Nimue Brown's Blog, page 366

Reclaiming my bloke

For the last year, this young lady has given me no small amount of trouble. When Tom��wasn���t with her, he was mostly thinking about her, and that���s tough in any relationship. I knew about her of course ��� she was getting ten and twelve hours a day of his time, often seven days a week, I���d have to have been pretty oblivious not to notice her impact on our lives.

It���s the biggest project Tom���s ever had ��� a 200 page graphic novel for Inklit – a Penguin imprint. He gave it his all, because he always throws everything he has at doing projects anyway, and this being the biggest and highest profile one to date, really focused his attention.

It did not make for an easy year. Tom and I came together through a publishing house, many years ago. We were collaborating on www.hopelessmaine.com long before we were romantically involved, and our creative partnership was for years a defining part of our relationship. Only, last year, he was mostly working with someone else. I occasionally got to help out doing large areas of simple shading, but that was about it for me ��� I provided domestic support, and what other support I could, but I wasn���t part of the project that had taken over our lives. I found that hard.

It���s also a challenge in any relationship when one party shifts up a gear to become way more successful, and the other party does not. As the person not making huge strides forward, it was hard not to feel peripheral, and left behind at times. I���ve made my peace with that ��� there was nothing else to do. I���ve watched resentment of success eat other people up, and I don���t want to be like that.

I pick my collaborators carefully. Always did. I���ve probably made more careful and considered choices around investing in co-creators than ever I have in romantic relationships. In matters of the heart, I���ve been swept off my feet into poor choices more than once. I���d assumed that the focus and intensity of a creative collaboration would be too much alongside also living with someone, but apparently not. And, having spent this last year with my marriage stripped largely of its creative collaboration aspect, it is immensely cheering to find that we still get on well and can be happy in each other.

It���s a form of challenge any relationship can face ��� when the thing that brought you together, or defined you, is no longer part of the mix. For couples defined by their parenting, the growing up of offspring can cause real difficulties. Then you get to find out how many facets your relationship has, and whether there���s enough depth and breadth to survive what���s missing.

This last year, we���ve learned that while working together makes us both very happy, we can survive long stretches of being flat out on working with others. It���s been an interesting experience, and by ���interesting��� I mostly mean that I hope we won���t do anything quite like that again! At least nothing quite that long and involved.

More about the aforementioned book here.

The march of progress (and where is takes us)

The mainstream west understands progress in terms of technological advancement and increased material wealth. It is held as a self evident truth that these two things are good, and desirable. They go with economic growth and increased GDP and are understood to be how we overcome poverty and improve quality of life for everyone. This is why it���s very hard to even start a conversation about alternatives ��� we have a culture that believes in material growth and consumption as its primary means of salvation in this lifetime, and its grand hope for improving the future for generations yet to come.

Thus is causes horror and alarm when The Green Party talks about zero growth economy, shrinking the economy, reducing material wealth. There���s a knee jerk, fear based reaction to all of this, because if material progress is good, not seeking material progress must be bad.

So what are we getting, for our great march of progress? What have we marched to, and where does the road lead? Yes, most of us now have more material wealth and comfort than the average mediaeval noble. ��We have increased life expectancy. We also have an obesity epidemic, social fragmentation, isolation, lack of resilience, loss of skills, increasing inequality between the richest and poorest and a crisis in mental health. There is no clear correlation between improved material comforts and improved quality of life. I would argue that the high stress, over stimulated, depression and anxiety inducing modern lifestyle is no kind of progress at all. As air pollution takes an increasing toll on life, those life expectancy gains are dwindling for many, too.

The march of progress pollutes our drinking water, the air we breathe and the soil that feeds us. It depletes habitat for all living things, and takes beauty out of the world. The mental health of humans is directly affected by contact with nature. So the more forests we cut down, the more open spaces we cover in tarmac, the more harm we do ourselves. It���s a funny sort of progress, when you stop and think about it.

And what do we do, with the amazing technological progress we���ve made? We sit in traffic queues and we watch television programs in which other people pretend to do exciting things. We do less that is real, less that has inherent meaning, less that gives us chance to be heroes, or saints, or whatever your calling may be. We spend more time investing in imaginary people doing pretend things. Are we living fuller, richer, more rewarding lives as a consequence of all our progress, or are we struggling to pay the bills and spending most of our free time on escapism?

Where are we marching to?

Because we do have a choice, and we do not have to accept the assumption that all new technology and all material posessions are unquestionably good. We need to be more discriminating, more selective, more willing to question the benefits and costs. Forever marching forward on the grounds that forward is good is a very weak strategy, especially if there���s no attention paid to what you march towards. With climate change, habitat destruction and species extinction on the rise, as we destroy the very resources we depend on, the march of progress seems intent on marching itself right over a cliff.

The courtship of birds

It���s not something I���ve ever really noticed before, but this year I am seeing the birds courting. They���ve done it all through January. They turn up and forage in pairs, and I���ve been treated to some amazing displays of close flying ��� small songbirds nipping through the undergrowth, turning and dodging together, a matter of inches apart. No doubt this happens every year at this time, the only change is in my noticing.

In the last few years I���ve become more conscious of other ways in which the essence of spring is distilled in the depths of winter. All the trees have leaf buds on them right now ��� locked tight against the frosts, but ready nonetheless. The catkins hang, tight and dark, equally ready. On the woodland floor, the bluebells and garlic is already putting up the tips of green shoots. It���s still icy out there, still bitterly cold and with heavy frosts, but the makings of spring are well under way.

This year I have been much more aware of the return of the light, seeing the day increase from one evening to the next. It���s not that I wasn���t paying attention in previous years, more that I couldn���t see what was happening. I���m not a winter person, but it isn���t always easy to leave. I���ve come into far too many spring seasons with such a deep chill in my bones, and so much darkness in my mind that I found it hard to make an emotional connection with the shift into spring. I found the journey into winter easier this year, and I am experiencing the journey back out without feeling lost or disconnected.

This isn���t especially about my Druidic work of engaging with the seasons, it���s about an entirely separate emotional journey that does not plug neatly into ideas of the wheel of the year. There���s often a profound disconnect between personal cycles and journeys, and the wheel of the year narrative and that can create a lot of tensions for the dedicated Druid. When life is peaceful and all is well then it can be quite easy to go with the flow of the seasons. However, the challenges of life and the baggage we carry can entirely preclude that. It can be hard to form a relationship with the seasons as you experience them when your own life rhythms are very different. Harder still to engage with the seasonal narrative, which isn���t always the same as what���s happening in your climate.

Depression and winter are a dreadful combination for me. I do not enjoy the darkness or the cold, or the extra challenges the season brings. I struggle with low energy and I entirely get how our ancestors could have wondered about whether the light would ever return. I wonder that ��� literally and metaphorically, when I am depressed. Being less depressed, I am less affected by all of these things, and curiously more able to recognise the changes for the better. I can feel the year turning. In winters of deep depression, I could not feel it, even when the spring came. Winters of the spirit can alienate us from the actual return of light.

This is not to say that working with the seasons will cure you from depression. It may do the opposite, making it more painfully clear that are not experiencing spring or any kind of return of light. However, overcoming depression undoubtedly makes it easier to work with the seasons.

Small space communal living

In my current family, we���ve mostly lived in small spaces. If one person plays music, everyone is listening. If one person needs a whole floor to deal with a project, everyone else has to work around that. During the years on the narrowboat, and now in a small flat, we are, when inside, in close proximity to each other.

One consequence is that we are perfectly in the habit of checking, being mindful of each other���s needs and flexing around each other. We discuss what to listen to, and what to watch. If I���m doing something sensitive ��� like recording audio for www.nerdbong.com I know I���ll get total co-operation. When there is homework to do, no one else is watching a film. Arguments just don���t happen, most of the time none of us is irritated by anyone else.

The second consequence is that this way of living gives us involvement in each other���s life. We all know roughly what everyone else is working on and how that���s going. We know what music we can agree on, and who is reading what.

In a larger house (and I���ve done that too) the same issues are resolved by spreading out. The result is that no one really knows or has any involvement in anything anyone else is doing. People in separate rooms can often hear each other, though. I did a period of shared living where people were sleeping at different times, and although I was quiet… they were not and it really impacted on my sleeping. In a big enough house, of course you can get by with barely any impact on each other at all. As our houses get ever larger, and our families ever smaller, as we trend towards one person per house in an increasing number of properties, the co-operative good manners fostered by communal living may be less prevalent.

Our ancestors lived in much greater proximity to each other. In a poorer household all the children might well be arranged at either end of one big bed. Parents would sleep alongside the smallest children. Extended families lived together because living with your family was about the only insulation anyone had for old age. You may think the rich man in his castle had a better shot at a room to himself, but it isn���t so. You could expect a servant or two to be sleeping on the floor, even if you weren���t sharing space with your peers. The reason for four poster beds, is that those curtains are the only way a person could have any privacy!

If you can afford it, living in a big space is easy. You don���t have to pay much attention to the needs or feelings of anyone else rattling round in the big space. If no one else is near you, then you can be as self involved and inconsiderate as you like, and it doesn���t matter, and you aren���t affected by anyone else���s selfish and careless actions. When everyone has an en suit bathroom, your less than perfectly acceptable bathroom habits are never an issue.

We may feel a good deal materially richer for all having an en suit, and copious space in which to exist privately. Of course it means that we use up more resources building, furnishing, lighting and heating the space. We are poorer for not learning the co-operative skills that are integral to living closely with others. We���re also more isolated. Four people in four different rooms under the same roof can all be really lonely. We���re supposed to be a communal species, and it is worth learning to be less self-centred, and more considerate so as to reap the benefits of being able to live communally. Yes, living closely with others is more hassle, takes more effort, but we���re culturally so obsessed with ease that we forget that many of the best things life can offer require a bit of trying.

The voice of God

I wanted to be a polytheist. It���s not an easy confession to make, because despite my best efforts at various times in my life, I have never had any coherent experience of deity. Only shadows and suggestions, and odd moments in dreams. I���ve encountered enough words from true polytheists to know that personal gnosis is a big part of how they experience the world. My failure to have any kind of serious firsthand experience informed a lot of writing When a Pagan Prays. It���s not a book for people who have comfortable exchanges with their deities ��� more for anyone else out there who does not get what they went looking for, or is not easy with believing.

I had a bit of a lightbulb moment last week. I realised that I���ve been so busy angsting over my failure to experience deity, that I really haven���t given enough thought or attention to what I do experience. There are other things in my life, and it���s subtle, it seldom comes with a side-order of words, (although I talk to everything) and it occurs to me that this is, for me at least, the most important stuff.

Here���s an example. My computer is at the window, if I raise my gaze I can see trees, and sky. On any given day I will at some point raise my head at just the right moment to see buzzards, a heron, woodpeckers, nuthatches, flocks of little birds, comedy squirrel activity, rainbow light, tiny whirwinds… It���s the same when I go walking ��� I always see something. If I walk the hills I���ll find fossils, or limestone quartz. It���s easy not to notice, because it is normal for me. I���m very open to what���s around me, and had got into the habit of considering it all fairly mundane.

On the Five Valley���s Walk we saw a lizard and a deer. 1700 people walking the 21 mile route ��� hardly an invitation to wild things to show up. I watched half a dozen other people walk right past the lizard, not seeing it, but I had been drawn to it at once. I knew it was there. I see kingfishers and little grebes, I hear owls. I do not experience these as messages from the divine or the otherworld, just nature doing its thing and me noticing. I do not read what I see for omens or symbols, but I do feel blessed.

Even as I try and square up to the idea that this could be something really precious and important, I am conscious of my own reluctance to put any big names on it. Knowing when to turn my head to see the deer is just being present. It���s not the voice of gods or the voice of spirit, it���s just me in a wood and everything else in the wood. Would someone else construct a different narrative? Would someone else feel the need to turn, and in turning, see something beautiful, and understand that as the presence of deity?

I���ve spent about twenty years stumbling around, feeling lost and that on a very fundamental level, I wasn���t a very good Pagan at all. It may be that I just do not default to the language of deity when making sense of experience. I don���t see the horned god in the deer, I don���t see goddess in the flash of kingfisher wings. I see the deer and the kingfisher. Perhaps that isn���t a failing. Perhaps I am not as shut out of mystery, as incapable of experiencing it as I had feared myself to be. It may have been the case that I���ve been so busy being enchanted by one tree at a time that I did not grasp that I���d been in the forest all along. I don���t know. Not knowing is pretty fundamental to how I interact with the world. My not knowing has shifted in tone a tad, opening up new possibilities.

The Awen Rug

For some weeks now, much of my time away from the computer has gone into making a rag rug for my son. He���s very fond of the awen symbol, and of the squishy beneath the toes quality of rag rugs. This is the second rug I���ve made this way, and there���s been a lot to learn about textures, fine tuning methods and techniques, and working out the colours (not perfectly captured in this image but you get the gist). I still have a lot to learn on how best to handle colour. It���s a bit like pointillist painting only the colours are fixed by the fabric you have, and they go down in rows so you have to be thinking ahead. You can���t do fine detail, that���s clear, but I think I could do far more than I���ve done here…

For scale, those are Tom’s toes at the bottom of the image!

The backing was a peanut sack, my local pet store otherwise throws them out, but is happy to give them to me instead! I opened it out and hemmed the edge before starting. Every strand of fabric in there was cut by hand, worked into the hessian by hand ��� it���s very labour intensive, very rhythmic work that creates ��a lot of thinking time. All of the fabric in this rug is stuff that could very easily have otherwise gone into the bin ��� small scraps, off-cuts, faded, damaged, stained, worn-thin materials from clothes and bed linen. None of it could be re-used in anything like its original form, but a rag rug transforms what is otherwise rubbish into a cheerful and snuggely addition to your home.

I put down the awen first. That meant most of the time I was working in the space an awen creates, which has given me many hours of pondering the space created by an awen, and seeing things about the nature of that space that I had not seen before. The shape of where an awen is not, is also really interesting. So much New Age thinking talks about being free from edges and boundaries, defying limitations and so forth. An awen is only itself because of its edges, and only makes sense because there are places it is not.

There���s a trancelike quality to any rhythmic and repetitive crafting. There is space to think ��� and that too is an interesting absence created by the shape of the thing in your hands.

Angels, whores and healing

The Victorian era seeded into our culture the division of women into angels and whores. The angel belongs to the domestic sphere. She is wife, mother or good daughter. Dutiful, gentle, self sacrificing, she puts all other needs before her own, and seeks no part in the world of men ��� in matters of religion, politics and social interaction, she is guided by her husband, father or brother. While if she can, she will bear children, the love of the angel is not carnal. She has no sexual desire, only the desire to please. Any woman who is not an angel, is a whore. The whores are not to be trusted, fair game for any kind of misuse and are assumed to deserve whatever happens to them. Men caught up in narratives with whores can be redeemed, but the whore will only be redeemed by a really penitent death. She does not get to win, only to remind women that they are much better off being docile and domesticated.

The overt language of the angel and the whore may seem not to be with us, but both are still here. Angels become domestic goddesses, yummy mummies, supermums. Now they work full time and are also paragons of the domestic sphere, pandering to everyone else���s needs and being selfless at every turn. The whores have turned into career women, tarts, slappers, hoes, and at the surface it seems we���re ok with them, and that there is room for more freedom of expression and to be something other than a doormat. But our media calls women cold, and bitches, if they don���t conform to angel standards. The woman who is not an angel is still considered fair game. What were you wearing? How much makeup? How many men have you slept with? Do you read or write erotica, or wear high heels, or dance sexy, or flirt…? Then you are in truth, a whore and we can safely assume you consented. You probably did more than consent, you were probably asking for it…(a ghastly, toxic notion in this context) and so play out the vast majority of court cases around the sexual abuse and rape of women.

The angel ideal is a personification of passive, obedient servitude. It���s not much to aspire to if you have feelings and opinions of your own. Express feelings and opinions of your own, and even today, you risk crossing over into unacceptability.

I was clearly never an angel. Not once I hit puberty. I had a wild and passionate nature, was a sensuous creature, generous in my affections and open hearted. I say ���was��� because a good ten years of being treated as though that made me a whore left its marks. The angels and whores dynamic means that if you are anything other than very guarded, there are those who will assume you have no boundaries at all. You���ll find some of those people in courtrooms. You���ll find them putting hands on your body assuming you have neither the will nor the capacity to refuse them.

Underpinning the angels and whores paradigm is the key Victorian assumption that women exist to serve men. Angels do it gently in the home and are to be treated kindly. Whores are there to satisfy all the urges you can���t vent on an angel, but in the end, both kinds of women are designed to answer male needs, not to be people in their own right. And after all this time, the same underlying thoughts still affect our culture. We still call working mums, and childless women selfish. We also call stay at home mums lazy, so you don���t get to win this one.

Where is the healing in this? It comes from seeing the story, and realising that it is nothing more than a set of ideas. It is not a truth, and I am not bound by it. I am not defined by how other people have seen fit to treat my body. It comes from recognising that I do not have to be one or the other. I am not an angel in the house. I am not a whore. There is nothing in how I am and what I do that entitles anyone else to do anything to me. My curves are not permission.

My impression of mythic Celtic women is that they were able to be sexual and able to choose, free to say yes or no. There���s healing in that thought, and hope.

Whole days off

I���m not sure when I got into the habit of not taking whole days off very often. Parent to a young child, self employed, then married to an over-worked artist, and struggling with work that required a lot of time and didn���t pay much… there were lots of reasons not to stop. It���s not helped that for a large part of 2014 my other half was working ten and twelve hour days, and seven day weeks all too often. It���s not easy to stop and chill out when the other person in your life is stuck at the table, hunched over a board and dangerously close to sweating blood. I managed half days off, but it���s not the same.

Since midwinter, I���ve been taking whole days off now and then ��� one or two in a week. For me, a day off means not switching my computer on. No email, no social networking, no blog (I write them in advance to cover those days). Nothing intellectually demanding. I may spend time on nest maintenance, crafting, I may read a review book, but there the line is drawn. There is, I have noticed, a vast qualitative difference between two half days off, and a whole period between sleeps when I���m not working. It���s like a reset button for my brain, and the impact on stress and mood is huge.

It is an odd feature of contemporary culture that we���re encouraged to spend our time off being just as over-stimulated as we are when working. If you���re sat in front of the television with your social media feed on your phone (and I think a lot of people are, based on how they post) the information coming at you is considerable. There is no rest when you���re processing that much. It���s also hard to go from that kind of over-stimulated over-thinking to peaceful sleep.

Sleep deprivation leads to weight gain. It���s a clearly established but under discussed issue. We have an obesity epidemic, in which no one is talking about sleeping, nor about how our culture impacts on sleeping. But then, no one makes any money out of us when we���re peacefully unconscious.

I���ve had to spend a lot of time getting things badly wrong to properly understand why getting it right is so important. I���ve watched my usually sharp mind become truly blunt, I���ve watched my once excellent energy levels become unpredictable, and often very poor. I���ve watched my mental health degenerate. All of these things locked me down into fear and it seemed like the only way out was to try harder, do more. It���s very hard, when you���re mired in that way to see stopping as anything other than very dangerous and bound to make things worse.

I���m sleeping better. I���m in less pain. My moods are more stable, and my thinking is a good deal clearer. I���m having more and better ideas. And yet our politicians bang on about the virtue of hard work and keep telling us that hard work alone is what it takes to lift people out of poverty. Maybe this is not an accident. Maybe they know perfectly well that over-stimulated, over worked people are more readily persuaded to keep running round in the same little circles, going nowhere. If we stop, we might have time to think, and if we think, we might question and if we question it might occur to us that we���re mostly running round in little circles for someone else���s benefit, or no benefit at all. And then what would we do?

When community is uncomfortable

I don���t normally read Kevan Manwaring���s blog, but this one turned up in my social networking feed (ah, the irony) and the first paragraph struck me as so interesting that I wanted to share it.

���In the age of mass-vanity projects like Facebook, the art of bragging has never been more rife. Social media risks making of us all self-obsessed narcissists, locked into an endless game of brinkmanship. Looking enviously at our friends��� latest updates, we are forever keeping up with the Jones. The consequence of leading such goldfish bowl lives is continual status anxiety. And yet, once bragging was a bardic art ��� and perhaps something can be salvaged from it for practical use, as we continue������

The rest is here – https://mymidnightdisease.wordpress.com/2015/01/07/the-art-of-bragging/ and goes into bragging as art.

What struck me about the paragraph above is how far it is from my own experience of social media. I don���t spend much time on it ��� ten minutes here and there in a day to see what���s out there. I have a vast array of connections of twitter, ello, facebook, linkedin, google+ goodreads and here on lovely wordpress. My social media experience contains breadth, depth, variety, richness. Tales of triumph, tragedy, small victories, little wins, inspiration shared and plenty of kittens. I post about things I think will amuse, uplift, encourage or inspire others. Sometimes when I am down I post needy little things and people come over and make soothing noises. I see it less as vanity, more as connection, expressing relationship and engagement, no more or less vain than any other social aspect of my life.

I don���t feel competitive most of the time, and outside of the odd shouty group, I don���t see much evidence of competition. It could be that I just do a really good job of selecting my friends and attracting splendid, interesting people more interested in sharing and co-operating than outplaying each other.

Sometimes of course there is envy ��� the grand adventures and professional successes of others do cause little green and jealous moments. I���m fine with this. It seems healthy, to me, to be aware of the greater successes of others, to see my own life and work in a wider context and to not always like how that looks. I don���t mind being uncomfortable, and I can say, hand on heart, I am always more glad for and proud of the people in my life for what they achieve and do, than I am envious, and I hope they feel the same way about me ��� I also see no reason to think anyone doesn���t.

Alain du Botton has some interesting things to say about status anxiety in his book Status Anxiety. We all get it now and then. This is because (to use my language, not his) our place in the tribe matters. Having a place at all has been a matter of life and death for most of human history. We need to fit somewhere. It is ok to care about that.

When we are ok about the idea of being uncomfortable sometimes, life gets easier. It won���t be perfect, it never is. Sometimes there are bumps and ego bruises, sometimes we aren���t as good as we think we are ��� it���s all part of being human. For the person who isn���t at ease with their own occasional discomfort, social media could very easily be hellish.�� For the person driven by the urge to compete, it will be a competitive space. It���s one of those fine examples of what we get out looking a great deal like what we put in, and what we believe shaping what we perceive.

Wanting and spirituality

I���ve been considerably exposed to the idea (mostly, but not exclusively Buddhist) that as wanting is the cause of all suffering, the goal of the spiritual life is to free the self from want. What this line of thought does not express so clearly is the logic underpinning it. To escape from wanting is to escape from living. It���s a process of transcending the realities of this life, on the assumption that something better than this life is available. Many religions are, in essence, about getting out of all this nasty, messy, hurty physicality and on to the good stuff.

As a Druid, my spiritual life is rooted in the earth. As a maybeist, I just don���t have the clarity of belief about afterlife to want to dedicate this one to reaching for what might or might not come next. If an approach isn���t relevant right now, it���s not going to work for me. (Other people with other beliefs and world views are welcome to do differently, this is not a judgement of anyone else���s perspective, just an expression of what works for me and what doesn���t.) As I don���t want to transcend this life, do I need to uphold the same approach to wanting that is held by religions that are about escaping from the physical? I think not. Avoiding want is only a spiritual virtue if it connects to the spiritual goal of transcendence. We���ve turned want into a suspect thing. ���I want doesn���t get��� and all that.

Recently James blogged at Contemplative Inquiry about wanting, and I wanted to respond in some way… so here we are.

 

I want

 

Not climbing imagined ladders

To pure, elated wants

That are other-named

Smug-sought

 

Not flesh transcending

Life denied

Nor pain ignoring

Not so live

 

Only raw truth

Animal self

Tired, hungry,

Living, longing

 

Vulnerable honest

Yearning, seeking

Questing craving

Desire to exist

 

No quiet escape

To unfeeling places

Present in want

Gifted in wanting.