47 not *that* kind of spring break

& poetry, archetypes, compromises & dandelions

part of section 2 from my long Dartmoor poem River Suite, with photographs by Vikky Minette (© 2008/2013)

2
lower now where the dawn horses gather 
pooled in blue morning 
amongst the granite and gorse 

you step over the threshold 
through a doorway of light 
you meet yourself coming back 
the other way 
and suddenly nothing's the same 

and the hand of morning opens 
throws these wild rivers to dance down the slopes 

fox-red bracken new green and a blanket of bluebell 
past the scribbles of stone rows and circles… 


…and here the river curls gentle as a sleeping baby
ash and alder lean to comb the water
hazel and rowan and willow

and you take your shoes off
it's the spring you thought would never come
though the trees are still bearded with winter

and the turf damp and riddled with sheep and rabbit scat
roots of heather, twists of gorse...

Spring break, haha
Hello my friends, from this fabulous spring I thought would never come… and welcome to you all, including my 400th subscriber (hello, Alison!).

Friends keep sending me words from and images of wonderful places: further south in France, Sicily to Paris (by slow train), and several of my regular writing retreat participants from the sacred Isle of Iona, where in a ‘normal’ year I’d be myself, for the 24th or 25th time, with them.

Traigh ban nam Manach, Isle of Iona © painting by Roselle Angwin 2006

I love receiving them. Apart from leading those retreats, we don’t really do ‘breaks’. There are a number of reasons for this: one, we’ve always lived in beautiful places where others come or go to holiday; two, we are usually simply too busy, even before this oversized eco-project we’ve taken on; three, there is often an environmental cost to such travel; and four, though I love the world, and adventure, and everything about place and new-to-me places, somehow I have less desire to leave this physical place to which I’m still learning to belong, as I age. (The Dalai Lama once said something about our spending so much time and money exploring ‘outer space’ when there is still so much uncharted inner space to learn.)

However, I was due back in the UK in a couple of weeks to see family, friends, a dentist; and to lead two workshops with very special groups of people. WAS. This now seems extremely unlikely as my ‘spring break’ consists of four broken bones in my foot, which has completely immobilised me - and yet again, to TM’s despair, I am ‘absent’ or unavailable at one of the two busiest times of year, with hundreds (and hundreds) of seeds to sow and seedlings to transplant. (My wonderful friends and neighbours will step in with a couple of hours; hooray for lovely people.)

Archetypes
For decades now I have used what we might call ‘ritual’ tools in the form of esoteric teachings in relation to mythology, astrological psychology, and tarot, as a form of self-knowledge. All of these are ancient ways of reading and understanding, making visible, subtle currents in the universe and how they might operate in both the collective and the individual psyche via the power of archetypes and archetypal imagery (from time to time I write about and teach this, elsewhere; and in my first book Riding the Dragon - myth & the inner journey). ‘As above, so below.’

My sister, who doesn’t engage with tarot but knows I do, texted me yesterday to say had I thought about the Tower in the tarot. As always, her intuition was spot on. The Tower struck by lightning signifies many things; what they all have in common is an upheaval or breakdown, often sudden and shocking, of structures in one’s life (or the world, of course) and the resulting destruction and chaos. (‘As without, so within.’) As soon as she said that I could see the many warning events in my own life that have led to my being immobilised, all of which recently have been hard (perhaps you will also understand how all the current levels of grief and destruction in the world can immobilise you, or add to the weight that we are all carrying, by virtue of being alive).

As always with such insight, in the understanding we are also given the key to navigating the situation, over which we often have more power than we think, don’t we? I can choose how I relate to it. It might be challenging, but I do have a choice: to react, or to respond.

Well, of course, I spent the first couple of days reacting, mostly in a fit of despair and frustration. Now, I am determined to learn to do what I never really manage: simply to be still, without a continual nagging ‘to do’ list. I have written here about Thoreau’s time at Walden Pond, and the ‘broad margin’ he gave his days: here’s my chance to really apply it, rest, and heal. To respond, not react.

Dandelions, birds & compromises
The birds, the sheer number and variety of them, have not only been a source of immense joy, but also testament to the abundance of biodiversity and habitat that can happen when you try and keep your intrusion into wilder spaces minimal and lightweight.

I have said before here that we regularly hit dilemmas and compromises on the journey to a degree of food resilience with the aim of living and working in harmony with the land and natural ecosystems, an essential focus for me around which all the rest of my life revolves. For instance, we try only to use biodegradable everything in the house, our lives and the garden, and especially to avoid buying plastic*.

But the last 2 years here we’ve lost all our outdoor tomatoes to blight. Given that the veg and fruit we grow are a very large part of our overall diet, and we freeze, dry or otherwise preserve all we possibly can, that has been a blow. So: to buy a decent-sized polytunnel, or not? A glasshouse framed in wood is simply way beyond our budget; but new plastic adds another swathe to all the non-degrading plastic suffocating the earth, the waters and our animal life. Reader, we bought it; and in community barn-raising style, as someone remarked, TM and our neighbour P and another friend put it up in an afternoon, as the same trio had for the other two members.

Another dilemma has been to mow, or not to mow. Mowing causes mass destruction of little interconnected ecosystems, and deprives so many species of food; not mowing makes a place this size unmanageable. Our current compromise is to mow the North Field, where our new embryonic fruit-and-nut forest is, once a year and not during skylark-nesting season, other than to mow perimeter paths; and I have created two circular sort-of-lawns in the meadow, one by the back door, one at the front. We don’t by any means shave them, but they are short enough for the blackbirds and thrushes to forage more easily; and they are laden with daisies and dandelions, which I gather the RHS is now recommending as a good solution.

To those dandelions and birds, and that ‘broad margin’: I’ve written before of how we, TM and I, now that we can, spend the first hour of the day drinking tea quietly together, looking out at the peach blossom, all the blue- and great tits, and the many finches, before we head around the big field with the dog and then meditate on the bench under the oak. I am now determined to extend my broad margin yet further in this period of enforced rest, and to enjoy it.

So I spent a further hour just continuing to sit, looking out; and actually watching the maybe 150 bare stalks I could see from the sofa opening out, one by one, into the radiance of dandelion flowers as the sun touched them: suns answering sun. Actually watching them open. And then the bullfinches and goldfinches came in and hovered over the seedheads among them. To have the time to witness this and not rush off doing… what a privilege, enforced or not.

* Plastic: if anyone knows where in Europe I can buy a large COTTON garden parasol (they’re almost all polyester, which is of course plastic and non-biodegradable) I would love to know.

Poetry

                                                              Poetry arrived
in search of me. I don’t know, I don’t know where
it came from, from winter or a river...  
Pablo Neruda

– and I can barely speak of how utterly healing it is to have begun writing poetry again, right now, after such a long long absence of it. I have written poetry since my teens (yes, that was dire poetry), and like Adrienne Rich, I know that, even if no one ever sees it, it saves my life. Otherwise, I desiccate. (I thank the people who have journeyed with me on this: you know who you are.)

So, in fact, maybe this broken foot brings blessings I didn’t understand I needed so much.

What if we could stop long enough
as to hear the hum of the whole universe 
in this one sweet phrase of goldfinch song?

Thanks for reading this, dear friends. Of course it will also make me even happier if you might click a heart, comment or share…