An Everywhen: A Poem

Expanding inwardly, 

creating more space for the generative darkness.

An inhalation that opens the interior

– in-held breath – 

so there is (no longer) an exterior – 

only self, whole.

Bird-self, tree-souled, 

a bow to the Others who 

make me.

Yellow wattle shining in afternoon light, 

gold-lit green fierceness at midwinter. 

The same yellow in the lemons, 

round-bright and sweet with sour.

I write from myself and for myself, 

from what is not myself, 

to be more truly myself

– transparent – 

cutting through illusion to the real: 

tree, sunlight, breeze, bird.

Rainbow lorikeets, faster than 

my eye can follow, 

entering me with their feather-selfs, 

opening me to what I am not, and to

the interplay of complements without hierarchy.

Relishing this place, this 

everywhen – for I am,

now, I am; 

will not be, one day; 

have not been, before –

but now – NOW – 

I am – 

and the earth embraces me, 

one small molecule of 

her curvaceous flesh.

(July 2017)

The Carpenter’s Wife: A Recreation Story

Lately, I have been feeling quite pessimistic about the state of the world, getting lost in despair over what we are losing, and have already lost, as climate change (amongst other calamities) destabilises and destroys the healthy workings of this fragile blue-green planet. I’ve felt guilt and hopelessness, exacerbated by my own health issues, yes, but tied first and foremost to the fate of the earth. I believe and know that we are connected with the natural world, and that an unhealthy culture and polluted landscape creates unhealthy and unhappy people. (And this is to say nothing of the fact that life itself is in the balance.)

If this is the case, what are we to do about it?

I wish I had easy answers, solutions to all the problems we are faced with as humans, and as earthlings. 

But I’ve been reminded, thanks to Jacqueline, the wise writer of Radical Honey, and this article that she recently shared on Facebook, that the seeing of beauty is radical resistance to despair. And that is, after all, part of what this blog is about—beauty and creativity as an antidote to destruction (and/or illness). So all I can do, at this point, is make my own small offerings of beauty to the world. It won’t solve any problems, but it is a small act of resistance, at least, and for now that will have to do.

Thus, I offer a brief tale of renewal—a different kind of creation story. Since today is the early spring festival of Imbolc, I thought it apt.

This is one of my early stories, written between January and March 2015. I do not think it one of my best—I really dislike the ending—but I think it is full of hope. That is, active hope, based upon taking action to take apart what is damaging (industrial civilisation), and to heal and recreate what is beautiful, joyous and full of the pleasure of life itself.

* * *

The Carpenter's Wife

A Recreation Story

‘I cannot live in this world,’ said the carpenter’s wife. ‘There is too much ugliness and not enough beauty, too much sorrow and not enough joy, too much pain and not enough pleasure. No one speaks with the Earth, with the growing things, with the four-legged ones, the winged ones and the swimming ones. No one speaks with the oceans and the deserts, the rivers and the mountains. There are voices in my head, voices all around me, but no one else seems to hear them. Husband, I cannot live in this world,’ she said, tears glistening in her eyes.

‘Well, this won’t do,’ said the carpenter. ‘I cannot have my wife unhappy. This simply won’t do.’ He rubbed the stubble on his chin and looked thoughtful for a moment. ‘My dear, I think there is only one course to take. We will have to dismantle the world, undoing the ugliness and sorrow and pain, and then we can begin anew, creating a new world. We can build and form and magic into being a new place, a new Earth, with beauty and joy and pleasure woven into its fabric. A world in which there are people—such as you, dearest—who will speak with the Earth and the growing things, with the four-legged ones, the winged ones and the swimming ones, the oceans and deserts, rivers and mountains. Many people will hear the voices, nothing will be silent anymore. You will be able to live in this new world, my love.’

The carpenter left his tearful wife and walked out of his humble house into the big world of smog and machines, populated by millions of deaf and blind humans going about their business. As he surveyed the blighted scene before him, he realised with dismay that dismantling this world was going to take a lot of work, so he enlisted the help of his friends: the stonemason, the blacksmith and the magician. Together they combined their skills and strengths, their knowledge of wood, stone, metal and magic, and they began the painstaking task of taking the old world apart, piece by piece. 

They began by deconstructing the skyscrapers, bringing the overbearing towers back down to the earth from the dirty sky, and they broke up the suffocating highways, freeing the lifeless ground underneath so it could breathe again. Then they burst the rigid, blank-faced dam walls that held back the freedom of the rivers, and water gushed out once more like life-giving blood through arteries. They broke the belching, sulphurous smoke stacks into pieces and cleaned the choked air of pollution, and already the Earth held more beauty, joy and pleasure than it had before. 

It seemed to the four men that their work was made much easier because large cracks had already appeared in reality, as if the new world was trying to burst through, for every manmade thing disintegrated at their touch—ashes to ashes, dust to dust. A reinvigorated world was beginning to take shape as concrete and steel crumbled to fine powder, and earth and water and air were liberated from the shackles that had been imposed on them. 

After some time the men found that the great dismantling was complete, so the carpenter, the stonemason, the blacksmith and the magician, weary and sore from their efforts, returned to the carpenter’s house and sat down to rest. The carpenter’s wife, hearty and rosy-cheeked, brought them steaming cups of tea with a twinkle in her eye. 

‘It’s your turn now,’ said the carpenter, happy that his wife was no longer tearful, for now that the men had played their part, it was time for the women to make their contribution to the reconstruction, the recreation of the world. 

The carpenter’s wife went out and called her friends: the stonemason’s wife, the blacksmith’s wife, and the witch, and together they combined their skills and strengths, for all women are skilled in creation and womancraft, and all women are strong. Swirling out from their dextrous hands came an alchemy of earth, water, air and fire, and the most important ingredient—love—and this enchantment obliterated what was left of the old world and replaced it with interwoven strands of beauty, joy and pleasure.

The new world that sprung from the women’s hands and hearts had green things growing out with snaking tendrils to cover the land, vast breathing forests like green lungs, meandering rivers wandering sedately or splashing wildly to the deep sea, and majestic mountain peaks that caressed the crystalline blue sky. It had four-legged ones, winged ones and swimming ones, creatures with fur and sharp teeth, feathers and slippery scales, who helped to chirp, howl, grunt and sing the Earth into life. There was snow and wind and rain, and flowers blossoming in the sunshine. Moon-bright nights and fragrant days. A marriage of every element.

Surrounded by all this wonder, the humans were no longer deaf and blind. Now there were wise women and men who spoke with the Others and listened to their wise and wild counsel, forming new friendships to ensure that the newly made world of beauty, joy and pleasure would endure and flourish.

The carpenter’s wife, the stonemason’s wife, the blacksmith’s wife and the witch looked upon what had been created and they saw that the world was filled with all manner of wondrous things. They spoke with the Earth, with the growing things, with the four-legged ones, winged ones and swimming ones, the oceans and deserts, the rivers and mountains, and all the Others said they were satisfied with their new home. The women saw that their work was finally done, and weary and sore, but elated as well, they stopped to rest, returning home to join the men who were enjoying their steaming cups of tea.

‘We can all live in this world,’ said the carpenter’s wife, smiling at last. 

* * *

I can’t for the life of me remember why I decided to write about a carpenter—only that the first line of this story came to me, and I tried to allow it to be what it needed to be. I think perhaps, in writing of carpenters, stonemasons, blacksmiths and magicians/witches, I was remembering what Jay Griffiths wrote in Kith: The Riddle of the Childscape (2013):

As a child, when I pictured the Middle Ages I could see who everyone was: a woodcutter with his axe, a merchant selling satins, a farmer or a weaver. People’s activities and their trades were graspable, visible and knowable, unlike careers in finance, project management, or consultancy, which are incomprehensible to children [and to me!]. Where there were unknowns, in the Middle Ages, they were known unknowns, the secret magic of witch, healer, seer and wizard … In terms of landscape, the Middle Ages told me of a finite, knowable village and an infinite and knownly unknowable beyond, and both glimmered with appeal. No plastic. Things were handmade and crafted, unprocessed and unfactoried. Everything was itself and was knowably makeable, findable, buildable. Everything came from the known earth around: leather, wood, wax, honey and apples. Things known, in this sense, shade into being close, intimate and beloved: this is not about information but relationship. (pp. 276–277)

The carpenter, stonemason and blacksmith represent trades/crafts that deal with tangible, handmade things: wood, stone and metal; while the magician and witch add the crucial element of magic, which is as much a part of the physical world as anything else. 

I’m not convinced that stone and metal, being non-renewables, are truly sustainable (and certainly timber used faster than it can be replaced is not). Yet there is a big difference, for instance, in the blacksmith plying his trade at the edge of the village, making horseshoes and shovels, compared with the building of massive skyscrapers which require tons upon tons of steel. One is small-scale, indeed, human-scaled, and still attached to the earth; the other is massive, industrial and completely artificial.

I think I also thought that if these men are ‘makers’, they can also be ‘unmakers’, and tear everything down. Initially I had them doing that work, as well as the recreation, and that caused the story to stall for a while. I needed a couple of months to realise that it is right and proper for the men to take apart the unnatural world they have created, but that it should be the women—the ones who had always stood behind the men, merely as ‘wives’—who should now step forward, moving from passive to active, to put things right again. 

I am seeing much that suggests that something to that effect will indeed take place. If we do manage to survive what is coming, it will be women, and supportive men, who will be the creators of the new cultures that take us beyond this time of endings, and into a brighter (though difficult) future. 

I don’t like the ending of my story—too simplistic? Too twee?—but I do hope it will come true.

Imbolc Blessings!

Connection: Writing as Magic

I subtitled Offerings from the Wellspring, ‘A blog about creativity and connection in a living world’, for an important reason.

‘Creativity’ is self-explanatory. This space is both creative tool and outlet, where I can share my writing, my art, my attempts at living creatively.

As for ‘a living world’, of course, this world and everything in it is alive, sentient, capable of communication and relationship. My ideas in this area have been particularly influenced by David Abram’s extraordinary and mind-blowing books, which explore, academically and poetically, the concept of animism (in terms of language, perception and embodiedness). I try as much as I can, to think and act from this animistic perspective. Not very well, I freely admit, but perhaps that is a story for another day.

But it is the word ‘connection’ that I am led to explain further. I have mentioned it before, in a piece I wrote for Writers in the Mist last August, in which I said: 

The word ‘connection’ has three meanings in this context: (i) the interconnectedness of everything, and the necessity of forming relationships, not just with humans, but also with nonhumans and the earth (principles I try to keep in mind as much as I can); (ii) the connections and friendships that can potentially be formed by sharing my work with other bloggers and readers from all over the world; and, (iii) the connections that I love to find in my writing and other creative work, such as when a resonant concept in a nonfiction book I have just read pops up in a novel, giving me something to explore and write about; or when a series of separate ideas or events join together to form a story.

And of course these three meanings are … ahem … connected.

It has been important to remind myself of this because I’ve been doing a bit more writing lately, flooding pages in my notebook with words, when for several months the words had only been coming in drips and drops. As I began to enjoy the process once more—no matter the quality, or lack thereof, of what I was producing—I started to realise that what I have been missing and craving is connection.

I wrote a poem not long ago—which I am holding safely under my wing for the time being—and that poem emerged from many connections: a feeling, an intriguing word, a few sentences I had written down a year ago, word meanings, synonyms and etymology … words leading to other words … images accumulating … until the poem surfaced, whole. I am proud of it.

There is something about the creative process which thrives on, requires, connections. Perhaps that is all it is: finding connections, and expressing them. Words strung like pearls on a necklace, threads of imagery woven into larger pictures, thoughts catching hold of other thoughts. When ideas are coming thick and fast, and I find my way from nothing to something, I feel so very alive, so very wild, like I am dwelling within a magical—yet entirely natural—process that is unfolding because of my engagement and interactions with it. 

Then I think of this: ‘Modern sickness is that of disconnection, the ego unable to feel an organic part of the world, except via chemical and popular culture addictions.’ (1) Yet we are an organic part of the world, our bodies and souls made of the very same stuff, from stardust to birdsong. That we forget this, or are no longer able to perceive it, is one of the tragedies of modern life. We are disconnected, and made ill and unhappy because of it. 

I often think of this quote from Abram: ‘… we are human only in contact and conviviality, with what is not human’. (2)

Though we are human, and think in (usually very limited) human ways, we do not exist in a vacuum, surrounded only by what is human, only by our selves. It can be easy to think this sometimes, living as we do in square-walled human constructions, with human-made (thus unnatural) conveniences like electricity and running water; or living only in our heads, in a disembodied intellectual state which we have come to believe is normal. In these ways we are physically (and psychically) disconnected from the weather outside, from fresh air, from other creatures, and from the natural world as a whole, with its cycles and transformations. We’re also disconnected from our own bodies. Thus, life ends up feeling static and empty of meaning, and we turn to the ‘modern addictions’ to alleviate this, merely making the problem worse.

We can only define ourselves as human by differentiating ourselves from what is not human, what is not us. Everything that we perceive and experience—the wind whipping our hair about, the shape and solidity of a tree, the velvety ears of a dog or cat—serves to tell us what we are not, what our bodily boundaries are. I think this is part of what Abram meant in the above quote. Yet there is so much more to it, for ‘contact’ is connection, and ‘conviviality’ is friendliness, relationship. We can’t just define ourselves as human based on what is ‘other’, but must connect with those others, those nonhuman beings and landscapes. This implies a need for engagement, observation, interaction and, importantly, empathy. In doing this, we learn how to be human, how to exist as part of, not disconnected from, the more-than-human community; how to speak with and learn from nonhumans and the land, and hopefully, how to be better humans. 

This is why we need what is not human, for it is the nonhuman world that creates us, not to mention the fact that nonhumans are, literally, our kin, and meant to be our teachers. This knowledge should humble us. And this is why the extinction of every species, the destruction of every natural place, is so great a loss. As we diminish the diversity of the earth, we diminish the family of life and ourselves, lessening our chances of becoming fully human animals.

I should say that this idea of contact and conviviality applies to nonhumans as much as it does to us. A wild creature is not just the body that contains it, but the sum of all of its interactions with the world: with its habitat, with others of its kind, with predators or prey, with earth or treetop, water or sky. Divorced from that wild context, and say, put in a zoo, a wild creature ceases to be what it is. And tamed and held captive in our houses, perhaps we are the same. Disconnected. Hollow.

While we do have a physical boundary, that of our skin, which contains us as a discrete person, a certain shape in the world, and a personal mind or consciousness, at the same time I believe we can, and do, extend ourselves beyond this dividing line. This is part of what animistic perception is about: letting the rest of the world in, and projecting ourselves out into it, physically and psychically. With each inhalation we let air (Spirit) into our bodies, with its myriad scents carrying the essence of other beings—the perfume of violets, the scent of coming rain, the musty decay of autumn leaves. Sounds enter our ears and cause physical and emotional responses, whether it be a memory arising from hearing a favourite song, or a slammed door making us jump. We feel gloomy on an overcast day, or have a sense of expansiveness and freedom when standing at a high vantage point. I believe that even thoughts, ideas and dreams cannot be claimed as merely human phenomena, as they come from elsewhere, perhaps given to us by a place, a tree, a bird, a feeling which was engendered by something outside of us (and who’s to say that nonhumans don’t think and dream too?). What we see, hear, feel, smell, experience, walk through, play with, eat, and so on, gives rise to who and what we are.

It is often said that language is what separates humans from nonhumans, though this isn’t quite true. Language, that is, the ability to communicate, exists independent of words (and independent of humans too). Though there is something in the notion that human language, particularly the written word, is one of the key things that has severed our connection with the natural world; Abram deals with this idea throughout his book, The Spell of the Sensuous. Yet, though he believes that a return to oral culture is greatly needed (and a return to living in our sensuous bodies also), his conclusion is not that writing is bad. It is, in fact, its own very concentrated form of animism. He said in an interview:

Everything that we speak of as Western civilization we could speak of as alphabetic civilization. We are the culture of the alphabet, and the alphabet itself could be seen as a very potent form of magic. You know, we open up the newspaper in the morning and we focus our eyes on these little inert bits of ink on the page, and we immediately hear voices and we see visions and we experience conversations happening in other places and times. That is magic!

[…]

I'm not trying to demonize the alphabet at all. I don't think the alphabet is bad. What I'm trying to get people to realize is that it's a very intense form of magic. And that it therefore needs to be used responsibly. I mean, it's not by coincidence that the word "spell" has this double meaning — to arrange the letters in the right order to form a word, or to cast a magic. To spell a word, or to cast a magic spell. These two meanings were originally one and the same. In order to use this new technology, this new play of written shapes on the page, to learn to write and to read with the alphabet, was actually to learn a new form of magic, to exercise a new form of power in the world.

But it also meant casting a kind of spell on our own senses. Unless we recognize writing as a form of magic, then we will not take much care with it. It's only when we recognize how profoundly it has altered our experience of nature and the rest of the sensory world, how profoundly it has altered our senses, that we can begin to use writing responsibly because we see how potent and profound an effect it has. (3)

Writing is magic. I feel this is so, based on what it has done for me, bringing me from a nowhere/nothing place, back to life. It has helped me to heal, to find myself once more. Creativity itself is a spiritual practice, and therefore necessary and meaningful. Thus, in not writing for some time, really delving deep into my inner life, my wellspring, I began to feel disconnected, from myself as well as the world. Without writing, I wasn’t finding the connections that enliven me, that bring meaning. 

I’ve said before, I want to write myself back into relationship with the world, to let my imagination spill out of the boundaries of my own body, yet to write in a fully embodied way too. When I am unable to go out into the world, I can at least invite the world to come to me. I want to write for and from the earth, not just for and from myself, and this implies responsibility. And if everything is interconnected—and it is!—then the connections are already there, always there. It’s just a matter of opening up to them. This means that writing itself is about connection, about engagement with the world—intellectually, intuitively and sensuously—even though, paradoxically, the life of a writer may seem, from the outside, so very full of solitude and withdrawal. 

And so here I am at the end of a long and rambling essay, because I started writing, and connections found me, and wanted to be written. I wasn’t quite sure what I wanted to say, or where I was going to end up, and perhaps this doesn’t make as much sense as it should, filled as it is with my sometimes vague philosophical musings. Yet this needed to be said, the connections forming on the page, and reminding me—writing is magic.

References:

1. Monica Sjöö & Barbara Mor, The Great Cosmic Mother: Rediscovering the Religion of the Earth, second edition, HarperOne: New York, 1987, 1991, p. 29

2. David Abram, The Spell of the Sensuous: Perception and Language in a More-than-Human World, Vintage: New York, 1996, p. ix

3. Scott London, ‘The Ecology of Magic: An Interview with David Abram’, http://www.scottlondon.com/interviews/abram.html

A Poem: Wedding

I have never been much enamoured with the idea of traditional marriage and its attendant white weddings—though each to their own, of course.

This poem describes what marriage is, or should be, from my point of view. No outside authority is required to officiate, for it is the two people themselves, and them alone, who have the power to speak their vows truly, to make them real. They are responsible for creating and upholding their marriage, which I think of in terms of the secondary definition of the word ‘marry’: join together; combine harmoniously (or similarly, ‘wed’: combine). Further, it is the natural world, rather than human beings, that witnesses the vows. 

Quite simply, it is a wild wedding.

Wedding

We are on a hill, 

beneath a tree,

under white light

bursting into every colour.

There is no white here,

only the purity 

of green leaf,

brown earth,

blue sky,

red love.

We are wedded wildly

away from eyes that pry, 

singing our own song,  

walking our own way.

A bird witnesses our vows,

and without ceremony

we exchange hearts,

not rings,

for the Earth is round 

and is all we need

to bind us together— 

two vines 

growing entwined

and blossoming

in time.

Wedding, 2016

I’ve been trying to remember where the inspiration for this poem came from, and I think a small part of it may have stemmed from Alan Garner’s novel, Thursbitch, in which Jack Turner and Nan Sarah (who is ‘teeming’, that is, pregnant), wed themselves in an elaborate pagan ritual. It takes place at certain significant stones in the valley where they live, and involves offerings of honeycomb, a button from Jack’s shirt, and strips cut from the edge of his britches and her petticoat. Jack speaks aloud to the hills, and the landscape, it would seem, speaks back, blessing their union, for in the sky above them a shooting star falls. (Having recently reread this book, I can recommend it as a particularly haunting story, as is the case with most of Garner’s books.) 

In Ireland in pre-Christian times, weddings were indeed held under the most sacred of trees: oaks (and I suspect that similar, nature-based customs were held elsewhere too). I did not know this before I wrote ‘Wedding’, so I was very pleased to discover it—though perhaps I did know it intuitively, for it feels right, at heart. To have written of this truth, without realising, is magical, and lends even more meaning to the poem.

In the theme of ‘Wedding’ there is something of a correspondence (which I only recently became aware of—yes, sometimes I am very slow) with the other poem that I have shared here, ‘Tree Woman’, in which I spoke of another kind of marriage: ‘A euphoric union / in the sun and shade, / wind and rain.’ This is the marriage, or more simply, the (re)connection, between human and the more-than-human, between human and Nature (in all its—or her—diverse and wondrous forms, both breathing and non-breathing). This is what we sorely need to bring meaning and enchantment back to our lives.

Further, the notion of a wild wedding, or wild love, and the importance of the natural world in the witnessing (and blessing) of the relationship calls to mind a D. H. Lawrence quote I found in Sharon Blackie’s powerful book, If Women Rose Rooted: The Power of the Celtic Woman:  

Oh what a catastrophe, what a maiming of love when it was made a personal, merely personal feeling, taken away from the rising and setting of the sun, and cut off from the magic connection of the solstice and equinox. This is what is the matter with us. We are bleeding at the roots, because we are cut off from the earth and sun and stars, and love is a grinning mockery, because, poor blossom, we plucked it from its stem on the tree of Life, and expected it to keep on blooming in our civilised vase on the table. (2)

Yes, indeed.

This is also the first time that I have intentionally created an artwork to illustrate a piece of my own writing. As I am very out of practice, art-wise, I decided to keep the image simple, very small (only 12 x 12 cm), and to try my best to embrace imperfections as they came. So in my humble painting above is that poetic tree-topped hill, and the watching bird, ringed in gold and twining vines. 

The soundtrack as I painted on this occasion was Vashti Bunyan’s Heartleap (2014). Perhaps some of her lovely whimsy rubbed off on me as I worked.

Secret Names

In a post on the Dark Mountain Blog called The Ecology of Language, Abbie Simmonds writes:

Mythologist Martin Shaw encourages his students to develop a practice of giving twelve secret names to the plants, animals or ‘things’ they encounter in nature and to speak those names out loud. He comments that ‘inventive speech appears to be a kind of catnip to the living world’ — an enlivening force. And surely it must be seen that those that love and know the land they live upon have a hundred names for snow or twenty different names [for] mud or, at the very least, three different names for the garden robin. In giving something a name, we deepen our relationship with it and in finding many names we find ourselves watching, listening, thinking more deeply about that bird, plant, flower or bug — by engaging through language, we come to know it better. 

Must those names always be secret, though? 

Perhaps sometimes, for they are our own personal way of forming relationships with the Others, and those relationships will often be private, intimate, not to be intruded upon. Our own special connection to the more-than-human world. There is a kind of magic in that.

Yet I have decided to share my twelve names for the eastern spinebill, a little bird who tends to be nearby all through the summer, but who I only really come to see up close in autumn, around March and April.

Whir-Winged Piper

Flight Magician

Brown Honey Sip

Singer of Wing and Throat

Faster-than-Sight Traveller

Slip Through Air Sprite

White-Breasted Flitter

Autumn Friend

Flutter Guest

Marvel Eye

Visitor of My Heart

One I Welcome

I challenge you to come up with some of your own secret names for the creatures and the landscape around you, to speak them out loud, and make your own magic.

A Story: The Solitary Woman

From time to time I may share some pieces of creative writing with you, and here is my first small offering. 

This story is particularly special to me for being the very first one that I wrote, a little over two years ago, therefore marking the beginning of my journey as a writer. Indeed, writing it is what helped me to believe that I could actually be a writer. After all, to have the technical ability to write is one thing; to be able to write creatively, to grow stories from the fertile ground of the imagination, is quite another. 

At first I did not believe I would be able to write fiction, for creating stories had never been one of my strengths or talents. And, to be honest, the basic structure of a story—the plot itself—is still something that I struggle with. Places and characters come to me far more easily. Yet, a dear friend (they know who they are) encouraged me to write, to perhaps initially write a story about myself and where I wanted my life to go. At the time, I resisted. I did not feel that I could write imaginatively about my future. Though, without my fully realising, a character had already been evolving within me for some time—a woman somewhat like me and totally unlike me—a woman who I aspire to be more like. Inspired in part by the Wild Woman archetype, and by all the stories of witches and healers I have ever read, she suddenly came to life. 

Strangely, I knew that I wanted to use the words ‘ramshackle’ and ‘hodgepodge’, and from those humble beginnings the story grew in the course of one magic afternoon. 

It seems that what I needed was someone else to believe in me before I could believe in myself. And I needed to give myself permission to write, to sit down and allow myself to begin placing word after word, until another world appeared on the page. 

Now, here I am—a writer. Still learning the craft, but a writer nonetheless. 

And here she is, the healer–herbalist–witch, the edge-dwelling woman of the forest, wild-hearted and wise beyond knowing. 

The Solitary Woman*

She lived in the woods in an old, ramshackle hut made of stone and timber, wattle and daub, topped with a mossy green roof. Some people said that she built the hut with her own strong arms and hands, her sharp axe and sturdy hammer. Others said that the hut had always been there, as if it grew up out of the earth, fully formed, a strange wood and clay and stone creature, warmed into life by a fiery hearth heart. Whatever the truth was, there was something magical about this hut and the women who lived in it. 

She liked to be alone, though she never was, not really. She was friends with the trees and animals, the toadstools and birds, even the ants that walked in a line across her windowsill. It was human company that she avoided. Yet, when some poor, lost and half-starved soul did manage to stumble into the clearing in the woods where she lived, they were always treated hospitably enough, offered hearty food, a warm seat by the fire, and a comfortable place to sleep. Providing the weather was favourable, they would be sent on their way the following morning, their bodies rested and their bellies full, with fail-safe directions back to their mislaid path. Still, though she was kind to her human visitors, she was always happiest when they were gone and her forest glade was quiet once more, filled with the peaceful hum of nonhuman life.

Yet some people in the nearby village were suspicious of the wood-woman, and they wanted to spy on her, to prove that she was a witch, and wicked too, but curiously, anyone who went into the woods with that intention never found her. It was as if her hut was so well camouflaged that it was invisible, as was she, her clothing a hodgepodge of greens and browns that made her blend in with her surroundings. Or it could be that her hut uprooted itself and trundled off to some new location, deeper in the forest, and harder to find. Some dark place that even the most courageous villager would be loathe to enter into, for fear of wolves and other wild creatures. Perhaps even the forest itself hid her, the trees protecting her home, blocking paths, and tripping unwelcome intruders. But even more curiously, when people were desperately in need of help—for the gash in the woodsman's foot, a woman’s difficult labour, or a child's broken bone—the woman's hut could always be found, quickly and with ease, as if it was situated right on the edge of the forest, the smoke from its chimney curling above the trees and clearly visible from the village, its scent blown in on the wind. She would then come, with her satchel of herbs and potions, utensils and restoratives, to stitch up and bandage the wound, deliver the baby, or set the bone right again, before disappearing back into the shadow of the trees. 

Of those who had seen her up close, none could agree on her age or appearance. Some said that she was old and wizened, small and stooped and quite definitely ugly. Others thought that she had not seen many summers at all, and was tall and strikingly handsome. Yet others thought she was of middling age, neither old nor young, and entirely unremarkable in appearance. And was her hair winter white or autumnal auburn, chestnut brown or sunlight golden? But, despite the contradictions, everyone wholeheartedly agreed that her green eyes always seemed to be laughing, even if her lips were not, and her voice, when she did break her silence, was lilting and rich. 

However, in spite of her obvious strangeness and the inquisitiveness of the villagers, in the general commotion of illness or injury, the woman’s presence was often largely unnoticed. She simply went about her healing work, quietly and methodically, doing whatever was necessary—staunching, stitching, bandaging, massaging, reassuring, easing pain. It was only when her patient was cured, on the mend, or had peacefully breathed their last, and she was gone once more, that her warm-hearted and motherly, yet uncanny presence, was acknowledged and missed, and the earthy smell of herbs, woodsmoke and soil that accompanied her would fade away. The villagers would then feel a peculiar dull ache, a yearning for something they knew not what—her patients most of all. And this yearning would pull them towards the forest, towards the dark, green, wild place outside the confines of the village, with its fenced yards and homely cottages, clucking hens and bleating sheep. Something called to them from the shadows under the trees, something ancient and untamed and mysterious. But after a few days, or a few weeks, most people would forget this yearning and get on with their lives. They always forgot.

Once in a blue moon, though, there would be someone who wouldn’t—or simply couldn’t—forget, who would feel the yearning so strongly that they would abandon their home and walk straight into the woods without looking back. And after the villagers had called and searched and eventually lost all hope of their safe return, sometimes that person would walk out of the forest, months later, smelling of leaf mould and vegetation, their clothes tattered and patched with squares of green and brown, but looking none the worse for their long absence. They would, however, have a strange kind of laughter in their eyes, now newly flecked with green.

*This story has previously been published on the Blue Mountains Library blog, Writers in the Mist, along with a number of short stories by other members of my writers’ group. Do click on the link and have a read of their stories too. We are a talented bunch.

Autumn's Gifts

In Australia autumn often comes late, even up here in the mountains, as summer likes to lazily linger on into March and April. Changes to the Earth’s climate are no doubt exacerbating this phenomenon, bringing too-warm days and too little rain, and this year has been no exception. Though for some time the nights have been cooler, and the mornings brisk, the days have remained mild, and it was well into April before I noticed more than a tinge of autumn colour on the trees. Yet I have still been marking the season’s gifts, and all the usual residents and guests around me.

Little garden skinks aplenty, along with impossibly tiny babies, making the most of the warmth and sunshine, their rainbow-sheened skins shining as they bask, and climb, and fight in rolling tumbles. A larger skink, who I suspect is an eastern water skink, also took up residence; as did another even larger member of the skink family: a blue-tongued lizard. 

Eastern water skink

Grasshoppers and butterflies, and bee-hum around the blooming fuchsia. 

Greenish Grass Dart (also called Southern Dart or Yellow-banded Dart)

Lines of industrious ants carrying provisions to fill their winter stores. And tiny insects, which I can only assume are some species of gnat, flying in oscillating dances, as if they are planets orbiting minuscule, invisible suns.

Gnat squiggles

The morning and afternoon migrations of sulphur-crested cockatoos, with their attendant screeches (my house regularly seems to be directly beneath their flight path); and the occasional, and much-longed-for, cries of yellow-tailed black cockatoos, mournful but beautiful. The sound gives me shivers.

Magpies have been making holes in the lawn as they dig out worms and grubs to eat, and there has been much flapping and whooshing of wings and clacking of beaks as they spar.

Of course, there has been an eastern spinebill, a tiny honeyeater (sometimes with one or two friends), that comes to sit in the callistemon and pipe his/her little call, preen his/her feathers, and feed on fuchsia nectar, wings a-blur. This year’s bird has been considerably shyer than the little fellow I got to know over the past couple of years, so I have had to keep my distance, and take advantage of the rather spectacular zoom on my camera, to capture his/her portrait.

Eastern spinebill

The ever-present crimson rosellas twitter and whistle their adorable conversations, and sit high in trees making soft cracking sounds as they nibble seeds.

In the garden there have been strawberries and tomatoes gradually blushing to red, while a pumpkin grows by the front steps. And, on a walk a little while back I found a shining golden, and no doubt magical, mushroom!

Until recently, the trees at the small park not far from my house—I believe they are bald cypresses—were still vividly lime green. Only now have they transformed to fiery copper, and eventually these bright leaves will fall (hence the tree’s name). 

Though late summer and autumn are the times for the harvest, for reaping the plentifulness of summer’s fruiting, I have not completed a story since the year renewed itself. Summer is a difficult time. While I love warm days and the freedom that comes with wearing less layers of clothing, the heat and humidity don’t agree with me. Though it doesn’t even have to be hot. For some strange reason, summer always depletes my energy. I find it difficult to do much physically, and very difficult to THINK, which I clearly need to be able to do to pull together all the various idea-strands that weave themselves into a story. Though I have had ideas—some exciting ones—I have not been able to follow them through, to put them together satisfactorily. 

Perhaps the story is not ready. 

Perhaps I am not ready for the story. 

I cannot find the rhythm.

Earlier in the year I read Ursula Le Guin’s book The Wave in the Mind: Talks and Essays on the Writer, the Reader, and the Imagination, and I was struck by Virginia Woolf’s thoughts on writing, as related in the quote which gives the book its title. Woolf wrote in a letter to her friend Vita Sackville-West:

Style is a very simple matter: it is all rhythm. Once you get that, you can’t use the wrong words. But on the other hand here am I sitting after half the morning, crammed with ideas, and visions, and so on, and can’t dislodge them, for lack of the right rhythm. Now this is very profound, what rhythm is, and goes far deeper than words. A sight, an emotion, creates this wave in the mind, long before it makes words to fit it; and in writing (such is my present belief) one has to recapture this, and set this working (which has nothing apparently to do with words) and then, as it breaks and tumbles in the mind, it makes words to fit it. (280)

Le Guin adds to this:

Beneath memory and experience, beneath imagination and invention—beneath words, as she [Woolf] says—there are rhythms to which memory and imagination and words all move; and the writer’s job is to go down deep enough to begin to feel that rhythm, to find it, move to it, be moved by it, and let it move memory and imagination to find words. (281)

It is quite true. Writing is about rhythm, and right now, I do not feel it. At least, not for the writing of stories. Besides, there is so much more that I need to know, to learn, to absorb and experience before I can write. 

Though I had hoped to read less this year to make more time for writing, I must confess, I am not doing too well on either score. I have written little of note so far, and have still been reading, perhaps not to excess, but not much less than usual (and the list of books I want to read, along with the things I subscribe to, and blogs, and articles, only seems to get longer and longer). Yet as Robert Macfarlane says in his book on landscape and language, Landmarks, ‘Before you become a writer you must first become a reader. Every hour spent reading is an hour spent learning to write; this continues to be true throughout a writer’s life’ (11). 

Perhaps it is not so bad to spend my time reading, for I am simultaneously learning to write, and learning in general, absorbing ideas and influences—what I like to think of as ‘literary osmosis’. The writing itself will come again when it is ready. I am sure of this.

I have now been writing creatively for a little over two years, and while I made great strides last year, writing several short stories and a novella, and developing well beyond what I had achieved the previous year (in part because I joined a writers’ group, which has motivated me to write much more), this past summer and early autumn has stopped me in my tracks. It doesn’t surprise me, feeling as I always do at this time; yet it still frustrates, in both senses of the word: thwarting my ability to do, and exasperating me emotionally and mentally.

I can only acknowledge the particular creative season that I am occupying at the moment, and accept its difference from the natural season occurring outside. While it is all abundance, I am lying fallow. Yet such dormant, slowing-down times are needed, as much as the times of abundance and activity. 

I am feeling a particular need to return to sources, to the things that I loved when I was younger. So I am slowly pursuing a re-reading of all six of Ursula Le Guin’s Earthsea books, the first four of which I read when I was about twelve or thirteen, and I am surprised at what forgotten things have leapt out from my memory. In particular, a line from A Wizard of Earthsea, in which the wise, quiet mage Ogion says to his young and impatient apprentice Ged, ‘To hear, one must be silent’ (The Earthsea Quartet, 26). That deceptively simple piece of wisdom made a big impression on me as a teenager, quiet girl as I was. Yet it means so much more now, for I consider listening to be of vital importance. Listening to the inner voice and to dreams. Listening to the more-than-human voices. Listening to the Earth herself. This is something that, for the most part, we have forgotten how to do. We surround ourselves with our human-made sounds, and the countless distractions of the digital age, and we have forgotten that we can, and should, listen to nonhumans, and to the land.

In A Wizard of Earthsea, Ged discovers ‘that the wise man is one who never sets himself apart from other living things, whether they have speech or not, and in later years he strove long to learn what can be learned, in silence, from the eyes of animals, the flight of birds, the great slow gestures of trees’ (82).

To listen. To learn, in silence. To try to understand what the Others—the more-than-human beings around us, both breathing and non-breathing—are saying, through their sounds and embodied languages, their movements and gestures, their non-movement and rootedness. The many ways in which they interact with, and create, the world. 

Listening—truly listening—with heart as well as ears, is hard. It does not come easily. 

Yet I sat on the front steps and listened, and watched, and in this fallow time, I was urged by who and what I heard and saw to write this piece. 

Perhaps I was listening well after all.