaces. Around them, neighbours were bemused by what they did, by this need to stretch legs beneath the sky.


I am inclined to suspect that in settled human history, walking because you must has been the norm, while a calling to walk is something rare. As someone inclined to saunter, I find it hard to imagine why anyone wouldn’t choose to do that, but reading these authors it’s clear that the people around them do not share their passion. They are oddities. For a long time I’d harboured the idea that we were perhaps a few hundred years away from a time when people were joyfully out in the natural world, but my romantic fantasy is not supported by the available evidence. Walking as a hobby for the rich only came in the wake of the romantic poets and the idea of picturesque landscape, but I’d thought the poor walked.


My family in various branches, has produced walkers. Not just my parents and sibling, but my grandmother and great grandmother on my maternal side, while on my mother’s father’s side, the tradition of the Sunday walk was an important one. I don’t know much about my father’s people in that regard.


The rhythm of walking has an effect on the rhythm of thinking and the flow of thoughts. I don’t think it’s any accident that authors are drawn to walking (the list of walker authors I can think of is longer than the above, and has a lot of poets in it) and I know that walking creates an urge to crafting language, at least in me.


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Published on November 08, 2015 03:30

November 7, 2015

Witch Lit and why we need it

I read Bridget Jones’s Diary back when it came out, curious about the hype. I hated it. Over the years as a reviewer I’ve been hit by the odd low-flying chick-lit title, and as a reader I’ve read a lot of book covers. Aside from romance, this is the genre targeted most at women. It tends to include romance anyway. Unfortunately the women in Chick Lit novels (based on the blurbs, and Ms Jones) are alien creatures I can make no sense of.


Not so long back, I had the good fortune to read Sheena Cundy’s The Magic and the Madness. It revolves around a small, witchy family. Modern Pagan witches that any modern Pagan woman could recognise. If you aren’t one of the characters, the odds are you’ve met her at a moot. Real life issues, magical issues, matters of life and death – and yes, a bit of romance. Lots of comedy, and lots of values and ways of seeing the world and being in it that I recognised and responded to. I enjoyed it a lot, and found it affirming.


I’ve never been a chick. Never aspired to be one. Why would I read books that I assume I’m someone I am not? I have an on-off relationship with Women’s Literature as well – all too often these are books in which very little happens and everyone thinks about it a lot (that’s a working definition of literature). I want books where a fair bit of interesting and surprising stuff does happen, and people do reflect on it and it has real consequences for them. I want books where women are main characters, and where their lives do not revolve entirely around their love affairs with men. I want to read about women who are complex people with an array of things going on.


Sheena generously waved her book at me because she’d read Intelligent Designing for Amateurs, and based on what I’d written, thought I’d like her book. She was absolutely right. Stories about women doing things, more and less realistic, are very much my cup of tea. Throw in some magic, some comedy, a broad emotional pallet, and I’m in. And yes, the blurb focuses on the sexy vicar, but I’m glad to say the world of this novel doesn’t revolve around him. It’s heart is the relationships between the central women.


What I need, is Witch Lit. Stories about earthy, passionate, grounded women living real lives and doing outrageous, wild and wonderful things. Women whose lives do not revolve wholly around the presence or absence of men. Women whose conversations with other women do not revolve exclusively around the discussion of their sex lives, and the presence or absence of men. I’m starting to realise why, for most of my adult life, I’ve been so drawn to Lesbian Fiction – it’s one of the few genres where you can be reasonably confident of finding women who are not all about the men. However, not being a lesbian myself, I’d really welcome more stories of bi and straight women doing things as well. I like men, and I’m not averse to romance in a story, but I don’t enjoy samey books, and I don’t like the priorities of many of the female characters in rather too many books.


I am prepared to bet it’s not just me. Less Bridget Jones, more Minerva. Less Chick Lit, more Witch Lit.


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Published on November 07, 2015 03:30

November 6, 2015

Things I have been doing

As it’s been a busy week or so in life beyond the blog, I thought I should do a quick roundup of other things to check out. In case anyone gets the urge!


I wrote at Sage Woman about seasons and mists, at Mystic Living today about the challenges of ancestry, and guest blogged with lovely witchy author Sheena Cundy about magic, madness and inspiration. Sheena has a really funny and touching Pagan novel coming out later in the month – The Madness and the Magic, hence the blog theme. She’s fab, do check her out.


Last week, John Holland of Stroud Short Stories prodded me into writing a ghost tale – long and complicated reasons but it is basically all his fault. A matter of hours after I’d written it, I got an email from another lovely author – Sheila North, asking if I happened to have a Halloween story because Sine FM were looking for something to read on Saturday. That was about perfect timing, so I sent Evelyn’s Pale Daughters over, and now they’re audio! If you come to this blog a long time after publishing date, they may have gone away again, but that’s uncanny things for you. I’ve never listened to someone else reading my stuff before. Quite an experience! It’s towards the end of the program, and my choice of tune follows…


Also last week, I attended Miserable Poets’s Cafe in Stroud. Here’s a video – audio quality is not great, but hopefully you can hear most of it. The things you need to know are that the chap running the event is Bill Jones, and that’s him on after me. His reaction is priceless! And no, he’s not sought a restraining order yet.


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Published on November 06, 2015 03:00

November 5, 2015

The qualities of leaders

Who are we willing to be lead by, and on what terms? In our working lives, in politics, in our spiritual lives, who do we grant power over us, and how much power do we allow? It’s very easy to be caught up by the charismatic leader who gets things done without looking too hard at the cost of their achievements. Sometimes the trail blazers leave a trail of burned out people behind them, people whose energy and wellbeing has been sacrificed for the sake of getting things done. Some leaders abuse their power for financial and sexual gains. Some are on a massive ego trip, some will say anything they think you will pay to hear.


I’ve experienced both good leadership and terrible leadership inside the Druid community and outside it. As a self employed person I have the luxury of deciding who I will work for. As a Druid, I’m ever more cautious about who I’ll follow. It pays off, and increasingly I find that when I’m working for other people, I like those people and I like how they get things done. As I’m sauntering gently back towards leading rituals again, I will be watching my own actions carefully to try and make sure I don’t become, by my own standards, the wrong sort of leader.


Good leaders, in my experience, do not consider their people expendable, or as a resource to get things done. A good leader takes care of their people, and does not pressure them into doing things that make them uncomfortable or unhappy. A good leader respects boundaries, and it is possible to say ‘no’ to them. Good leadership also respects difference – this is at its most important in a spiritual context, but has relevance everywhere else, too. A leader who demands total agreement, total conformity, is trying to run a cult, and you don’t want to be part of that. Diversity is good, and makes communities stronger.


Good leadership values criticism. It doesn’t get all up tight and defensive if someone picks holes in a plan or flags up problems. Good leadership values that person greatly – better to spot the pitfalls rather than falling in them. Getting it right is more important than being seen to be right. A good leader can also admit their mistakes, limitations, shortcomings, anxieties and so forth. They aren’t afraid to be human. They aren’t trying to sell themselves as perfect, shiny people.


Good leaders are doing something with their time. If what a person says, writes and does is mostly about conveying how awesome they are, then they’re well worth avoiding. If all you hear is sales pitch, if they talk endlessly about who taught them and how much praised they were as students, if they talk about who is impressed by them, if they name drop a lot, and at the same time are rude and critical about other people in the same field, it’s mostly about self importance. If they bitch a lot about previous supporters/students who weren’t good enough, move away. The best leaders are there because they want to get something done, and they spend most of their time focused on how to achieve what they’re after. Self-aggrandisement is not the main theme.


There are people I am fiercely loyal to – and they get that loyalty from me because they deserve it, because they do excellent things and are worth supporting and because they do not try and use me. There are people I would never consider working with again under any circumstances. Which is another consideration – the leader who has longstanding support is probably one of the good ones. Leaders with a high turnover in overtly adoring and devoted people who don’t manage to stay, are decidedly suspicious.


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Published on November 05, 2015 03:30

November 4, 2015

Things we do not speak of

I need your acceptance.


I need you to stand in this space with me,


And let your body speak of tolerance, to mine.


I do not always know how to be


In this skin, with these bones.


I need your time, today, now


Because tomorrow one of us could die,


The vital things left unsaid and I need


To speak the unspeakable things with you,


The soul bare vulnerable things that are too much,


Salt tear words, heart words, foolish words,


And the things that can only be said


Palm to palm in the language of skin.


I need to swap funeral plans with you.


Is it reasonable to be afraid of everything


That currently frightens me? Not just me?


I need to speak of grief loss failure apathy,


Hear your awkward stories echo my own.


Sex, politics, toilets, religion, aging, bleeding


Being lost, losing, looser, all the things


It is not acceptable to talk about.


Let us sit in concealing darkness and voice it.


Stand together and be unreasonably real.


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Published on November 04, 2015 03:00

November 3, 2015

Community Druid, hermit Druid

I’m drawn to the path of the hermit, to silence, and solitude or just the company of Tom, who is very easy to be silent with. To be out in the hills, or sitting with the dead, away from the noise of living, and the concerns of people. To be off social media, out of blogging, not trying to turn experience into meaningful words I can share.


There would be issues in doing this full time. If I was to be a hermit, someone else would have to support me financially in doing that. It’s one thing to retire from the world having retired, but my life stage requires me to be financially active. I have to engage with people to work, I have to source things from people, I also need to show up as a parent.


Much of the urge to go into the hills and listen to the wind and sit with the dead is selfish. These things are increasingly easy for me, and increasingly comfortable. It’s the living I find difficult. Some of the living, some of the time.


I stood in ritual circle on Saturday and committed to being more of a community Druid. I pledged myself to holding space for anyone who wants it, in ritual a few times a year, socially, and in support of people by whatever means makes sense at the time. I will try to be more open-hearted, more generous, more present.


A small number of people have managed to cause me a vast amount of damage, one way and another. The urge to flee, and hide, to slip into silence and non-participation is as much a fear-based choice as it is a call to the wild. I’m tired of being hurt. I’m tired of feeling vulnerable, and having that vulnerability exploited. I’m tired of people who use me. I know they have been the minority, but every occasion of being available, every round of being open leaves me afraid that the person I’m dealing with will turn out to be one of the unhappy few.


At the moment I have a lot of reasons to think about who I can work for and on what terms. I’m considering who I’ll be available to and on what terms. People I can say no to. People who can say no to me without knocking me down. People who want to spend time with me (however infrequently that’s viable) not people I forever feel like I’m chasing to no good effect. People who respect my boundaries and don’t pounce on me, and who are more interested in finding right answers than proving themselves right. Not people who need to compete with me or score points or prove something.


And so, holding my best guess at where the boundaries need to be, I am shuffling forward, to be more in service, to be a community Druid while holding hermit time for myself. All too often, to offer service can be an open invitation to be used by all-comers. I can’t sustain that any more. I don’t think it’s an ethical way to treat a person, and I am no longer willing to facilitate people in treating me unethically. I have no idea what will come of this, but perhaps I can do more without being worn down by it.


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Published on November 03, 2015 03:30

November 2, 2015

Exploring the limits of positive thinking

Positive thinking is all too often sold to us as the solution to all life’s troubles. It’s an approach that has some utility, but if we don’t recognise its limitations, it becomes a form of tyranny, a method for victim blaming and a way of hurting people who are already hurting a lot. The idea is of course that a positive attitude changes everything; with exams and job interviews cited as examples of how this will work. And yes, in exams and jobs interviews a positive attitude will help you. In war zones, with a knife at your throat, starving, or watching a loved one die, it’s not just useless but insulting.


There is much to be said for asking whether good, or potential good exists within a situation. In times of mild upset and modest difficulty, the challenge can be a blessing in disguise and a positive outlook can bring that to the fore. However, if a situation is truly hideous and doomed, a positive outlook can keep you slogging away when you should be running away. It can deny you the space for needful emotional processes – when important things are lost to us, we need to grieve first before we try and move on.


If there’s no good to be found in a situation, then we waste energy looking for it, or we delude ourselves trying to manufacture it, and this doesn’t help in the slightest. Further, the person who is undertaking to think this way may be less alert to dangers, and to strategies that suit the scenario. The eventual, inevitable realisation that it really is hopeless may lead to a more profound despair than the less optimistic person will ever face. An approach of planning for the worst while hoping for the best, for example, can give you a much more realistic grasp of a situation’s many possibilities, and prepare you for more eventualities.


If you can solve all of your problems by taking a more positive approach to them, then the problems aren’t that big to begin with. It’s worth noting that the greatest exponents of this notion tend to be healthy, affluent, white, western and generally privileged. If your problems stem from a sense of entitlement, a lack of gratitude, and a ‘poor little me’ mindset then yes, positive thinking can save you. But only then.


If there is something you can make the best of, looking for it will help. It is possible to be happy even while being really quite poor, if you have an attitude that allows you to find the good. Material wealth is not, after all, what happiness is all about. If your essential needs for food, shelter, warmth and safety are not being met, no amount of positivity will transform that into a good situation –practical change needs to be sought.


Perhaps the place we most need positive thinking, is around the idea that things can change. Positivity applied to what we’ve got, if what we’ve got is awful, can lead to cognitive dissonance. We have to be realistic about how things are. Positive thinking applied to what we might be able to do, is a whole other game. How many people who could change their lives, communities and environments don’t act because they don’t think it will make a difference? All the people who don’t vote, protest, petition, or take action? All the people who accept what’s being done to them out of the belief that nothing better is possible. Believe that better is possible, and the lies of politicians and the gains of big business appear in a very different light.


When it comes to who holds the power, thinking positive about what you’ve got allows that to stay just as it is. Thinking positive about what we might collectively and individually do, has the power to change things. Positive thoughts alone are never enough. We need positive actions.


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Published on November 02, 2015 03:30

November 1, 2015

Walking without conquest

We did not go to the top of the hill, and as we skirted the side, the thought came to me ‘feminist walker does not conqueror the summit’. Exploration and adventure can often involve the language of conquest. There can be something decidedly macho about the bid for the top, or for covering the distance. Look back at older explorers and adventurers, and there’s a language of penetration, as the man takes the landscape, and the landscape is female. This is something H. Rider Haggard took to a wilfully absurd extreme in King Solomon’s Mines (the mountains that are the breasts of Sheba, and the treasure cave are, when you look at the map, pretty unsubtle).


It’s easy to have even the tamest of walks turn into something that is about achievement, in a way that has a really interesting impact on our relationship with the land itself. The top of the hill is just as much about reaching the summit and looking down on everything as the top of a mountain might be. Not that there’s anything wrong with climbing things or getting to the highest point. The issue is how motives and intent affect experience. There is more to a hill than reaching the top of it, but if we’re only interested in the summit, we may miss a lot of things along the way.


This is perhaps doubly interesting  as an issue for Pagans. Many of us see land, or the Earth as a whole, in terms of goddess. Mother Earth, Gaia; if we understand this as her body, then how we walk upon it, is worth thinking about. Are we here to penetrate the forest, or the cave? Regardless of gender, we can cast ourselves in really macho roles in relation to our journeys.


It’s a different process to walk as someone who is interested in seeing how the landscape unfolds. Being someone for whom each wrinkle, each bump and curve, is important, and engaging. To be someone who seeks out not just the pretty, picturesque faces but is willing to walk through old industrial sites and new ones, along main roads, under motorways – this too is the land. The land does not always wear the face of a beautiful virgin goddess – if previous visitors have ravaged her, she may bear scars and open wounds, lines of sorrow, and she may seem hostile.


If we simply go to take, if we walk to possess and to be gratified, seeking only what is most pleasing to us, caring only for the face of the land where other humans have not bruised that face with careless treatment, we are still colonialists. Regardless of personal gender, we are still the man in the pith helmet who wants to penetrate virgin forests to bring back prizes. We don’t have to be that. We can walk in sympathy. We can walk with empathy and with a desire to know and understand, to be present rather than to conquer. Then we find that the side of the hill has its own precious qualities, different from the summit but no less worthy, and everything changes.


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Published on November 01, 2015 03:30

October 31, 2015

Songs for Samhain

Coming from a folk background, a big part of how I express my relationship with the seasons, is through music. Here are some songs I think are particularly relevant for Samhain.


Lyke Wake Dirge – yes it’s Christian, but All Souls Night and all Hallows Eve are also Christian, it’s a wonderful spooky tune and there’s a story here about poetic justice in the afterlife. My take on it is that as you g through Purgatory (and most souls would after death) what you get, is what you’ve given. Never given anyone shoes? Don’t expect to have shoes when you walk through all the prickly plants.


I’ll Haunt You – Show of Hands. A modern song in a folk style. You don’t have to be dead to be creepy.



Tam Lyn – a traditional Scottish ballad, and a faerie classic, because Samhain has distinct faerie connotations. Fairport Convention, as this is my favourite tune. There’s a lot of versions of the words, whether the young lady is Janet of Margaret varies! This one skips over what exactly happens in the woods, some versions are less than consenting. At full length it can be huge, this is an abridged version.


And one of mine – no snazzy video , but you can listen to it on bandcamp.


If you’ve got favourites, do please add them – titles or links as you prefer – to the comments.


 


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Published on October 31, 2015 04:30

October 30, 2015

Sharing the misery is good

Last night I went to a Miserable Poet’s cafe. In the past I’ve been to Death Cafes. Both serve similar functions in allowing people to talk about what is otherwise unspeakable. I’m in a social media group that allows the same process. In a space that is held for people to talk about what makes them miserable, there can be a surprising amount of laughter.


Mostly in our lives we’re encouraged to hide our hurts, fears, failings and setbacks. We are to look brave and successful. This can make tough times into lonely times as well, and it can isolate us. When you think everyone else is brilliant, and winning, when all you see is the online bragging, it can be easy to feel you’re the only person who isn’t having a fantastic time.


Miserable Poet’s Cafe is the brainchild of Bill Jones, a chap who has an uncanny knack for making people laugh by being relentlessly miserable. He’s run several now, and their popularity is increasing as ever more people want to come out, not just to share their woes, but to listen attentively to other people’s. Why? Why would a person choose a night of misery over something fun?


There is a common humanity exposed by sharing stories from our worst times. Last night we had teenage diaries. I didn’t contribute from mine, but hearing other people’s, I realised I was not the lone freak I’d previously assumed myself to be. I listened to tales of pain and breakup, bereavement, madness, sickness, abuse and loss. We share these things. Sooner or later, all of us are touched by one of the many things that can go wrong for a person. Seeing our suffering reflected in other people’s poems, we can each feel that bit less alone. We can recognise the commonality of experience, and that makes it easier to be gentle with ourselves, and see that behind other people’s cheerful exteriors, all manner of grief may be lurking.


A poem calls on the writer to put their pain into a coherent form that can be shared. That in itself is a process that can be cathartic, and bring fresh insight. The sharing can be an act of release, having it witnessed can help place it in the past and draw a line under it. Finding out that other people understand can lighten the load, make it easier to help each other, make it seem less shameful to admit failure and shortcomings. We can laugh in recognition, we can laugh in relief. We can hurt together, and at the same time be comforted by the sharing of hurt. We can applaud each other for finding powerful, well crafted ways of making hurt intelligible to others. After an evening of that, you don’t go away depressed, you go away lighter, and feeling less alone.


I’ve discovered, in the last few years, that I absolutely love making people laugh, and if I can do that on a stage and hear the laughter, that’s even better. Comedy can work very well in darkness, it can feed on disaster. I remember from college a quote that went “Comedy equals tragedy plus timing.” It may have been Woody Allen. Being able to frame tragedy so that it becomes funny, is an incredibly effective thing. It can give back a sense of power and control, it can restore a person, it reveals the vulnerabilities we all share, and provides a coping mechanism. If you expose your sorrow, you can share it in empathy, and sometimes in laughter, and both are really helpful.


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Published on October 30, 2015 04:30