This year I will turn 40, or 788, that is, if I am the sum of all the years I have been, that is, if those years all add up to something more than what you see that is, a collective culmination of some kind of insight that edges ever closer to what some may refer to as wisdom that is, if the days spent are what makes a life.
I have seen 160 seasons come and go that is, where I have looked up to notice their passing, I still hear my 8 year old self stamp her feet, I feel my 2 year old inner child lean in for closeness, my teenage self keeps trying to be good… she remains resolutely misunderstood, my broken tweenage heart is still looking to be loved, the young adult in me brings me confidence, sometimes, my mid-life self is urging to step out of line, my early mothering me just looks at me exhausted, all those hours on my knees was a kind of love incarnate.
this year I will turn 40 and all things being equal this will be the middle of the road, though life spins on a 6 sixpence I just have 2, 420 more years to go.
It’s all very loud out there right now. Perhaps no more than normal but it seems so to me. All those decibels, hertz, vibrations reverberating constantly. So much noise is generated and amplified and some people throw words about, like sound doesn’t matter.
The quieter voice, which says very little but when it does is entirely necessary, is hard to hear. Perhaps that is why when I read the words of this poem they darted straight to my heart, where I am unable to forget them, where I can unwrap them from time to time and listen.
‘And you would accept the seasons of your heart, even as you have always accepted the seasons that pass over your fields’ (Kahil Gibran: On Pain)
I keep hearing about the trees
and how they talk to one another underground
about how the birds stitch up the sky
how trees turn golden just before they let go of everything
and enter the season of the sticks
how they endure the harshest of days
but are still prepared to offer buds and shoots at the first sign of warmth
and when I look up between those branches the moon looks right back at me
Everything I look at demands something of me, that is to say, almost always, 51 weeks and weekends of the year. But this past weekend, this 1 weekend of 52, something else happened instead. Sat in a car in remote Scotland with 3 friends from times long gone by, I eased back into the blissful silence, except for it was far from silent. The 3 of them chattering away. I closed my eyes breifly, not exactly listening, just allowing their familiar voices to wash over me and absorb into me. The absolute letting go that is being without a hint of judgement. A whole weekend of pure acceptance. People looking at me and demanding nothing. A landscape looking back at my gaze, and demanding nothing.
I like my friendships best
when they are
naked
exposed
laid bare.
We take off our necessary masks
of mothering
caring
wifing
worker
juggler
housekeeper
keeper of lists.
We remove them all
abandoned
piled by the loch
along with our leggings
and jumbled jumpers.
We slip into swimsuits
and one another's hands
immerse ourselves
in the icy waters
and
in each others company
where
we keep
each other
warm.
she
she is all smooth
all rich
all deep evokes
all long steady strokes
all base
and bass notes
all low vibration
all cedar mellows
she gives way to melody
to step-toe across waters
dance like light
high, fleeting and bright
when melody flits and fades away
she
she resounds on
whomever
whoever
she-ever
that is who I see
to the girl I was
thank you dear heart
you were rarely free
to the woman I will be
I see you
through the woods
I hear you breathe
my she-ever
my child
my elder
me
Though I need the compost of prior years
though it is in fact unavoidable that I must sit in it
Though I can draw on intent and toil
and turn the mess
to eek out the very best nutrients of that time
It is compost now
it is moulding and mulching now
both decomposing and absorbing into the earth
taking the painful sting with it
So I need to remind myself to stop sticking my head
back in to check the top layer
the potency knocking me off my feet
In due course it will mellow anyway
enrich everything anyway
melt away anyway
all the broken halleujahs
all the goodness that doesn't glimmer
but is good
anyway
Ever since each of us were small we have encountered the repeated emphasis on the two, or three or even five year plan. Initially this is framed within education, getting through GCSE’s, A-level’s, Higher Education. Thereafter we enter the world of work and are faced with strategies and visions to work towards, all of a similar timeframe.
The greater context however is so much grander than this allows us to see, and if we un-blinker ourselves momentarily and look up, or down even, there is evidence to suggest there are greater forces at work and we live with the conflicting truths that time is of the essence and concurrently, that we have all the time in the world.
The BBC series ‘Earth’ tells the narrative of the earths history through geology spanning millions of years, and being naive to much of this story, with those two encounters, life broadens, and the best laid plans become 200 year ones.
And in those times, when they, whose feet
tread here, bend
with inquisitive eye
to dig upon the land,
when those knowing hands
touch the tender earth which has spun
hence round upon itself ten thousand fold,
when those eyes, which cannot yet be imagined
look up to gaze upon the moon
who has adorned and undressed herself before billions,
when those toes curl, resisting as they enter the
frothing shallows of the sea, sinking into sandy shores
washed clean as a million canvases
pushed and pulled by forces far beyond our reach,
Then, we, looking from a distant somewhere
will sigh
and this long out-breath will be relief,
a great letting go
which will be the breeze that tingles down spines,
For then, we will be at last
at rest
we, whose destiny is ancestry
we, who felt the earth shift and could not bear
to be on watch when she crumbled,
we who made two hundred year plans to
rebuild, replant, rewild,
we who tried, then hoped, then acted, then wished,
and wanted and prayed and waited,
until in the end we could only watch
generation upon generation
do it all better,
watch ,as great dreams came to pass,
watch, as what was planted took root
and spread all by itself, protected as it now was
having been placed in ever safer sets of hands.
Then, finally, on that day, as the sun sets for the trillionth time,
it will be setting to mark an end to our endeavours,
the world will have saved herself,
because given a nudge, half a chance
and time,
she was destined to heal.
the problem wasn’t the red rag,
or the green, blue or violet,
the problem was the bull
and it’s propensity for violence
the problem wasn’t the china
that lay dormant upon the shelves,
the problem was the shopkeeper
whose doorkey let dominance prevail
In walking on a summers day we may sometimes spot in the morning, the sun and the moon are both in the sky and that signals some kind of intergalactic balance. If this is coupled with a earworm of recently read words that tumble over as footsteps take us onwards, it may occur to us, that perhaps this a moment to pay attention to. One might try to capture it, record it and later transcribe that recording, to find a home for the earworm, which in this case was the 5 words ‘find a new reference point’.
what if we had a different frame of reference? what if the the reference point was no longer pain? I’ve found whenever I tell my story I always use reference points of pain, they are like the main markers and everything else orbits around those. I wondered what it would be like to start the story from a different point of view. I wonder if you feel the same? I mean I could list off now the things I have always listed but you already know that they’ll be painful, so let’s take that as a given. you will have your own painful things that you could list and have listed. what if, instead of those being front and centre, we started to talk about our lives from the moments of significance that were not pain? that brought light, that were not triggers but glimmers, and then the pain would not disappear, of course it would not, but it would orbit around the things that are more powerful and have stronger energy to them and hold the pain in orbit somewhere. still there, still manifest in our lives but at an appropriate distance, and sure sometimes these things will come into alignment and we will notice and recognise what has healed or faded perhaps. but it won’t be centre stage anymore. we will have found a new reference point and our lives will orbit differently thereafter.
FootnotesOnLife 