One CD in my collection played only at Yuletide, for no more than a week, brings me to tears for all the Winter Festivals gone past in since I was twenty. Music to make me weep. The disc only came to me a quarter of a century ago, but it pulls all the memories from the twenty plus years before, the tears flow blurring vision through which I see like yesterday the Yuletide I became engaged to my first husband, and then the Christmases we shared for a year over a quarter of a century. Music to make me weep. The scene changes to the first Yule after I met my second husband, shared three thousand miles a apart on the phone all Christmas Day the same meal, and the same video after, and the first one we were together a year later after his two young daughters moved this at time to Ireland, after the ten years in England and Orkney, then the Yule alone, after he left me for another. Music to make me weep. Finally, six years ago in Bath, the three cats and I with the man who became husband three, a big house in the city and in then the years since after the big house to our place in the country, a home to share a life to cherish a time of gratitude. Music to make me weep. This CD has taken me through three lifetimes since I became an adult, in such different places all of which the music slips into my memory holding tenderly the remembrances of joy and gladness, gingerly those of loss and pain; for this is the power of music, to elicit emotion, to recall events, to jostle free recollections of times and people past and gone, present and here, into the future and yet to be this CD will take me through those Yuletides as well. Music to make me weep. The CD is Celtic Christmas II: A Windham Hill Collection
Time
Mulch for Memories
Time does not behave now as it used to, or perhaps, just maybe from such slowing down its behaviour is more noticeable. Bound in places, held in spaces what happens to spacetime, when space contracts, time constricts? Seeing no one, unless observed remotely, from windows walking past, or in virtual space in real time – What then is real? What is time? What is space? Or Where is real? Where is time? Where is space? What have we become? Who are we becoming? Going nowhere beyond the shop, necessities seem more necessary, for they are the reason to leave one’s space for a time, venturing to other places masked and distanced. Unable to trust anyone, who knows when or whether a stranger or a friend carries the contagion, making us wary as in every moment life’s time for each individual crawls and scurries onward. What is lost of time’s trajectory, no less precious for its ephemerality, no less regretted for what feels like its wasting, differently experienced now slipping past day on day, hour by moment for a nearly a year gone forever? Shards, scraps, shreds of time tumble in free fall as autumn’s leaves landing silent and mostly unremarked forming mulch for memories.
My Twenty-One-Year-Old Self
My twenty-one-year-old self looks down on me, watching from the wall across from my bed, as I sleep and waken, follows me around the room, leaning out from her canvas home, curious and enigmatic.I wonder sometimes what she thinks of the life I have made in the forty-six years since she was painted, a time and a life committed by brush, oils and skill to be a wedding present from my father, when according to him at the time I looked like everyone and no one, too young with too little of life lived to make my features have the unique signature of self only time can grant. Sitting here with her looking down on me now, on the anniversary of that marriage which failed after a quarter century, I wonder what will happen to her when I am gone, I who leave no descendants, no one who would want a portrait of me; but I shelve these musings choosing instead to wonder about the life I’d be living now had I not changed my name, not been divorced two times, gone to university at eighteen instead of thirty-five, not answered the call to leave the religion of my birth as well at its country. For I can see shadows of those other lives lived surely in other places, and perhaps on other planes, from that which I inhabit now, lives with descendants perhaps to carry her forth along with my genetics. I look at her watching me perceiving no judgement sensing no disappointment, feeling no regret, rather there is acceptance, without resignation and the acknowledgement life has its twists and turns, that there are eddies and still pools in the flow of time as well as raging torrents pushing one onward, for the trajectory of being is complex, and the algebra of the heart and the trigonometry of the soul remain mysterious. What I make of the life I have created for myself by the paths I have taken, the doors I have either entered or closed, the decisions and choices I have made, whether with my heart or with my head, whether wise or foolish, each have led me here to a place my twenty-one-year-old self there and then could never have imagined, where my sixty-seven-year-old self here and now can have a silent conversation with her, with that me, any time that I desire, and in those moments find a sense of continuity transcending there and then, where place and time no longer matter for in the flow of being all are one.
Reunion
Near enough to twenty years
since last we saw the other,
first sighted in the shadow
of old Salisbury Cathedral’s
twisted spire with a chill breeze
yanking the flowers
from a short row of horse chestnuts,
extinguishing their candles
under a grey clouded sky,
arms flung out as suitcase dropped
a long-holding hug and whispered tears
melting away time
retracting distance
renewing connection.
Sitting in the cloister
introductions made between
her and my new partner,
three cups of different teas,
mint, hibiscus, camomile,
and then he excused himself
leaving us to reminisce,
indulging in nostalgia
washing between us like tides,
revealing in our sharing
the good days and the dark times
we have each lived
in places far from where we met.
Time stood still,
distance evaporated
stories merged
interests twined,
whilst we sat together,
speaking punctuated
by shared tears and laughter,
hands reaching out to comfort
and affirm deep connections
yet exist between us,
stronger today than we had before.
Alas, our brief time together
came to a close marked by
the striking of the Cathedral’s bells,
and walking to the place of our parting,
we both knew that what we had
will remain and what we have now
will continue to grow
as yet more years tumble behind us,
for our reunion revealed
a deep abiding friendship,
neither of us will leave behind.
New Year
New year
slips over the old.
Often the changing
of year results in events,
that like tectonic plates
grinding across each other
precipitate upheavals,
bring havoc,
cause devastation
in its wake and reckoning.
New year
slips over the old.
Other times,
far fewer,
events occur as fog
gliding over hills,
softly altering perceptions,
enveloping all around
stillness, quietude, whispers,
differences so slight
in attitude and action
that change hardly
registers at all.
The new year
slips over the old.
What comes as the
midnight heralds sound
the fireworks explode
in cascades
of light and wonder,
will be the slow
inexorable dawning
of another day
with the sun rising
and people shaking off
the bonds of sleep
to greet unknowns
the imponderability
of future becoming
present with each
step forward
and breath taken.
New year
slips over the old.
What each one of us is granted is the opportunity to start again. To make amends. To heal breaches. To reach out. To live. To love. To become what is the best of us, of each and every one of us, when we allow the old ways, the old patterns, the old thoughts processes to slip under away, under the shadow of the old year. In this way we are able to wake to the clear bright light of our tomorrows.
Through a Deep Borne Past
Through a deep borne past
we move through today
into tomorrow,
the future
a phoenix rising
from the ashes
of yesterday’s
victories and failures,
the just sped through
now.
The title words of this reflection shot through my awareness as I was in the shower this morning. Repeating them like a mantra I was able to hold onto them until I made my way dried and dressed to my journal to transcribe them and the words following here. I KNOW in my bones, in the interstices of my very self, what they mean, and for me at least how significant they are for how I actively perceive my life and its text, context and subtexts.
The past we carry – past as in yesterday no less or more than the past of six lifetimes ago.
This does not mean the past is, ought or need be a burden. We carry it lightly, but bear it deep within us.
What does this then say about our present? Where does that fit in?
The present mediates then and yet. Both are managed, as it were, through the prism, the lens of now.
One comes from somewhere and is on a journey to somewhere else, and it is the actual steps of the journey that comprise the now. We can’t go back. We can’t skip ahead. This keeps us on our path, one step and footfall at a time.
We have had, of course, or I believe that I have had as many futures as I have had pasts. Or to put it more forcefully: I believe that I have as many pasts as futures in the larger view of multiple lives across time. More prosaically, even if you do not credit past or future manifestations/incarnations, since every yesterday had, and has, a tomorrow, and every tomorrow has, and will have, a yesterday and we move between one and the other from yesterday and tomorrow through today. Then for all of us there have been as many pasts as there are futures.
This is the reason it is important to honour every day, to honour the everyday. In so doing we don’t just slip along through life. We step with intention. We move with deliberation. We make choices. We acknowledge mistakes and accept their lessons. We take responsibility. We are not passive. We don’t just observe our life; we live it. It’s not riding on our own personal high speed train, where one day blurs into another. It’s putting on our hiking boots and going out to live in all emotional, physical and spiritual weathers.
We may only have a vague idea of what direction we are heading, maybe a crude map, with key markers on it, but that’s good, as it should be. There is not OS map for the soul, not satnav for a life journey. There is no knowing what the topography of tomorrow will be like. We only find out on the ground. There is no one, or should not be someone, telling us to take the third exit in the roundabout of experience. We have to live them to find out. So, we will stumble onto boggy bits and get through them. We will confront rivers swollen with the torrents of pain or distress, and we will ford them. We will trek across barren places and through barren times, but we will get through them to greener places again.
Living with an awareness of one’s deep borne past gives us hints that arise from both our knowledge and our knowing. It is made up of, as we are made from, the large small, the happy and hurtful events of this life, as well as those we have lived before. In all this it is vital to remember that the future is much more vast than next weekend or a score of years from now, for it means who we will be the next time as well.
But now, and not just this present life, but this very instant, is what constitutes and makes the past meaningful; because the moment you read the first part of this sentence or as you read along word for word, the present has become the past.
The now is always, and inescapably, becoming simultaneously both then and yet.
For me it’s part of how I get my head around time, the flow of time, my flow by time through space, the measures and structures of my existence.
Thinking and writing about these things, and reading them, in some inexplicable way becomes part of the then that we have walked together into the mystery of yet.
May the nows of today bring you meaning from the then and courage for the yet.
Time Variously Considered
Time variously considered
is all or nothing at all.,
is incident and accident,
serendipity and destiny –
or it isn’t.
All things happen in its
non-existent frame –
or they don’t.
It parameters life by seconds
as by tick tocking minutes,
hours stretch
weeks escape
months turn on calendar pages.
Slipping away
hourglass sands fall
through the constricting centre
between future and past,
the now unable to hold back
the yets as they escape into thens.
Only at the narrow squeezing place
are we able to experience
the rush of existence
whistling by us
coursing through us
never able to settle for long beside us.
Swiftly surging
tenuously treading
rapidly racing
there is no quiet quelling
of the hiss whisper echo
of fleeting time flying
fracturing assumptions
immortality and fate
always on a collision course.
Are we real in its taloned grasp,
or would be we be real
only when we
realised relaxed released?
Then how would we know
in any case suddenly beyond
the key reckoners of being
marks on sticks,
megalithic monuments,
the atomic clock
rendered meaningless
and perhaps us as well.
Instead we live enshackled,
time marching on and waiting for no man.
time passing slowly,
seeing what’s become of me,
for if we allow it
will beat us into submission
subverting our quest for meaning,
our very reason for being.
Time can extrude
like fine wire,
to bind the hands
to tie the feet
to strangle the voice,
and cut off the circulation
of the spirit or extinguish it
paralysed mute unable
to do
to move
to speak enbreathed.
Time can also blow
like a menacing wind
ruining days with boredom,
tossing aside hours in waiting,
wafting the years away in yearning,
threatening sanity,
destroying hope,
leaving a wrecked life,
unlived.
Whether real or not –
construct of the mind,
premise of quantum physics,
millstone about the necks
of our psyches –
reminding us of mortality,
ambitions unfulfilled,
dreams shattered,
loves lost,
time is neutral
neither good nor bad,
thus it can be friend or foe
help or hindrance,
as benign as we make it,
as tyrannical as we allow it to be.
Trust and Assistance
It has been many weeks since I last posted. Many weeks of wondering and stressing. Many weeks of holding on to trust and continuing to know I would be led to my new home. Baskin (see previous post The Badger’s Gift) was with me, reassuring me, snuffling about quietly, but never far away.
My friends were losing sleep for me. My friends were hassling me to do this or do that. Those who were once close were giving me advice that was totally unrealistic and inappropriate. I did things in the order that worked for me. I took steps as the time presented itself to me. It was not in other’s time, or the time others were sure was right for me.
The time ticked away. I did what I could. I continued to trust. I felt the presence not only of Baskin, but also Nemetona. Other’s fretted and panicked. What would I do if I did not find a home? All I knew is that I would. I trusted as I looked on the internet at places I could not afford, in places I knew I was not supposed to live. I looked everyday. I called a few agents and when they heard my situation they pretty much told me to forget about it.
I was offered through a family member help with paying a deposit. And when I learned I’d have to have a guarantor I approached, with trepidation, this same family member to do that for me as well, the answer was of course. I breathed a sigh of relief. But with only a couple of weeks to go nothing had turned up. I was in the nearest town visiting agents when the agent for the property I was being asked to leave because it was going to be sold texted me. He had a place that had just come up and offered to show it to me. He met me at the then home and took me to the new place. It was on the other side of the village I knew I was not supposed to leave.
As soon as I walked in I said yes. It felt right. It was a home. A bit tatty. Cat airlock already there (a little porchy bit). Big fireplace. Enough space once I got rid of extraneous stuff. I breathed another sigh of relief. Things were immediately set in motion. All the papers were signed four days before I was due to be out of the old place. Unfortunately the guy tidying up the new place was not to finish until midday of the day before I had to move.
The move took ten days. I had friends and friends of friends who helped me. Cars and a trailer. I was given grace of an extra week to clear the old place, though I lived in the new place from the day I was due out. Another family member came for three days from a considerable distance away to help me, she offered I did not ask.
I am awash with gratitude. I did not have to spend any money. I was helped because I needed the help and my friends rallied around me. An hour or two here and there, willing hands and generous hearts. I said thank you lots and some of them got little gifts that were appropriate and suddenly given. There was never a plan, only knowing at the time this was for that person.
As I sit here still getting rid of stuff there is not room for and things I do not need, I reflect on the gifts of friendship. I ponder the inexplicability of trust. I give thanks, so much gratitude to so many.
I am aware that Baskin is still with me and is a guardian of this home, this sett he helped me to find. I am aware of Nemetona whose presence graces the energy in which I now reside in a way much fuller than from the place from which I came. I am aware of the determined energy and power of trust, when coupled with the inadequate actions I could take in the face of what confronted me. I did my bit, and all along I was aware I would need a different sort of assistance.
On the last day of dealing with the previous property another lesson came. It was a rainy morning, I was told I really needed to sort out the garden before the owner of the property came the next day to do an inspection. I was tired. I did not think I could do any more there, and was surrounded with what felt overwhelming where I was. All of a sudden I felt a presence of one I had not thought of in over 20 years. I felt the presence of St Fiacre, yes I am a Druid but I am willing to receive assistance from those who offer it, the patron saint of gardeners. I felt within a few moments renewed energy. I knew I was not alone in this project. When I got to the house in the rain, wellied and waterproofed, with my sturdy push broom and a bag with a plastic dustpan and a stiff boat brush, I got to work. Two sheds had been in the small sloping garden for a number of years so I had to reshape the slope and take up six cement squares supporting the larger hexagonal shed. When I flagged I knew I could lean on Fiacre’s spade for a bit. In a little over two hours what looked like an impossible task had been completed. I was a mess, but it was done.
I was texted the next day by the letting agent that the owner was perfectly happy with the way I’d left the place and that I’d done a great job with the garden.
Now I am working my way to bring order out of chaos. Of getting back into a routine in a place I know will be good for creating. I feel I have missed a lot of the early spring. I’ve not really been on a proper walk, not taken any photos. But I am home. I know I have friends and family who love me. I trusted. I did what I could do. I accepted assistance when offered, and was willing to ask for it when I needed it. I learned much. I have a renewed sense of contentment and energy. I am home.
Thirteen Years
Thirteen years
time spent and life lived
through dreams formed and lost,
but dreams still remain.
A day of bittersweetness,
the complicated day-taste,
mixing the sweetness of joys
with the sadness of disappointments,
whilst meaning vanishes slowly
in pungent autumnal mists,
homecoming
heartlosing
soulfinding
rooted – these gods holding
grounded – these ancestors claiming
held – these landspirits embracing,
harking thenward
to the mythic
bidding yetward
to the neomythic,
the age of new mything
endeavouring to capture
ways to comprehend
nature’s forces
in postindustrialmodernity
the gods ancestors spirits
enlivening this land,
rewriting their histories
retracing their storylines
rendering their meanings
and ultimately our own,
through the lay lines of the land
echoing calling reaching
through the meridians of the body
energy tracks and traceries
mirroring shadowing flowing
just beneath the soils
no less than our skins.
Thirteen years
time spent and life lived
through promises made and broken,
but promise still remains.
Not Good at Waiting
All right, I admit it, I’m not good at waiting.
Not good at waiting around for news, to hear back from someone, for something to happen that is in the air so to speak. I get edgy. I need to move around. I pace like a caged tiger. I fidget and can’t concentrate very well unless I force myself.
As I write this I am waiting to hear the outcome of a job interview. I don’t think I’ll get it as there are not only the external candidates, but the internal ones as well. I’ve lost out in that scenario before, ‘pipped at the post’ they said. But I have not choice but to wait. And the longer the wait the less confident I am of a good outcome.
My mind races, it goes over little things again and again. It runs back over big things as well.
It it is prime example of not being in control. I’ve never given birth, so I don’t know what that waiting is like, but I have waited for death. I have waited for things I’ve seen to happen. Waited for days of supreme importance to dawn and unfold. I have waited for buses, planes and trains. I have waited for nights that are too long to end and days that are too long to come to a close. I have waited for something I’ve counted on happening or doing only to find out at the last moment it might not and the disappointment is proportional to the length of the wait.
I am not good at waiting. Most of the things I have waited for are completely out of my hands. They are in the hands of the gods or in the hands of others.
Sometimes I wish I was more comfortable or competent at waiting. Of knowing how to use the time between what I am experiencing in the present to what will be revealed in the future coincide. But, alas . . .
I do know that in certain instances when I am in control of the waiting that to do so risks never. Put off something indefinitely and it becomes forever. I have had that happen often enough that I try not to be caught in that situation, or at least as seldom as possible.
In the throes of waiting I find doing almost impossible; I’m pushing hard to write this post. Each time I pause I have to yank hard on the reins of my thoughts to bring them around again to the task at hand.
So I am waiting still. Holding on and hanging in until the phone rings and then I carry on with a different level and intensity of waiting and doing until the next time. I do wish I was better at waiting.
Gray Bear in the Middle 