Nimue Brown's Blog, page 404

Hairy Tales

Hair is informative about a great many thing. The condition of hair says a lot about health, reveals age, whether we have time and inclination to groom, and who we think we are. Little wonder then that we devote so much time and money to trying to make sure our hair conveys the right message. Colouring to hide the tell-tale grey that announces we are no longer young. Cutting to say ‘professional’ or ‘bohemian’ or not cutting. Some of it is about trying to attract a mate with our gleaming, silky pelts, but a lot of it is a statement about our place in the world, and identifying the culture and traditions we belong to. Covering the hair can also be part of this.

Looking at someone else’s hair, you’ll see what they want you to see (usually) and if they’ve done a decent job, little more. Our own hair has stories to tell us, and those we can get a much closer look at. The state of your hair is a pretty good marker of the state of everything else. If your diet is wrong, it’ll show up in your hair. If you aren’t taking enough care of yourself, your hair will bear the signs. It’s also surprisingly indicative of emotional states, too.

When I was youthful, my hair was the only aspect of my appearance I liked. It was good hair, rich, and abundant, falling to about the base of my ribs with a slight ripple. Darker brown in winter, picking up reds and golds when exposed to the sun. I took pride in it. It’s normal for women to have hair changes around pregnancy. After my son arrived, there were some years when I had very little time for me. Sleep deprived and with too much to do, appearance was a long way down the priority list. A non-essential, luxury thing that could wait until after… and kept waiting. Growth slowed, so my hair was effectively getting shorter. Little more than shoulder length by the end. There were a lot of other things going ever more wrong for me. That, like the hair, shifted in slow degrees, until existence and hair alike were thin, sad and lifeless. I had lost the only part of me I ever thought looked good, and by the time I got to there, that was the least of my troubles.

Did I take this loud message from my body on-board and make radical life changes? I didn’t. Not for years. When I did make big changes to put my life in order, my hair changed. Within a matter of a few months, it started growing again, thickening up from the roots, with new and much more rapid growth. In the last few years it’s kept doing that. It took a while to heal my scalp, which got into an awful state – stress induced I believe. It took a while to start to get some of the old shine back. The new growth has almost caught up to the old, and I’m going to get the length back in the next year or so. This cheers me enormously. I know, from the state of my hair, that I’m making a much better job of my life than I was.

Life is full of signs, symbols and messages we can try to interpret. Many of them are quite rational. The surface symptoms all have stories to tell about what lies beneath. Details of skin, hair and breath can inform us of how we are doing. Fingernails. How we dance. Whether we dream. Part of what got me into trouble in the first place was the pressure to ignore the many messages from my body in order to serve other people’s needs. I eventually learned just how big a mistake this was. Messages from our bodies come for a reason. There’s nothing abstract or imaginary about it.

Bodies manifest experience, demonstrate health or the absence thereof and are affected by our emotional lives and stresses. This is not to say that we can magically cause or cure all ills with a state of mind – far from it. Rather, we are integrated systems and what shows up in one part will be connected to what’s going on other places within us. Being alert to that, we can usually improve things, even if we can’t always fix them.

Walking the borderlands

Edges and margins are always productive places. In a field, it’s the hedge and strip to either side of it that hold the most life and diversity. In a woodland, the edges, and the margins of glades are where life thrives. In terms of humans, being out at the edges is often where we have most scope to grow and learn, but edges are also scary places.

We have our boundaries for reasons. Inside them, we feel safe and we know what we’re doing. There’s a lot to be said for being comfortable, and the more time you spend uncomfortable and out of your depth, the more you come to value the calm, safer waters. Or at least, that has been my experience. Growth happens when we push our boundaries, but we don’t always want to grow. Indeed, sometimes we find that we can’t. We are finite creatures, and when we get excited about pushing the limits and growing, we easily forget that.

A casual acquaintance from a few years back told me that no matter what she did, she could not run more than ten miles without making herself really ill. We speculated that her body just wouldn’t store enough glycogen to carry her beyond that point. We are limited beings, and as John Michael Greer points out in his Mystery Teachings book, this is a good thing. Without limits and boundaries, we would be little piles of squidge! It is our physical limitations that allow us to be who and what we are.

There are limits in all things. Earlier this week I hit a brain burn-out. In the space of a couple of weeks I had written four stories, each about 5k, each with different settings and setups. I’d studied changing thinking on airport emissions and Staverton airport, and put together a piece (It’ll be on http://www.ruscombegreen.blogspot.com in a week or so) and I studied Green policies on housing and land use with a view to writing a report. I also read most of Glennie Kindred’s Earth Alchemy book for review, and read and reviewed some of Jay Ramsay’s lovely poetry. All of that whilst trying to juggle family demands over the festive period, put up a daily blog, manage my online teaching work and deal with the rest of life. There is only so much you can do with a brain before it hurts, and I hit it. I could have pushed beyond those edges, I have before. What it gets me is tired, ill, depressed and ever less able to think clearly, process new information or make good judgements. As this is entirely counter-productive, I took a break.

I can run my mind harder and faster than I could ten or twenty years ago. This whole slowing down as you age thing is bollocks. It’s a matter of use and intent. I’ve had exactly the same experience with my awkward body – I am in better shape than I was ten or twenty years ago, even. Regularly pushing the edges with both things has allowed me to keep growing. However, pushing continually beyond my boundaries just makes me ill. There are balances to strike.

For me the hardest area in which to deal with the boundaries has always been around the darker emotions. Pain and shame, guilt, loss, grief, fear, anger… these are not things I like feeling, and when I get beyond what I can cope with, I tend to switch off, plunging into the safe, numb waters of depression until I don’t feel so overwhelmed. It leaves me with a lot of things I have not entirely faced, and edges I have not explored. Push too hard into those and my whole body shuts down defensively, so it’s got to be baby steps, taken when everything else is calm, and when I know I can retreat safely at need.

Boundaries are good things. They hold us together. Edges are places of vitality and possibility. I get very tired of New Age books that invite us to explore boundless, limitless freedom because that way lies the pile of squidge, the formless, incapable amoeba self. There may be people for whom being limitless squidge would feel like joyful liberation. On the whole, I find learning to manage the limits of my body and mind a good deal more interesting than that kind of amorphous freedom.

Pauper arts

The twentieth century saw some radical cultural shifts for the western poor. We moved away from self-sufficiency, and towards consuming low cost goods. We stopped cooking from scratch and bought processed food. Many of the skills that had historically been essential for paupers, became lost to the vast majority. We’d ushered in a new era of prosperity and ease, and no one would ever have to cut worn bed sheets in half again to re-sew them for a re-use.

Now, many people are finding they don’t have the money to support the lifestyle they’d once taken for granted. It comes as a shock. Being poor is very hard if you have no idea how to do it. Let’s just consider food. If you can grow your own veg and fruit, make jam from the fruit, keep a few chickens, if you know how to re-use your leftovers, how never to waste anything, then you can eat for very little cost. It takes time. We’re used to throwing away a third of the food we buy. There’s a huge distance between those two ways of being, and the pauper arts are not reclaimed over night by people who find they need them.

The twentieth century taught the western poor to want all the same things the rich were getting. Of course we want fairness and equality, but we didn’t pause to ask on what terms we were getting it, or what it meant. Nor were we encouraged to, because turning us into an avidly consuming class drove the economy along. The more we can be persuaded to want, and the more willing we are to go into debt to have those things, the more vulnerable we are. We’ve been sold the idea of comfort and convenience, and now we have to work ever longer hours to pay for it, or the money dries up and we suddenly can’t afford to eat.

The cheap boom of the twentieth century was underpinned by low cost goods from abroad. The environmental cost of cheap food is huge. In another country, people are working in dangerous conditions for little pay to put cheap consumables in our shops. That’s a very high price, and just because we aren’t the ones paying it, does not entitle us to be comfortable. We can’t go on consuming at the current rate or in these ways.

What we need to do is stop being seduced by advertisers and junk pedlars. We need to stop accepting that we need everything done for us, by someone abroad, or by a machine. We need to reclaim the pauper arts that truly can allow us a better quality of life for less money. Much of that knowledge is still out there, and much can be re-invented. The important thing is to know there are options.

If you know how to do a good job of being a pauper, a little money goes a lot further. There is a sense of power and achievement in self-sufficiency, in being able to repair clothes, mend useful items, convert one thing into another. There’s a lot of use in cooking with leftovers and making compost out of kitchen waste. No one is going to pick all of this up overnight, but thinking creatively and imagining solutions is a good place to start.

In front of me on the table is the sorting and storage system for Tom’s art gear – an old, unwanted metal tea set, bought for a pound, and doing the job very well. Next to it is a plastic sweet box that I cheered up by collaging it with paper from old calendars, and am using to store my sewing kit in. We had fun with those, they will serve us well for a long time, and they cost very little. They kept a few things out of landfill, too. We’ve got a draught excluder made from a pair of worn out jeans. Bags made out of old curtains. Old curtains cut down to be smaller curtains suitable for these windows. It adds up.

What we all need is a new aesthetic; a sense that clever re-use is chic. If we only collectively decided that ‘make do and mend’ is a great look for this year, it would be easier for a lot of people to tackle poverty whilst feeling good about it, and to step back from the over-consumption that is pushing our planet to the brink. We need to declare re-use the sexiest thing imaginable. That it currently isn’t, is just a trend, and trends can change.

Why you need to get political

This is not a bid to convert you to any political party or perspective, just to the idea of politics. I’m finding a lot of people for whom politics is ‘too depressing’ or ‘pointless’ and if that’s you, please read this. It will not contain any actual politics, only ideas about politics.

It is all too easy to see the ruling classes as some kind of separate species, whose affluence and power divides them from the rest of us. There’s so little difference between the main parties most places, that voting hardly seems to make any odds. New faces, same old shit. I have a great deal of sympathy with Russell Brand, Billy Connolly etc that ‘voting only encourages them.’

The word I want you to think about in this context, is ‘them’. If you live in a democracy then in theory, there is no ‘them’, only us. In theory, anyone can get involved and make changes. The problem is that most of us sit round wringing our hands in despair, feeling powerless and useless, and like there’s no point even trying. We switch off the news because it’s too depressing. I have been there, I have done it, I know what it is to feel utter futility and misery in the face of politics. I’ve also come to the conclusion that it really isn’t the answer.

There are now a number of campaigning groups around the world, that do not have anything to do with traditional parties: Sumofus, Change.org, 38degrees avaaz, and no doubt others. (add them to the comments if there are groups you’re keen on that I’ve forgotten.) Petitioning, harassing and challenging conventional politics, these outfits have the tyrants in the UK so frightened that they’re trying to bring in gagging laws. 38degrees is bigger than any of the UK political parties. Hate politics? Hate politicians? Sick of feeling powerless? Get yourself over to one of these groups, and make some noise, and watch the wins. These groups confer opportunities to back whatever campaigns matter most to you, to start your own, to level the playing field. They do make a difference. A blend of consumer power, public shaming and fear of what we’ll do at the polling stations gives these groups real power.

You could join a political party. There are loads, many of them small, idealistic, crazy and unlikely to win anything, but they make one hell of a good protest, and if enough of us defect to little parties, we will destroy the vice-like grip large parties have on our countries. There is still scope for democracy to work, but we need to actually vote, with our feet, our cash, and our energy. Find a lovely crazy party that you can get along with. Join it. Stand for election. Make some noise. Stand as an independent. If you prefer.

If you’re really mad and brave, join one of the big parties. They all have falling memberships, which means in theory the voice of the individual is growing. You could join, go to meetings, vote on ideas, propose policies. After all, every policy a party has starts somewhere. Why not with you?

You can. Remembering that you can is not easy. Real differences can be made. Whether you like the Greens or not, Caroline Lucas as a lone Green MP gets more news time and more national influence than any back bencher from the main three parties. She demonstrates what can be done if you have the will and the determination. Lone independent politicians frequently punch above their weight, too.

There is no need for hand-wringing and hopelessness. Pick a place to stand. One you can bear. One that feels comfortable, manageable, useful enough. Go and make a difference. I promise you, that as soon as you act, you will be making a difference. What keeps the same stupid attitudes and people in places of power, is our collective disbelief that we can change anything. History is full of public movements that made radical change. Not so very long ago most people did not get to vote. We got shot of feudalism. We won the unwinnable fight to give the poor and women the vote, when it had seemed most of us would be disenfranchised forever. We had a Labour movement, we can have another. We have an environmental movement. Other countries have managed to enfranchise their original peoples. Anything can happen.

I’m sure lots of people told Mandela and Ghandi they were wasting their time and it couldn’t be done. We do not have to quit. We do not have to accept what we’re given, and anything you do will make a difference. The giving up in apathy contributes to keeping in power those who abuse our trust. Whatever you do, give up on apathy, it is no answer. Rebel, resist, reimagine on whatever terms suit you, but do not support what you hate by letting it beat you.

A life made of stories

All autobiography is to some degree a construct. As soon as you start talking about your ‘real’ life there’s a process of editing, and as with all kinds of history-making, more is bound to be left out, than mentioned. I’m very conscious of this when blogging, because I write from my own life a lot. I pick which points to dwell on. I decide which experiences are important or interesting enough to seem worth sharing. Consequently my life probably comes across as a lot more engaging than it is. But then, much of the life of an author involves sitting down and churning out words, and that bit is no kind of spectator sport! All normal human life is full of dull but necessary bits, and unless the laundry is your art-form or you’re really into cleaning, it’s not easy to talk about that in engaging ways.

We all tell stories about our lives, whether we consider ourselves to be ‘storytellers’ or not. We tales of who we are and where we came from. Those tales can root us in land, culture, family, community and faith. Such stories can be powerful, grounding forces in our lives that underpin identity, sense of purpose, sense of self. We tell stories that explain things. These can be helpful. I’m claustrophobic because I had a bad experience in the London underground. I don’t have to feel ridiculous or irrational, I have an explanation. However, if my story is that I can never make friends because I was bullied at school, or no one will love me because I am fat, that story can become a toxic thing that prevents me from taking the risks needed in order to move on. If my story is that it is never my fault and people are so unreasonable wanting me to behave decently, then I’m going to be fairly psychotic.

The stories I tell are constructs. They are true stories, but just by making a selection, I change the effect. Most often what I do aside from missing out the boring bits, is remove from the story those people along the way who I haven’t much liked. They become vague allusions, unnamed, ill-defined. It is a power that I know causes offence because I’ve had some very specific feedback, from one of the few people I don’t talk about in detail. People only like me, she said, because I am so selective in the stories I tell, I construct a falsely good impression of myself. If you really knew me, you’d hate me as much as she did, she felt.

I think she was missing the point. I don’t write this purely in order to be liked. I write to be useful. I’m guessing most of you do not read this because you are interested in my life, per se, more because you are interested in what light stories from my life might shed on your stories from your life. That’s a good deal more useful all round. Used that way, it doesn’t matter how factually ‘true’ a story is, only how useful it is. My stories are limited by being from my perspective, but other perspectives are available and a few of those cast me as villainous, selfish, demanding and unpleasant. I don’t expect to be able to keep everyone happy.

What I have for you today is a story. It is a true story, except that I missed out the boring bits, and I pared the cast down to a few interesting figures. A lot else happened during the time frame I’m talking about, but for the sake of coherence, I left those bits out too. This is a story about spiderwebs and the tenuous strings of connection that hold my life together. https://soundcloud.com/cradle2gravestories/nimue-spiderwebs-allow

It’s hosted by cradel2grave stories, who make a habit of this thing – people telling tales from their lives. It’s a really interesting project, so do have a poke around!

New Year aspirations

New Year’s Day can be a traditional opportunity for self-flagellation. All those resolutions about diets, gyms, lifestyle changes, giving up smoking, drinking, achieving more… It can be less about making change and more about a chance to beat yourself up for shortcomings, real and imagined. As the next couple of months will most likely be grey, cold and depressing, its hardly an idea time to give up the things we find comforting, or attempt to make ourselves run around getting wet.

As a younger person I used to thoroughly indulge in this annual opportunity to give myself a hard time. Convinced I was far too fat, I would promise to starve myself. I have a very efficient body, I adapt to famine situations. Starvation attempts never consequently led to much weight loss, but they did play havoc with my body, and increased my predisposition to store fat. About as counter-productive as you can get, really. Not eating was a simple way to express the rage and frustration I felt with myself, for all the things I was not, and could not do well enough. An invisible form of self harming.

Looking back it is apparent to me that I had no sense of ‘good enough’ or of being an ok person. I felt under constant pressure to achieve more, get better results, earn more money, be more pretty, more likeable and all that guff. I had a great deal of external support in developing and holding that perception right through until the last few years. I also, from my teens, had a body that wasn’t working terribly well, and nothing useful from the medics – an early diagnosis of ‘psychosomatic’ left me feeling unable to ask for help. Maybe one day I will pluck up the nerve to go back and say, actually, that illness a doctor told me I was imagining? Well I’ve spent the last twenty odd years now dealing with pain and fatigue, and no amount of telling myself that it’s all in my head makes it go away. Any chance of a rethink on this? Maybe one day. When I’m feeling brave and have convinced myself there’s a point. In the meantime, I can work on accepting that this body of mine has limits and is a finite resource, and not keep pushing to breaking point on the grounds of thinking I *should* be able to do more than I can.

New Year’s resolutions are a useful opportunity to reimagine, and rethink, if you use them that way. It does not have to be an opportunity to pile on the misery, nor to set yourself up to fail. It’s taken me an embarrassingly long time to figure this out. Better late than never. Not beating myself up has been an ongoing intention for some time now. Some days, I do better than others.

This year’s set goes as follows:

1) To be gentler with myself.

2) To say ‘no’ when I need to and to guard my energy and keep it for the things that matter most to me, respecting my own limits.

3) To be less tolerant of bullshit.

4) To invest more in the people and activities that really make me happy.

5) To devote more of my time to trying to put uplifting, inspiring, encouraging material into the world.

6) To boldly go…. (I’m not sure where, Brighton for one, but, places, and boldly).

Honouring the numbers

Years are numbered in arbitrary human ways, and this is just one of the many points when people have deemed that a solar year has ended and a new one commenced. Still, I am a sucker for culture and traditions, so let’s sweep a bow to the rolling on of those meaningless numbers anyway!

2013 was in many ways better for me than the years before it. Highlights included getting off the narrowboat, and actual warm summer, the joys of Druid camp, starting Auroch Grove, and lots of hill walking. The new luxuries in my life- plentiful hot water, a toaster, reliable internet, have resulted in me being a lot more comfortable and feeling a lot better as a consequence. The sheer joy of a permanent bed has really enhanced my life.

On the downside there have been more political nightmares than I want to have to think about. Bedroom tax, climate change, fracking, the badger cull… so much that is hideous and wrong, that at times I have felt overwhelmed with despair at the state of the world.

I’ve learned a lot about politics in the last six months or so. I’ve read vast reams of political history and current thinking, trying to understand what’s happening and how best to make a positive difference. Alongside that, I’ve made a long study of prayer practice across religions, and started putting together what I know about dreaming. I had a novel come out (Intelligent Designing for Amateurs) and a Pagan Portal book (Spirituality without Structure) and the second volume of Hopeless Maine. There was travel – Doncaster and Scarborough were excellent experiences.

I have more sense of direction than I did this time last year. Back then it was still very much about survival and getting some control over my life. Now I’m thinking a lot more in terms of what I can do. What can I add? Where can I make a difference? Where am I needed? I have a lot of projects underway, and I know that next year is going to be both busy and interesting. I spend more time looking forward than I do looking back, and a lot of time getting on with whatever now has brought me. My days are full, busy and interesting, and I’m spoiled for choice in terms of opportunities to go out and have new and interesting experiences. Sometimes the downside of this is that I end up very tired, which can make me ill, but I’m learning when to stop and how to balance things.

The last year has forged some very strong relationships for me. I have a sense of being part of a community, and a network of people with whom I feel very much engaged, who inspire me, and with whom I am able to share all manner of things. People to walk with, to share music with, to contemplate with and who share creativity with me. There have been a few mistakes on that score too, and a few hard lessons but as I get more confident about who I am and what I want, it gets easier to see where I fit and where I should therefore invest my time and energy.

I’m anticipating that next year there will be Hopeless Maine part three, Professor Elemental the novel, and a book about prayer all in print. I will be at events in Frome and Bristol, and at Druid camp. I mean to try and do the epic Five Valleys Walk, and to sit out overnight on the hills. There will be more music, and more reconnecting with people I lost during the hermit phase. There will be adventures and I am going to attempt a few crazy things (more on that as I do it). I feel more positive about this calendar shift than I have about any other in a long time. I feel like I’m winning, and I think I know what I’m doing, where I’m going and how to achieve my many and curious goals.

Is mould a climate change issue?

This recent article in the Guardian http://www.theguardian.com/society/2013/dec/27/damp-social-housing-residents-heating-energy-bills indicates that mould is a growing problem. Cold, damp houses are natural habitats for mould, which do not make for good air quality and add to respiratory diseases. Part of the problem here is unequivocally poverty – people cannot afford to heat their homes. But is that the whole story?

2000 was the wettest winter on record, with 2012 coming in a narrow second. There are no figures for 2013 yet, but it is moist out there. According to the Met office, “Looking at annual rainfall for the UK, we can see the country as a whole getting wetter in recent decades.” More of that here – http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/news/releases/archive/2013/2012-weather-statistics.

We add moisture to the air in our homes every day. Breathing, washing, and cooking are the main culprits. If there is nowhere for that water to go, no amount of heating your home can keep it dry. If it is wet and humid outside, water will inevitably build up inside and no amount of heating can fight that off forever.

When I was a child, we used to air things. You’d expect to get windows open a few times during the winter, and air out rooms to combat the damp. Washing went outside often enough that you could get away with it. A tumble drier will go a long way to solving that, assuming you can afford to run one. Of course tumble driers use a lot of energy, and if the core problem is climate change, then a tumble drier is like opening the fridge door to tackle global warming.

Cold, damp homes are not healthy. We know that. If winters keep getting wetter, we cannot buy and heat our way out of the problem. We need solutions that do not add to climate change in the first place, as well. We’re brewing a real problem here, alongside all the other many real problems climate change is already causing. Politicians refuse to act, afraid of harming the economy by taking the decisions that would be needed to safeguard our future. They don’t mind ‘tough decisions’ when that means punishing the poor and cutting funds to the most vulnerable, but the economy is sacred and must not be hurt. Except apparently they haven’t figured out that climate change is going to be really bad news for economies, and countries that are not prepared for the flooding, the winds, the wet houses, and all the other technical problems, are not going to have thriving GDPs either. These things are connected.

Being a Druid, the idea that all things are connected comes very naturally to me. We are one big eco-system. What happens in one part affects all the others. It drives me mad that those in power are still clinging on to the magical beliefs of centuries past, that you can do what you like to the planet and it will all be fine. Perhaps they imagine God will put it all right for them? When are we going to let go of the collective fantasy that our actions do not have consequences, and start recognising that the rain, and the mould, and the flooding, and the high winds, the late springs and all the rest of it relate very directly to our activities as a species?

Meanwhile, there is an absolute deluge going on out there.

Three years on

Three years ago today, Tom and I were married at Stroud Registry office. For those of you who have not followed this saga from the outset, Tom was in America when we were first put together by a publishing house. As we could neither afford nor feel comfortable about commuting back and forth across the Atlantic, he moved to marry me. There are no halfway options available, no interim testing periods. If you’ve got an international romance and you want to explore it, it’s either commuting, or moving to marry. We were sure enough of each other to take that plunge.

From the point at which the visa to enter the country was issued, we had six months to get him here, get married and get the next round of paperwork handed in. There was no time for anything elaborate.  It was a mad dash to get everything done in time with the added pressure of knowing that if we failed, or were too slow, we would be forcibly separated from each other.

The last three years have kept us on our toes with many challenges of numerous different shapes and sizes. We made Hopeless Maine Book 2 whilst living on a narrow boat, with nothing like enough electricity or internet access to get the job done. We survived setbacks, and all kinds of external pressures. Faced with hardships and trials, we pulled together, hung onto each other, coped, survived, made the most of the good bits. In the last few months we’ve emerged into an easier life, the good contracts and the royalty cheques are coming in, and it’s all getting a lot more viable and comfortable. I do not imagine that success is going to put much strain on us, but it looks like we’ve some scope for exploring that.

During the last three years we also made some fabulous friendships, met some amazing people, had wild and incredible low budget adventures, shared stories and laughter and delights. We’ve spent very little of that time apart, working side by side in all things, and find we are able to live closely, intensely without suffocating each other. We’ve deepened our knowledge of each other, and our mutual trust and I know we have both changed a lot, becoming more able to relax, laugh and play. We both have shadows in our past. Big, serious shadows, the sort that will follow you about and suck on the marrow of your life if you aren’t careful. Rather than be consumed by the amount of darkness we both brought with us, we’ve been able to make hefty changes, and that’s been a truly remarkable sort of process.

There are no huge or dramatic gestures planned for today. That’s fine. One of the things we have found along the way is that if you get the small things right, if daily life is rich with love, with gestures of affection and things enjoyed, then there’s much less pressure on the ‘big days’ to deliver some spectacular proof that all is well. We know where we are with each other, and it is a good place. So, I did serenade him with an impromptu song this morning (a silly one) and we are going out for lunch, and we leap into the next year of being together with joyful enthusiasm.

Thank you everyone who has shared the journey with us so far.

Kissing Dr Who

I watched the Christmas Dr Who, and noticed at one point that the Doctor pounces on a female character, dips her, and kisses her. It started me wondering about when that became a thing to do, and the implications of it.

The dip and kiss clearly isn’t consistent with Victorian etiquette, although you’ll find it in later bodice-ripper fiction. My guess is that it turned up with cinema, in the swashbuckling films so keen to impress on us that bad boys are sexy. Bad boys don’t ask, they just pounce, dip and snog. The victim surfaces from this starry eyed and adoring, most often. It is important to note that in reality, the victim was expecting it and had been told how to react by the director.

I have been dipped and kissed. I had consented and knew it was going to happen. It was some time ago, but what I learned was this. It is bloody disconcerting. The dip is an act of overpowering the victim. If you are anything other than still, passive and compliant, you’re going to get dropped on the floor, which is going to hurt. Being swung over backwards is not terribly dignified, and the total awareness that your bodily safety depends entirely on the person dipping you is not an easy thought. I did that with someone I knew passably well, trusted enough and was pretty sure wouldn’t drop me. To have that done to you by a total stranger would not be sexy. It would be scary and threatening. You need a height and weight advantage to pull it off, and it makes obvious to the victim that the perpetrator has superior strength. It’s an act of intimidation.

The idea we are sold in the movies is that if the guy is sexy enough, women are happy to be treated any way he likes. This is not a healthy thought form. It teaches us to put up with a lot of shit ‘for the right man’ and it teaches men that if you have the nerve to pounce on a woman and force her, and you’re reasonably pretty, you’ll probably get away with it. She might even like it. This is not a thought form that helps the guys much, either. I have no idea how it translates in same sex relationships, but from what I’ve seen, same-sex couples are largely free from the mad cultural baggage that plagues straight relationships.

There’s a lot to be said for asking someone before you kiss them for the first time. That can be romantic, or sexy if you play it right. If words are not comfortable, then starting slowly, giving the other person time and space to decide whether they’re going to consent or not, is a good way to go. If you leap in, dip, and kiss, there is no space to consent, or to refuse consent. In my book, that’s not romantic, that’s a form of assault, and it’s a slippery slope from there.

Dipping is a theatrical move. I suspect it exists because of the visual impact. If you’re wondering about what it’s like to be dipped and whether it is as appealing as you think it looks when the Doctor does it, find a willing partner and experiment. Make sure you have something soft to land on if you misjudge and one of you gets dropped. Try to imagine how it would feel if forced on you unexpectedly.

Sexual predation isn’t sexy. It isn’t respectful, it isn’t honourable and it does not make for any kind of relationship. While we keep depicting predatory acts as attractive, we perpetrate a culture in which the right to consent, is horribly undermined.