Nimue Brown's Blog, page 365
February 6, 2015
Falling in love
It���s a chemical bonding process that puts a lot of very interesting stuff into the bloodstream. We fall in love, and it���s not unlike taking ecstasy and amphetamines and having a sugar rush all at the same time. Then, allegedly, it all settles down, and to get a new high you have to go and fall in love with someone else. It is the addiction of this fleeting chemical process that makes serial monogamy so attractive to so many people.
It���s not what I do at all. Partly because the state of falling in love is not something that necessarily wears off. I���ve been married four years now, to the same chap. Not a day goes past but I���ll be hit by all the force and wildness of falling in love with him all over again. It���s not a tame sort of sensation for me. Sometimes it creeps up and pounces, sometimes it���s like being hit by a train, it���s always fierce. When I am well, this is part of how I am. In many ways, depression is a shutting down of my ability to be in love.
On a good day, falling in love is not purely a feature of my married life. While it is inherently romantic as a process, that would be ���romantic��� in the older senses, not the painfully narrow modern definitions. I fall in love when faced with sublime sweeps of landscape. I fall in love with other people���s creativity. I melt in the warmth of a friend���s embrace. I do not however, fall in love with everything and everyone, it is boundaried, and highly selective as a process. I need to be swept off my feet. I need to be left gasping and teary with wonder. Without that, life is thinner, narrower and I am far less inspired.
It���s come to my attention in recent weeks that this is an essential part of who I am and how I relate to the world. It���s all tied up with my openness to inspiration and my ability to give. I lost that for a while in most of my interactions, often rigid with fear, unable to yield, unwilling to be swept away too much. I can feel that changing, and watch how the colours of my world shift accordingly. Depression leaches the life out, leaving me with a world of beige and grey. When I���m high and wild, awash with love and inspiration, I see the colours of dreams and faerie at the fringes of my waking world.
February 5, 2015
Warren Ellis liked it.
My splendid chap talking about a thing we did, and explaining our relationship (such as it is) with Mr Warren Ellis…
Originally posted on The Moth Festival:
No. Really.��He did. He said this ��������This is simply a wonderful thing: a marvellous idea, executed with great charm and style.��� This pleased us greatly because his first response to something of ours was���considerably less flattering and contained (you will all be shocked to hear) a word beginning with ���F���. We don���t hold this against him, naturally. (especially now)
It occurs to me, that you will probably have no idea what I am talking about. Let me just back up a bit���
Back when I was still living in the US, Nimue (my now wife and partner in all things unspeakable) sent me a link to a video. It was, in fact, this video. ��It was a performance by Professor Elemental, entitled Cup of Brown Joy. Nimue was enchanted and greatly enthused, and I was an instant fan. Nimue confessed a desire to work with him one day���
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February 4, 2015
The shedding of skins
Beings with soft skins can simply get those skins to grow with them. Those with hard outers have to slough off a layer in order to grow ��� crustaceans, insects, snakes and lizards grow this way. There are other creatures for whom growing up means radical transformation, not just shedding the outer skin, but changing the whole being. There is a drama to this transformation that softer entities don���t seem to manifest.
Birds shed their feathers. Mammals shed their fur, and we soft things also shed skin. The part of us regularly in contact with the rest of reality is forever changing, dying, falling away and being replaced. It is an interesting parallel that I do not shed my physical skin well, tending to accumulate layers of the dead stuff. This works well on the tough soles of my feet and the music calluses on my hands, but will turn the rest of me grey if I do not soak and scrub. I hold on to my old skins, my protective and disguising layers.
How our minds grow and develop seems to vary a lot. Small changes can be sloughed off like last year���s winter pelt, but a major change in thinking can bring more complications. If I���m trying to shift how I see myself, or the world, there are times when no tidy progress from one view to another is ok. A point of having to switch can feel a lot like taking off a skin. Not always a dead skin, either. Some of them bleed. I had it suggested to me a while back that depression can be a sign of transformation. Perhaps that���s why it leads to so many people sleeping more. It���s simpler to make those big shifts of consciousness when the conscious mind itself isn���t looking. When you woke up this morning, you might not have been the same person as you were on waking up yesterday.
Avoiding and resisting pain are hard wired survival skills. Unfortunately, large and necessary changes can hurt like hell. Healing and growing can be an excruciating processes, forcing us to recognise things that were wrong, insufficient, shabby… that can be a profound blow to the ego. So we hang on to the skins, or we flail about in trying to let them go.
This is a story I wrote about a year ago. At the time these were things I could only talk about with distance and metaphor, but it���s a rare case of my writing something very much from my immediate emotional state. I knew I couldn���t hang on to the dead skins much longer, but was afraid of taking them off. Who or what will I be if I let go of the dead layers? Somewhere underneath it all, is some actual skin, and I have no sense of the shape it takes. I may have a few layers to go, but I���m more human shaped than I was when I ventured to write this. http://nerdbong.com/nerdbongs-splendiferous-stories-slumber-s01e03-skin/
February 3, 2015
Ancient paths
Come with me on the bard path
Breathwalking, word carried
On feet dreamed to being
With a voice you must first craft
To sing up the road ahead.
Follow all the ways:
Moonlit paths to madness.
Old straight tracks into history.
The bonny road to faerie
And the broad, smooth path to hell.
The uphill climb to righteousness.
Wicked, sweet temptation
Is a lush, flower scented wood
With rumours of a pub.
Blood paths of the heart.
Bone paths. Foot paths.
New roads the mind makes
Lost tracks the soul sees.
Leave the path and be bait
For pixies, wild hunts
And never returning.
Walk a path that is no more
Than a memory of ruffled leaves.
Walk a path that is yours alone.
And may the journey be the blessing.
February 1, 2015
Heart Healing
I am continually surprised by just how physical a process emotional and psychological healing is. Logically, the body is all one system, mind and emotion are all about structures and chemistry too, so of course healing is physical, I just don���t expect to feel it as such a distinct and bodily process. It���s often gut sensation as well, which makes little sense to me ��� but it���s what I get.
Wounding ��� physical and emotional, took me out of my body for a long time. Pain from illness didn���t help. I learned not to be in my skin, not to experience discomfort. What happens instead is that I go into this hazy, unreal headspace. The more pain there is, the more absent I become, vanishing away into a strange kind of fog where I am a disembodied awareness. Being asked, verbally or by physical contact, to show up in person to my body has been such an issue that in most contexts, it creates a jolt, and panic. I am not here, I am not in my skin, I am not this body… don���t ask me to be this body.
It���s not an easy thing to face up to where that comes from: A sense of betrayal. An understanding, deliberately fed over a long time, that my body was what caused the problems. My body, by its very nature, justified what was done to it. Pain, and shame and misery were not the responsibility of anyone else, they were the natural consequences of this body… and I came to believe it, and as I internalised that blame, it became logical to assume that any reasonable person would treat my body this way because I have the kind of body that deserves to be mistreated. I can���t imagine saying that about anyone else. Getting to the point of being able to consciously identify it is not comfortable at all, but there we go, healing can be a messy process at times.
Recent years have blessed me with people who treat my body gently, and are patient with my physical awkwardness. People who are concerned if I am sore, and kind if I am startled, people who give me time and who listen, and help me to be present in my own skin. The circle of contemplative Druids I sit with have been very supportive, and there are others, too. Teaching me how to handle affection, and gentle exchanges. Teaching me how to trust, and how to feel safe. Spaces in which I have wanted to say yes so keenly that I���ve been willing to take risks again in order to move forward.
I feel those changes in my body, in my gut and across my shoulders, down my spine and in the tips of my fingers. I feel it in my own growing willingness to be open hearted, and more open of arms. I feel it in the way my body no longer jolts with an adrenaline spike if someone tries to touch me.
It is a process of unlearning guilt. This body is not guilty, it does not come with any implicit invitations to hurt or harm it. There is nothing in my skin that requests disrespectful treatment. My body did not betray me ��� someone betrayed my trust. There is no going back to the person I was and might have been, but there is scope for going forward, without guilt or shame, perhaps even without fear. Showing up to my own skin, and offering heart and hands to people who know how to respond gently and in kind, with warmth and care.
I have no idea who or how I will be if I manage to come through all of this, but there are people to trust, and hands that have held mine when I could barely identify that I had hands… and I think they will still be there as I learn to do better with all of this.
Kitchen Witch
I knew nothing about Rachel Patterson when I first started reading her books. The kitchen witchcraft aspect appealed to me greatly. It sounds earthy, pragmatic and suitable for everyday use. And indeed, her work is all of these things, with added charm and humour for good measure. Like me, she���s someone who believes in cake as an important part of life.
Her titles at present are as follows (but she���s uber-prolific, so if you���re reading this post a while after I blogged, there���s probably more…) and while I haven���t read all of them, her style and approach in what I have read incline me to say this is an author I trust. I think she���s also a good author for your younger witchy types, because she���s accessible and responsible in equal measure.
Pagan Portals Kitchen Witchcraft ��
A Kitchen Witch���s World of Magical Herbs
A Kitchen Witch���s World of Magical Food
Here���s some samples of her work, to give you a bit of a flavour…
���A woman stands hunched over an old wooden table, pestle and mortar in her hands, grinding away at a mixture of ingredients.�� A large white candle stands on the table beside her the flame flickering and spluttering.���� Open in front of her lies a huge leather bound book, the pages well worn and filled with beautifully written spells.���� Sounds like a scene from medieval times?�� Actually it could be now; it could be me (or you) in a town house kitchen, or an apartment in the city.�� This is a witch at work, same scene, same utensils, and same ingredients now as it was centuries ago.���
Pagan Portals Kitchen Witchcraft
���Food is magical, not just because of the amazing tastes, flavours and aromas but also for the magical properties it holds.���� The magic starts with the choice of food to use and it can then be added in whilst you are preparing and cooking then the magic unfolds as people enjoy your food.���� Dishes can be created for specific intents, moon phases, and rituals, to celebrate sabbats or just to bring the magic into your family meal. Many food ingredients can also be used very successfully in magical workings in the form of offerings, medicine pouches, witches bottles and poppets.���
A Kitchen Witch���s World of Magical Food
While I don���t self-identify with witchcraft at all, if I did, kitchen witchery would undoubtedly be part of my mix. As a Druid, I���m a maker of cakes and puddings to mark the seasons, festivals and rites of passage. I like the kind of medicinal herb that goes straight in the cooking (garlic!) and I like approaches to magic that are about our daily lives.
January 31, 2015
The king of birds
So the birds decide to choose a king, which you might think looks a good bit like democracy. They gather together to talk about the qualities a king should possess. This seems like a good idea, because those who will be led should have a say in who leads, and choosing the qualities of leadership is very important. Wisdom, perhaps. Knowledge, compassion, generosity, problem solving skills…
Rather than thinking about the qualities they want in a leader, each bird thinks about what he or she does best, and tries to make a case for why that should be the defining factor of a king. None of them are thinking about the implications of being ruled by someone else ��� only their own scope for getting the title. The biggest birds who are able to shout the loudest soon dominate the debate, drowning out the smaller, quieter and softer voices. Between them, they agree that being the biggest and strongest bird is the quality for kingship. This is in no way unusual. Being biggest and strongest was often what kingship was all about for people, too.
Having decided that power and strength make a king, the biggest and most powerful birds decide that seeing who can fly the highest will be an acceptable way of deciding which if them is most powerful. Thus it has always been, where the richest decide the means by which the richest will be chosen king. Those who rule by force arrange the trials that establish their rulership by force. It is the job of those who are to be led, to watch and cheer for their tyrant of preference and generally go along with the process and never, ever to question the basis on which kingship is decided. The birds know the routine, they all enthusiastically get involved with the flying contest. Especially those who know they can���t win. Joining in makes them feel part of something, and they like that.
All except for the wren, who hides on the back of an eagle, judges the timing perfectly and when the eagle thinks it���s won, the wren takes off, flying up a few feet to win the crown. Subverting the whole kingmaking program so that wit, tenacity and imagination win the day for a change, instead of brute force.
I don���t know about you, but if I must be led by others, (and sometimes it is a useful way of getting things done) I prefer to be ruled by one who has wit, vision and ingenuity. I prefer to be led by one who cannot rely on force to back up their points, but must instead reason and co-operate. I prefer to be led by one who knows what it is to be small and vulnerable, and who does not assume that the loudest voice is the most important. I also prefer to be led by someone with a sense of humour, and the wren also wins by being funnier than anyone else, turning its tiny form into a tactical advantage to beat the eagle from within its very feathers.
Here���s a song for the Occupy movement, featuring wrens…��http://youtu.be/21IbgTewrMs do saunter over.
January 30, 2015
Creating your reality
One of the concepts in magical and spiritual thinking that could use some fettling is the notion that we create our own realities. To a significant extent, we shape and inform our own experiences. However, this is not about reality conforming to our desires. It���s not about ���doing magic��� as a thing separate from how we live. It���s about being able to see and work with the threads of connection that guide what���s happening around us.
Let���s take a case in point. How we treat people informs who they will be for us. You can get the best a person has to give by acting as though you trust them and believe in them. Just believing in them won���t do it, you have to very deliberately put that belief where it can be seen, where it affects the other person���s sense of self and their ideas about what might be possible. And thus your will flows into the world and they become better able to manifest the things you were looking for.
I���ve noticed this recently in terms of how I respond to people, as well. If I���m taken seriously and treated as though I have a value, my morale is improved and my investment in that situation increases. The person who treats me like I have a value to them gets my best work. The people who see my skills and strengths and give me room to manifest those, get the best I am capable of. I���m finding myself in a number of spaces at the moment where this is happening, and I feel inspired by that sense of being valued. I become capable of doing more.
There have been times and places where I���ve faced the opposite. Places where I felt tolerated rather than welcomed, where what I do was/is belittled, diminished, dismissed or assumed to be of little consequence. Places where I have been taken for granted, or afforded no respect for my contributions. In those spaces, I am not at all inspired to do my best ��� I���m more likely to plan a quiet escape as soon as I am clear about what���s happening.
I go into these as the same person ��� same abilities, same willingness to give, same capacity to work and think, but what I���m able to do is informed to a significant degree by how I am treated and valued. I can���t do my best work for people who don���t think I���m up to much.
Every interaction we have with every other living thing creates ripples and changes. Every word spoken, every casual gesture. We shape so many of our relationships unconsciously, sending messages that were not intended, and reaping the awkward consequences. Self knowledge, self awareness and clarity of perception make it easier to get what we were intending. Putting into the world the things we want to find makes a lot of odds. Want to be taken seriously? Try taking other people seriously. Want to be loved? Be willing to put love into the world. It���s not a simple, causal effect, it is not the case that what you put out is what comes back to you. However, what you put out shapes what comes back to you. There is magic in being able to craft that so that what you do achieves the results you were looking for. In this I am a novice, but a happy, enthusiastic novice.
And as an entirely related aside, I���m really excited about what I���m getting to do at Moon Books, at nerdbong.com, with Down to Earth Stroud and Stroud Short Stories competition and I���m wondering whether a few other spaces might start to shape up some time soon.
January 29, 2015
Bleeding politics
I find it difficult to write or talk much about my ���moon cycles���. I don���t have a good and positive relationship with them because they are always long periods of pain and considerable bleeding. I suffer significant PMT mood swings, I swell up and it plays havoc with my digestive system. Often I really want to retreat into bed for a few days, and it feels like letting the side down.
Historically, the bleeding and its attendant influences have been used to devalue women. Blood is understood as unclean in numerous cultures. It���s a big part of why we get designated as the weaker sex. It has tended to be understood as just as nasty, embarrassing thing that had to be hidden away ��� and I knew as a teenager that it would be the worst thing imaginable, socially, if people knew when I was bleeding.
Of course for many women it���s no big deal ��� two or three days of very light blood that in no way slows them down or troubles them. For many Pagan women, reclaiming blood as sacred, natural, and something to celebrate has become a very important process. I have every respect for this work, but it���s not something I can participate in. I can get six or seven days of being seriously beaten up. Even time spent on the pill didn���t render it tidy and easy. This does not leave me with a lot of options, and I choose to endure my body as it is rather than have my reproductive organs removed ��� I���ve tried countless suggestions over the years and nothing has ever helped much. It���s womb out, or deal with it. So I deal with it, trying my best to honour nature as I experience it ��� bloody and painful.
However, talking about it is tough, because my fragility around bleeding is exactly the kind of thing people with a sexist agenda have used to belittle women. For two or more days in a month I am much less tolerant of anything annoying, and for two or three days I get enough pain to mess with my concentration. Mind you, there are plenty of people who achieve much the same effects through the medium of hangovers, so it seems odd to me to pick on this one form of fragility when ailments and the consequences of over indulgence can knock anyone around, and frequently do. Even so, to talk about bleeding as troubling, painful and unhappy feels like letting the side down as a feminist and as a Pagan woman.
This has led me, as I dealt with the pain this week, to really think about what equality means. If equality is treating everyone the same, what it creates is a system that penalises everyone who isn���t able to conform to assumed standards of normality. ���Equality��� means we have to all default to the same working patterns. It means giving women time off around monthly bleeds would be seen by some as ���special treatment��� or an unfair advantage, or proof that a woman who bleeds heavily is not as reliable, useful and valuable as part of your workforce. Never mind what happens the rest of the time. Actual equality would treat us as we are, in all the grand diversity human bodies and minds are capable of.
I notice that all too often, when something is done to level the playing field for someone with a disadvantage, those who don���t get the same ���perks��� will cry foul play. It���s because we collectively think of ���equality��� as all starting from the same place. We���re competing, we want to come to the same start line and use all the advantages we have to get ahead when the starter���s gun goes off. If someone is reduced to a nervous wreck by the sound of gunfire, or can���t run, there are too many people who consider it ok to leave them where they are. They had an ���equal��� start, after all.
My reality is that I bleed copiously, and so painfully each month that it impacts on what I can do. For a few days, the level playing fields become steep slopes. And I���m lucky, because it���s just a few days.
You can���t really have equality in a culture underpinned by competition. If everyone is playing to win, those with most advantages will use them to get further ahead. Only in a culture underpinned by a co-operative ethos would meaningful equality be possible.
January 28, 2015
Sharing the awen
Like many Druids (it���s never all, nothing holds true for all…) I consider awen, inspiration to be a sacred force. That creates a context for any situation where I find awen present. People who inspire me in an ongoing way hold positions of great significance in my life. People who respond to what I do by seeming inspired, I also recognise as being in that awen-shaped relationship. I live by my creativity, not just in the sense of paying the bills, but in how I approach life, how I deal with depression. Without the flows of inspiration, my life is grim.
My two most obvious collaborations to date have been www.hopelessmaine.com with my husband Tom, and Letters Between Gentlemen with Professor Elemental. There have been other shared projects along the way. What���s also important to me is the working relationships shaping spaces ��� so Trevor Greenfield, publisher at Moon Books has a key role in my creative life, and increasingly so does Simon over at www.nerdbong.com
Some sharing of awen is about being involved in the same work, or just happening to be affected by another person. To sit down and do it deliberately is a whole other thing. For a start, it means exposing my process. I don���t usually put work in front of anyone else until it���s at a level I feel is ok. However, to make room for a collaborator, it is necessary to let someone in far earlier than that, when the flaws and holes in a piece are still very present. It means letting go of control and being willing to see things change and not be as I imagined them. I am continually surprised by how the island of Hopeless looks, but it���s way better than anything I would have come up with. But, you have to trust a creative partner to surrender something to them.
So, what is it that I look for? What am I trusting when I set out to share awen with someone? Their brilliance, for a start. The Professor hadn���t written anything book shaped before, but I trusted his wild imagination, humour, and skill with words. He in turn trusted me to hold the shape of the project and guide him through the more technical bits. I trust Tom���s technical skill as an artist and I trust that his visual imagination knocks spots off mine. He trusts me to make sense of things and handle plot arcs ��� he���s great at setups but can���t plot his way out of a paper bag… while my visual imagination is poor. And so we bring both weaknesses and strengths to the table, holding both honestly. It���s an emotional exposed and exposing sort of process. You have to be able to negotiate, and let go, and no one gets to be entirely in control of what happens.
In my experience, control and inspiration don���t go together very well anyway. Letting inspiration in as a solitary Druid or creator, is an act of relinquishing control. The inspiration does not always do what you expect or take you where you intended to go. Awen flows most freely when you don���t try to direct the flow but instead allow it to direct you. There is an aspect of surrender to all religions and forms of spirituality, and whether working alone, co-creating or when sharing ritual, whether you are willing to surrender to inspiration, and whether that turns out to be a good idea, can define so many things. Surrendering, it must be recognised, is not reliably a good thing, inspiration doesn���t always lead to ideal outcomes, eureka moments do not always hold the key to true understanding. We can get all of these things wrong, so letting go has to be tempered with a bit of wisdom.
