Offerings to the Wellspring

I’ve been treading a tricky path these past five years, since starting this blog, trying to reconcile my frequent impulse to withdraw, with the need to share my thoughts and creations publicly. 

As someone who lives with chronic illness as a companion, I have to conserve my energy and protect myself from stress as much as possible, and I haven’t been doing that very well for a long time. Being constantly connected to the internet is the main cause of the problem, and I freely admit that though I am critical of technology, and frequently wish it gone, I am just as susceptible to it as most people. It’s addictive and distracting, for all the connection and creativity it also provides. 

So I’m straddling these opposing needs: to be present and to retreat; to be somebody and to be nobody … And retreat and anonymity are much stronger needs right now.

In order to gift you offerings from my creative wellspring, I need to devote offerings back to it, so I have made the long-overdue decision to withdraw from social media and blogging for the remainder of this year, so I can feed the source that feeds me. 

I hope this lengthy pause will grant me the breathing space to, first and foremost, rest deeply and focus on my health. I also expect it will enable me to open up more fully to creative/spiritual practice, and make some much-needed changes in my life.

My art will still be available from Redbubble, and I will also be contactable via email … though I may be a little slower to reply than usual.

Until 2022, farewell!

Wise Words: The Presence of the Past

An irony of our technological advancement is that it has created a society that is in many ways scientifically more naïve than the preindustrial world, in which no citizen who learned physics through backbreaking work and understood climate through subsistence agriculture would have assumed that he or she was exempt from the laws of nature. The “modern” kind of magical thinking is characterized by the belief that repeating falsehoods like incantations can transform them into scientific truth. It is also yoked to a quasi-mystical faith in the free market, which, according to the prophets, will somehow allow us to live beyond our means indefinitely.

The problem, in essence, is that rates of technological progress far outstrip the rate at which human wisdom matures (in the same way that environmental changes outpace evolutionary adaptation in mass extinction events). Critic and author Leon Wieseltier contends that “every technology is used before it is completely understood. There is always a lag between an innovation and the apprehension of its consequences.” The rapid obsolescence of digital technologies and the cultural flotsam they deliver corrodes our respect for what lasts (“That was so five minutes ago”). And just as reliance on GPS navigation systems causes our capacity for spatial visualization to atrophy, the frictionless, atemporal instantaneity of digital communications weakens our grasp on the structure of time. Our “modern” idea that only Now is real is arguably delusional, while the medieval concept of “wyrd” [the power of the past upon the present] seems positively enlightened. And our blindness to the presence of the past in fact imperils our future.

(Marcia Bjornerud, Timefulness: How Thinking Like a Geologist Can Help Save the World, Princeton University Press: Princeton, New Jersey, 2018, p. 164)

The Words Of The Wild Soul

Weary of all who come with words but no language

I make my way to the snow-covered island.

The untamed has no words.

The unwritten pages spread out on every side!

I come upon the tracks of deer in the snow. 

Language but no words.

~Tomas Tranströmer (1)

What can be spoken without words?

Once, everything was spoken without words, though the world was made entirely of stories, and all of the stories were told in wordless languages written across life’s pages. To read these stories was to see them, to hear them, smell, taste and touch them, and to participate with them in reciprocal relationship. To tell stories was to live them—to grow, unfold, bloom, make, procreate, kill, eat, and die.

The stories were sacred, were steeped in the effortless beauty of life on this blue-green world, floating like a drop of preciousness in a soft and enfolding darkness, studded with stars.

Why did our focus turn outwards rather than remaining inwards? I don’t mean inwards in an arrogant, self-referential way. I mean inwards in the sense of knowing that everything we need, everything we are, and everything we could ever want, is right here, not out there. 

Why do we feel the need to seek other worlds, to colonise them? Why are we never satisfied with what we have? When did we lose touch with reality? When did reality become not enough, something considered malleable and subject to our human whims?

* * *

Recent events have been making me feel quite angry. Not in an overwhelming or uncontrollable way. It’s more that I just feel fed up, so sick and tired of what is happening in the world: the contempt that is shown for women; the contempt that is shown for the earth; the lack of action on climate change (though any action will never be enough, and will never be what is actually needed, because what is actually needed is not even considered an option, if people are even aware of it—and this in itself makes me angry).

I feel so frustrated. I don’t want to sit back and do nothing, but what can I do?

I believe that there needs to be real, direct action, structural change, the destruction of certain harmful institutions and infrastructure. But I also believe that this must happen concurrently with spiritual and psychological change—a complete alteration to our perception and consciousness. We need to fall in love with life, with the earth, for we cannot, and will not, protect what we do not love. But how do we find and foster this love?

That is part of the reason why I am going to be Writing the Wild Soul. I want to find ways to fall in love with the world, and in particular with my own small part of it—these mountains, escarpments, forests and hanging swamps. And then, when I have felt that love, formed that relationship, I want to do my best to speak for the earth—to use language to speak for what is, not just for myself. That, perhaps, is the most important thing I can do with words.

Self-expression is easy. Expressing what is 

is a little more difficult.

~Robert Bringhurst (2)

We will not fall in love with the earth via scientific facts or statistics—for all the importance of such things—but only through poetry, myth, story, and art. It is only though the poetic and visionary, the sensuous and emotive, that we will really begin to feel love for life in its wholeness, its completeness, its enoughness.

‘Technological solutions’ will not save us. I do not believe that they exist, though many people like to think they do.

It is poetry that will save us; art, stories, local mythologies and new cosmologies founded on principles of biophilia, and human humility. All of this needs to be communicated, at least to begin with, with words. Thus the challenge is to find a new way of using language that de-centres ourselves, and re-centres the wild; that speaks for the needs of the earth, rather than the selfish wants of human beings who have lost any connection with the Real.

This is the challenge I am facing, with fear and apprehension, but also with a seed of joy in my heart. I only hope I can live up to it. 

References:

1. Tomas Tranströmer, quoted in Andreas Weber, Matter & Desire: An Erotic Ecology, Chelsea Green Publishing: White River Junction, Vermont, 2017, p. 96 

2. Robert Bringhurst, from his poem ‘Xuedou Zhongxian’, in Selected Poems, Jonathan Cape: London, 2010, p. 91

Wise Words: Progress Is A Four-Letter Word

Cardinal John Henry Newman once said: ‘Progress is a slang term’. For many, it is a four-letter word. Vandana Shiva spits on the shoe of progress and development – including, not surprisingly, the Narmada dam.

‘What is currently called development is essentially maldevelopment, based on the … domination of man over nature and women. The economic “growth” that the masculinist model of progress has sold has been the growth of money and capital based on the destruction of other kinds of wealth such as the wealth produced by nature and women.’

She argues instead that ‘steadiness and stability are not stagnation, and balance with nature’s essential ecological processes is not technological backwardness but technological sophistication.’ ‘Chasing the mirage of unending growth, by spreading resource-destructive technologies, becomes a major source of genocide, the killing of people by the murder of nature is … today the biggest threat to justice and peace.’

(Jay Griffiths, Pip Pip: A Sideways Look at Time, Flamingo: London, 1999, p. 198)

Illness is My Spiritual Path

I was hoping, when I first began this blog, to write much about my spiritual journey, my experiences with shamanism. My thoughts, in general, about the world behind and inside this world, that we so seldom speak of. It was going to be one of the tests of my courage. How much would I be willing to say?

However (as with most things, I suppose), things have not quite gone to plan. My health has been sliding downhill these last several months, and at times I have wondered if writing this blog is part of the problem. Still, I refuse to believe that that is so—and if there are specific causes, no doubt they are much more complex than I can even begin to understand—yet I do know that I should be limiting my use of technology. And therein lies the dilemma.

Without the Internet, without this blog and email and social media (as conflicted as I often feel about those things*), I would be much more isolated than I currently am, and I know I couldn’t bear that. (I think most people with illnesses or disabilities, confined to houses/bedrooms, would agree with me—sometimes it is only the contact we have with other people via social media and email correspondence that keeps us going.) Nor would I be able to share my thoughts and creative work, to make my small mark on the world, and to share my story—the whole point of blogging.

So I’m determined to continue with this work, for I know it is doing me good, having this creative outlet (and I’ve had some very encouraging feedback from my followers—many thanks to all of you!). It is frustrating, though, that I cannot write quite what I would like, because I am not able to live as I would like, and that instead I am being pulled in a different direction. I didn’t want this to be a place where I dwelt upon illness, yet that is what I seem to be being called to do. 

I few months ago I reread Kat Duff’s extraordinary book The Alchemy of Illness (1993). She says: 

Not long ago, when I turned down an invitation to attend a Buddhist meditation retreat because I was not well enough to sit upright for hours, I felt sad, wondering when I would be able to resume spiritual practices. Then, as I was falling asleep that night, it occurred to me that my illness is my spiritual path and practice—at least for now. (p. 91) 

I find this book inspiring for many reasons—it is so bursting with wisdom that it’s almost too much to take in—but this is the quote that seems most relevant as I write this. For now, illness is my spiritual path. I have no choice in the matter. 

So, what is illness trying to teach me? What can I learn from my experiences? How do I heal myself?

I cannot yet answer these questions. Though one of the things I love about writing is that I am often taken to places I never expected, and I think my path through the dark forest of illness is going to be the same. All I do know is that I am likely to share more from Duff’s book, as I revisit it and ponder it further; and I will, I hope, soon be pursuing some new treatments, and a challenging new diet, which no doubt will give me some interesting topics to explore here. I’ll also be reading about female healers and mystics, and the teachings of plants, amongst other wonderful things, and all of this will inspire my writings.

While I do hope to feel better soon—with more energy, and less of this frustrating brain fog—I also hope that I can accept my circumstances, go deeply into what I am feeling, and bring back some wisdom. If my spiritual journey so far has taught me anything, it is that there is meaning to be found in everything, even the darkest, most painful parts of life, and even in the failings and frailties of our fragile human bodies.

I intend to do my best to find the gifts in this situation, and to share them here.

*I know that technology, for all its benefits, is not healthy for me … or anyone … or the planet! I sometimes long for how life used to be, before the Internet, when spare time meant, for instance, making art, not wasting time trawling through posts on Facebook. Yet I am also very grateful for it. There have been several people over the years who I have corresponded with, and in many ways, they saved me; not to mention the access I now have to information that feeds my never-ending hunger for knowledge. I just hope I can do some good with it.

From Out of Patience and Searching

I feel a need to slow down, to rest. To continue my ongoing search, of course—for my Self, for meaning, for stories, for life amidst my sometimes non-life—but to do so slowly, with patience. 

It frustrates me that there is so much I could do, yet at the moment there is not enough energy to do even half of it. I have no choice but to go steadily, to let life and the creative process take me where they need me to go, at a pace that I can keep up with.

This past week I’ve been heartened by rereading Jeanette Winterson’s Art Objects: Essays on Ecstasy and Effrontery (1995). I first started reading Winterson’s work when I was a teenager, and I admit, I did not fully understand her then, though I was certainly beguiled; now, older and a little wiser, with much more reading behind me, I do understand her better (though not perfectly, I am sure), and I love her work all the more. 

Initially, what drew me in were the fantastical elements of her stories, which, nonetheless, I would not have described as ‘fantasy’ in the usual sense. To me it seemed more like she had taken reality and skewed it sideways slightly, so that the impossible suddenly became possible. As she writes in Art Objects, ‘I wanted to create an imaginative reality sufficiently at odds with our daily reality to startle us out of it’ (188). I think this is, perhaps, one of the things that the best books do: they startle us into seeing our own reality with different eyes, with greater intensity, and our imagination kicks in, allowing us to believe in and dwell in other worlds.

Reading Winterson is something of a challenge—I often feel like a tiny intellectual minnow to her grand Salmon of Knowledge—but it is worth the effort. Art Objects, especially, is replete with insight and wisdom, so much so that I have typed out almost nine pages worth of quotes for future reference! 

I particularly identify with Winterson’s approach to life. She says:

I like to live slowly. Modern life is too fast for me. That may be because I was brought up without the go-faster gadgets of science, and now that I can afford them, see no virtues in filling the day with car rides, plane rides, mobile phones, computer communications.

If you deal in real things, those things have a pace of their own that haste cannot impose upon. The garden I cultivate, the vegetables I grow, the wood I have to chop, the coal I have to fetch, the way I cook, (casseroles), the way I shop, (little and often), the time it takes to read a book, to listen to music, the time it takes to write a book, none of those things can happen in microwave moments. I am told that the values I hold and the way I live are anachronisms paid for by my privilege. It is a privilege to make books that people want to read but why would it be more appropriate, less anachronistic, for me to spend the money I earn on a flashy lifestyle instead of funding my own peace and quiet? (158–159)

Remember that she was writing this in the early- to mid-1990s, before mobile phones, the Internet and all the other technologies we take for granted had become as ubiquitous as they are today, and therefore I believe she was, and remains, a woman ahead of her time in striving after a way of life that is real and nourishing, yet to so many seems ‘behind the times’. In some ways I could describe her, and her writing, as being outside of time. If you have read her books, you will know what I mean, for she often plays with time; also, as she has said, in stories, whilst writing them and reading them, time as we know it ceases to exist. It is clear that Jeanette Winterson knows what is important, necessary to life, and necessary to the making of art: peace and quiet; a lack of haste.

I need this peace and quiet for myself, this slow pace, for I often have a tendency to rush rush rush, and it does me no good, physically or mentally. (Does it do anyone any good?) Though don’t get me wrong, I appreciate what technology, in particular the Internet, has given me—information at my fingertips, connections with people near and far, and the opportunity to share my work publicly, by blogging. Yet, sometimes I long for a return to a pre-Internet, pre-technological life, in which I would have more time, and would use it more wisely, forming a better relationship with the world around me. In which there would be less distraction, less digital/virtual intrusion into physical reality and my own imaginative realms. That day may yet come (whether through my own choice, or by technological collapse), but for now I must find my own ways to live with less haste, to use my time (and energy) wisely, and to walk the creative path with patience and trust. 

Life takes time. Art takes time. I must be patient.

Winterson writes:

My work is rooted in silence. It grows out of deep beds of contemplation, where words, which are living things, can form and re-form into new wholes. What is visible, the finished books, are underpinned by the fertility of uncounted hours. A writer has no use for the clock. A writer lives in an infinity of days, time without end, ploughed under. 

It is sometimes necessary to be silent for months before the central image of a book can occur. I do not write every day, I read every day, think every day, work in the garden every day, and recognise in nature the same slow complicity. The same inevitability. The moment will arrive, always it does, it can be predicted but it cannot be demanded. I do not think of this as inspiration. I think of it as readiness. A writer lives in a constant state of readiness. For me, the fragments of the image I seek are stellar; they beguile me, as stars do, I seek to describe them, to interpret them, but I cannot possess them, they are too far away. At last and for no straightforward reason, but out of patience and searching, I find that what was remote is in my hands. Still uncut, unworked, but present. (169–170)

I am going to take some advice from this, to invite silence in, and pursue Nature’s Time in favour of clock time. To live by the slowness and rightness of the turning seasons, the sun and the moon, and my own internal seasons and cycles. To read and think every day, and to spend time outside, walking or just sitting in the garden, watching the birds and insects and newly emerged skinks, listening to the living, speaking Earth around me. Trying, as much as possible, to remain in a state of readiness, so that out of patience and searching, what I seek will at last arrive glimmering in my hands.