tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-50555987772036545472024-03-05T18:59:36.294+00:00qualia and other wildlifeWalking the Old Ways : nature, the bardic & druidic arts, holism, Zen, the ecological imaginationrosellehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00971482422276765335noreply@blogger.comBlogger1115125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5055598777203654547.post-61010020636106909602023-10-31T18:35:00.000+00:002023-10-31T18:35:42.263+00:00Samhain, squash soup & Substack<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEilwQP2LFK9Lef_pjXu9ggmI-sz6s7V_ZkFqCzw3Uh2azjEqjkuagRp8BOXqULSQNDjssMwpGCyF757jfO9yUezfMrvqmg0b5M6gCKyp3Si_wvcmdAoZxH0FM8384VpMQc6fIpe5XR5Xpq6PeXrjsv2TZdfk7JBTW8qU3XBdRj1MsFZ5fowVl0q7cy60JKq/s800/samhain%20square.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="800" data-original-width="800" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEilwQP2LFK9Lef_pjXu9ggmI-sz6s7V_ZkFqCzw3Uh2azjEqjkuagRp8BOXqULSQNDjssMwpGCyF757jfO9yUezfMrvqmg0b5M6gCKyp3Si_wvcmdAoZxH0FM8384VpMQc6fIpe5XR5Xpq6PeXrjsv2TZdfk7JBTW8qU3XBdRj1MsFZ5fowVl0q7cy60JKq/s320/samhain%20square.jpg" width="320" /></a><br /></div><p><br />My dear friends, I began this blog in 2010. I've loved writing it, and I've loved knowing how many of you read it.<br /><br />Over the years, partly for life reasons, partly because my computer and its operating system are old and there are glitches, and partly as a result of some material being 'borrowed' several years ago, the content and depth of what I wrote diminished. You will have of course have noticed, if you are one of my lovely 'regulars', that since my life changed and we moved to our Brittany smallholding, I've barely written here, except at significant points in the turning year.<br /><br />But I've missed it.<br /><br />So I would like to invite you to join me over on Substack. At the moment all my posts are free, and focus mostly on our relationship with the land, what and how we're growing food, and the other-than-human. <br /><br />Many of you have asked about life out here, and our sustainable approach to land and growing. Come and visit my new blog, and read the stories. I miss you!<br /> </p><p>Later, I will be adding a FIRE IN THE HEAD section, where I will offer
tips, exercises and other suggestions for writers. (This will be
part-free and part-paid.)<br /><br /><br /><a href="https://substack.com/@roselle1">https://substack.com/@roselle1</a></p><p></p><p></p><p><br /><br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj4WteYm2mW1oiCRdv38afV_EF8cwlUv7MM7bE3shULob66Wa2okVa1AAp-TPMrN-JJtQhbt3hjQdR1MGwjKw6F30fMSs7CdH8wXkptfDkjPPW1ToWaAdkjD_6mWXnXxprpfSUy02luvftrOPX-i-PkRUZZESbMx-QIaCsufGqKg8W90IY-a75XdStGdRET/s2000/gable%20with%20lilac.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1500" data-original-width="2000" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj4WteYm2mW1oiCRdv38afV_EF8cwlUv7MM7bE3shULob66Wa2okVa1AAp-TPMrN-JJtQhbt3hjQdR1MGwjKw6F30fMSs7CdH8wXkptfDkjPPW1ToWaAdkjD_6mWXnXxprpfSUy02luvftrOPX-i-PkRUZZESbMx-QIaCsufGqKg8W90IY-a75XdStGdRET/s320/gable%20with%20lilac.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><p></p><p><br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjryHpqUKcwgnPZCbuS8UY2u99G9nu19fDpgqr9ErrNgMdsTduL0j3m8mE3t1HmteAWMVddJlT9wmJaVy6_P5VRDnu2A_y9XORwk4hxf8MMnQKc-m41ImWhWu4DFMXjbWlqav1Af5Y0xtnPycnfjDACB4oUvZXzIDvE1V_V56ZAHl8srH55vhVoZOys1_uF/s600/mist,sun,chestnut-web.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="450" data-original-width="600" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjryHpqUKcwgnPZCbuS8UY2u99G9nu19fDpgqr9ErrNgMdsTduL0j3m8mE3t1HmteAWMVddJlT9wmJaVy6_P5VRDnu2A_y9XORwk4hxf8MMnQKc-m41ImWhWu4DFMXjbWlqav1Af5Y0xtnPycnfjDACB4oUvZXzIDvE1V_V56ZAHl8srH55vhVoZOys1_uF/s320/mist,sun,chestnut-web.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><p><br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjqqFwNzQH0Gn-dNc1eshQWjFg9GFsV3pYXzWhmekQ5cEFFXXWo9bFIgGtLJwHF2f1Y6V8wBIbuAX94ESDJdBPheVJvELtlJk4dNXX-q9VZ-WsuThGG9SfNoUFSWLebFdTd-SRXANfDCFg_VzMIeEV6P-topiTrCcVlieI7cN0svVv9ppfWeukDG9zAjA4o/s206/squash%20in%20barrow.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="206" data-original-width="206" height="206" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjqqFwNzQH0Gn-dNc1eshQWjFg9GFsV3pYXzWhmekQ5cEFFXXWo9bFIgGtLJwHF2f1Y6V8wBIbuAX94ESDJdBPheVJvELtlJk4dNXX-q9VZ-WsuThGG9SfNoUFSWLebFdTd-SRXANfDCFg_VzMIeEV6P-topiTrCcVlieI7cN0svVv9ppfWeukDG9zAjA4o/s1600/squash%20in%20barrow.jpg" width="206" /></a></div><br /><p><br /></p><p><br /></p>rosellehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00971482422276765335noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5055598777203654547.post-45657978081435230572023-09-24T13:55:00.002+01:002023-09-24T13:55:30.189+01:00poem for the autumn equinox 2023<p style="margin-left: 80px; text-align: left;"> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh7lNWIOZBNvzbLbVxuzCv7gXS9MlOT--sANSBWLFrYD5PPaek4nhDQ5kQ1sDouCk5AYb9AvdZqdFKFBU0iVRGRlzDStlfuKPs8edKnEp45NDcoahaYincmFsJtr6Lez96OV4ccANPQgcV7KRm21OFxSDKlM1gq36RlV93bSCM5zh9ai6k8djJ_Sg_h-bbo/s4032/C%20&%20dogs%20distant.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3024" data-original-width="4032" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh7lNWIOZBNvzbLbVxuzCv7gXS9MlOT--sANSBWLFrYD5PPaek4nhDQ5kQ1sDouCk5AYb9AvdZqdFKFBU0iVRGRlzDStlfuKPs8edKnEp45NDcoahaYincmFsJtr6Lez96OV4ccANPQgcV7KRm21OFxSDKlM1gq36RlV93bSCM5zh9ai6k8djJ_Sg_h-bbo/s320/C%20&%20dogs%20distant.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><p></p><p style="margin-left: 80px; text-align: left;"><br /></p><p style="margin-left: 80px; text-align: left;">
</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%; margin-left: 120px; text-align: left;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Georgia",serif; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%;">At the Year’s Autumn Turning</span></b></p><div style="margin-left: 120px; text-align: left;">
</div><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%; margin-left: 120px; text-align: left;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Georgia",serif; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%;"> </span></b></p><div style="margin-left: 120px; text-align: left;">
</div><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%; margin-left: 120px; text-align: left;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Georgia",serif; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%;">1</span></i></p><div style="margin-left: 120px; text-align: left;">
</div><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%; margin-left: 120px; text-align: left;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Georgia",serif; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Penn
ar Bed</span></i></p><div style="margin-left: 120px; text-align: left;">
</div><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%; margin-left: 120px; text-align: left;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Georgia",serif; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%;"> </span></i></p><div style="margin-left: 120px; text-align: left;">
</div><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%; margin-left: 120px; text-align: left;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Georgia",serif; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%;">This morning the sun lifts</span></p><div style="margin-left: 120px; text-align: left;">
</div><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%; margin-left: 120px; text-align: left;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Georgia",serif; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%;">right behind the silver
birch</span></p><div style="margin-left: 120px; text-align: left;">
</div><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%; margin-left: 120px; text-align: left;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Georgia",serif; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%;">who’s been dropping her
leaves</span></p><div style="margin-left: 120px; text-align: left;">
</div><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%; margin-left: 120px; text-align: left;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Georgia",serif; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%;">a few day by day, the
first tree,</span></p><div style="margin-left: 120px; text-align: left;">
</div><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%; margin-left: 120px; text-align: left;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Georgia",serif; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%;">as she was to clothe
herself </span></p><div style="margin-left: 120px; text-align: left;">
</div><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%; margin-left: 120px; text-align: left;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Georgia",serif; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%;">in spring. The more she
lets go</span></p><div style="margin-left: 120px; text-align: left;">
</div><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%; margin-left: 120px; text-align: left;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Georgia",serif; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%;">the more the rest glow gold.</span></p><div style="margin-left: 120px; text-align: left;">
</div><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%; margin-left: 120px; text-align: left;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Georgia",serif; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%;"> </span></p><div style="margin-left: 120px; text-align: left;">
</div><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%; margin-left: 120px; text-align: left;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Georgia",serif; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%;"> </span></p><div style="margin-left: 120px; text-align: left;">
</div><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%; margin-left: 120px; text-align: left;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Georgia",serif; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%;">11</span></i></p><div style="margin-left: 120px; text-align: left;">
</div><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%; margin-left: 120px; text-align: left;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Georgia",serif; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Ste
Anne la Palud</span></i></p><div style="margin-left: 120px; text-align: left;">
</div><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%; margin-left: 120px; text-align: left;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Georgia",serif; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%;"> </span></i></p><div style="margin-left: 120px; text-align: left;">
</div><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%; margin-left: 120px; text-align: left;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Georgia",serif; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Later the sea gentles at
our feet,</span></p><div style="margin-left: 120px; text-align: left;">
</div><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%; margin-left: 120px; text-align: left;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Georgia",serif; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%;">breathes in and out, her
tides</span></p><div style="margin-left: 120px; text-align: left;">
</div><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%; margin-left: 120px; text-align: left;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Georgia",serif; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%;">swell and subside; a
constant,</span></p><div style="margin-left: 120px; text-align: left;">
</div><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%; margin-left: 120px; text-align: left;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Georgia",serif; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%;">just as the moon rises and
fades,</span></p><div style="margin-left: 120px; text-align: left;">
</div><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%; margin-left: 120px; text-align: left;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Georgia",serif; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%;">each night a little
different,</span></p><div style="margin-left: 120px; text-align: left;">
</div><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%; margin-left: 120px; text-align: left;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Georgia",serif; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%;">but always present. </span></p><div style="margin-left: 120px; text-align: left;">
</div><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%; margin-left: 120px; text-align: left;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Georgia",serif; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%;"> </span></p><div style="margin-left: 120px; text-align: left;">
</div><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%; margin-left: 120px; text-align: left;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Georgia",serif; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%;">There’s a constancy we
crave </span></p><div style="margin-left: 120px; text-align: left;">
</div><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%; margin-left: 120px; text-align: left;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Georgia",serif; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%;">in our uncertain lives in
these </span></p><div style="margin-left: 120px; text-align: left;">
</div><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%; margin-left: 120px; text-align: left;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Georgia",serif; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%;">uncertain times. Here on
this</span></p><div style="margin-left: 120px; text-align: left;">
</div><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%; margin-left: 120px; text-align: left;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Georgia",serif; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%;">long Atlantic strand,
we’re given it.<br />
<br />
<br />
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Roselle Angwin</i></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%; margin-left: 120px; text-align: left;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Georgia",serif; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> </i></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%; margin-left: 120px; text-align: left;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Georgia",serif; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> </i></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%; margin-left: 120px; text-align: left;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Georgia",serif; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> </i></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%; margin-left: 120px; text-align: left;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Georgia",serif; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> </i></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%; margin-left: 120px; text-align: left;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Georgia",serif; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> </i></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%; margin-left: 120px; text-align: left;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Georgia",serif; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> </i></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%; margin-left: 120px; text-align: left;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Georgia",serif; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> </i></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%; margin-left: 120px; text-align: left;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Georgia",serif; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> </i></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%; text-align: left;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Georgia",serif; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> </i></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%; text-align: left;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Georgia",serif; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> </i></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%; margin-left: 80px; text-align: left;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Georgia",serif; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> </i></span></p><div style="margin-left: 80px; text-align: left;">
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{page:WordSection1;}</style></p>rosellehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00971482422276765335noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5055598777203654547.post-1571813554724188062023-06-22T16:45:00.014+01:002023-06-27T15:24:55.246+01:00(belated) poem for the summer solstice: Sometimes the Mind<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgKoOCaL80dhU-aB0GdWGZmU_NhHCAKN4pwmSzOfa0xbsmj3N4-UGtFwSUROZoEK5ydWJOyu5f2sCg8ochdSuaNnvImHrnNk8AaDAZdDUaDdDjZKHaPUVYJifjieKkw9I99QGPMNI2Yu-hUGj80XILskulyk1Xvi2lseQwQEj9-JZ4dy73H4zviZehvtM_p/s600/mist,sun,chestnut-web.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="450" data-original-width="600" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgKoOCaL80dhU-aB0GdWGZmU_NhHCAKN4pwmSzOfa0xbsmj3N4-UGtFwSUROZoEK5ydWJOyu5f2sCg8ochdSuaNnvImHrnNk8AaDAZdDUaDdDjZKHaPUVYJifjieKkw9I99QGPMNI2Yu-hUGj80XILskulyk1Xvi2lseQwQEj9-JZ4dy73H4zviZehvtM_p/s320/mist,sun,chestnut-web.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><p><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><span style="color: #2b00fe;">PLEASE REFRESH THE PAGE FOR THE MARGINALLY-BETTER REDRAFT!</span><br /><br /><b>Sometimes the Mind</b><br /><br />This solstice morning a haze<br />slips through the gap between<br />the sweet chestnuts, this portal<br />the only place in our secluded<br />Home Meadow that reminds us<br />there’s a world out there<br />beyond the trees, that describes<br />perspective.<br /> Sometimes the mind<br />slips out of key, out of gear,<br />tectonic plates on a different plane<br /><br />and you remember for a moment<br />that there is something you’ve <br />forgotten, though what it is <br />you forget too; but the bosky<br />doorway, framed as it is in<br />creamy comets’ tails of chestnut<br />blossom with its bee-thrum<br />offers a glimpse of bliss<br /><br />and as the early sun suddenly<br />floats free of the sky and floods across <br />the meadowgrass and mallow<br />over the honeysuckle and right on<br />into your eyes, in the time it takes<br />for this one sparrow to gatecrash your gaze <br />you know that it’s something so simple <br />you forget over and over: something to do<br /><br />with kindness, something to do<br />with it being the only word, in the end, <br />that counts.<br /><br /><i>Roselle Angwin<br /><br /><br /><br /></i><b>My lovely friends,</b> I know it might be a shock for you to see a post from me; since we have moved to Brittany I've been quiet and reflective; partly I'm considering my writing future. </p><p>I've also been quite reclusive, getting to know this ancient house and the land of which we are guardians. We've spent a lot of time, too, outdoors reclaiming meadow to make a large vegetable garden, planting fruit trees, making a small wildlife pond, and appreciating the wild Home Meadow with its many fragrant roses and bee-shrubs and its orchard, so overgrown we didn't know of its existence until be moved in. We're also planning a future food-forest, planting willow and hazel for coppicing, and considering how we might best help biodiversity. This land has woodland and many bordering trees; we are becoming increasingly familiar with each tree in or on the meadows, but on the whole leaving the woodland that drops to the stream to itself.</p><p>There is much to say about all this.<br /><br />The only writing I've really done is to keep a daily journal of here, and our experience here; this is a year now, nearly, and I have ideas for its further shape. There are still two poetry collections 'in the queue', and a prose poem book; plus a book of essays on place and belonging. <br /></p><p>But I have also been working on my long-promised vegan cookbook; still a way to go (editing and checking facts and sources – much more exciting to create a new recipe or two!). <br /><br />And meantime, there are various other creative projects simmering – if I could just tempt myself out of the hammock and onto the computer...</p><p>But I am cooking one or two new online courses again (at last), and if you might be interested in knowing about these and you are not already on my mailing list for my occasional newsletter, you can contact me through the sidebar.<br /><br />Meantime, I'm considering re-establishing this blog, but migrating it over to Substack.<br /><br />Till next time, may you live well, and deeply, and with kindness.</p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><br />rosellehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00971482422276765335noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5055598777203654547.post-73246405787850214912023-01-06T10:55:00.002+00:002023-01-06T10:55:58.704+00:00haiku for the new year 2023<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiOJhqm2-HOzqUfWUjgbMNKJ3MLQM10ui5sc5NAi3nXIR4KCk0Op65scpFSJvraJ_O0jwHSOGnh5kEfkG53R6kIygRXGztpWhTBoBJNBj3Mo0UhYqLPmetlLzv1X1qlJx5r0GTuePy68AXCRIvLv4U9jBjtCy7PdNSffjHg4dggAjQJU3MC_bDrlRdSmg/s600/mist,sun,chestnut-web.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="450" data-original-width="600" height="346" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiOJhqm2-HOzqUfWUjgbMNKJ3MLQM10ui5sc5NAi3nXIR4KCk0Op65scpFSJvraJ_O0jwHSOGnh5kEfkG53R6kIygRXGztpWhTBoBJNBj3Mo0UhYqLPmetlLzv1X1qlJx5r0GTuePy68AXCRIvLv4U9jBjtCy7PdNSffjHg4dggAjQJU3MC_bDrlRdSmg/w461-h346/mist,sun,chestnut-web.jpg" width="461" /></a></div><p></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p style="text-align: center;"><b>Haiku for the New Year (2023)</b><br /><br /><br /><br />meditation bell<br />cold cup of tea and my<br />hands pretending warmth<br /><br />*<br /><br />in the wet holly<br />single drop of rain takes light<br />ignites the whole tree<br /><br />*<br /><br />in this one raindrop<br />swim mist sunshine robin-song<br />the whole world inside<br /><br />*<br /><br />hair dripping, clothes soaked<br />I bring in flowering twigs –<br />quince, honeysuckle<br /><br />*<br /><br />distracted by dogs<br />mind skitters thread lost again<br />have to start over<br /><br />*<br /><br />woodstove incense twigs<br />in a bowl – even these things<br />clutter my mind<br /><br />*<br /><br />in the Christmas tree<br />lights reflect the fire<br /><br />heart in the wrong place<br /><br />*<br /><br />even poetry feels<br />redundant for this crisis –<br />the first time ever<br /><br />*<br /><br />the world passes by<br />rainstorms gales mist sunshine ice<br />solstice new year now<br /><br />*<br /><br />after the storm<br />the light steals back –<br />shy animal<br /><br />*<br /><br />this moment – trying<br />to grasp it is like clutching<br />at grasshoppers<br /><br />*<br /><br />if this moment<br />is not for living deeply<br />then what is it for?<br /><br />*<br /><br />who said: ‘if we can’t<br />find it here where can we find it?’<br />I say it again<br /><br />*<br /><br />knowing it is here<br />my friend and I sit quietly<br />hoping it might visit<br /><br /><i>(for Pat)</i><br /><br /><br /><br /><i>© Roselle Angwin, January 2023</i><br /><br /><br /><br /></p>rosellehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00971482422276765335noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5055598777203654547.post-71446022449435675902022-12-21T12:50:00.001+00:002022-12-21T12:50:52.801+00:00Poem for the Winter Solstice/Alban Arthan 2022<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi2CATEXiqESSqYJTMGrR2UzL5wsAG8AAySndeVZxsyWiD_AMHgnK8IsH66DPdvgLPorQzVevhymNJ2AO7iM4v2MDpQu_-godOPL4nNzdNbDdL4faCLn6cJgto1oE-ZCzzPT-a_yKBPLXOtzUOPcQ3EcRyfVuBduP-B8nV8dDlp6-E2vUNPi_v_6ViffQ/s4032/east,%20frost.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4032" data-original-width="3024" height="401" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi2CATEXiqESSqYJTMGrR2UzL5wsAG8AAySndeVZxsyWiD_AMHgnK8IsH66DPdvgLPorQzVevhymNJ2AO7iM4v2MDpQu_-godOPL4nNzdNbDdL4faCLn6cJgto1oE-ZCzzPT-a_yKBPLXOtzUOPcQ3EcRyfVuBduP-B8nV8dDlp6-E2vUNPi_v_6ViffQ/w301-h401/east,%20frost.jpg" width="301" /></a></span></div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /> <br /></span><p></p><p style="margin-left: 120px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><b>Midwinter in Finistère</b></span><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;"></span><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;">Despite the ice, the icy rain</span><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;">sparrows chatter all day </span><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;"></span><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;">in the peach tree at the corner</span><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;">of my eye. The dogs don’t care</span><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;"></span><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;">that it’s cold, or wet. Flocks </span><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;">of fieldfare, redwing, startle</span><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;"></span><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;">at their rush. Only I have </span><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;">forgotten to visit my larger </span><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;"></span><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;">self; am stranded in this </span><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;">enchantment, tide, of ice.</span><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;"></span><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;">If we could join heaven and earth</span><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;">the way a bird does, or a tree.</span><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;"></span><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;">If we could remember.</span><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;"></span><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;"></span><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i>© Roselle Angwin</i></span><br /></p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"></span><span style="font-family: georgia;"></span><br /></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"></span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /><br />And here's an older one that I really like, from my book <i>All the Missing Names of Love</i>:</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"></span></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjgGH1g746_DutmVG6bN8CNcucFjlYpYP_6cD_8xKO14Zs9cVemVC0usGYwqv8ZFGFjHRzSxVBex0UWC7RFwx99umVfVEuQxQdJAtxFyZvBbu5kMRe5qrbR9Hq_R2j1DD4C2m57RaxLoNORKtHcVaHAOg0JVz4o0pFPJgtnU5_9AJUvz-O5_r2WvSG9Nw/s1448/Midwinter%20Totleigh.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1448" data-original-width="1317" height="450" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjgGH1g746_DutmVG6bN8CNcucFjlYpYP_6cD_8xKO14Zs9cVemVC0usGYwqv8ZFGFjHRzSxVBex0UWC7RFwx99umVfVEuQxQdJAtxFyZvBbu5kMRe5qrbR9Hq_R2j1DD4C2m57RaxLoNORKtHcVaHAOg0JVz4o0pFPJgtnU5_9AJUvz-O5_r2WvSG9Nw/w409-h450/Midwinter%20Totleigh.jpg" width="409" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_eI2T4-dogSFHxgabBr9-P98103mnOnxgtZ4wXngBkvNIQaJkgimEZGeplAxSi6bM2s78XaKxq3Ulbuc0SmQvML0y6OyArLxmdXxGf36pwsIr_0N4jCpDC2KBn2J6-5GLC4NwNBT2-JuMo87NyECjF88V66b74mgO7dFAXgO6s9Uc58Kvru6WItIGxA/s4032/frosted%20hemlock.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4032" data-original-width="3024" height="397" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_eI2T4-dogSFHxgabBr9-P98103mnOnxgtZ4wXngBkvNIQaJkgimEZGeplAxSi6bM2s78XaKxq3Ulbuc0SmQvML0y6OyArLxmdXxGf36pwsIr_0N4jCpDC2KBn2J6-5GLC4NwNBT2-JuMo87NyECjF88V66b74mgO7dFAXgO6s9Uc58Kvru6WItIGxA/w298-h397/frosted%20hemlock.jpg" width="298" /></a></div><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span><p></p><p style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Blessings for a deep and bright midwinter turning to you all.<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></p>rosellehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00971482422276765335noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5055598777203654547.post-57408101313476808772022-09-22T19:52:00.001+01:002022-09-22T20:02:13.339+01:00poem for the autumn equinox: while nothing changes, everything does<p><br /></p><p> </p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiU-S9Q7Di8mUWDtlsqjLwgGLLG2QL6a32RgGEQtTLRVTFCE4REKODEOOSLNeRW9ovwKdVZo9dJovcs-yPImycqL2H5Y90ayjbtzVobyl9QOQsmCeOaWpYMmp6xhtu_v29w_CinNP7tSBRuVaI-tpcouoMGXhuRW3dKOlymgX33ytVDHDp08ScsiAtgGg/s4032/corn%20marigold.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4032" data-original-width="3024" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiU-S9Q7Di8mUWDtlsqjLwgGLLG2QL6a32RgGEQtTLRVTFCE4REKODEOOSLNeRW9ovwKdVZo9dJovcs-yPImycqL2H5Y90ayjbtzVobyl9QOQsmCeOaWpYMmp6xhtu_v29w_CinNP7tSBRuVaI-tpcouoMGXhuRW3dKOlymgX33ytVDHDp08ScsiAtgGg/s320/corn%20marigold.jpg" width="240" /></a></div><br /><br /><p></p><p><b>While nothing changes, everything does</b><br /><i>Autumn Equinox 2022</i><br /><br /><br />At dawn, after the stars and crescent moon, the sun<br /><br />is back in the east, peering through the laden chestnut trees<br />into our bedroom.<br /><br />In the night, scores more apples fall, and we eat our own<br />peaches for breakfast. <br /> Just now a new ladybird, so small<br />I could barely count its spots, landed on my arm.<br /><br />These moments are lifeboats. <span><br /> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span>Such abundance, and <br />it's taken me till now to learn I don’t need to earn it, <br />deserve it, or strive for it; I can simply revel in beauty. <br /><br />Nothing has lost its significance for me; it’s just<br />that, ageing, I crave it all less.<br /><br />Of course<br /> the tragedy of the world continues.<br /><br /><br />My friend says ‘Five swans flew past this morning.’<br />My friend says ‘Surely this is enough.’
<br /><br /><br /><br /><i>© Roselle Angwin 2022</i></p><p><i> </i></p><p><i> </i></p><p><i> </i></p><p><i> </i></p><p><i> </i><br /></p>rosellehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00971482422276765335noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5055598777203654547.post-19601749857305955072022-07-31T20:04:00.001+01:002022-08-01T09:42:29.240+01:00the first harvest<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjmBJDV3glqJbiAq8sI6oQ4QD4PJAH5EICWINUqYWu702fOIGug47v-3q3XvMGVLRRWUqSQc84Ef0aGmgQzFrZBHTqcsYe4FHPLY52QuyeS6gfjmQA0SW2ngSUp4JJWOu6lap6pHCpPYsCjwhYSvsBCYuTOowkSTf8G6z234TYLcY8LLkOw4o-UZlCFEg/s3053/physalis%20cropped.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3053" data-original-width="3012" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjmBJDV3glqJbiAq8sI6oQ4QD4PJAH5EICWINUqYWu702fOIGug47v-3q3XvMGVLRRWUqSQc84Ef0aGmgQzFrZBHTqcsYe4FHPLY52QuyeS6gfjmQA0SW2ngSUp4JJWOu6lap6pHCpPYsCjwhYSvsBCYuTOowkSTf8G6z234TYLcY8LLkOw4o-UZlCFEg/s320/physalis%20cropped.jpg" width="316" /></a></div><p></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size: small;">Lughnasadh, Lammas, begins tonight. As I've written many times before, <a href="https://thewildways.co.uk/2017/08/01/lughnasadh/" target="_blank">Lughnasadh </a>is one of the Celtic fire festivals, and exactly midway between the summer solstice and the autumn equinox. Traditionally, it's the time of the first harvest: notably grain (think John Barleycorn). <br /></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size: small;">As you will know if you've been paying attention, TM and I have moved to Brittany, to be guardians of some very beautiful land and a shambling old farmhouse. We are beginning to plan – and where we can, start to implement – the next phase, which involves permaculture, forest gardening and rewilding. We have many mature and lovely trees as a starting point.<br /><br />There is much joy and many challenges. There is far far too much to say, which is why I haven't.<br /></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size: small;">Something rather lovely here is quite how many, and what a variety of, trees and shrubs are coming to light as we get to know and to weed or prune back the overgrowth; many of them fruiting. Our first harvest of raspberries and blackcurrants is well past now, and we have walnuts, sweet chestnuts, figs perhaps, grapes, kiwi fruits, hazels, apples and damsons to look forward to. We have the previous owners to thank for this. This garden has been much-loved – there are about 15 species of rose, many of them heavily scented, planted in borders and against walls. </span></span><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br />And today's harvest, for Lughnasadh, are these cape gooseberries. Little fiery suns.<br /><br />I'm thinking about giving thanks for our harvests, and how, on so many levels, what we are giving thanks for is the fruit of others' labour, whether we know those others or not. Of course, there is the earth; the sun; the rain (when it comes – here the promise is pushed back day after day). There are those who grow our food for us, since most of us don't grow our own; those who harvest it, pack it, deliver it. <br /><br />Whether or not you eat animals or their products (I don't), something still has to be sacrificed in order that we might live. Accompanying the reaping is a dying, too.<br /><br />What we are today comes from others, human or other-than-human. Our very cells are made up of others' cells. </span></span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size: small;">Of course, there are metaphorical harvests too; </span></span>and in an equally real, albeit non-material, way, <i>who</i> we are today is also a result of others: their gifts, their kindnesses, their teachings, their wisdom, their lendings, what they have offered and what we have taken.<br /><br />And then there is immeasurable gratitude to whatever animating spirit it is that fires the cosmos, and consciousness. <br /><br />Tomorrow morning, when I wake, before the various anxieties about the world kick in, I am determined to turn my mind, and thanks, to the harvests, past and ongoing, that have come my way from others; the many blessings of this (and any) time.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size: small;"></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size: small;"></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size: small;"></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size: small;"></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /><br /></span></span></p><p style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhO5SdY3bkAiORV74iULjNG53Jk0QybVSthyIkPj_zbeoBw0xRLiMfmhAEhL5qOcj1jgTfnEHbRotAviMxMsbrl2YkPTKhj2jxpfM1ngL194g45UAOcnCdTUptvuH6qPceIL_TAakOQIzrZOm-jqhRwSjQMAYCrmEE7TIhgR2aXOdymAFm2rSbnM1Czhg/s627/physalis%20heart.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="616" data-original-width="627" height="314" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhO5SdY3bkAiORV74iULjNG53Jk0QybVSthyIkPj_zbeoBw0xRLiMfmhAEhL5qOcj1jgTfnEHbRotAviMxMsbrl2YkPTKhj2jxpfM1ngL194g45UAOcnCdTUptvuH6qPceIL_TAakOQIzrZOm-jqhRwSjQMAYCrmEE7TIhgR2aXOdymAFm2rSbnM1Czhg/s320/physalis%20heart.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /></span></span><br /></p>rosellehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00971482422276765335noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5055598777203654547.post-76880209730291456022022-06-24T16:18:00.002+01:002022-06-24T16:18:40.464+01:00a summer solstice 2022 poem, belatedly<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEizv7MnkrwBIJA2gsxXZJD-IwKvbwNNFNnNharhUApb6oSOL_iBpMmjkyx--x3IEjBFDD6yoAEBLODeZOjKpvdNkDBycgxdfjL2wIGhRDWUwDBp1KuqsLzKVJQ996EHqeC6EekbMtJZY-Ftb8KnRTrqQShJgLW6xMeeshpgD4w16Ae3iZjwjDFqnfiR3A/s4032/whire%20rose%20at%20gwynvid.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4032" data-original-width="3024" height="272" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEizv7MnkrwBIJA2gsxXZJD-IwKvbwNNFNnNharhUApb6oSOL_iBpMmjkyx--x3IEjBFDD6yoAEBLODeZOjKpvdNkDBycgxdfjL2wIGhRDWUwDBp1KuqsLzKVJQ996EHqeC6EekbMtJZY-Ftb8KnRTrqQShJgLW6xMeeshpgD4w16Ae3iZjwjDFqnfiR3A/w234-h272/whire%20rose%20at%20gwynvid.jpg" width="234" /></a></div><p></p><p><br /></p><p><b>Moving House at the Summer Solstice – Finistère, 2022</b><br /><br />Even before the sun crests the chestnut trees<br />this thousand-blossom twenty-foot fountain of fragrance<br />spreads her white invitation across this and the other<br />wild gardens, and already a hundred bees have rspv’d. <br /><br />She was a slip when I planted her five years ago, <br />rooting so easily into her non-native soil. I could <br />linger here under her arch, at a kind of midsummer <br />crossroads like the one where I saw the hare yesterday, <br /><br />I could borrow her unstintingness, belonging <br />to the universe so easily, breathing out freely, <br />without holding some back for myself, without asking <br />where home might be. At this midsummer turning, <br /><br />how to unmoor the self from ‘I’, ‘me’, ‘my’? – simply to rest<br />between earth and sky, this whole wide world my home. <br /><br /><br /><i>Roselle Angwin</i></p><p><i> </i></p><p><i> </i></p><p><i> </i></p><p><i> </i></p><p><i> </i><br /></p>rosellehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00971482422276765335noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5055598777203654547.post-18908641378458057292022-05-29T17:46:00.004+01:002022-05-31T10:18:12.546+01:00A ragbag: May in Devon; other-than-human kin; Iona in April; our big move<div style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjH_VUZhL1VDM3Fv5hAVqWbuS1c4p78jKv7NT-ZJv8USxQHlfPCJBjEvU0sya5pqL_1ISbwpLjifqZTeX_t19OL5Cg29f-443NGWATdtoPh2NRMj4UIA_JVp__rRbDjsVvxVpb6j9_3l7PO1sCehDCSYFUfxjBa6WttZ81mHy5qElav0CTsOAJJG4x-fw/s4032/bluebells%20nr%20beenleigh.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4032" data-original-width="3024" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjH_VUZhL1VDM3Fv5hAVqWbuS1c4p78jKv7NT-ZJv8USxQHlfPCJBjEvU0sya5pqL_1ISbwpLjifqZTeX_t19OL5Cg29f-443NGWATdtoPh2NRMj4UIA_JVp__rRbDjsVvxVpb6j9_3l7PO1sCehDCSYFUfxjBa6WttZ81mHy5qElav0CTsOAJJG4x-fw/s320/bluebells%20nr%20beenleigh.jpg" width="240" /></a><br /></div><div><p> <br /><b>A RAGBAG</b><br />In this post, I include parts of my recent Fire in the Head newsletter, so if you are on my mailing list you already know some of this.<br /><br /><b>In the merry month of May</b><br /><i>May and in the deluge I walk out where the bright spring rain ignites the hillside into the ultraviolet flame of bluebells, incandescent against the new sharp greens of the valley. May, and in the deluge something hidden, almost lost, shyly steps forth and in a moment has taken wings. May, and in the rain I’m stripped naked then clothed by rain. May, and high above me the buzzard’s quiet jubilation encircles the day, the way a priest or a magician passes hands over the bread, the chalice, the water to be blessed; casts a spell that changes us all into what we were always meant to be.</i><br /><br />*<br /><br />If April is the cruellest month, May must surely be the kindest; the land here in Devon is awash now with the last of the bluebells and wild garlic, and the bridal blooms of Hawthorn, the May flower, in whose month, in the Celtic Tree Calendar which underpins my own life and work, and my most recent book, <a href="https://roselle-angwin.co.uk/books/3547-2/" target="_blank">A Spell in the Forest – tongues in trees</a>, we find ourselves currently. There is much to say about the mythology surrounding Hawthorn, and her dark sister, the Blackthorn, but that's not for here. <br /><br /><br />*<br /><br /><b>Our other-than-human kin
</b><br />Where are the swallows and martins? I wonder if ‘yours’ have come back? Weather, chemical farming methods, conversion of barns and lack of nesting sites have all played their part in the decline of the hirundines. A permanent absence of these migrants in our skies is a prospect too heartbreaking to contemplate. There is a hole in the fabric of things when a species declines; a snag in the web of life.<br /><br />Some time between 4 am and 4.30 am each morning for several weeks I’ve been woken by various iterations of young ravenous jackdaw squawks, in triplicate, deepening and increasing in volume by the morning. The ‘nest’ – the shambolic heap of twigs balanced precariously in the ivy growing up the stone wall and literally a metre from our heads in bed, albeit the other side of the roof – is coming apart at the seams. This morning something is different, though. The squawk is higher-pitched, I’d say panicky; even louder, and higher up the roof, accompanied by noisy mad flapping and the distinct sound of a small body sliding down the slates. And repeated. (Last year one fledgling fell off the roof, narrowly avoiding the neighbour’s cat’s jaws by dint of abseiling back up said ivy.)
<br /><br />I lie wide awake now, and listen to the two thrushes, one each side of the valley. ‘Our’ thrush, in the field, has a fairly sophisticated repertoire, with a number of regular recognisable phrases: caerphilly caerphilly caerphilly, chew chew chew, peewit peewit peewit, teeeoooh. The valley one is a learner with a less distinct song – perhaps last year’s youngster. If I get up and go downstairs now, the pair of dunnock that lives in the courtyard and who currently have a brood in the goat willow tree that decorates my car so prolifically with fluffy mouse-like catkins, will, I know, appear at my feet, looking hopeful. Dunnock are shy birds, but these now know me so well that I can rustle a bag just above their heads and they won’t move. <br /><br />In just over a week’s time, a new family, one with two cats, will move into this house with its one-and-a-half acres of spectacular land – meadow, woodland, bee and herb beds, extensive veg plot and wild twisty-pathed gardens. They will love and tend the place, and their plans will fit. But their cats will not respect my friendship with the other-than-human here. And I am heartbroken at leaving the wildlife I know so well, and who trust me: woodpeckers, owls, nuthatches, bullfinches, robins, blackbirds, five species of tit, and many others, and who know I will help when the winter is hard on this north-facing slope. <br /><br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEha7d39OsVu5_Bgke16bTXiC6m8iVUPyg7l5tvGOwpYBAYwezuhKGMaBuGf1AyQ9h8xKYq7EmDXvDlQP-gtuRmlawlIVc62AwNFNHlghMmiezfEmXjiCONp1nY2pqEnW9E_CJDpo1nEjHkoNCG-sJnXJErQBEcGd--mO8ZXjArdNA_-Gl_2Gol0FxYKww/s3042/snow%20w%20bullfinches.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1783" data-original-width="3042" height="188" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEha7d39OsVu5_Bgke16bTXiC6m8iVUPyg7l5tvGOwpYBAYwezuhKGMaBuGf1AyQ9h8xKYq7EmDXvDlQP-gtuRmlawlIVc62AwNFNHlghMmiezfEmXjiCONp1nY2pqEnW9E_CJDpo1nEjHkoNCG-sJnXJErQBEcGd--mO8ZXjArdNA_-Gl_2Gol0FxYKww/s320/snow%20w%20bullfinches.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><p><br />*</p><p>Then there are the hares, voles, and roe deer; the few badgers left from culling, illegally gassing or sett-blocking; the few foxes that the illegal hunt hasn’t killed. Nesting in our field are also buzzards and sparrowhawks; they too have their place, and I’ve learned a lot from buzzards.<br /><br /><br /><b>The secret valley</b><br />There is, too, this secret valley. Having lived, with my daughter, most of my adult life on Dartmoor, and spending regular time in wildish places: the Hebrides, West Cornwall and, before that, the Pyrenees and then Brittany, this soft valley in the affluent South Hams didn’t at first speak to me. But I have come to love its quiet tranquillity, its out-of-the-wayness (one expects the compass to spin here, and in fact it is a bit of a Bermuda triangle), its lack of farming activity; its brook, its spindle and gorse, the little egrets that come up the Dart in winter to roost in the old oak and keep an eye on the fishy tiddlers in the brook, the owls who call from our great oak tree. Nowadays, within a radius of a couple of miles, there is also a small population of youngish people who have moved in to tend and cultivate the land in sustainable ways, some living off-grid. <br /><br />
And there is the land, and the beautiful stone wood and glass house built by TM 20+ years ago. And we are leaving it. The next blog I will write will not be from here. <i>NB It seems that my browser and blogger are no longer easily compatible. I may start a new blog, perhaps connected to my websites, soon.</i><br /><br /><br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEihT74tKEvnd8RENYIXcdMksPWcl16CKi-M2veb98NXZmBFByLOXSzQBrKA8qo3p-YVm5qj4V9V6RlXAY5seKAXtFum1afIdlMd6Hf-xzLRcGepN7XakW7VLeI23NH1OCLrKfgwHsuxtKzpTynJfpTWaPavI9JsGyiOADdcfS8w8xOX715SupNp5g8q_g/s1573/path_to_field.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1573" data-original-width="1180" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEihT74tKEvnd8RENYIXcdMksPWcl16CKi-M2veb98NXZmBFByLOXSzQBrKA8qo3p-YVm5qj4V9V6RlXAY5seKAXtFum1afIdlMd6Hf-xzLRcGepN7XakW7VLeI23NH1OCLrKfgwHsuxtKzpTynJfpTWaPavI9JsGyiOADdcfS8w8xOX715SupNp5g8q_g/s320/path_to_field.jpg" width="240" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhCMlYc-u6yGRUTBlL48Qy0KsaQZhzdwYQ7u2NaUFZ894fRhxTTij6seqp2tejkEcSWjizERxzuveNE2eagJzXF-8e4UmISSdDylYINzvSF4PVfbUsp97uiWwLQ9jWV-yVjrY-OjVVjlXOnUfvh7PqSSqL2h9sE7tlz5h0jMWSrDM2UsbT9L0WDO5r3vw/s1600/bee%20&%20herb%20garden.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1200" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhCMlYc-u6yGRUTBlL48Qy0KsaQZhzdwYQ7u2NaUFZ894fRhxTTij6seqp2tejkEcSWjizERxzuveNE2eagJzXF-8e4UmISSdDylYINzvSF4PVfbUsp97uiWwLQ9jWV-yVjrY-OjVVjlXOnUfvh7PqSSqL2h9sE7tlz5h0jMWSrDM2UsbT9L0WDO5r3vw/s320/bee%20&%20herb%20garden.jpg" width="240" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgLfya7QGwjNqYA4qqEj0KI1UeZupSMHqzWo7iVItHEB0iHHbwORqgyUP0b96SEaE0sV6hKwt8f7AlOxzowGXsKqmZBcCI9HWIdalimRjHIR_NgkeiwZrPjaVrty8uZTjvfmzDy6qnVIe64wOjjEpf1AMsUVw-VQjqjHBMnC-EwM4dWKJSu7CsW_rtUHA/s2048/kitchen%20beenleigh.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1536" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgLfya7QGwjNqYA4qqEj0KI1UeZupSMHqzWo7iVItHEB0iHHbwORqgyUP0b96SEaE0sV6hKwt8f7AlOxzowGXsKqmZBcCI9HWIdalimRjHIR_NgkeiwZrPjaVrty8uZTjvfmzDy6qnVIe64wOjjEpf1AMsUVw-VQjqjHBMnC-EwM4dWKJSu7CsW_rtUHA/s320/kitchen%20beenleigh.jpg" width="240" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEirEyYIS6BkLMnZCGxevaAnFeqYV4EQCkxzBVb6QTF3KIDO5Z3rg0d1MAJ0BHlMih10vxD9oDGojfS2tQ0--43MZsl4uaDEsMaf0E5F4mtH5MKoX9u0FCgzg8bGdoc0BZUhHJmb4n1WKVwZ3ZTZlEONqYgQYOTRSJa_FFohp7JKGa8Bkr1Nk-UOMN4C7Q/s2048/Beenleigh%20w%20Ash.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1536" data-original-width="2048" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEirEyYIS6BkLMnZCGxevaAnFeqYV4EQCkxzBVb6QTF3KIDO5Z3rg0d1MAJ0BHlMih10vxD9oDGojfS2tQ0--43MZsl4uaDEsMaf0E5F4mtH5MKoX9u0FCgzg8bGdoc0BZUhHJmb4n1WKVwZ3ZTZlEONqYgQYOTRSJa_FFohp7JKGa8Bkr1Nk-UOMN4C7Q/s320/Beenleigh%20w%20Ash.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><p style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;">*<br /><br /></p><p style="margin-left: 1em; text-align: left;"><b>Loving it all
</b><br />We
learn to love the general, and humanity/other species/the world/cosmos, by loving the
particular, the personal, the specific. I believe this is the meaning of
Robert Hass’ complicated and wonderful poem '<a href="https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/47553/meditation-at-lagunitas" target="_blank">Meditation at Lagunitas</a>'.
See how he begins with the distancing large and abstract, and brings it
down to the close-up material detail of the personal? Almost everyone
who reads this poem (it figures on my poetry correspondence course)
feels the fire of it coming alive, beginning with the 'clown-faced
woodpecker' but really leaping into three dimensions when he writes
'There was a woman /'. This is how, I believe, we make sense of, or
learn to love, the vast existential and metaphysical questions: by
seeing the enormous and extraordinary in the small and ordinary detail
of those beings and things to whom we give our hearts. <br /><br />Now is my
chance to take this deep love and open it out to all I newly encounter
in our new adventure; in wildlife terms, red squirrels, deer, pine
martens and wild boar, besides the usual host of smaller creatures. Oh, and the humans.<br /><br />*<br /><br /><br /><b>Islands of the Heart</b><br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgwU6QhdNGmGed0q0YOnbivO8RV09UJ0QVMaOl1w4EDAuFNc1TSeTYOhIE-oxmNQaCrB-jVb2LEl7zU1KCtzXyWZtdMRbTA4FvgF_xBZdiO7G2zmK0PioAjrVCDpcYIt5erqY-H4Or8l3a_4B3A6LhEiw-lTzXrzcKX3uoIG-QOBvxTkeEzFvbpYlkSOw/s4032/atlantic%20from%20dun%20i.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3024" data-original-width="4032" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgwU6QhdNGmGed0q0YOnbivO8RV09UJ0QVMaOl1w4EDAuFNc1TSeTYOhIE-oxmNQaCrB-jVb2LEl7zU1KCtzXyWZtdMRbTA4FvgF_xBZdiO7G2zmK0PioAjrVCDpcYIt5erqY-H4Or8l3a_4B3A6LhEiw-lTzXrzcKX3uoIG-QOBvxTkeEzFvbpYlkSOw/s320/atlantic%20from%20dun%20i.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><p style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh1s6q5_BTV-9z3j73Yy_fT7dxRXs4pACw2cDCfGitX-9m9Vld-J62vCkM_gKFi2nWOu7X1PHkv5CFPgSnh9xp_WM3r_oI7yyNcFMUO1Vj3aAtaaXVMUcy1J4Yi9Ul-QjYWXduV2o39jj6Skt6pfWsgdRUQHlF0NVh-SEub_zgo_OABaUQjNAlxnAU2Gw/s4032/well%20of%20eternal%20youth.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4032" data-original-width="3024" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh1s6q5_BTV-9z3j73Yy_fT7dxRXs4pACw2cDCfGitX-9m9Vld-J62vCkM_gKFi2nWOu7X1PHkv5CFPgSnh9xp_WM3r_oI7yyNcFMUO1Vj3aAtaaXVMUcy1J4Yi9Ul-QjYWXduV2o39jj6Skt6pfWsgdRUQHlF0NVh-SEub_zgo_OABaUQjNAlxnAU2Gw/s320/well%20of%20eternal%20youth.jpg" width="240" /></a></div><p style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><br />My ‘Islands of the Heart’ retreats on the Isle of Iona happened again this year. I always feel so privileged to be able to work with these fine people, some of whom have joined me every year, or nearly, since 2000 on the sacred Isle of Iona. I believe I say this every time, but I think this was the best yet. The weather was (mostly) fabulous, the people were just lovely, and some very fine writing was writ. (Some of the nutters among us, what’s more, also dipped into the sea, daily. Yes, in April, up north.)
<br /><br />I also climbed up to the Well of Eternal Youth with the long-suffering M, who didn’t complain about our taking the steep slippery route up Dun I – the 'Hill of the Island' – at speed, lured by promises of a gentle easy descent which never materialised: ‘I marched her up to the top of the hill / and I marched her down again’.<br /><br />This well, dedicated to Bride who gives her name to the Hebrides, Bridport, Bridlington and possibly the whole of Britain (Brighid, or Brigid, christianised as St Bridget), the ancient Great Goddess whose cauldron (or in this case well) occurs in various guises in Celtic myths, is supposed to restore the aged to youth and also the dead to life. Sadly, I came back just as old and wrinkly as I went up. (Oh wait, I think we were supposed to take our clothes off and immerse ourselves?) Here for you, above, are photos of the well and its view, as a change from the eternal white sands and blue seas I normally post.</p><p style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"></p><p style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"></p><p style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><br /><b>The Old Nunnery on Iona
</b><br /><br />Always the chatter from these <br />streamers of geese, ravelling the sky.
<br /><br />Above the hill, two rooks <br />bring their shadows along for the ride.
<br /><br />What else can I say for this nunnery <br />that I haven’t said twenty times before?
<br /><br />Beyond, the primary school is flying the blue <br />and yellow flag we all now know so well.
<br /><br /><i>Roselle Angwin</i><br /><br /><br />*<br /><br /><br />And so to the big adventure.<br /><br /><br /><b>Walking into the Unknown</b><br />I imagine I'm not alone with the strength of ideas of belonging in my psyche – to a place, to its inhabitants, to its culture. Experience of place and belonging are fundamental to how we humans find our way in the world. I'm also concerned as well with how we walk through this world, and relate to our other-than-human kin.
I know many of you are too. And what does it mean to attempt to live truly sustainably, minimising our footprint?<br /><br />As regards 'home', comfortable in most places at the edges of the Western Atlantic, I still have a strong sense of my own roots. We can trace the family’s roots back hundreds of years to the tiny magical triangle that is the far west of Britain, West Penwith in Cornwall. Having said that, I’ve spent most of my life in Devon, having been brought up on the North Devon coast and then, as I said earlier, on or very close to Dartmoor. I belong here in the Westcountry. But 'home' is perhaps more to do with a sense of being comfortable with a chosen life and its path as much as a geographical location. How do we DO this life? How do we walk lightly on the earth? How do we create a life that is congruent with our values? <br /><br />We are now about to cross the Channel and make our home in Brittany: the far northwest department, Finistère (think Asterix), so similar to Cornwall (and Wales) in language and culture, as well as land, trees and wildlife. There is a long story behind this, but I will remain geographically very close to my beloved forest, the one that figures in <i>Spell</i>, and which I know well.<br /><br />We have just bought 17 acres of beautiful meadows and woodland, along with a shambolic farmhouse whose heart dates back, supposedly, to the 1700s, where we are, in a matter of weeks, going to unroll our vision of guardianship of the land via permaculture, forest gardening or at least orcharding, and letting the land do its own rewilding as it sees fit. <br /><br />One important aspect of this is a vision of how little one needs to create a healthy life. How can we shake our dependence on fossil fuel, and consumerism? How might we consider sharing this land? How much can we let it be, to be what it needs? What might we grow in how small a space that could help the wider community without damaging the land? All these questions are in our minds as we make this transition.<br /><br /><br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjNy-5lY4kB4gd2mhaywTZYuP4sRytE4m3eRqUq50NqcKFiCIsU5bmRYfh7x31KLQw85nmCswdafGvdKt5lr_9DC64P0pwH7auqsD_aecSdjGjXORQY0d6mDWBPsB-8vENdpJzfMkZnsqpFgzMQm6fWwNiPpud2_oJUFdN_t2aARjDTfTii7eo7eU7_2w/s4032/hortus.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3024" data-original-width="4032" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjNy-5lY4kB4gd2mhaywTZYuP4sRytE4m3eRqUq50NqcKFiCIsU5bmRYfh7x31KLQw85nmCswdafGvdKt5lr_9DC64P0pwH7auqsD_aecSdjGjXORQY0d6mDWBPsB-8vENdpJzfMkZnsqpFgzMQm6fWwNiPpud2_oJUFdN_t2aARjDTfTii7eo7eU7_2w/s320/hortus.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhlpLAMS2J3_EqiU3bEfRKx9rBqc0ipwK9hNw05rZTSIyP_-uz7PdLH2dd7xelTa81spWvZKft2wJOy4Xf_K8BpghJ72OdgYKnqz5hfdjjed1C7GXUBn3lV_3B_i8cYGxiifta3MVI-uliHLafk35rg1iP0PYwGBCVS8yll2csOscl6PQSQQ79yQX5t8g/s2048/from%20the%20back.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1536" data-original-width="2048" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhlpLAMS2J3_EqiU3bEfRKx9rBqc0ipwK9hNw05rZTSIyP_-uz7PdLH2dd7xelTa81spWvZKft2wJOy4Xf_K8BpghJ72OdgYKnqz5hfdjjed1C7GXUBn3lV_3B_i8cYGxiifta3MVI-uliHLafk35rg1iP0PYwGBCVS8yll2csOscl6PQSQQ79yQX5t8g/s320/from%20the%20back.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhSwytFSzkqY5tfSY22l-CEaY3WU3fADmAEr10tWyta2igx9hYFvaMDGGZCdabT5q0odw49z4eDcvsvV0LEa7jgNvt_YNc8qx_aQ2I6b5mLpbe96VDPeAXUBBYnUJOlFm6YLDUeO6KepeFFlL49jxqql5SCQ5q4hICe2TaWP3jGiIGQ_I3BaC35jH5Esg/s2048/south%20aspect.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1536" data-original-width="2048" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhSwytFSzkqY5tfSY22l-CEaY3WU3fADmAEr10tWyta2igx9hYFvaMDGGZCdabT5q0odw49z4eDcvsvV0LEa7jgNvt_YNc8qx_aQ2I6b5mLpbe96VDPeAXUBBYnUJOlFm6YLDUeO6KepeFFlL49jxqql5SCQ5q4hICe2TaWP3jGiIGQ_I3BaC35jH5Esg/s320/south%20aspect.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgn9I3igte6SQ30KazimuGGrXHwWxVuNkUoa_kdifxgSFl-osmR_OTCbmJjghy-tI8SfSidCRsdp0GTHVqIsFKvt8eJE1Aj_xwvc5k_oTikdfeA5A4bhXzrNiwLeSdMQouYw0QNQNq7t7mNvDO6sEZlKO4LortPkU18YA0mQJJGg5qXrIyuDGo5Tnuu3Q/s4032/IMG_1071.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3024" data-original-width="4032" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgn9I3igte6SQ30KazimuGGrXHwWxVuNkUoa_kdifxgSFl-osmR_OTCbmJjghy-tI8SfSidCRsdp0GTHVqIsFKvt8eJE1Aj_xwvc5k_oTikdfeA5A4bhXzrNiwLeSdMQouYw0QNQNq7t7mNvDO6sEZlKO4LortPkU18YA0mQJJGg5qXrIyuDGo5Tnuu3Q/s320/IMG_1071.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><p style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><br /><br /><b>My work</b><br />For the best part of a year I will be concentrating on my own writing only (that is, if our land projects in Brittany allow any time or energy at all). I have my vegan cookbook to be finished, and hundreds of scrappy notes towards Book Two of A Spell in the Forest.<br />
The next full course I’ll offer will be Iona next year.<br /><br />However, this autumn I hope to offer 3 weeklong virtual courses. (I've finally added the prose version of 'Writing the Bright Moment' that I've been promising so long, as a nature memoir course.) Dates for these have to be arranged, but they are likely to take place in October, November & December. Please keep an eye on <a href="https://roselle-angwin.co.uk/news/" target="_blank">this link</a> for info; and do let me know if you are interested (numbers will be limited). The first two courses garnered very complimentary feedback each time I offered them, and some of the groups have continued to meet, with one producing an anthology.<br /><br /><br /><b>
Postscript</b><br />I don't know how it is for you, but I notice that my deep joy in the turning year, especially manifest in spring, is tinged often with something like guilt for experiencing bliss when so many are suffering severe pain, trauma, loss in other parts of the world. Then I remember the words of Kahlil Gibran: ‘It doesn't help to limp before the lame’ (this is a paraphrase).
So I wonder whether, to offset somehow the horrors, we almost have a responsibility to live deeply, love abundantly, and feel profound joy to the extent that we can, in this very beautiful, albeit torn, world of ours?<br /><br />With this in mind, till next time, my friends, may the summer shower inspiration and love on you all; and I find I want to wish you the music of the eternally-turning spheres. May you find your true home in the universe, whether outside or inside; or, best of all, both. <br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /></p><p style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"></p><p style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"></p><p style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"></p><p style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"></p><p style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"></p><p style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /> <br /><br /><br /><br /></p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjH_VUZhL1VDM3Fv5hAVqWbuS1c4p78jKv7NT-ZJv8USxQHlfPCJBjEvU0sya5pqL_1ISbwpLjifqZTeX_t19OL5Cg29f-443NGWATdtoPh2NRMj4UIA_JVp__rRbDjsVvxVpb6j9_3l7PO1sCehDCSYFUfxjBa6WttZ81mHy5qElav0CTsOAJJG4x-fw/s4032/bluebells%20nr%20beenleigh.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"></a></div>rosellehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00971482422276765335noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5055598777203654547.post-10143409990235232052022-03-27T16:19:00.000+01:002022-03-27T16:19:25.404+01:00Isle of Iona, again...<div><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="color: #20124d;"><br /></span>song from the Abbey</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">less precious to my heart</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">than this small sparrow<br /><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">*<br /><br /><br /><img border="0" data-original-height="3024" data-original-width="4032" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEinf4quRxpyFp5Mie_tyZz2tFzfUyhJNuwXhPXVu9uwsIUl4LdqKX8XubblkXuTiYOyX09liDLvTc_eQNGp48VfwVa0Uh6uFKhzjGThOqSPPbJOoic6fgX-4soXDESZ8Nm3hGGn3_xh_Kh7jqqpMmVPoHGWRAzde-1Ojz_spALkHiBvxXSg-DTS2Ee8jg/s320/IMG_0791.jpg" width="320" /></div><br /> <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjvijrA0oY18nelt9XFYbEewN_wtKN1_3iCHzgd15-_u--ZJGK1RWgjoQGrYDD66ElBT3pL3ado2STfNFvXkAI6Ls8aXoj48QzEJr7lstXPIxK9GM0PnhF3g6s_Z6YIrpxEWka06jVkG1bJVLWFSzqGCbWRTjTRcKuriEy8cqfTH5hOIN9oLgw7LSkfcg/s4032/IMG_0818.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3024" data-original-width="4032" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjvijrA0oY18nelt9XFYbEewN_wtKN1_3iCHzgd15-_u--ZJGK1RWgjoQGrYDD66ElBT3pL3ado2STfNFvXkAI6Ls8aXoj48QzEJr7lstXPIxK9GM0PnhF3g6s_Z6YIrpxEWka06jVkG1bJVLWFSzqGCbWRTjTRcKuriEy8cqfTH5hOIN9oLgw7LSkfcg/s320/IMG_0818.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiirpI8_d7AUdf9jclfDbLV-Wzsr-uu1JGXhJvYxi06l9xKO98pyG6FAXZpa3in5E6NNB27XU0KV5zhOo_YPT5bwYvHpSqKMJv479Ky49LwfOKkFtLzUO50IqBBOLxc44OgBFG7bVwlH_HAm2kONJmxbncVPa9yqSVZbn2KxwFQ-znZGK1l9R8od-IJJA/s4032/IMG_0835.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3024" data-original-width="4032" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiirpI8_d7AUdf9jclfDbLV-Wzsr-uu1JGXhJvYxi06l9xKO98pyG6FAXZpa3in5E6NNB27XU0KV5zhOo_YPT5bwYvHpSqKMJv479Ky49LwfOKkFtLzUO50IqBBOLxc44OgBFG7bVwlH_HAm2kONJmxbncVPa9yqSVZbn2KxwFQ-znZGK1l9R8od-IJJA/s320/IMG_0835.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgZS-bESfXoPd9hRDAsyIM3b_1NQKexqd4ldO7R2Uow1mdrRfttt--kyALHZn9vKj2MSDTBc1M3_REl63zDV8NAbTfm9MZPgXD7nV0nfMGm4mirOm01nzxlgLWKSVSgcx4XJCzSUwa6xXKfO41vioMQ0BTRaBeTdmVg7LKUTUY4-UGNIz4j7zIOUS4iLA/s4032/IMG_0839.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4032" data-original-width="3024" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgZS-bESfXoPd9hRDAsyIM3b_1NQKexqd4ldO7R2Uow1mdrRfttt--kyALHZn9vKj2MSDTBc1M3_REl63zDV8NAbTfm9MZPgXD7nV0nfMGm4mirOm01nzxlgLWKSVSgcx4XJCzSUwa6xXKfO41vioMQ0BTRaBeTdmVg7LKUTUY4-UGNIz4j7zIOUS4iLA/s320/IMG_0839.jpg" width="240" /></a></div><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;">*<br /></div><div><p style="text-align: center;"><i>...And for a long space of time we voyaged on this glass-clear sea and knew no pain or fear, above or under it, and were blessed only by joy...<br /></i></p><p><i><br /></i></p><p style="text-align: center;"><i>*<br /></i></p><p><i><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /></i><br /></p></div>rosellehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00971482422276765335noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5055598777203654547.post-87417394420471820082022-03-20T20:22:00.001+00:002022-03-20T20:22:39.929+00:00Between the Poles: equinox poem<p><br /></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEj4X1tX4kBPUdrkvE_faY84EBC9Nu9wYcPbitJKLzooSYwHOFPGaZncroCK8mwRxlr-Uy3K8gX6GZU9QuUkySGmt19Kq6Fs6R0qdQ9RK4LDbxKOq6aevLtUPTqrdeWA8WcfU9lMKST2A5X4yUxMlGZVgB0IUR0TgprOCTLSITsJVtNaYrT4KnIRTurUKg=s340" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="340" data-original-width="255" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEj4X1tX4kBPUdrkvE_faY84EBC9Nu9wYcPbitJKLzooSYwHOFPGaZncroCK8mwRxlr-Uy3K8gX6GZU9QuUkySGmt19Kq6Fs6R0qdQ9RK4LDbxKOq6aevLtUPTqrdeWA8WcfU9lMKST2A5X4yUxMlGZVgB0IUR0TgprOCTLSITsJVtNaYrT4KnIRTurUKg=s320" width="240" /></a></div><br /><p></p><p><b>Between the Poles
</b><br /><i>20th March 2022, 3.33pm: spring equinox</i><br /><br />Beneath the newly-leafing elder <br />a shoal of wild garlic is secretly flourishing.<br />Above my head, a pair of buzzards flips and plays. <br /><br />Yesterday I wrote ‘Saharan dust!’ in the thick <br />sandy spatters on the car bonnet. Today <br />the wind is backing; and here on the bench <br /><br />at the top of the meadow I can see east<br />to the far horizon, though not enough <br />as to hear the bombs and smell the fear. <br /><br />Everything cycles between these poles: <br />summer and winter, dark and light, peace <br />and war. For this one equinox moment, <br /><br />though, on the cusp where day and night <br />are held in equal tension, I can almost pretend <br />we could change our lives, the world.<br /><br /><br /><i>© Roselle Angwin</i></p><p><i> </i></p><p><i> </i><br /><br /> </p>rosellehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00971482422276765335noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5055598777203654547.post-375516212136803392022-03-15T11:10:00.000+00:002022-03-15T11:10:46.393+00:00A Tree Full of Birds PART 11<p> <br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgFvpmCu5pqOcLWhmB6Lb7ixId6OakNMG5iHXA51AMEWrBcE-TQN_PtxEJzmXNsNNNbsQLFDd4ZLvSPSSwx9WbFf-Yf2IG3oSow9CW8JUJ_AuG7zUPSbaSUVFB_DbfTBfkMY0G_ADb3scs43WLGiUoEBjNzHPwkSxK1aP_VXXVVAGD-4ntTD9CDf4nRSA=s340" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="255" data-original-width="340" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgFvpmCu5pqOcLWhmB6Lb7ixId6OakNMG5iHXA51AMEWrBcE-TQN_PtxEJzmXNsNNNbsQLFDd4ZLvSPSSwx9WbFf-Yf2IG3oSow9CW8JUJ_AuG7zUPSbaSUVFB_DbfTBfkMY0G_ADb3scs43WLGiUoEBjNzHPwkSxK1aP_VXXVVAGD-4ntTD9CDf4nRSA=w400-h300" width="400" /></a></div><p><br />In my previous post I excerpted a section from the last chapter of my book <a href="https://roselle-angwin.co.uk/books/" target="_blank"><b><i>Writing the Bright Moment – inspiration & guidance for writers</i></b></a>.<br /><br />The chapter is called 'A Tree Full of Birds', and is intended to keep us keeping on: not just with writing, but with active hope, as Buddhist scholar and activist Joanna Macy would say, for the future, remembering that we co-create it, in our own small but individual ways through our own unique gifts.<br /><br />Keeping a sense of wonder alive seems particularly important at a time of great darkness. This is not naïve, not sentimental – it's a way of not giving up.<br /><br /><b><br />So here is Part 11 of A Tree Full of Birds.<br /><br /></b>Where do you start? Find a moment of glory. I’m thinking of Seamus Heaney’s ‘Postscript’ poem, of R S Thomas’ ‘Bright Field’, of Brendan Kennelly’s Glimpses. Early in her narrative non-fiction book Pilgrim at Tinker Creek Annie Dillard mentions a tree, an Osage orange, which, ostensibly empty, suddenly flames with an eruption of blackbirds, previously unseen; then another, then another – hundreds of blackbirds from what looked like an empty tree. This was a moment of glory for her, to which she returns in the course of the book. <br /><span> </span>Reading her passage, many years ago now, that tree became a moment of glory for me, too; one which I have not forgotten, to which I return, a metaphor against which I measure, or by which I name, other moments – including, of course, my own personal remembered gloriousnesses. The tree, in the book and in my imagination, is both itself and a metaphor for something else. It has become mythic in size, and that way contains magic.<br /><br />It happens that many bright moments occur outside, when alone in nature; and many occur in the little ‘lost’ moments between people. <span><br /><span> </span></span>These events, I realise as I get older, are not the huge dramatic moments of intense revelation or passion, epiphanies, as they seemed to be when I was younger. Instead, they’re often tiny and easily missed; clichéd in their everydayness: a smile from a stranger, a hug from a loved one, a touch on the arm, shared words or silence, extraordinary light on the water, the glimpse of a kingfisher, an unexpected gift through the post, a card with kind words, pony’s breath or dog’s wet nose barely touching your hand, catching the dawn, an instant of total and spontaneous openheartedness. Sometimes you are prepared, maybe in a heightened state of some sort. Usually, though, these moments occur in mundane circumstances – and, let’s face it, much of our life is mundane; yet this, this <i>quotidiennité</i>, is the terrain of miracles. It’s the present moment that we inhabit – the <i>now</i> that is the only time we have. <br /><span> </span>The writer’s job is to pay attention, pay attention, pay attention. Cultivate that kind of looking, and write with intention. Write to add to the positive stories that might help us keep hope, the tiny flame of hope, alive.<br /><br />Slow down. Stay open, stay alive. Stay awake. <br /><span> </span>Writing is a process that never stops. There is no destination; there is only the journeying. Sometimes it works; sometimes you’re off track. You’re always searching for the next step. ‘…It can take a lifetime to convey what you mean, to find the opening,’ says Barry Lopez. ‘You watch, you set it down. Then you try again.’<br /><br />So you find something that inspires you and you let the pen catch fire. Find that moment of glory. Stay alert for it. Catch it out of the corner of your eye as it streams past, and slide it onto the page. Write what you’re passionate about. Really passionate about, deep inside. Let it have soul. Let your words matter. Make them count. Don’t waste them, and don’t underestimate them. Don’t worry whether anyone else cares about your writing. That way, you can’t fail. ‘People are hungry,’ says poet David Whyte; ‘and one good word is bread for a thousand.’<br /><br /><br /><i>© Roselle Angwin 2004</i><br /><br /><br /><b><br /></b></p><p><b><br /></b><br /></p>rosellehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00971482422276765335noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5055598777203654547.post-39036774305303619822022-03-12T15:32:00.003+00:002022-03-12T15:32:46.854+00:00A Tree Full of Birds PART 1<p><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjPRtE634pnvjSprcai8kTz5RuI95BZG82NTCYtuw6Hsd_K0vzESZd-EvObkbYaJKHiMz67Nr6CCjuDsXxPhMfC4XLbmhCo4MPMtW4QaHSYwPF2nlW_gNagxg6bXKaTZiEIC_qA7TWLNfVGhgPFGJALmZP56xUWn9VZntbOkNwp6BWykr2XtHDEzuNY8g=s1326" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1326" data-original-width="884" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjPRtE634pnvjSprcai8kTz5RuI95BZG82NTCYtuw6Hsd_K0vzESZd-EvObkbYaJKHiMz67Nr6CCjuDsXxPhMfC4XLbmhCo4MPMtW4QaHSYwPF2nlW_gNagxg6bXKaTZiEIC_qA7TWLNfVGhgPFGJALmZP56xUWn9VZntbOkNwp6BWykr2XtHDEzuNY8g=w266-h400" width="266" /></a></span></div><p></p><p><span style="font-size: small;">My friends, it's been a long time. I know that. I've been ill, and there has been far too much going on, personally as well as collectively; there is far too much to say; plus big changes are happening in our lives (of which more anon).<br /><br />But for the sake of encouraging those of you who write (and encouraging those of us who do and haven't for a while!), I thought that in these times it might be worth posting part of the final chapter in my book above (published 2005 with Arts Council England support; available in the UK from me). In its way, it's about not giving up. I hope you enjoy it.<br /><br />Part 11 next week.|<br /><br />***</span></p><p></p><p><span style="font-size: small;">EXCERPTED FROM A TREE FULL OF BIRDS: the final chapter in my book <i>Writing the Bright Moment – inspiration & guidance for writers</i>
<br /><br /><b><br />A Tree Full of Birds PART 1</b><br /><br />‘If I were asked what I want to accomplish as a writer, I would say it’s to contribute to a literature of hope... I want to help create a body of stories in which men and women can discover trustworthy patterns...Every story is an act of trust between a writer and a reader; each story, in the end, is social. Whatever a writer sets down can help or harm the community of which he or she is a part...’<br /><i>Barry Lopez</i><br /><br />[...]<br /><br /><br />We know that we need to find a wiser, more sustainable way to live; not just for ourselves, but for the planet as a whole. <br /></span><span style="font-size: small;"><span> </span>What are the tales we tell ourselves? What underlying beliefs and truths do they portray? What stories support our values? How could we build on this? Do the stories in which we immerse ourselves enhance our view of ourselves, each other and life? <br /></span><span style="font-size: small;"><span> </span>Here’s another question: what responsibility does the writer have for what he or she puts into the world? No one wants chocolate-box stories and perpetual epiphany; you can’t make stories about only contented characters in a perfect world. But when did you last see a film that portrayed people relating in a healthy, loving and mature way to each other? What is the attraction of watching TV shows and screenplays that centre on human dysfunction and people behaving badly? <br /><br />What stories do we need? At the end of my first book [written in 1992] I asked this question. Here I am again: nearly twelve years on [2004], I am still asking this same question. [Now, in 2022, it hasn’t changed.] In one way and another this question has been posed throughout this book, too: tacitly, or overtly. <br /></span><span style="font-size: small;"><span> </span>How would it be to read books that support us in being more fully and compassionately human? Ones that give us tools to grow and change; offer us models of functional, healthy patterns of relating – whether to ourselves, to each other, to the wider human sphere or to the planet as a whole, rather than narratives that merely underline how grim ‘reality’ is, and how untrustworthy and self-seeking people are, thus confirming our view of the world and the human condition as basically beyond hope? <br /></span><span style="font-size: small;"><span> </span>Perhaps our diet has become too thin, and we are looking for a different kind of nourishment. We need now stories that offer us healing, offer us the potential of wholeness, of coming through in the end. Empowering stories. Stories that show us human being at its best: its most courageous, generous, kind, loving, compassionate, wise, funny. Stories that celebrate the earth, wilderness, the diversity of nations, the diversity of species. Stories that allow us to imagine a new world order based on empathy, co-operation, kindness, discussion, negotiation, fairness, equality. Stories that celebrate what is green, what is vulnerable, what is innocent, what is childlike, what is wise, what is feminine, what is masculine; stories about co-operation and harmony rather than competition and conflict; about people making wise choices. Stories that celebrate magic, mystery, miracle. Stories that help restore some sort of faith, whatever that may mean for each of us. <br /></span><span style="font-size: small;"><span> </span>I am aware that these things on their own do not make story, or even poetry. But the way we deal with them, and the choices we make, do. I am not suggesting that we pretend all is not how it is. I am not naïve enough as to assume that war will end in my lifetime; that violence will cease to exist; that poverty will be an extinct word; that pollution will be outlawed; that conservation will suddenly become more important to the corporate world than profit. <br /><br />I am not at all suggesting that we pretend pain does not exist. On the contrary. Go to where the pain is. Write about it. Make a story of it. The pain will show you where the work is needed, and it will, in its unfolding onto paper, show you the path for healing. Human life will always be hard, in parts – that is the nature of the egoic life, which sees itself as separate and all-important, that judges and picks and chooses: ‘I like this, but not that. This is acceptable but that isn’t.’. But the stories that matter, the big stories, are always a triumph over these limitations.<br /></span><span style="font-size: small;"><span> </span>It is important not to give up. Human actions matter; they make a difference. Even one person’s weight will make a difference. And who knows which of us will effect the final ‘critical mass’ moment at which a threatened downslide will wobble, pause, and start to right itself? And it is at that critical moment, when we are deepest in the darkness – maybe right now – that we need these stories of hope; when we need a lamp out of the cave. And we need to know we are not alone.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: small;"><span></span>Find something you can really believe in; something that enhances your life; and a group of people who think like you, whether it’s a writing group, or a politically active group, or an evening class, or an online discussion group, or people who like walking out on the land, or are involved in life-enhancing projects in the city. Find a community that supports you in your vision. Maybe they’ll be flesh and blood people. Maybe it’ll be the books of poets or authors writing passionately about things you care about. It’s crucial. Make it the next thing you do. ‘Never doubt that a group of committed individuals can change the world; in fact it’s the only thing which can,’ said anthropologist Margaret Mead. And ‘Better to light a candle than curse the darkness,’ goes another saying.
<br /><br />And again: ‘There is never enough darkness to extinguish a single candle.’ Hold that thought close, especially in these times.
<br /><br />May we together work towards freedom from suffering.<br /><br /><br /><i>© Roselle Angwin 2005–2022<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /></i><br /><br /><br /></span></p>rosellehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00971482422276765335noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5055598777203654547.post-19672169933359336182022-01-19T17:15:00.000+00:002022-01-19T17:15:11.224+00:00Reblog from 2012: the book of beauty<br /><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEiWAYCAv0siheC5y1zDN9ZpzKAiNYlfMc_3o1KN-kzsl4seLSTDAstWFwjumODkl3fdyohGFYX0XYX3IXswYG_MI6pNmTd9Mcx78g3GrY_EauCk9twDlUORHJhdCwkmuWJvjeHPyM--KxBrfQTbxQegRMqEuDRnR0C7019Wbnz9Zgn4bxJR4IzjqdKcRw=s2816" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2112" data-original-width="2816" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEiWAYCAv0siheC5y1zDN9ZpzKAiNYlfMc_3o1KN-kzsl4seLSTDAstWFwjumODkl3fdyohGFYX0XYX3IXswYG_MI6pNmTd9Mcx78g3GrY_EauCk9twDlUORHJhdCwkmuWJvjeHPyM--KxBrfQTbxQegRMqEuDRnR0C7019Wbnz9Zgn4bxJR4IzjqdKcRw=s320" width="320" /></a></div><br />Thinking as I do from time to time about Keats' profoundly simple
statement that 'Truth is beauty and beauty truth' (I'm reminded in part
because it's one of the few ideas couched in poetry that TM rates), it
occurs to me that truth is to the mind what beauty is to the heart; and
how we need both. It's exciting coming across an idea or concept that
seems to have traction, to be of another plane, to convey what we sense
but may not always be able to articulate. It's also exciting, and
inspiring – and essential to the life of the heart – to experience
beauty, through, as we usually do, the senses of the physical body (in
this I include, say, meeting the eyes of another with love for example,
as well as the more obvious access to the manifest beauty of the
physical world).<br /><p></p>
I'm partly saying this because the students on my poetry course have
recently been looking in some depth at Robert Hass' wonderful and
difficult poem 'Meditation at Lagunitas', where, amongst many other
things, he seems to be suggesting that profound human experience, akin
to beauty, is found in the particular, the unique, the individual, the
specific – and in his poem it's the recording of this rather than the
abstract generalised conceptual truths that we feel moving our hearts.
And yet it's against the backdrop of the abstract and eternal that the
particular and transient reveals itself.<br />
<br />
So I'm suggesting that 'truth' is an equivalent to the abstract
'backdrop', where 'beauty' is the matter of the world of the senses.<br />
<br />
And I'm partly saying this too because in the last two weeks I've had
occasion three times to remember the ever-presence of the nearness of
death. In the last few years I've experienced a number of deaths of
people, animals, ways of life that were dear to me; and of course we
experience a perpetual cycle of births and deaths in smaller ways all
the time. These three times, though, were more directly personal
reminders. I've found myself this morning, after a night's sleep,
utterly ecstatic to be outside in all the beauty of our world when
walking the dog this morning. It's always a source of joy to me being
outdoors, no matter what the weather (interior or external), but it's
heightened by the reminders of our transience, isn't it?<br />
<br />
Once again this morning I picked up a book that has lived by my bedside
since I bought it at Glastonbury Festival in 1994. It's a modern book of
hours: <i>Soul of the Earth</i>, by Phil Cousineau. Each page contains a
passage or excerpt from a poem, accompanied by a stunning photo by Eric
Lawton, and each day of the week is given a number of pages according
to the old monastic tradition of praise-singing at set times of the day.<br />
<br />
Here's a paragraph from the introduction: 'Contemplation of beauty is
the consolation of the world. The soul needs the slow absorbing of
beauty just as plants long for the sun and the sea craves the moon. Deep
contemplation of beauty in the scudding clouds over an ancient Mayan
temple, the shimmering blue-white of Vermeer's portrait <i>A Woman in Blue Reading a Letter,</i> the deep black god-tracks of Old English in the hoary pages of <i>Beowulf</i>
is still our most creative human response to the shuddering of the
soul.' He continues: 'And always after every encounter with the wonders
of the world came a further wonder: How can I keep alive the astounding
moments of my life so that I might withstand the turbulence, the
soul-breaking moments?'<br />
<br />
Make a book of beauty. Choose a big hardback notebook – one that you
like the look and feel of – and dedicate it entirely to the collecting
of poems, quotes, phrases, images that move your heart. Keep it by your
bed. Bathe in it often. Allow it to remind you that in all the distress
and suffering in the world the moments of beauty are right here, right
now, too. They can save your life.<br /><br /><br /><br />
<br />
<br />
<br /><br /><br /><br />rosellehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00971482422276765335noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5055598777203654547.post-46040095278129230782022-01-06T12:24:00.002+00:002022-01-06T12:24:33.278+00:00Prose poems: Driving North; and Reed, Eagle, Monk; & the sacred Isle of Iona<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhh3By9yKxjr3qoUbXRaG0JbluKfi-F5bBzhnigbd1q14_-MGH0aCd9cRgxnc869OUq2NmfwnSMUYXsmLcB0faqm_pwn_xMHw4l9ipjdWUpweLKba_0fy6qPRSVkvmjJtMTd-6ZaTq2lwJIvElejQHthpo062kiAxF4DXuyN96L5LvHurRn91WdCZyQAQ=s3648" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2736" data-original-width="3648" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhh3By9yKxjr3qoUbXRaG0JbluKfi-F5bBzhnigbd1q14_-MGH0aCd9cRgxnc869OUq2NmfwnSMUYXsmLcB0faqm_pwn_xMHw4l9ipjdWUpweLKba_0fy6qPRSVkvmjJtMTd-6ZaTq2lwJIvElejQHthpo062kiAxF4DXuyN96L5LvHurRn91WdCZyQAQ=w400-h300" width="400" /></a></div><p></p><p><span style="font-size: small;">This is the first post of the new year – Birch month – and in my mind I've been mulling over all the profound(!) and nature-oriented things I was going to tell you; and tell you I will. Soonish.<br /><br />But for now, already I'm thinking of my Iona weeks in March and April; it seems so short a time since the September and October weeks I spent up there leading my retreats (for the 21st year, minus 2020), and remembered that I was due to have two prose poems – one about the journey to the Island, one about being there – up on Stride magazine. The prose poem is a form I like very much, and I'm currently gathering my many together for a collection.<br /><br />You can read these two here, if you'd like to distract yourself for a few minutes:<br /><br /><a href="http://stridemagazine.blogspot.com/2022/01/two-prose-poems-by-roselle-angwin.html">http://stridemagazine.blogspot.com/2022/01/two-prose-poems-by-roselle-angwin.html<br /><br /><br /><br /></a></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEiPI3el7cjpxmcO7ttyKmDv9ZyK4QBzC42VXAxdKYrFDVSAXugwX0QQk9JoPYSLUxXFtdRzeezsD4GyypR_tEvfcsxCrkrgaMFmg-uAZhnFCujgd3BQ-PxZeHf-EKf5ss4C3fQBIW6eJ71i98CeEhD1C978yX18FG3AXCaqVbEA89MWRVM8KGRQED1XUg=s2048" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1536" data-original-width="2048" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEiPI3el7cjpxmcO7ttyKmDv9ZyK4QBzC42VXAxdKYrFDVSAXugwX0QQk9JoPYSLUxXFtdRzeezsD4GyypR_tEvfcsxCrkrgaMFmg-uAZhnFCujgd3BQ-PxZeHf-EKf5ss4C3fQBIW6eJ71i98CeEhD1C978yX18FG3AXCaqVbEA89MWRVM8KGRQED1XUg=s320" width="320" /></a></span></div><span style="font-size: small;"><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEj72rg_hxogC69S2dTOJRymVVAbVt0tCqsofkPNuBzpBasG0Zf3JNI5ZV-V9rk7yCel4dzgTkHSYKqElypvDRcsl6I4YqqibDeDkyATRqHPJ-qmu0mGLL9GJnD4s4bDX8aW4D-BYsp82zvvmhbh2JCs9VsgtOvBPadlgiBIgG-0p1nhkMxEZr58bOSvoQ=s350" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="263" data-original-width="350" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEj72rg_hxogC69S2dTOJRymVVAbVt0tCqsofkPNuBzpBasG0Zf3JNI5ZV-V9rk7yCel4dzgTkHSYKqElypvDRcsl6I4YqqibDeDkyATRqHPJ-qmu0mGLL9GJnD4s4bDX8aW4D-BYsp82zvvmhbh2JCs9VsgtOvBPadlgiBIgG-0p1nhkMxEZr58bOSvoQ=s320" width="320" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEh9kSicOGuu_svq62Sul3_kbTrywRc_MxdG2jE-UoPUKW5sjWvpP8IxDacm_RU9mGjDRA4TnOz7zn-1vZ_QcW-Kdx124BgAeSRbhhpgiRbGhIg5rNLOsvfVw9WNs0T585V1uA2Q74tSkYVgGqU_v-x1YzXCBqrhuHUCsHoqbyGygKz8KjS0F3ZlTyGalg=s2048" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1536" data-original-width="2048" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEh9kSicOGuu_svq62Sul3_kbTrywRc_MxdG2jE-UoPUKW5sjWvpP8IxDacm_RU9mGjDRA4TnOz7zn-1vZ_QcW-Kdx124BgAeSRbhhpgiRbGhIg5rNLOsvfVw9WNs0T585V1uA2Q74tSkYVgGqU_v-x1YzXCBqrhuHUCsHoqbyGygKz8KjS0F3ZlTyGalg=s320" width="320" /></a></div><br /></span><p></p><p>Wishing you all good things, and a healthy, creative and inspiring 2022.<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /></p>rosellehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00971482422276765335noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5055598777203654547.post-13009415872121041472021-12-22T16:02:00.000+00:002021-12-22T16:02:32.947+00:00the last of the light: winter solstice 2021 (poem)<div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><p style="text-align: left;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhoHuAenEbog9a-OY6Ko2DL54K3-XqBmhUHIuMg6HQE9bexQPELxAJstYFy41VXnMuJ2E60JB5vrmhu1DSoSRS83qyLE1DRp8BVZyyCzgkHhv6DM9ig1aDOGstyT6k9hdGXdWfmkh-CmrA3qYjvGzPKEBOgzlIQuXMTJAhTFedTV3r91FE_6dRc_59ASg=s363" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="363" data-original-width="350" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhoHuAenEbog9a-OY6Ko2DL54K3-XqBmhUHIuMg6HQE9bexQPELxAJstYFy41VXnMuJ2E60JB5vrmhu1DSoSRS83qyLE1DRp8BVZyyCzgkHhv6DM9ig1aDOGstyT6k9hdGXdWfmkh-CmrA3qYjvGzPKEBOgzlIQuXMTJAhTFedTV3r91FE_6dRc_59ASg=s320" width="309" /></a></div><br /> <br /><p></p><p style="margin-left: 80px; text-align: left;"><b>The Stillness of Trees</b><br /><i>winter solstice 2021</i><br /><br /><br />After the owl has scratched white lines<br />on the gathering dusk<br />After the soup the mince pies<br />the warmth of companionship<br />after these dry months<br />After the lit tree<br /><br />We carry our lanterns into the dark wood<br />in silence each lighting the way <br />for the one behind<br />Make a circle round the fire<br />taste the lichen gin<br />make a libation<br /><br />After this I lean into the stillness<br />of trees think of the one yellow leaf<br />holding firm at the tip of the thirteenth<br />apple tree which I read as both promise<br />and symbol think of how<br /><br />persistence and resilience take a yielding shape<br />trusting in the dying and rebirth cycle<br />without question think of how hard<br />this is as human think how much<br />we still have to learn.<br /><br /><br /><i>© Roselle Angwin<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /></i><br /></p>rosellehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00971482422276765335noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5055598777203654547.post-48143007389367392372021-12-20T18:03:00.001+00:002021-12-20T18:03:46.806+00:00November's mini-sagas<p><span style="font-family: georgia;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEi_X0uK45Fmu26CkyJDwQQghTRcw74p3whDY3GjovCH3QsXZoRgh289LPxTK8mECvpn-eo4n2hyqtZ0FTLlm7uuHhX92kTtqxbsEhAqaZzKHILqD_NHAofpMFlWLbnXVqxrUFKl38dumwxVJLpe1fWkRXK_otX4vQTHSWMbfqJCYXWnTqDge4-AwxkR4Q=s1280" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="725" data-original-width="1280" height="181" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEi_X0uK45Fmu26CkyJDwQQghTRcw74p3whDY3GjovCH3QsXZoRgh289LPxTK8mECvpn-eo4n2hyqtZ0FTLlm7uuHhX92kTtqxbsEhAqaZzKHILqD_NHAofpMFlWLbnXVqxrUFKl38dumwxVJLpe1fWkRXK_otX4vQTHSWMbfqJCYXWnTqDge4-AwxkR4Q=s320" width="320" /></a></div><span style="font-size: small;"><br />When I send out a <a href="https://roselle-angwin.co.uk/" target="_blank">Fire in the Head</a> newsletter, I've taken recently to offering a mini-competition. The prize is a book, but the point of the competition is to keep the pens or cursors of the many lovely writers who've worked with me in the past moving, especially during a time when it's hard to attend courses in person. (I will be returning with some more online courses in 2022.)<br /><br />The latest one in November was a prompt to write what I called a 'mini-saga' with beginning, middle and end all contained in no more than 200 words. My stipulation was that it should in some way, no matter how tangentially or briefly, refer to trees. The idea behind this prompt came from a competition I ran as part of a small Dartmoor literary festival I used to organise many years ago. I've never forgotten one of the winners: the whole of the Trojan wars retold in 200 words.<br /></span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size: small;">'Mini-saga' is a bit of a misnomer in this current competition, though I haven't found an alternative. Really, mini-saga should refer indeed to some epic story, like the Trojan wars. Never mind though: it did get some people writing.<br /><br />As always, I struggled to pick a winner. Four stories rose to the surface in the end, and the truth is I could have chosen any one of them. All of them had something to commend them. Here they are, with the writers' names and my brief commentary:<br /><br /><br />THE WEAVER’S MAGIC<br /><br />Deep through the night of dark blackness when all slept, save for the sparkling stars illuminating a way, a mystery unfolded. Someone spun such a complex pattern of intricacy and beauty across the cover of firs and berries, that it was impossible not to be awed. A force had stolen in through that silent darkness, creating immense power and strength. And whatever were to fall against it resistance would be impossible.<br /><br />Then the freezing air caught up each suspended strand of woven thread, all was engulfed as magical white tightened its hold, drawing taught all in its wake. As a new day emerged, the sun rose to shine, and the mists drew away, leaving life to unfold in its usual daily habit! And the hunter knew it was time to withdraw, no capture yet made… Eyes rushing looking down, all failed to witness the wonder of the night’s magic.<br /><br />But suddenly marvelling, new eyes caught the sparkle dancing, they paid attention. Who had created such craft? Alas, the gardeners already cutting, destroyed for ever those unseen magical threads. And a larder was empty, no-one saw the destruction they’d caused. Who knew what talent of weaving might ever again emerge? <br /><br />© Thea Bailey November 2021<br /><br /><br /><i>Thea Bailey wrote a beautiful and lyrical piece that drew together how easily the small but beautiful is overlooked and even trashed, and the ‘weaver’s magic’ destroyed. (The weaver being both spider and a metaphor.) Look at this great opening line: ‘Deep through the night of dark blackness when all slept, save for the sparkling stars illuminating a way, a mystery unfolded.’ Somehow Thea made a mere 200 words feel like a substantial story.<br /><br /><br />*<br /><br /></i>CHANNELLING LEWIS CARROLL<br /><br />Once upon a time, in a shiny part of this lovely land, happily a-gyring and a-gimbling, lived the little locals. Music lulled their sleepy woodland groves –<br /><br />BUT monsters were reputed to stalk the deepest forests - the Secretive Jubjub Bird, the Fiercely Frumious Bandersnatch, the Totally Terrifying Jabberwock!<br /><br />Our princely hero, (listen well, my Beamish Boy!), grasped his fabled sword and, fully-armoured, bravely left the Palace, seeking to slay the fearsome, flame-eyed monster.<br /><br />Princey entered the tulgiest part of the wood, hunting high and hunting low until, iffing and uffing slightly, he rested his weary body in the shade of the Tumtum tree.<br /><br />"What's that I hear?!" He caught up his blade and snicker-snack! Off came the head of the unsuspecting Jabberwock, as it came a-whiffling between the trees... <br /><br />Grasping the gory head, leaving the body dead, our hero hurtled lickety-spit through the wildest woods and galumphed-up to beat Callooh-Callay on the Palace gates!<br /><br />"Oh what is this, my Beamish Boy?! Have you triumphed over adversity and restored peace to our Kingdom! Come to my arms, come sing the frabjous news!"<br /><br />And we all lived happily ever after, a-gyring and a-gimbling in the mimsiest of Borogroves...<br /><br />© Janey Thompson November 2021<br /><br /><br /><i>Janey Thompson made me smile with her ‘Channelling Lewis Carroll’ and her version of the Jabberwocky – a humorous and tight little piece. I loved the verbs – some created by LC but some I think by Janey herself. This was an original approach to my topic.<br /><br /></i><br />*</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size: small;">(UNTITLED) <br /></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size: small;">The battle was over; the Kings of the land were dead. Pyres of discarded corpses smouldered as the victorious took their riches downstream. Wind swept across the open space and found no answer, as only the emptiness of death lived here. <br /><br />A young girl emerged from the surrounding trees. She had witnessed the battle and felt the pain of loss. She came to stand where the earth had been scoured during the fight and pushed her bare feet and hands into the earth. Her tears fell.<br /><br />Years passed. Many seasons came and went until a warrior came upon the clearing. She struck her silvery sword fiercely into the earth. For she too had lost ancestors in this place and silently channelled her rage in the only way she knew. She gripped the soil, sensing a need in her to make this place her own. <br /><br />More years passed. Others had followed the warrior here and life returned. One day an old woman walked within. She stood before the warrior who towered over her, cascading tendrils of hair flowing in the wind. She thanked this soul who had renewed the Earth. Her tears fell on the Silver Birch.<br /><br />© Claire Brown November 2021<br /><br /><br /><i>Claire Brown wrote a fierce and beautiful story about the brutal logging of the Kings of the Forest, in which the feminine principle, in the shape of the queenly Silver Birch (opening tree in my Wheel of the Year tree calendar), after the ravages of the logging companies, sets her footsteps towards the healing of the land (Birch is a 'pioneer species' colonising new land for other trees to follow). After the desolation comes new life and restored Wasteland via the women in the story. This one really speaks to me. Claire has some strong lines: 'Wind swept across the open space and found no answer, as only the emptiness of death lived here.’ This story too feels so much bigger than its length suggests; it’s also a bit archetypal.<br /><br /><br />*</i></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size: small;">WINDING WOOD<br /><i><br /></i>“Mama,” she asked when she was small, “why is it called the Winding Wood?”<br /> And Mama told her it was for the path that winds through the trees, and that winding path is the one she must always take.<br /> Now that she’s grown the rule irks her. Her friends abide by it but she slips off, skips through the trees and then waits, laughing, as they take the longer way.<br /> She goes to the wood on her own – another rule carelessly laid aside – and the sound of the trees moving in the wind is like a voice calling <i>Come and dance with us</i>. And she dances, winding among oak, ash and beech until she remembers the time and dances back to the path, and home.<br /> She wakes to the tree-voices in the night and slips out in her nightdress, running into the woods, dancing – certain the trees are dancing too.<br /> Another tree-voice – a rowan, berry-bright – whispers, Come close, touch my skin, then, Let me feel your skin. She sheds her nightdress, leans naked against the trunk. The leaves caress her; the branches wind round her like a lover’s arms.<br /> She’s lost to Mama. But in the moonlight, she still dances…<br /><br />© November 2021 Caro Johnson<br /><br /><br /><i>In the end, I chose Caro Johnson’s ‘Winding Wood’. I think it’s because of the apparent simplicity. The story reads like a fairy tale that holds a key, as well as ‘everywoman’s tale’ - there’s an undercurrent that feels autobiographical, but also more universal and ambiguous. Central to it are two themes: leaving home and finding one’s own true path despite the various voices that try to hold you back, and finding home among the trees (in this case the Rowan). The journey of individuation. Read it again, though. The simplicity is deceptive: do you too feel the undercurrent? A somewhat Otherworldly undercurrent?<br /><br /><br /></i>My thanks to all four of the writers above. <i><br /></i><br /><br /><br /><i><br /> </i></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size: small;"><i> </i><br /> <br /><br /></span></span></p>rosellehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00971482422276765335noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5055598777203654547.post-9159060474621052662021-12-08T16:59:00.004+00:002021-12-08T17:42:28.092+00:00Ragbag: cultivating the land inside<h3 style="text-align: center;"> <br /></h3><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><h3><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEj8Q_otpOiLK1uQU1Y1ObW0fdAEDrxtkG5omG7Aj2om33jxooOHveg-kTGbK5m4z8OwTx-pQfi7goA5EePD7Q4Lxgh81PtaM7pIEq2XYXAvk9HtpyDO4X5vqflh0tpI3Hz_7Q-eSLy574YzpuWicgnvMBJ-y66E_tMe1Xmwkvjbk7h4q-Wba0f9fW-F0Q=s250" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="188" data-original-width="250" height="241" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEj8Q_otpOiLK1uQU1Y1ObW0fdAEDrxtkG5omG7Aj2om33jxooOHveg-kTGbK5m4z8OwTx-pQfi7goA5EePD7Q4Lxgh81PtaM7pIEq2XYXAvk9HtpyDO4X5vqflh0tpI3Hz_7Q-eSLy574YzpuWicgnvMBJ-y66E_tMe1Xmwkvjbk7h4q-Wba0f9fW-F0Q=w320-h241" width="320" /></a></h3></div><h3><br />'What we need is existential creativity...'</h3><p style="text-align: left;">'There is a time for hope and there is a time for realism. But what is needed now is beyond hope and realism. This is a time when we ought to dedicate ourselves to bringing about the greatest shift in human consciousness and the way we live... It is now time for us to be the most creative we have ever been, the most far-sighted, the most practical, the most conscious and selfless. The stakes have never been, and will never be, higher... For we are on the verge of losing this most precious and beautiful of worlds, a miracle in all the universe, a home for the evolution of souls, a little paradise here in the richness of space, where we are meant to live and grow and be happy, but which we are day by day turning into a barren stone in space.' <i>Ben Okri, The Guardian, 13.11.21<br /><br /><br />*<br /><br /></i></p><h3 style="text-align: left;">'My real work is getting to know, inside out, my home ground.' <br /></h3><p style="text-align: left;">'The soil is dark, the wind is red, and my dreams are snake green with long white roots. At the back of my mouth, way behind memory and longing, is the taste of the ground I garden every day, grit that lingers on my tongue and tells me who I am.</p><p style="text-align: left;">'Every particle of soil, every atom of earth, is alive with mystery and potential... </p><p style="text-align: left;">'Every soil is a long winding story told in the voices of water and inhaled and exhaled air; of the stone-slow cycles of rock itself becoming soil; and in the voices of the swarming masses of micro-organisms feeding, breeding and dying on fertile dust, creating new life out of their own bodies made from exploded stone.</p><p style="text-align: left;">'After all these years of working the land, I am made of the soil and water of my home place. I have become these elements and they have become me.</p><p style="text-align: left;">'The best gardeners I know continue to find time both to sit still and to walk the margins of their land... When I slow down sufficiently to actually arrive in the garden, I see that everything around me is constantly changing... And when I really slow down, I see that garden and gardener are changing too, ripening and decaying with every breath.' <i>Wendy Johnson, Zen Buddhist gardener<br /><br /></i></p><p style="text-align: left;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhY-zYbKbjHnf9ZI2pIpiUZSzFy5yGcVGkS-JPEHRjm3ynHUUGaAiyLkA2aZslhO4yjt4NR-lQ9vj5IuaD70dJ1UT8kPhz1FdVLJSIS4e2aYpm6_dQgVB87UNmVlI55NZVKCCS2GsO0DC9lQeFanOQtW2NJWpR_seE3kNsirT4E8uz3jxPu34w1foQuvg=s1600" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1200" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhY-zYbKbjHnf9ZI2pIpiUZSzFy5yGcVGkS-JPEHRjm3ynHUUGaAiyLkA2aZslhO4yjt4NR-lQ9vj5IuaD70dJ1UT8kPhz1FdVLJSIS4e2aYpm6_dQgVB87UNmVlI55NZVKCCS2GsO0DC9lQeFanOQtW2NJWpR_seE3kNsirT4E8uz3jxPu34w1foQuvg=s320" width="240" /></a></div><br /><i><br /></i>*<br /><br /><p></p><h3 style="text-align: left;">Cultivating the ground of metta<br /><br /></h3><div style="text-align: left;">I have a Buddhist practice on which I sometimes focus during meditation. In true Buddhist spirit, it is both extremely hard and extremely simple.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">'Metta' is loving-kindness meditation. Before you stick your fingers down your throat, it is neither New-Agey nor simplistic, though it seems both. <br /><br />Allied to the Tibetan practice of tonglen, in which you breathe in another's suffering, it is a breathing out of love and kindness towards someone else. <br /><br />You may incorporate phrases into the meditation, all the while holding that person in mind/heart. Currently, I say:</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">'May you [name], be free of suffering and sorrow.</div><div style="text-align: left;">May you be free of fear and anxiety.</div><div style="text-align: left;">May you be well. May you be safe. May you be happy.'<br /><br />Of course it's not a magic cure-all. However, it can't hurt to wish goodwill towards others; and who knows how far such a vibe will travel. Its real benefit, though, is the softening of the heart of the meditator, and goodness knows we need that these days.<br /><br />That's the easy bit. Now try turning that on yourself! This is my current practice:<br /><br />'May I be free of opinions and judgement.</div><div style="text-align: left;">May I be free of suffering and sorrow.</div><div style="text-align: left;">May I be free of fear and anxiety.<br />May I be well. May I be safe. May I be happy.'</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">For many of us, especially those of us who were brought up Catholics, the first sentence is easy (we know how to flagellate ourselves: mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa). And I <i>am</i> full of opinions and judgements, so I can admit/say that fairly readily (I'm not the only one in our family, but let's leave that on one side, at least in the moment of vowing to try to be less judgemental!). <br /><br />But to<i> </i>receive our own love and care?<i> </i>To <i>be happy? </i>How hard we in the West find that, especially if we let the world in to break our hearts.<br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">And it's oft-quoted in therapeutic circles: how can we truly love another if we don't know how to love ourselves?<br /><br /><br /><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgCjfh8mhf3BYewlMp1JTkxqVAbtpcRExMoaUv0OS_YGz3LBEN5A_bd2cy4nBzQFPF7wL1nTmnxYFZBhHoMCag-hp8kWhNmMbJBBtHqkdE63pyYjg9ogpFHwl4Abe3gM5lXPLVEpA0qsAtHPFIwOGQVKI7RokfZWwONXhhSxq4_ks_9idzXkBSRyqZm0w=s2048" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1150" data-original-width="2048" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgCjfh8mhf3BYewlMp1JTkxqVAbtpcRExMoaUv0OS_YGz3LBEN5A_bd2cy4nBzQFPF7wL1nTmnxYFZBhHoMCag-hp8kWhNmMbJBBtHqkdE63pyYjg9ogpFHwl4Abe3gM5lXPLVEpA0qsAtHPFIwOGQVKI7RokfZWwONXhhSxq4_ks_9idzXkBSRyqZm0w=s320" width="320" /></a></div><br /><h3 style="text-align: left;"><br /></h3><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div>rosellehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00971482422276765335noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5055598777203654547.post-54231716954549073202021-12-06T17:29:00.003+00:002021-12-07T11:47:27.067+00:00Ragbag: The land outside (to be followed by the land inside)<p><b>THE BIRDS, THE TREES, THE PLANTS<br /><br /><br />Swallows</b><br /><br />October has come; autumn storms <br />sweep winds over the island. On the fence<br />by Oran’s Chapel – he of the Song –<br />two new swallows, so young they barely<br />have tails, crouch determinedly, ignoring<br />their parents’ harsh chivvying to fly, fly,<br /><br />be ready to migrate. Late brood; the last <br />of the flock to leave. So many things these days <br />break my heart. Weeks’-old bodies <br />against an ocean, a continent; and I here<br />witnessing, knowing they may not make it – <br />and there is nothing, nothing, I can do.<br /><i><br />© Roselle Angwin</i><br /></p><p>No surprise that the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/dec/01/britain-endangered-birds-red-list-rises-to-70-species" target="_blank"><i>Guardian</i></a> has reported so many more birds entering the red list. Astonishingly, swallows are not yet on it, though I've seen the migrant population here in Devon diminish year on year on year. Swifts and house martins, heartbreakingly, have found their way on to that list; each time I've seen a barn conversion in the area I've known that a few more martin and swallow families have lost their ancestral homes; and a barn owl or two, probably, as well.<br /><br />I have to remind myself that it's not all bad news, all of the time: the white-tailed sea eagle population in Scotland is rising a little; and indeed I saw one a couple of times this autumn on Iona.</p><p></p><p>Here in the courtyard the winter birds gather in the dawn, appearing as we come downstairs before daybreak, shadowy forms hopping onto the doorstep awaiting seed. Here are the dunnocks, one of whom is exceptionally tame; the two robins, one of which chases every other bird away, though the two bullfinches hold their own. Here are the various tits. The adult male blackbird is followed still by his now-mature son, as he has been for two full years. I can only imagine that since his mate, the son's mother, and the son's two just-fledged sisters, all of whom were taken by a sparrowhawk (the mother) and a buzzard (the siblings) in the same week and right by their cliffside nest outside the kitchen French windows, some kind of maturation and development has been arrested. Perhaps there is a comfort now in numbers for both of them, even if that number is only two.<br /><br />I walked past a bench that neighbours have planted by a little stream the other day, close to the lane. I saw they'd installed a beautiful new sculpture attached to the end of the bench: a heron, lifelike and detailed to the extent I could practically feel the velvet delicacy of its engraved feathery coverts. Then it flew away.<br /><br />Each winter little egrets make their way upstream and inland from the Dart where there is now a small permanent population, to perch in the big oak near 'our' brook. There was a winter when TM and I were walking beside the brook below our house, in the valley. I had just said to TM 'I haven't seen the little egrets here at all this winter'; and one flew up literally two metres ahead of our footsteps. Today, I was thinking the same thing as I walked the dogs, and then saw three of them stalking across the wet meadow.<br /><br /><br /><b>Oak by the Brook</b><br /><br />When the great oak fell in the woods<br />the valley shuddered and we felt <br />the aftershock in our feet for weeks.<br />When the great oak fell, fifty families<br />of mice fled, and the pairs of woodpeckers.<br /><br />Nuthatches went into exile, and a hundred<br />thousand insects. The heron and winter’s<br />white egrets no longer have a lookout<br />over the minnow brook; no perch<br />for summer’s turtle doves. Last week<br /><br />a thousand bees hummed in its canopy;<br />this winter, the jays will scavenge for<br />five thousand fewer acorns. The valley <br />is a wound. The valley is a mouth with <br />a missing front tooth. The valley is Munch’s <br /><br />mouth, open and forever a silent scream. <br />When we walk where the oak was we too <br />are now silent. The great oak fell; the valley <br />shuddered; we feel its echoes still.<i> <br /><br />© Roselle Angwin </i>(from <a href="https://roselle-angwin.co.uk/books/3547-2/" target="_blank"><i>A Spell in the Forest</i></a>)<br /><br /><br /></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEiHrYEL2FkoBJlJejAeAJOyl9IegDlKfzWa2d1ZD_xCNEhbvUr15a2z65GUwoWn24ktr1kJV-W47nH5GSer8EL-JJGe7sv4Ykr_iiIehrh0x3stBesMUSUbNk-SMn7IHdur07CsC-WqLvCU6N4Vzqc88hpbYA66r-mGBwdbZBFKgK4swU4SlBk9R2VytQ=s2048" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1536" data-original-width="2048" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEiHrYEL2FkoBJlJejAeAJOyl9IegDlKfzWa2d1ZD_xCNEhbvUr15a2z65GUwoWn24ktr1kJV-W47nH5GSer8EL-JJGe7sv4Ykr_iiIehrh0x3stBesMUSUbNk-SMn7IHdur07CsC-WqLvCU6N4Vzqc88hpbYA66r-mGBwdbZBFKgK4swU4SlBk9R2VytQ=s320" width="320" /></a></div><p><br />Speaking of jays (as the poem was), they can gather up to 5000 acorns each year, burying them for overwintering, and noting, apparently, landmarks to find them again. The garden has been deprived lately of that enormous and smile-making coarse racket they make; I'm wondering whether they've had to go a lot further afield for their winter stock. This year has been whatever the opposite of a 'mast year' is: last year was a mast year, at least in the UK, where a huge abundance of nuts, beech mast and acorns was produced. This is often followed by a year when the pickings for jays and squirrels are more slender, although this year they've been exceptionally slender.<br /><br />What we have had an abundance of in the courtyard though are these: tiny pale green discs, like sequins, in their hundreds of thousands. They are 'spangles', created by oak gall wasps, and each spangle contains a larva. Not sure they're the choice foodstuff of jays and squirrels, however.<br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjpODsLZcls6meUPj_fRRCKKEO8fYtQJF-tRGNW9718tGOO0B35VQO0hcLCDqTPDHYbH7LAqMRVfgm1oFoWQXZHaWL4gZUcsrU3EVaG3h6kzw-X4K0xatu6nVD__LytUUrvbTG2js6sQepUEsq2oQ7pNnE6RR8UTSUbzVNzrLVH2C2RZ52pLmqqOIWMAw=s2048" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1536" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjpODsLZcls6meUPj_fRRCKKEO8fYtQJF-tRGNW9718tGOO0B35VQO0hcLCDqTPDHYbH7LAqMRVfgm1oFoWQXZHaWL4gZUcsrU3EVaG3h6kzw-X4K0xatu6nVD__LytUUrvbTG2js6sQepUEsq2oQ7pNnE6RR8UTSUbzVNzrLVH2C2RZ52pLmqqOIWMAw=s320" width="240" /></a></div><p></p><p>It's been an odd growing year. The early part was cold and wet, and the 'season' was late starting. Our beans, courgettes and squashes all failed: a shock, as our borlotti, cobra and pea beans are normally easy and prolific, and, frozen, provide much of our winter protein. I say all the beans failed, but actually the three successive sowings of broad beans (one over-wintering) were all productive, including the new red-podded variety. I've been trialling a no-dig bed (rather against TM's sense that only a bed that's been <i>properly dug over </i>is a suitable bed), and felt a bit smug, as where all the many greenhouse-sown beans, later planted out into the dig beds, failed, my very late sowing of borlotti beans in the no-dig went from bean sown direct into soil to fruiting bean in just five weeks.<br /><br />After last year's apple harvest, enough to keep TM, who eats at least six apples a day, in fruit until March 2021, this yautumn, despite plenty of blossom and young fruits in early spring, we had not a single one. Not one. I guess, as with nutting trees, a mast year costs the tree, and it hasn't the same energy the following season. In this case, spring gales didn't help.<br /><br />An unexpected success, though, were my sweet potatoes. Here's the first one I dug, a 'beauregard', a perfectly decent size, and very tasty indeed:<br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgmdF4vqpVPdaFZOFluVQZVmWr6w2ZGWKQC2VZLEum0AsDEkFElJe2ugpjj0SP356LvCRjRuugo5DKRF6AmQOroGu-iXaL6lYvdYK_Uhrrna1NRYW8bRVqg1qt8qbMNjbOw267Ndq8JpGcr3DB-jswnk2UjSN816T9qArzyZj5A8RfrTrAF82rtQkKM7A=s2048" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1536" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgmdF4vqpVPdaFZOFluVQZVmWr6w2ZGWKQC2VZLEum0AsDEkFElJe2ugpjj0SP356LvCRjRuugo5DKRF6AmQOroGu-iXaL6lYvdYK_Uhrrna1NRYW8bRVqg1qt8qbMNjbOw267Ndq8JpGcr3DB-jswnk2UjSN816T9qArzyZj5A8RfrTrAF82rtQkKM7A=s320" width="240" /></a></div><br />There were a few other big ones, but most of the rest were small. Still, the dogs loved them.<br /><br />On the other hand, I'm delighted at just how many dishes we had from one butternut squash: butternut, lentil and coconut soup for 12 people; butternut hummus; roasted butternut rings; and a topping of squash again for the dogs' dinner. (And yes, my plant-based cookbook is nearly ready to go off and seek its fortune. I just need to double-check all the research into animal welfare, environmental benefits, land use benefits, health benefits and so on.)<br /><br />Now it's dusk: chilly, clear, periwinkle blue turning cobalt then Quink. In the lanes, there are still a few campion hanging on, and yes periwinkles: almost all of those left the palest starriest large white-lilac ones, escapees.<br /><br />Over the stone wall edging my bee-garden my prostrate rosemary, one of my very favourite plants and quite an amazing medicinal herb, tumbles its new lavender blue flowers, taking over from where my enormous bush rosemary has left off. <br /><br />Soon, the witch hazel catkins will light the little tree golden; till then, spindle berries garland the dusk.<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhUMfyMqXxX9xcBrwL3SdgYQoYCnN-9kohSJZeZG9oTbAnlj2bzhBG8EebIWgj4XUOfBgrkj5ES2T4kmVX0QBkJRlAH12weQg4AvWPjx8MwheXlxNF925M8f2M3oWoVqNMKtaLABM1bPM5C4SdT9-7UgTysgvse9y4mXu9_IsihcoUhpXx09LHxH4tv_w=s1794" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1794" data-original-width="1266" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhUMfyMqXxX9xcBrwL3SdgYQoYCnN-9kohSJZeZG9oTbAnlj2bzhBG8EebIWgj4XUOfBgrkj5ES2T4kmVX0QBkJRlAH12weQg4AvWPjx8MwheXlxNF925M8f2M3oWoVqNMKtaLABM1bPM5C4SdT9-7UgTysgvse9y4mXu9_IsihcoUhpXx09LHxH4tv_w=s320" width="226" /></a></div><p><br /><br /></p><p></p><p><i>© Roselle Angwin 2021</i><br /><br /></p>rosellehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00971482422276765335noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5055598777203654547.post-71107171394886527952021-11-12T11:22:00.000+00:002022-01-19T17:02:21.604+00:0020th year of my ISLANDS OF THE HEART retreat weeks, Isle of Iona, autumn 2021<p>At last, after a 2-year COVID break, these <a href="https://roselle-angwin.co.uk/week-long-residentials/islands-of-the-heart-iona/" target="_blank">holistic writing retreats</a> went ahead. Such joy. Some differences; some similarities; two lovely groups; spectacular (as always) island.</p><p>I don't know what's happened to Blogger – the photos are posted in the reverse order to the unfolding of the days and the order in which I posted them! Never mind. Scroll back in time.<br /><br />All these photos are mine, except the wild geese, by Caroline Harmsworth (thank you, Caroline, for your permission).<br /></p><p><br /></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjIWqS5HdpcJFa9GpzGzdS_YQSa6AYbQRo5L5McfoKje3fLgUF7mkB_DeSVkb_ZIsYwKH5IQuMTBNqftpHTOtVy2M5RJEiZf4qfrJoteJnKicGhaOMBboXToyCdckkNA_pUjMyQ5Z5S2d4g/s2048/caroline%2527s+wild+geese+at+the+north+end.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1536" data-original-width="2048" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjIWqS5HdpcJFa9GpzGzdS_YQSa6AYbQRo5L5McfoKje3fLgUF7mkB_DeSVkb_ZIsYwKH5IQuMTBNqftpHTOtVy2M5RJEiZf4qfrJoteJnKicGhaOMBboXToyCdckkNA_pUjMyQ5Z5S2d4g/s320/caroline%2527s+wild+geese+at+the+north+end.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; 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text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhA46NXRZCjbpU_bKkV-m_Fs95LnsqWrEwX1ddcxSoI2zWDq8OLcP7TSYCTHTl_aTb3BZouMGcrlQgSKFP9FzaE65QpJ_qfq-2mqEwjpJZOqrhcVhGBvkVN30qeaJqBMeSffgZQUa-aciop/s2048/iona+dawn+2+2021.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1144" data-original-width="2048" height="179" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhA46NXRZCjbpU_bKkV-m_Fs95LnsqWrEwX1ddcxSoI2zWDq8OLcP7TSYCTHTl_aTb3BZouMGcrlQgSKFP9FzaE65QpJ_qfq-2mqEwjpJZOqrhcVhGBvkVN30qeaJqBMeSffgZQUa-aciop/s320/iona+dawn+2+2021.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEicdk80_U49ItXEXxHj-F7qD5shMXk9C8yauRHY0ram2gZFO__K5_MuWSXfDjSUVZZ6mWWX1vQ-QfgtvUuv4IymxPRmlfM_fcz6rD8yPGyihkoWAnIcaEVHS7ql9-lpz3Gf7jKzUhFpIJqE/s2048/iona+dawn+0.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1242" data-original-width="2048" height="194" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEicdk80_U49ItXEXxHj-F7qD5shMXk9C8yauRHY0ram2gZFO__K5_MuWSXfDjSUVZZ6mWWX1vQ-QfgtvUuv4IymxPRmlfM_fcz6rD8yPGyihkoWAnIcaEVHS7ql9-lpz3Gf7jKzUhFpIJqE/s320/iona+dawn+0.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhk2QOCx1xrpcsUrYXIMPiPx-rv6rVBvVkz4otfM7YnKafNEJKFFqQzEjLyH1gB0V0_BqF7hz2BKhbQheLBmfoeBW-wpkVYFwfaK0lNcfS6d91V8l4cPhbz6Ek82Bn5809D1K7ERUnbbqIG/s2048/iona+dawn.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1536" data-original-width="2048" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhk2QOCx1xrpcsUrYXIMPiPx-rv6rVBvVkz4otfM7YnKafNEJKFFqQzEjLyH1gB0V0_BqF7hz2BKhbQheLBmfoeBW-wpkVYFwfaK0lNcfS6d91V8l4cPhbz6Ek82Bn5809D1K7ERUnbbqIG/s320/iona+dawn.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEje0OxcEoxb1Eds9VovYZSamq06C9gmzNwhaaTY1aX7iDXXO7qoPBGEr8bVmR7xPqqCOED4rHCrm08TdCoGI8YXpzdxpwG7ZeK-cSsrf_c0CjznAOhMqNgeHswv4c3gNIq9dgi_EXDt7Z5N/s2048/rainbow+lismore.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1965" data-original-width="2048" height="307" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEje0OxcEoxb1Eds9VovYZSamq06C9gmzNwhaaTY1aX7iDXXO7qoPBGEr8bVmR7xPqqCOED4rHCrm08TdCoGI8YXpzdxpwG7ZeK-cSsrf_c0CjznAOhMqNgeHswv4c3gNIq9dgi_EXDt7Z5N/s320/rainbow+lismore.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><br /><p></p><p><br /></p><p>Photos 1 © Caroline Harmsworth September 21</p><p>Rest © Roselle Angwin September 21</p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p>rosellehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00971482422276765335noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5055598777203654547.post-59818867739628888332021-09-21T16:44:00.001+01:002021-09-21T16:44:41.873+01:00these bright moments<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgFqDMovoU-sxpbfTN3QSEeta-DZsbHdSJhzie8zvLg2QY2TT87Fq7Z1lo4F-AJY7ymlusxHUOSHF1Rx-OCXr4sFoXLMePMLisQ5aNqxyUt-wRdo4eyp9x1C02GtP76kdV-tUNhxxqRslkA/s350/day-lilies+web.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="263" data-original-width="350" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgFqDMovoU-sxpbfTN3QSEeta-DZsbHdSJhzie8zvLg2QY2TT87Fq7Z1lo4F-AJY7ymlusxHUOSHF1Rx-OCXr4sFoXLMePMLisQ5aNqxyUt-wRdo4eyp9x1C02GtP76kdV-tUNhxxqRslkA/s320/day-lilies+web.jpg" width="320" /></a></span></div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /><br />In my last FIRE IN THE HEAD newsletter, I offered a mini-competition, as I usually do, the prize being one of my books.<br /><br />This one was for the briefest of brief recordings, in writing, of a moment of presence: 7 short passages that expressed a passing beauty, delight, and/or surprise.<br /><br />When it came to it, I could not choose between 3 submissions. I think you'll see why when you read them. Each has that quality of mindfulness I was looking for: attention to and submersion in the present and passing moment, and a glimpse of something larger conveyed within the brevity.<br /><br />Thank you, Barbara, Gabrielle and Sheena for writing these delights – they help offset all the horrors we all know too much about right now; a reminder that the earth still turns and that beauty heals the heart.<br /><br /><br /><br /><i>Seven short prose pieces<br />Early Autumn / N.E.Fife<br /></i><br />I<br />Desiring a moon-fix, I leave it late to take out to the compost the day’s peelings and tea-leaves. I scan the sky. There’s no moon to be seen. Darkness envelops. Slowly, the stars appear: pinpricks revealing light from beyond.<br /><br />II<br />I wasn’t expecting rain. After days, weeks, of dry, I waken to damp earth. All along the box, cobwebs hang, an overnight handiwork of hammocks. They are holding the moisture, minute drops around the edges, a glistening mass towards the centre.<br /><br />III<br />Do you remember the rainbows, on windowpanes and doorsteps? Ours leant against the gate, a discarded roof-slate, drawn with wax crayons from years ago. Those early months, we were fearful and in shock; the rainbows gave us comfort. Things are different now and the slate hangs on the potting shed. I didn’t want it abandoned. This morning, approaching past runner beans and michaelmas daisies, out of the blue the slate appears icon-like: Tender Mother of God, with loving-kindness showing the way.<br /><br />IV<br />Contrary to what you imagine, it’s best to mow first thing; so here I am in the orchard, the sun tipping the tree-tops and my scythe sharpened and gleaming. It cuts through the grass like butter, a steady joyful rhythmic swish…halted suddenly by a tiny sound of squealing. There below, at the blade’s edge, a yearling frog scrambles away, panicked and I fear in pain, desperately trying to bury itself in the reapings.<br /><br />V<br />The rooks have started to gather again, late afternoons, in the ash. They’re a rough noisy backdrop as I pick apples from the espalier against the wall. The air is warm and still. There’s the rustle of leaves, dusty and beginning to brittle, and the crack of the snap, as I twist off the stalks. There’s the muffled gentle placing of the fruit in the basket. Occasionally there’s a thud, when an apple dislodges from its branch and drops to the ground.<br /><br />VI<br />The unfurling of the lily leaves, sure and steady, is a source of delight as I sit by the pond with Friends, on yet another Sunday morning, in these still-sparse post-lockdown days. I’m reflecting on the Advice Attend to what love requires of you. I feel admonished, daunted, feeble. Then I recall a Friend saying, “Love enables as well, you know.” Another unfurling.<br /><br />VII<br />I’ve made a habit of trusting the birds for sunflowers. Seedlings usually do appear and this year I’ve gathered them next to the drying green and underplanted with nasturtiums Empress of India, the gold and the red. It’s midday and the washing’s hung out. I’m caught in the concentration of bees as they feed on the sunflower’s dark centre, the crown of petals aflame.<br /><br /><i>Barbara Davey
</i><br /><br />*<br /><br /><i>September Snippets
</i><br /><br />6 September:
<br />The climbing nasturtiums are late this year. Today they heft marmalade orange trumpets to a cornflower blue sky. The visual hit of complementary colours. A tortoiseshell butterfly forages the nasturtiums, orange on orange.
<br /><br />7 September:
<br />First autumn mist on the lake. A grebe dives, disappears, leaving a radiating circle of silver. Two swans synchronised diving, sticking up through the mist like a split iceberg – and my heart splits open too. I half expect Excalibur to be next up. <br /><br />8 September:
<br />A walk through a neglected field. Sunshine. Ash trees dangling magnificent bunches of keys. A surprise of late blackberries. I have no container. I walk home with warm purple ooze seeping through my fingers, the earthy lush smell of ripe berries.<br /><br />9 September:
<br />Watching bumblebees trying to stuff their ample bodies into a second flowering of purple penstemon. I see a tiny triangle on the brown bobble of a nearby rudbeckia, wing spots like staring golden eyes. I am only a handspan away, but it stays still while I fuss with google lens to identify it as a mint moth. So delicate, so easily overlooked.
<br /><br />10 September:
<br />My garden caryopteris have flowered overnight, brilliant blue on lime green. Excitement of bumblebees who have abandoned the penstemon for these easier pickings.
An east Asia native, you shuin Chinese, but in my mind I see my aunt-in-law’s wildlife rich London garden, its butterfly and bee laden caryopteris by her front door, the wicker tepee in a winding shrubbery where her magic bird would lay chocolate eggs for small children.
<br /><br />11 September:
<br />Reaching for some home-grown rocket, I find myself eyeball to eyeball with a garden spider, soft morning light bouncing off two of its eight eyes. It dangles at ease, hammocked ona web slung between a camellia and winter jasmine. Legs stretch out like an advertisement for striped leggings, special offer 4 for 2. I am mesmerised by its stillness, its symmetry, when a bin lid clangs in the next-door garden and its legs convulse, high knees sharp-angled, just for a moment and then dangling nonchalance resumes.
<br /><br />12 September: <br />It seems that overnight the woods have changed colour, paths peppered with yellow and brown leaves. There are little red orbs everywhere, like early Christmas decorations, on guelder and wild roses, hawthorn and rowans. The blackberries that so recently fruited are clotted with fat convolvulus like dollops of early snow. A tipsy feeling that the earth is turning.
<br /><br /><i>Gabrielle O’Donovan</i><br /><br />*<br /><br /><i>7 moments …</i><br /><br />Thursday<br />The little Rowan trees in Morrisons’ car park never know true silence nor the star-pierced darkness of open moorland or a Welsh hillside. They breath in petrol laden air, their leaves are choked with dust, their nights are neon and they are sometimes clipped by reversing cars. Yet they survive – and here they are on a late August afternoon, their glowing berries warming the souls of frazzled shoppers.<br /><br />Friday<br />I am looking upwards through the heart shaped lobes of a sizeable vine leaf, patterned with the shifting shadows of its higher sibling leaves, against a bright sky busy with passing birds. Hinged to its stem by a glistening spider’s web it is mesmerising, nature’s narrative played out on a living screen mapped with veins (who needs television?) And – oh! – now a small insect is crawling across it, sharply silhouetted, vibrant.<br /><br />Saturday<br />My neighbours have given me onions from their garden, plaited together into a sort of heavy necklace which I am very tempted to wear - an elderly female Onion Johnny (?Jane.) But I resist. Instead they are hanging outside to dry in the sun, fat globes of gold and deepest ruby red, their smooth skins making them shine like lamps. They are so tactile. Stroking them, I can sense the firm juicy layers within and imagine them browning in olive oil and filling my kitchen with their appetising smell.<br /><br />Sunday<br />The Buddleia’s spires are dying. It should be cut back but I have been putting the job off, in spite of having to fight my way past it to reach the compost bin, endangering my eyes in the process. But far from being punished for my laziness, today I am richly rewarded. A Red Admiral butterfly has landed on almost the last panicle still to bear a few flowers and is lingering there, wings gently opening and closing. Terra-cotta, black and white on purple – what an arresting colour combination! What a gift!<br /><br />Monday<br />(Re)reading Ted Hughes’ poem about an otter that<br /><br />“….from sea<br /><br />To sea crosses in three nights<br />Like a king in hiding. Crying to the old shape of the starlit land,<br />Over sunken farms where the bats go round,<br />Without answer…”<br /><br />An “Oh” moment every time.<br /><br />Tuesday<br />My small garden is beyond untidy, but it is blessed with many insects. The heavy rains of a fortnight ago collapsed the Cosmos and Japanese Anemones and now they are leaning towards me where I sit with a mug of coffee, like eager stall holders offering their wares. And such wares! Delicate shell-pink Anemone heads, Cosmos with their rich burgundy petals, golden centres and feathery leaves – they are generous with their lovely energy. They are full of bees; all kinds of bees. And tiny iridescent flies are crawling over them, rainbowed by the mid morning sun. <br /><br />Wednesday<br />The first day of Harvest Month and I am picking blackberries – one of the perks of having a garden that would make devotees of order weep. Although I try to be careful, I cannot avoid disturbing the spiders that have laced the hedge with filament curtains. The spiders scurry off and I am in awe of their beautiful markings – cream and black and tawny brown. Stepping sideways, I catch my foot in something (see above, for perks read hazards) and topple, inelegantly, on to my bottom. But I do not spill the blackberries!<br /><br /><br /><i>Sheena Odle</i><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /></span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /><br /><br />
<br /><br /><br /></span></p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span>rosellehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00971482422276765335noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5055598777203654547.post-56471705523192448272021-08-16T18:37:00.003+01:002021-08-16T18:40:21.514+01:00RAGBAG PART 1: those jackdaws; the veg garden; books old & new<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh4yrxVGODHvAvPPBF01_Ajd_hAaDn01rwsGzbshQ4hmCZHsuyqCixohUvhmIrFCcCdfAxFPH0y1UJpKIdesDFyTh3rJ9ZSWk1r_JFy5YYTIOUq_IjJhz3l4NnetiYCZfF_LsSINDpCU_F9/s1600/path+to+field.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1200" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh4yrxVGODHvAvPPBF01_Ajd_hAaDn01rwsGzbshQ4hmCZHsuyqCixohUvhmIrFCcCdfAxFPH0y1UJpKIdesDFyTh3rJ9ZSWk1r_JFy5YYTIOUq_IjJhz3l4NnetiYCZfF_LsSINDpCU_F9/s320/path+to+field.jpg" width="240" /></a></span></div><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span><p></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">You know what it's like to have so much crammed in to your daily life, and so much to say, that you say nothing at all? – That. Hence no blogs. <br /><br />What a turbulent time in the world. How distressing and helpless-making it all seems – if we're not mindful of holding a positive intention, even a tiny intention, like noticing some beautiful things in or about each day. When you do that, not only do you remember that the world is still beautiful, but you also gain some perspective on your own relatively trivial issues. (I have to say there have been a few of those, here in the Garden of Avalon. As in the macro, so in the micro, for we are all connected.) <br /><br />However, since there really is too much to talk about, I shall just say: over and over I am reminded that change is the only constant, and how we surf these changing challenging moments, how we learn to live increasingly calmly with uncertainty as our faithful companion, determines so much of how we live, and what we experience and think and feel, in the world. So easy to hit out, to blame others, when it's our own emotional reactivity to our perceptions, false beliefs and assumptions that causes so much of our own distress.<br /> </span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjMfydw3aeFrTS0rz9bAMmFpH7SyKqaY5jdvYJtoM9vVpYEulQNXNny-VNausqSiPOgwjDzpMu21Ukq_goOWSeOgIqP4_hEafTlhKG4OTM_dA3vEaDE6C1xJGuHXz4gS0NV_kIAwgGwBWOX/s1600/rosa+rugosa.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1200" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjMfydw3aeFrTS0rz9bAMmFpH7SyKqaY5jdvYJtoM9vVpYEulQNXNny-VNausqSiPOgwjDzpMu21Ukq_goOWSeOgIqP4_hEafTlhKG4OTM_dA3vEaDE6C1xJGuHXz4gS0NV_kIAwgGwBWOX/s320/rosa+rugosa.jpg" width="240" /></a></span></div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span><p></p><h3 style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">THOSE JACKDAWS!</span></span></h3><h3><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"></span></span></h3><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Way back before Easter I posted <a href="https://roselle-angwin.blogspot.com/2021/03/ragbag-chortle-of-jackdaws-7-weeks.html" target="_blank">some words</a> about the jackdaws waking me early with their wild chortles and plays on the roof, just feet from my head on the pillow (the other side of the slates, I hasten to add).<br /></span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">The birds didn't ever go quiet. What did happen, though, is that a few weeks later their chortles were joined, and then replaced, by an ever-increasing-in-volume small raucousness: undifferentiated and rabbley. Every morning. <i>Every morning at 4.30 am.</i><br /><br />Week by week, though, it changed until I could pick out three small, demanding, and distinct individual voices. The parents went quiet: they were clearly far too hassled and far too shagged-out to do anything other than spend every daylight hour shoving food into the squawking open mouths.<br /><br />About four or five weeks in, I managed to get a glimpse of their 'nest'. A shambolic strewing of twigs, several of which frequently toppled to the ground (where the neighbouring cat sat in the early mornings, also with his mouth open) balanced right under the eaves on top of the ivy growing up the back of our stone house homed five almost full-sized jackdaws (three the chicks). By now their voices were truly loud. I have no idea how they didn't fall out, let alone how they actually managed to sleep at night, piled as they must have been one of top of the other in swaying ivy (one did, but caught itself in the ivy just above the cat's reach; and must have managed to flap or scramble back up).<br /><br />Anyway, they fledged, and all five joined the bigger congregation of rooks and jackdaws roosting across the valley. Occasionally still all five will do a flyover; and now and then I hear a familiar chortle at 4.30 or so. I still wake at that time, even without their greetings.<br /><br /><br /></span></span></p><h3 style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">THE GARDEN</span></span></h3><h3><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"></span></span></h3><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">My herb and bee garden has become a quiet corner for meditation and – should I ever manage to snatch a few moments for my own writing – poetry. More significantly, it's home to many insects, and many fledgling birds. There was a moment this year when it was a spectacular feast of scents and colours and peak abundance; before a week or two later it tumbled to huge overgrowth.<br /></span><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">However, it's been
wonderful to see so many bees and butterflies this year, though
devastating to see and hear so few swallows – again.</span><br /><br />It's been an odd year in the garden, with the climatic extremes we've all had. (I imagine many of you who are gardeners out there would say the same thing? I'd be delighted to hear your experience.) We depend on our veg for between half and two-thirds of all our food, but this year it will be less that that. <br /><br />Because TM* wasn't working last year, he had more time to spend in our organic veg garden, so for once we were ahead of ourselves. For once, too, I actually managed to sow three lots of broad beans successionally, and they have been prolific. But the French cobra beans, courgettes and squashes we started off in the greenhouse in spring have been terrible; simply not thriving, despite well-composted beds and enough magnesium. <br /><br />On the other hand, the borlotti beans which we sowed directly a couple of months later into the soil of my mulched no-dig bed had reached the tops of the canes and were producing flowers fewer than five weeks later. Also very productive were the three varieties of broad beans: one overwintered, and two, including the red-skinned Karmaszyn, sown and cropping early.<br /><br />The kales and cabbages are doing fine under their nets against cabbage whites and pigeons. Ditto the onions and leeks. My Swiss chard, French sorrel and salads have been great; ditto beetroots and spring onions. So far, the sweet potatoes we're trialling seem to be OK, and the sweetcorn too. Both depend on late sun, though.<br /></span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">The biggest failure, and rather devastating on a small domestic scale, has been blight on the wonderful, huge, lush tomato plants, both indoors and out-; and, worse, when they have been laden with trusses of green fruits. We have had to uproot and burn a dozen previously-healthy plants. I've made green tomato and rhubarb chutney with some. <br /><br />Of course, being in the same family, the potatoes have it too. The earlies are OK, and we cut down and carted away the haulms of the main crop spuds, and TM lifted the purple-skinned heritage Arran Victory yesterday. We don't know yet if they'll be edible, although normally they would store well and see us right through the winter. <br /><br />We are lucky: we can go and buy organic potatoes. Not the case for the victims of the Irish Potato Famine – how easily, given the vagaries of the weather, one could succumb to starvation (one million did) if one depends on a single crop, especially given the political horrors imposed by the British/English rulers and wealthy absentee landlords that went with that event.<br /></span><br /></span></p><h3 style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: medium;">BOOKS</span></h3><p><span style="font-size: medium;">Well, I was fortunate enough as to be given a fabulous online launch for <a href="https://savetheoaks.org/2021/07/02/a-spell-in-the-forest-2/"><i>A Spell in the Forest,</i></a> by my friend James Murray-White, who founded the <b>Save The Oaks</b> campaign. More than a hundred people from all over the world attended the launch event, were generous with their attention, and said lovely things. If you were one, thank you. Please know you made a difference to my life. That evening was truly a peak experience. <br /><br />If you click on the link above, it will take you to James' site and blog, where you can, if you'd like, watch and listen to the launch, and also be directed to my webpage to see details of, and buy, the book.<br /><br /><b>A plea</b>: if you have read my book, it would help me enormously if yyou'd post a brief review on Amazon, even a sentence or two. Many people go to Amazon to read reviews, even if they then buy direct from me, or from their local bookshop, Hive or Bookshop.org. (Oh – what a thing! – the week the book was published, I shot right up into Hive's Top 20, at place #7! Sadly, however, I shot right back out again the following week...)<br /><br /><b>Another plea</b>: if you haven't, <a href="https://roselle-angwin.co.uk/books/3547-2/" target="_blank">please buy the book</a>!<br /><br />And I am supposed to be writing Book Two. Well, nothing's happened with that since midwinter; there has been so much else going on, with new online courses: <a href="https://roselle-angwin.co.uk/news/poetry-mindfulness-writing-the-bright-moment/" target="_blank">Writing the Bright Moment</a> & <a href="https://roselle-angwin.co.uk/the-poetry-lab-the-crucible-of-poetry/" target="_blank">Poetry & the Ensouled Life</a>; and with mentoring, and admin for the Islands of the Heart retreats in a few weeks. Then there is family, our two young dogs and many discussions and explorations in relation to what future we want to create for ourselves, and help in whatever way we can to create for the world. <br /><br />One thing I know is that I want to spend more time writing, and growing, and less time on the computer. So...<br /><br />One way in which I'm committing my time in future is to completing my book (for which I may have found a publisher) on plant-based living, based in part on recipes from our garden. </span><span style="font-size: medium;"><span>I am a quiet but deeply committed vegan activist. </span>Going plant-based, or at least reducing your meat and dairy consumption is the biggest way in which you can tackle the climate emergency. Of all this, and a recipe, more in Part 11.<br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"></span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"></span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"></span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><i>* a small boast: TM has been awarded the regional Sustainable Builders' Award of the Year by the Federation of Master Builders for his last eco-house. That means he goes forward to the nationals in the autumn.</i><br /></span></p>rosellehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00971482422276765335noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5055598777203654547.post-13291778046412449302021-06-23T17:08:00.001+01:002021-06-23T17:08:29.031+01:00Zoom launch for A Spell in the Forest'The magic of trees. Guides to the wildwood, keepers of mysteries, tellers of tales.'<br /><br /><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg-5J7dGnvLY0QkBMsQ6BPpu6UOaXDFJBpUnIZyapL_Op1er5VlWArDOGQZvSWqTd8H0bEQk75D8qnZ3RlEkjoaeTqnuCSYsj5HxqcNjRtq0xWr8BFpJ2aT8HRbDghW1CLm5tSDvVjslJ4g/s2048/near+le+chaos.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1536" data-original-width="2048" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg-5J7dGnvLY0QkBMsQ6BPpu6UOaXDFJBpUnIZyapL_Op1er5VlWArDOGQZvSWqTd8H0bEQk75D8qnZ3RlEkjoaeTqnuCSYsj5HxqcNjRtq0xWr8BFpJ2aT8HRbDghW1CLm5tSDvVjslJ4g/w400-h300/near+le+chaos.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><p></p><div class="section synopsis" id="synopsis"><b>Synopsis
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<p><i>Trees occupy a place of enormous significance, not only in
our planet’s web of life but also in our psyche. A Spell in the Forest -
Tongues in Trees is part love-song, part poetic guidebook, and part
exploration of thirteen native sacred British tree species. Tongues in
Trees is a multi-layered contribution to the current awareness of the
importance and significance of trees and the resurgence of interest in
their place on our planet and in our hearts.</i></p>
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</div><p><br />Well, only two days to go till publication date in the UK (mid-July in the US). <br /><br />There's 'before the book' and 'after the book' – all I've been able to think of the last few weeks is the amount of publicity my publisher, like almost all publishing houses now except the very biggest corporate presses, requires that I do. I've been asked for blogs, articles, interviews, podcasts – I know, I should be so lucky; but it's exhausting and time-consuming (and unpaid), nonetheless. <br /><br />And you might have noticed I didn't even manage a poem for the summer solstice.<br /><br />If you think my new book might be of interest to you, then sign up for our book launch on <b>Thursday July 1st at 7pm BST (UK)</b>. It's free but you do need to register. We are inviting donations to my host James Murray-White's campaign Save the Oaks.<br /><br />You can register <a href="https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/launch-event-for-a-spell-in-the-forest-by-roselle-angwin-tickets-158697116347" target="_blank">here</a>; and read more about the book <a href="https://roselle-angwin.co.uk/books/3547-2/" target="_blank">here</a>. With any luck, we will record the launch and post it online.<br /><br />I'm very much looking forward to it (with a little trepidation); and James tells me about 100 tickets have gone already.</p><p> Maybe see you; and I'll be back post-launch with, perhaps, a little more diversity of content than recently! <br /><br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgBjh2EPMHYBuYd_Qt69KLNvJInyO5jotkGfLndxhE3q3UBU7QoYViuqUkiU5X_OShh71QIcS6vDR4HTrK8kiQEimilQQzMZI6X6FXTDiHJP31ogrwT08PvRoddkW2mRI0FIIRGlSoNDPmf/s600/ramparts+with+oak+camp+d%2527artus.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="600" data-original-width="559" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgBjh2EPMHYBuYd_Qt69KLNvJInyO5jotkGfLndxhE3q3UBU7QoYViuqUkiU5X_OShh71QIcS6vDR4HTrK8kiQEimilQQzMZI6X6FXTDiHJP31ogrwT08PvRoddkW2mRI0FIIRGlSoNDPmf/s320/ramparts+with+oak+camp+d%2527artus.jpg" /></a></div><br /><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p>rosellehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00971482422276765335noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5055598777203654547.post-11127236819857888812021-05-24T14:16:00.001+01:002021-06-04T11:15:49.345+01:00Spelling time...<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiHTdaM8B9RYxThRqpHZp9hnZEAMpVOoCxxqZHhWAbWwn20K92ih_4AJn16ByEFSfl-suTLOyeNBv7nIQ6KYB7MWbPVLy4keh-XElPZhF0xTH3nPEMfVun-YyG9PR0HAWlZ8cdKu8NxYmzs/s612/SPELL+cover+72dpi.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="612" data-original-width="397" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiHTdaM8B9RYxThRqpHZp9hnZEAMpVOoCxxqZHhWAbWwn20K92ih_4AJn16ByEFSfl-suTLOyeNBv7nIQ6KYB7MWbPVLy4keh-XElPZhF0xTH3nPEMfVun-YyG9PR0HAWlZ8cdKu8NxYmzs/s320/SPELL+cover+72dpi.jpg" /></a></div><p></p><p>You might have noticed, if you've been paying attention over the last year, that publication date is racing towards us for my new book? And I'm currently overwhelmed by all the work undone from 9 weeks in total of being without phone and internet this year, but catching up with myself. <br /><br />I was delighted with how my most recent course developed and progressed. <a href="https://roselle-angwin.co.uk/the-poetry-lab-the-crucible-of-poetry/" target="_blank">Poetry, Imagination & the Ensouled Life</a> almost didn't happen due to an absence of the wherewithal to offer the promised Zoom sessions, but at the last minute Open Reach restored this – er, well, lifeline, no matter what one thinks of spending one's days on a computer. This will happen again; I think we were all inspired by the work we did together (you can see details, and feedback, on the link).<br /><br />Meantime, my publishers have organised a long list of individuals and organisations to help publicise my book, and Nimuë Brown hosted a blog by me last week. Here it is reposted from her blog:<br /><br /></p><p><em>A guest blog from Roselle Angwin</em></p>
<p>I imagine that all children know – at least if they have access to
the rest of the natural world – that animals and birds, plant and trees
all speak to them. It seems both normal and natural, and just the way
the world is. How different our lives, and our relationship with the
more-than-human, would be if that was a quality, an enchantment, that
routinely continued into adulthood.</p>
<p>As a very young child, I used to leave out ‘potions’ of pulverised
rosehips, herbs and rainwater in acorn cups for ‘the fairies’, whom I
knew lived in plants and trees. Sometimes I would see a glimpse of a
woodmouse, or a bird, who’d sipped my brew – and that was OK too; in
fact it was magical (considering the delight I feel, even as an adult
when birds come to the doorstep without fear, not much has changed
there).<br /><br />I remember when I first learned to speak Cedar. My
cousins in Cornwall had a ‘home field’ on their farm where the orphaned
lambs would be, needing bottle-feeding several times a day. In between,
we would climb onto a long horizontal limb of the Cedar tree in the
field. One day, up there on my own aged about five, I heard the tree
whispering, and realised that I could understand its language.</p>
<p>Around the same time, I used to climb up into one of the pair of
cherry trees either side of our home front gate, and delightedly knew as
I faded into the canopy that no one could see me for blossom.</p>
<p>That was probably the beginning of my lifelong relationship with
trees. However, there was a more significant event as an adult. I worked
part-time for <em>Kindred Spirit</em> magazine back in the 90s, and one
of my briefs was to conduct a transatlantic phone interview with shaman
Eliot Cowan, who had just written <em>Plant Spirit Medicine</em>. I
knew about shamanic practice and plant medicine; had read my Carlos
Castaneda; had experimented with psychotropic plants; had even written a
book on subjects that included such things from my own practice. But
something subtly shifted for me after that interview.</p>
<p>Not long afterwards I booked myself a week’s solo retreat in a tiny
cottage near Cornwall’s coast. The cottage was in woodland, and within
the shelter of a triple earthwork, complete with its own Iron Age fogou.
I’d come specifically to work with trees, and to do a week’s writing. I
imagined I would connect with the magical Rowan and the ethereal Silver
Birch (sometimes known as the ‘poet’s tree’). I’d dumped my luggage and
headed off down through the woodland towards the sea. I knew the area
well, and was confident that I would find Birch and Rowan close by – and
I did. </p>
<p>I knew that trees love to be met, anthropomorphic as that sounds. We
seem to have a natural close relationship with trees; indeed, some first
nation peoples believe that humans are descended from trees. </p>
<p>However, I hadn’t bargained for the abductive qualities of the Willow
– that slender, gentle and tender-seeming tree under which Ophelia
permanently floats in her death-song in a painting by the Pre-Raphaelite
John Everett Millais. So I was taken hostage by a particular Willow in a
watery grove of them. Benign though the tree was, it was also extremely
insistent, in a way that startled me.</p>
<p>I never made it to the other trees; instead, I spent a rather trippy
few hours under Willow’s influence instead, and that journey has
continued. (It was only later I learned that Willow has a reputation in
folk lore for ‘stalking’ people.)<br /><br />Since then, I’ve become ever more
aware of the deep synergy between humans and plants, in particular
trees, and it led me to marking the wheel of the year with my version of
the Celtic Tree Calendar, and then devising courses, ‘Tongues in
Trees’, that would enable me to lead participants into a deeper
relationship with the tree family. I’ve been leading these for many
years, now, and have more recently offered this course as a one-year
online intensive.</p>
<p>I spend part of my year in an ancient mythic forest. Quite apart from
everything we now know about the gifts from trees, whether to do with
climate change, the hydrological cycles, preventing soil erosion,
offering habitat, food, medicines, timber for shelters and fires, and
new findings about the immense ‘wood wide web’ that underpins a forest,
we have a deep psychic resonance with the idea of the Greenwood, the
Wildwood. </p>
<p>There are always two forests: one is the physical wood and forest we
encounter ‘out there’. The other is the abiding forest of our
imagination: an inner pristine wildwood, an Enchanted Forest, the one we
encounter in myths, fairy stories and legends.<br /><br />When I walk into a
physical forest, I walk into a liminal place, and a deep, receptive and
attentive humming silence, a benign presence. There’s something about
entering a forest that is both healing and disorienting (in my
forthcoming book I speak a lot about this). In the forest we lose
horizons, and perspectives, and enter firstly a green underwater-type
world, and secondly a kind of mythic consciousness, as our European
fairy tales attest. </p>
<p>I know this particular forest quite well. I arrived in it a few years
ago after a particularly traumatic time in my life, knowing that it
would offer me some kind of healing, and it did – AFTER tripping me up
and breaking my arm so that I had to be still – an almost foreign
experience for me.<br /><br />But the biggest shift was my fond idea that I’d write <em>about</em> trees here; but in fact I ended up learning <em>from</em> trees – as it’s said our Druidic ancestors did. That changed the way I wrote my book. </p>
<p>And – years on – I am still learning from trees.<br /><br /></p>
<p><i>Roselle Angwin</i></p><p><br />Roselle Angwin’s new book <a href="https://www.johnhuntpublishing.com/moon-books/our-books/spell-in-forest">A Spell in the Forest – tongues in trees</a><em> </em>will be published by Moon Books on June 25th 2021.<br /><br />First published on <a href="https://druidlife.wordpress.com/2021/05/21/learning-to-speak-cedar/?fbclid=IwAR1CtxrFswybzH3P2-UfGZVTgY152wE6typ72LlXXpxbSma8ZuWzsOrGY3w" target="_blank">A Druid Life</a><br /><br /><a href="http://www.roselle-angwin.co.uk">www.roselle-angwin.co.uk</a></p>
<p>www.thewildways.co.uk<br /><br /><span style="color: #cc0000;"><b>WATCH THIS SPACE for dates for a Zoom launch.</b></span><br /></p>rosellehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00971482422276765335noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5055598777203654547.post-6369703339290784132021-04-14T16:50:00.001+01:002021-04-15T12:42:06.402+01:00Interconnectivity<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjceKE7ByiDlv39KH83mvPy-2jdIqooCPtSlqIHgp0SDsw7-H4ZTtGfcqsIVmmV-TzRvbus0_mnEXJZBVqLZ8s3nW3sSZIb-zR4VS1t4-UU7FKjy6pl2zSoxOyJCacmoFYvpse91OFA-7JU/s350/iona-moss-cushion-blog.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="276" data-original-width="350" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjceKE7ByiDlv39KH83mvPy-2jdIqooCPtSlqIHgp0SDsw7-H4ZTtGfcqsIVmmV-TzRvbus0_mnEXJZBVqLZ8s3nW3sSZIb-zR4VS1t4-UU7FKjy6pl2zSoxOyJCacmoFYvpse91OFA-7JU/s320/iona-moss-cushion-blog.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><p></p><p>If you are familiar with my work, you will know that the notion of connectivity, and how we make conscious relationship to 'all that is', sits at the heart of it. We are all in interrelationship, all of the time. Living as if this is the truth that it is changes everything. We can no longer pretend that we are separate and superior.<br /><br />A few weeks ago friend, colleague and occasional workshop participant Dr Lania Knight, until very recently a creative writing tutor on the MA course at the University of Gloucester, recorded a <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FAmyLG15eys" target="_blank">YouTube</a> interview with me where I was talking about my approach to land, place and the other-than-human species who share our planet.<br /><br />I was speaking as a writer, and therefore talking about my own relationship to the more-than-human world and how it colours my writing as well as my experience.<br /><br />A little afterwards, one of the university MA students who were the destined audience of the video emailed me.<br /><br />Some of you might be interested in our conversation.<br /><br />[KA] I would very much like to know a little more about your idea of 'connectivity'. This has intrigued me and I'm trying to imagine writing nature poetry by removing the self as a prominent focus… it's begun to make me think differently about nature and my place within it. Would you have time to comment more on what you mean by 'connectivity' and how this can be put into practice when writing poetry?<br /><br />[RA] I have been thinking about what you ask. It has been a perspective that is so woven into the fabric of me that I needed to step back and think about your question. Here's my response:<br /><br />CONNECTIVITY<br />So, in brief, my starting point is that our post-Enlightenment/Cartesian heritage has not always done us favours. It fosters a further dualism that has probably been a significant part of our collective psyche for hundreds and possibly thousands of years: matter/spirit, good/bad, man/woman, humans/nature. So it seems almost inevitable that we relate to the rest of nature – the other-than-human or more-than-human – as if it’s ‘out there’, separate from us. It’s my view that it’s this unconscious assumption that is at least in part responsible for the atrocities we can visit/have visited on other species and the planet.<br /><br />My perspective is that, rather than a hierarchy of life with humans at the apex, we are all part of a vast network of interrelationship where anything that happens to a part affects the whole. It is not ‘us’ and ‘nature’ but as eco-theologian Thomas Berry said: ‘we are a communion of subjects, not a collection of objects’.<br /><br />In my view, everything of the natural world is animate, sentient, conscious to some degree and in its own way. Everything is inherently in interrelationship, all profoundly interconnected, a vast eco-system of which every single organism is a necessary part of a coherent whole.<br /><br />PUTTING IT INTO PRACTICE<br />I believe this requires for most of us a shift in worldview so that it’s not ‘us’ vs ‘nature’; nor even 'us' and 'nature'. <br /><br />So I’m not sure it’s so much ‘getting rid of the self’ (or in your words ‘removing the self as a prominent focus’) as seeing it – the self – as simply one, if integral, part of the cosmos. <br /><br />In terms of poetry, farmer-poet Wendell Berry said something that has always stuck: ‘So much of the poetry I see has speaker present but world absent, or world present but speaker absent.’ (My paraphrase.) (Another dualistic trope is 'either/or’, whereas I believe it’s more holistic and wise to see ‘both/and’.)<br /><br />I notice that the best writing (poetry is a good example) exemplifies this, when the speaker is fully present in the poem (or essay, or whatever it is) but as a co-operative force, rather than a dominating one. In other words, the writer is <i>part of</i>, not <i>apart from</i>, the subject (and the rest of the natural world). <br /><br />This seems especially potent in 'the new nature writing', those nature-memoirs written by people like Kathleen Jamie, Helen MacDonald, Miriam Darlington, Jim Perrin, Robert MacFarlane, John Lewis-Stempel, and many others, where the author is very clearly present. In nature non-fiction even 50 years ago the writer, usually a rather old-fashioned and perhaps bachelor gentleman, was very much the detached observer. There may be a place for that, but we want more engaged writers nowadays. That in turn engages us more.<br /><br />In terms of planetary ethics, clearly we are more likely to protect that with which we are also emotionally engaged – at least, I believe so.<br /><br />So how we may write to include self and other both is a preoccupation of mine, and one that I emphasise in my courses. I believe this is partly down to consciously switching between the perspectives of self and other and taking care to incorporate both (as per Wendell Berry), but also reminding oneself that in some profound philosophical way self IS other and other IS self. My view of the cosmos suggests that the physical level is only one level
of being, and there is a correlation, a reciprocal affinity of relationship, on more subtle levels also. That’s what I mean by connectivity – there are subtle ties that bind us to everyone/everything else. <br /><br />This doesn’t sit well with our current mechanistic philosophically materialist ‘scientific’ viewpoint, but with, for instance, our new understanding of the subtler aspects of ecosystems such as the mycorrhizal networks that link all plants and trees we are beginning to understand scientifically too that nothing happens in isolation. <br /><br />My forthcoming book <a href="https://www.johnhuntpublishing.com/moon-books/our-books/spell-in-forest" target="_blank"><i>A Spell in the Forest – tongues in trees</i></a> explores this in much greater detail through the lens of the tree world and also archetypal and symbolic motifs (I trained in a branch of archetypal psychotherapy).*<br /></p><p>There's a page on my other website that also addresses this idea (well, actually, probably all the pages do, but this one overtly): <a href="https://thewildways.co.uk/an-ecocentric-view/">https://thewildways.co.uk/an-ecocentric-view/</a><br /><br />* This is the description: <span class="fld-row" id="F_bDescription">'Trees occupy a place of
enormous significance, not only in our planet’s web of life but also in
our psyche. This book is part love-song to trees, forests and the
Wildwood, part poetic guidebook to the botany, ecology, cultural
history, properties, mythology, folklore and symbolism of trees, and
part a deeper exploration of thirteen native sacred British tree species
in relation to the powerful mythic Celtic Ogham alphabet calendar. <i>Tongues in Trees</i> is a multi-layered contribution to the current
awareness of the importance and significance of trees and the resurgence
of interest in their place on our planet and in our hearts.'<br /><br /><br /></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjVLCs5wa-eGFwcisOpzprBbXZRH2uVY28BwTAr_B-4afmEackMp93k3lQlxOEXkh6U4qqKYLoCQN5TqKXtPqXO4ZGi6Du9f50TrqAe7N0MB6gjNZT35_qDLMJKHXu-Wyz73Cl6B8o-rIzv/s340/huelgoat-sqaure.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="255" data-original-width="340" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjVLCs5wa-eGFwcisOpzprBbXZRH2uVY28BwTAr_B-4afmEackMp93k3lQlxOEXkh6U4qqKYLoCQN5TqKXtPqXO4ZGi6Du9f50TrqAe7N0MB6gjNZT35_qDLMJKHXu-Wyz73Cl6B8o-rIzv/s320/huelgoat-sqaure.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><p></p><table cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" class="fld-table" style="width: 100%px;"><tbody><tr><td valign="top"><br /></td></tr><tr><td class="lt" valign="top"><br /></td>
<td valign="top"><br /></td></tr></tbody></table><p><br /><br /><br /></p>rosellehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00971482422276765335noreply@blogger.com2