Nimue Brown's Blog, page 388

Re-writing history

History is a surprisingly malleable thing, as I came to realise while writing Druidry and the Ancestors. So much depends on perspective and the tone in which you tell the tale. We can talk about glorious Empire, or the horrors of colonialism. History that focuses on Kings is very different from the history of radicalism and social change. In choosing which story to tell we are announcing which bits we think mattered most. Often we’re making certain kinds of story disappear.

I’m very conscious of the historical absences. Women are often written out, even in times and places where they were clearly significantly active. Mainstream history books do not tend to show much of the lives of the poor. Those who were colonised tend to also be ‘vanished’ from the pages of history. You won’t see much trace of the sick and disabled, or children, and most of the time anything that is not firmly heterosexual is also rendered invisible. All the people who did not fit in the main thrust of the progress narrative. The ones who went the wrong way or got the wrong ideas. There are so many kinds of people history encourages us to think weren’t even there, or didn’t matter.

All of the same things apply when we create tales of personal history, and family history. Some things are edited out – consciously or not. Other things we allow to become the big story about how it was and what it all means. Meanings are especially hazardous. The urge for meaning is a very human one, but the journey from ‘this thing happened’ to ‘this thing means’ is so easily messed up. We can become convinced of all manner of unhelpful, restrictive things, because we’ve made a history story that we think proves it.

As a case in point… I was not the world’s happiest teenager, and that wasn’t all angst. There were some tricky things in my life during those years. I ascribed a number of meanings to my experiences: That affection would be conditional on my utility or sexual availability. That I was in some way inadequate or insufficient. That things going wrong in my life could all be attributed to my personal shortcomings. I carted all of that into my twenties, and found people who were glad to pick up the threads and keep weaving that kind of story for me.

But…

With hindsight, it becomes evident that there was a space where I was valued and cared for. At least one, and because there was definitely one, it becomes easier to imagine there might have been others. I could not see it at the time (for good reasons). I can see it now. I get to re-write my teens, and that lumpish, awkward, unwanted girl can be re-imagined as someone who had a value and place after all. That in turn allows me to think differently about a lot of other experiences, and to see where I am now in a wholly different light. I have a new story about how things were, and through that can change things about who I am.

In any situation that affects you, current or historical, it is always worth stopping to see if there might be other stories. Would it look the same from someone else’s perspective? Is the ‘meaning’ really self-evident, or did we bring it with us and plonk it down out of habit? Are we playing the role we think we’ve ascribed for ourselves? Hero, victim, rescuer, powerless, guilty… What else changes if we change the story? There are no absolute truths here, only what we can do with how we decide to see things.

Walking with few plans

It can be tempting to be really organised about walks. Maps, advance planning, considering the terrain and what gear to take. If the point is to walk to somewhere, that makes perfect sense. However, for me the point of a walk is often the walk, not the end point.

My preferred approach at the moment is to pick a general direction, and head out of the front door with no map, and no plan. A basic set of gear – waterproof coat, good boots, a drink, a snack, will cover most eventualities.  And then we just go, and see where the fancy leads us. We’ll pick up a path we haven’t walked before, and then just see where it goes. It might not be a safe or viable approach if you’re in a truly wild landscape, but in rural England, you’re never far from a landmark.

The consequences of this kind of walking are several. You get a lot more surprises, although some of them are better than others. You see places you haven’t seen before, and even small discoveries of that sort can be really exciting.  There is a sense of adventure in striking out like this – even in a quiet familiar place. Doing it builds a map inside your head, and knowledge of how the landscape fits together.

I have a fascination with Lost Things. (Bards of the Lost Forest, The Auroch Grove…) Life can leave many of us more lost and bewildered than we like to admit. There’s something very liberating about going out there and getting physically lost and disorientated a bit – we can do that safely enough. A bit lost, and having to find and figure out our way, and then how exciting it is to get that right and make it back to the fields we know… It’s a way of working that builds confidence, and somehow makes the more existential lostness easier to manage.

Learning to be lost outside, learning to look at the sky and the land for suggestions about where to go, learning to orientate ourselves a bit and overcome the fear of lostness, has affects that stay long after we’ve come home. On some level, I still know that the answer to being lost is to get to the top of the next hill, or around that far corner, or to follow a stream. Other forms of lostness start to seem that bit less intimidating.

The morning after

It was not a wild or drunken night, so I surfaced this morning, another day older but not notably lacking for brain cells or liver functioning. Yesterday was lovely, in a happy and gentle sort of way. Good people, cake, good conversations, some wildlife encounters, a glass of beer, lots of books. A low hassle sort of birthday, with much to feel warm and fuzzy about. There were lots of lovely online messages this morning, too.

I also got to see my birthday bug, which was lovely. Demoiselle flies seem to emerge reliably around my birthday, and are glorious. In flight, the black on their wings is evident, and the intense blue of their bodies is really eye catching.

Birthdays are an obvious time to stop and ponder where we’ve been and where we are going. They can be alarm bells and elicit anxiety. I’m reasonably relaxed about this whole ‘getting progressively older’ malarkey, but much of what I do, and my sense of self does not depend on seeming young and shiny. Authors and Druids alike have wise and aged archetypes by way of reassurance. In a culture largely obsessed with the appearance of youth, this is a significant advantage.

I feel more grounded and rooted than I ever have before. A year in Stroud and I’m settled here, and can see scope for a good future. Yesterday was, amongst other things, a confirmation of community. I know where I fit. Tom and I have been together five years, and that too feels very rooted, stable and dependable. If he’s coped with me this far, through all the hard times, I rather suspect he’s not going to give up on me at all!

In the last few months I’ve given a lot of thought to what I want and need out of life, alongside how I can make best use of my time and energy. Increasingly, that’s falling into place for me, giving me more balance, more inspiration, more sense of direction. What I end up doing remains to be seen, but I have a sense of where I want to be, and that’s produced some surprises.

I have practical and emotional stability. That’s no small achievement, and gives me a firm underpinning that makes everything else so much more viable. Thank you, everyone who has been part of this journey. Thank you for warmth and friendship, insights and ideas. Thank you for sharing your own experiences, and for having space for me in your life. I turn my face towards the sun, and the summer. There will be mayhem and giggles, but probably no hangovers because my tastes in vice and debauchery have changed considerably, and I like the kinds of wickedness that allow me to wake up feeling cheery the next day, with scope to do it all again.

 

Flowers and Balloons

Today I am that bit older. Last night I experienced the most dramatic thunderstorm. This morning I drew the bedroom curtains and discovered that Stroud was sending me balloons.

The picture fails to do justice to the soft, misty morning, and there’s just one balloon – they looked a lot bigger without the camera, and there were dozens, including a penguin shaped one. Best birthday balloons ever! And no storage/disposal issues either.

I have been up in a hot air balloon – for my 21st birthday. An amazing thing to do, it’s an adventure I hope to revisit some time.

 

 

 

 

Then, on the other side of the windowsill, there was this going on… during the night, my pumpkin had burst into bloom! We got it as a seed from Down to Earth, Stroud some weeks ago, and despite a life in captivity, it is doing well.  Next to it is my thyme plant, with the faerie garden door that the chaps got me. So much cute! (and now, it is the door into time) the third proto-triffid in this arrangement is a tomato plant, which came to stay last weekend and has tiny flowers on it already. Make plant friends… eat their babies.

I ave no idea why ore people don’t grow pumpkin flowers for their looks, though. It’s huge, vibrant, and it might lead to a pumpkin. What’s not to like?

 

Today also bought my first Transition Stroud volunteering job (much excitement) and promises cake, and the possibility of shared music. Life is good.

 

Ritual location

If you’re doing rituals outside, there are a number of considerations. You need to be able to access the land – that means public spaces or a person you can ask. You need to consider how people are going to get to and from your ritual, especially those who are less mobile, access to toilets (or bushes!) and so forth.

It can be noisy outside – traffic noise, wind, and water can drown out attempts at normal ritual. This is one of the great advantages to working in a place surrounded by trees. If you are in a wood, or a clearing, trees act as a barrier, reducing the amount of sound that can reach you. If the wind is so strong that the sounds of leaves could drown you out… it is better to go home because that kind of wind can also bring trees down.

This assumes that you seek out a place where you can undertake the usual form of ritual. Historically this is what I’ve tended to do – think about the kinds of rituals I want to do, and then sought a space which would work for that.

Finding a space that you want to work with, but which does not lend itself to ritual is a whole other issue. There’s one I’m enamoured of which, given the tiny space and the water sound, could only accommodate a few people doing totally non-verbal ritual. I’ve worked on the shore, where there was plenty of room, but too many rocks for a circle and too much sound for speech. At Avebury, the circle is too big to use and has cars going through it, and a lot of background noise from those and the wind – it might be popular, but it’s a hard place for a regular ritual.

I wrote about my favourite hill yesterday, on which there is a barrow – it’s a space that absolutely calls to me, and is entirely unsuitable for normal ritual. The calling is strong enough that it has become necessary to find other ways of showing up.

I wonder what we’re doing if the need to hang on to our habits of ritual is more important than the space we’re working in. Not all spaces suit ritual as we tend to do it, but that shouldn’t limit us to only showing up places where we can reliably bring musical instruments and light a candle. Sticking with standard approaches to rituals holds us in the safest, tamest, most predictable spaces, all too often.

Perhaps rather than looking for places to do ritual, we should be looking for more innovative approaches to ritual that let us engage with more places.

Loving the land

I am besotted with a hill. I love the shape of it, the many flowers that grow upon it and the skylarks who sing over it. I love the way it is battered by the wind, and the stunning views from every side. Often when I’m up there, I feel a huge urge to hug it, which is a touch impractical.

As it is a hill, I expect nothing much from it – other than it is there and I can spend time with it, adoring it for all that it is. The hill does not have to be nice to me – in terms of weather it often isn’t. Sometimes it blesses me with beautiful things, sometimes I just get wet and cold. That’s fine, it’s a hill, this is what it does. I am aware that because it is a hill it would be hard pushed to express any kind of dissatisfaction with my presence, but also that it needs very little from me and probably has no expectations or desires.

This makes for an interesting comparison with human interactions. How often we bring our expectations and desires to other people, and then feel hurt if they don’t notice or aren’t equal to it. How easy it is to take personally the things that people do, when often it may be no more personal than a heavy cloud on a hilltop. So many interactions are underpinned by a need to have positive attention paid to us. The need to feel liked, valued and wanted.

The hill pays no complements, expresses no enthusiasm, does not speak to my ego. It’s ‘just’ a hill. And yet I am profoundly in love with it and I seek out its company in much the same way that I seek the company of my most beloved friends.

It occurs to me that the people I love most… I love because of what they put into the world in words and actions. Human equivalents of manifesting orchids and skylarks. They too have their weather, their cloudy days, just as I do.

There are lessons to be learned from the hill, about what I need from my interactions with people. Most of the time, what matters is the inspiration to love – the orchids and larks, in whatever form they take. What that leads to, and whether it is in any way returned are whole other issues, and not always the most important.

The productive slacker

It can be tempting to see hard work as the answer. The more pressure we’re subject to, the more difficult it gets to stop, and this can lead to working flat out all the hours there are, too tired to do any of it well or efficiently, and never questioning what any of it is for.

In the last eight months or so, contemplative Druidry has become a really important part of my life. I’m involved with a group that meets regularly to meditate, reflect and share. The first few afternoons we did this, I felt really guilty about stopping, and the first whole day we did, I struggled to justify. There was work to be done elsewhere. So much else I should be doing. Stopping felt indulgent and unjustifiable. Just sitting there and contemplating would not solve any problems.

I learned, despite my own resistance, that I really needed this time. It allows me to unravel my thoughts, getting beyond surface concerns and immediate issues, and into the bigger life stuff. Taking an hour to just let things run through my head gives me perspective and calm. I can see what matters and where I need to act. I become more able to let go of the things that I realise don’t matter.

Over the last few months, I’ve started responding to overload by stopping, walking away and getting my head straight. An extra hour in bed, an afternoon in the sun, a walk – anything that gives me the mental space to unravel a bit. Often this is really unstructured. I don’t try to meditate on anything, or to clear my thoughts, I just make space so that whatever I’ve got can percolate a bit. As a direct consequence, I spend a lot less time running for the sake of it, or doing things inefficiently. I am quick to ditch the pointless stuff, and much clearer about what I want and need. I make more productive choices, I am calmer and happier.

I’m running my brain fairly hard, in terms of the sheer quantity of information I’m handling most days. People, politics, what I’m absorbing, what I’m creating… and trying to process all of that consciously doesn’t work. If I give my mind time to wander about free range, I digest information far more effectively. Then later, if I want to do some more creative meditation, I have some headspace and it works a lot better.

I’ve noticed that it is the mind wandering periods that make me most creative. I don’t ferment inspiration or develop deeper ideas by consciously chipping away at them. I need time with unstructured, directionless thinking where I can meander about aimlessly, pondering with no great purpose. That’s when connections are suddenly made and the sparks of inspiration set fire to my mind. Trying to work hard all the time actually crushes that process.

So if you find me idling away a summer afternoon, daydreaming and doing nothing of note, I am slacking, because slacking is exceedingly important.

Things I have been doing

This is by no means all of it, skipping over the dull bits, the realms of ‘too much information’ and the things that have not found their shape enough for me to want to try and talk about them, but, here are some things that are happening…

Last night I was interviewed by Steve Noble, talking about Spirituality without Structure. http://www.cygnus-books.co.uk/magazine/2014/06/spirituality-without-structure-nimue-brown/ It’s about twenty minutes, and was a good experience – some interviews flow better than others and I enjoyed doing this one. It’s odd for me because I finished working on this book about 18 months ago, and have been writing about a lot of things since then – but the most recently released book needs talking about like it’s fresh in my mind… always a challenge.

While I’m plugging things, let me alert you to the monthly ‘alternative wheel’ posts I do At Sage Woman 

I’ve got a couple of events coming up – in July I’m participating in Stroud’s First ‘Clocking off’ Festival – yes, that is a festival all about dying.  On the 11th July, Tom and I will be at Black Books cafe, with ‘The Ultimate Punch Line’ – last words, obituaries and of course… gravestones. A light-hearted look at how death puts our lives in perspective.

Then there’s Druid Camp at the end of July, where you can find me at the green and white stripy tent… http://www.druidcamp.org.uk/ More on that nearer the time.

I have two books coming out this summer. One is Pagan and about prayer, the other is Steampunk and was co-written with Professor Elemental, and you’ll be hearing far too much about both in the coming months. The Steampunk one has a lot of gags about dodgy Victorian hermeticists in it, though, just to muddy the waters a bit.

I’ve just started doing some blog work for JHP Fiction, which I’m really enjoying. It’s good to be using my skills productively, and having some steady income is always a delight. One of the great problems being a household that lives by its creativity, is the financial uncertainty, but this year we’ve stabilised, and that’s really good for the sanity. Flying by the seat of your pants from one month to the next is not conducive to making good art, unless cracking up is your art form of preference…

There should be another Pagan title next year – I figure one a year for those is sustainable. I am working on the second professor Elemental novel, and Hopeless Maine vol 3 gets uploaded to the publisher in a week or so. I am wondering about the novel I started late last year, but have not gone back for another go, so far.

And if you’re wondering how I’m going to fit that into a working week alongside the Green press officer job and this blog, having a spiritual life, a social life and a family life, the book reviews, and the other things I’m dabbling in… well, yes. I’ve been wondering that too. The last month or so I have juggled a surprising amount, so I’m mostly going to assume that I can, and hope for the best.

Sunday with bee orchids

It’s been a stunning weekend full of lovely people, and grand adventures. This is a snapshot… and it doesn’t have a title, because one of the things I have learned this year is that I almost never know what to call poems, and my titles often feel weird and arbitrary, and I’m often happier if I don’t include them.

 

If you aren’t familiar with the bee orchids… the photograph by Tom Brown will give you some idea…

 

 

Eyes eager, downcast, miracle questing,

For brilliant gems of coloured wonder.

Let there be glory in this mundane world.

 

How the swathe of hill becomes vital,

In detail. Stone to petal, into wing.

Landscape of secret treasures, unveiled.

 

 

 

Gaze lifting, absorbing the vibrance,

No scarcity here, meadows teeming,

As lark song kisses the sky.

 

Wild thyme a small tongue explosion.

No crumb of soil irrelevant today,

And enchantment in the sharing.

A work in progress

I was recently very inspired by Naomi’s post about the ongoing and unending process of Becoming a Druid.

There is no end point of having become a Druid such that you can sit back and not bother any more. There is always more to know, further to reach, more to love and opportunities for being confused, overwhelmed, awed and inspired.

When I started out along this path, I had no sense of that at all. I was a somewhat spiky young human and I had a great deal of need to prove some things. Part of the process of becoming has, for me, involved a process of letting go. When I started, I needed to get to the place (wherever it was) where I would be recognised and taken seriously. I was generally short of feeling recognised, valued or taken seriously and being in my early twenties really didn’t help with that.

I imagined that achieving Druid grade with OBOD would Mean Something. When I got there, I would Be something. By the time I got there I realised I was just beginning, but had also come to feel very cheerful about that prospect.

When I started out, the idea of it taking nine years of study to become a Druid historically, frustrated me. Of course I could do it faster than that! I could work harder, try more, be cleverer than anticipated and shave a few years off. And now, having been doing this for a lot more than nine years, I feel further away from the imagined goalposts than I did when  started, and also entirely at ease with that. It just doesn’t matter anymore.

I am regularly surprised and delighted by how much I do not know, and by how much I have to learn. I am smaller and less able than my younger self could bear to acknowledge. I’ve come to accept that I do not have to know everything, or be brilliant in all ways and that’s incredibly liberating. I am not required to magically have the answers and there are no guarantees yesterday’s answers would hold up today, anyway.

There is nothing to do but show up with an open heart, willing to explore, and to see what happens. Always a work in progress, only finished when dead (assuming we stop then, and I’m not actually sure). Always becoming.

We have such a success and achievement orientated culture. It has taken me a lot of my more than nine years to unpick that a bit, and stop obsessing about being qualified. It is enough that today there is sun, there will be orchids and good company and I have laundry to do. Hello sun. Hello orchids. Hello socks… The mysteries of existence are great, and numerous, and there is no dishonour in being a small thing muddling along in a state of wonderful bemusement.