Writing/walking/writhing

I dip back into city life every once in a while, friends, over-priced coffees and craft beer do have their pull on me still. I did a little experiment during my usual solitary street wandering in London last month: take note of all the commercial messaging, fragments of conversations and impressions I encounter in the city and write a quick poem out of them. The amount of vacuous commercial violence that invaded my inner peace was something that I had grown unaccustomed to. Living in a small seaside town and working in an ecovillage thankfully has eliminated much of these consumerist pressures but I still at times crave the vibrancy, diversity and energy of large cities. Whenever I do however reengage with that longing, I end up feeling just as empty and vacuous as the messages I come across. A line from a recent sustainability forum I went to echoed in my head as I tried to maintain calm: Happy people do not shop.

Mind that child, stuffed with ice-cream and unattainable dreams.
What part of this world is left to share,
A coffee attendant's sipping coke at 6 in the morning blank stare.

Showboats, sidewalks, served all day dancers,
averted gazes, Benugo delivers, please give a dime/damn charity fundraisers.
Tremoring morning hangovers, anxiety-fuelled leftovers,
which outfit will make today less bitter, £13 sock bargains, dirty rivers,
up to 50% less, this inner space quivers,

A year of surrendering to stillness

“Those who contemplate the beauty of the earth find reserves of strength that will endure as long as life lasts. There is something infinitely healing in the repeated refrains of nature - the assurance that dawn comes after night, and spring after winter.”

~ Rachel Carson

Separation comes from the mind, love and connection comes from the heart. So many lessons have come into my first year of living in Findhorn. This time exactly one year ago, I packed what was over 3 and a half years of London shrapnel to start a new life in a small, but renowned spiritual community in the north of Scotland. But I did not know much about where I was moving to, having lived in London's first eco-village, moving/running/relocating to a new job which was based in another ecovillage seemed a natural fit, and a way to clear old hurt and start anew.

I was always always running from one place to another in London, feeding my distractions with so many things/events/workshops/gatherings/pubs/museums/galleries/openings/meetups/yougettheidea, so scared to stop, to consider, to embrace the pain, to accept rejection, to face the unknown, to be still.

And so the healing began, a painful process of unfolding, of sitting with inactivity and letting go of my busyness. To stop moving, to still the mind. To be present, to be grateful. To start to notice the symbolic beauty in the movement of birds, the ebb and flow of tides. To learn from nature's cycles, that told me each day to let go of old things like old leaves, that a bare and cold Winter would always bring new buds of Spring. I have met such kind, tender and open-hearted souls along this new and wonderful journey, each day brings the chance to meet and learn from them each day. A recent highlight was Satish Kumar, an Indian peace activist who dedicated a peace pilgrimage from India to the four capitals of the nuclear world: Moscow, Paris, London and Washington D.C. and decided to carry no money on the trip. His presence was inspiring, and since working for a tree charity, most of my learning has come from the tall quiet forest this last year. As Satish says: How much I can learn from a tree! The tree is my church, the tree is my temple, the tree is my mantra, the tree is my poem and my prayer.

Along with my daily dose of vitamin sea at Findhorn beach, within each ocean curl echoes Hoʻoponopono, an ancient Hawaiian practice of reconciliation and forgiveness. There are four simple steps to this prayer, and the order is not that important. Repentance, Forgiveness, Gratitude and Love are the only forces at work as I say I'm sorry, Please forgive me, Thank you, I love you with each wave I see. The power is in the feeling and in the willingness of the Universe to forgive and love.

Forest Woman

~ by Mary Reynolds Thompson

She is sunlight and shadow, rooted in dark earth
and reaching for sky.
She is the breath of inspiration, the vividness of dreams.
The clear-cut path is nothing to her.
She spins and spirals, loses herself in the labyrinth,
in a thousand colors of green.
Through eons and extinctions she has thrived.
To enter her world, is to brave the creative fire
that brings forth seed-bursts of new life.
She is magic, a whirl of wonder in a world
made plain by literalness.
From her dark folds things grow and green.
Her skirts are bushes, her hair a tangle branches.
Her hollowed limbs, home to winged and furred ones,
teeming insects.
She speaks in myriad tongues.
Inside her, circle upon circle reveals an ancient way of being.
She will never walk the straight path
nor embrace too-bright light of modern consciousness.
She knows everything is birthed from darkness.

What to make of a diminished thing

Ruining streams where eternity lies,
No flowers, no bees, but here eat some fries.
We weep for all that can no longer grow,
soft trees still recite what we scarcely know.

Glazed telly vigils while sipping Bordeaux,
not noticing then the slow rising flow.
No place to escape from this poisoned sky,
if only we questioned it sooner, why?

Carpeted, concreted, depleted soul,
forgetting we too are ocean and snow.
Part water, part air and magic unknown,
now just packaged skin and picked apart bone.

No longer do winds blush warm with birdsong,
hollowed out by progress hums, vain, cold, strong.
Greed, give back to us what we have now lost,
as if we knew what true wilderness cost.

Shopping aisles lit, all lined up in a row,
like that's the apex of success to show.
Stillness won't be found in consumption shrines,
but rather in spaces nature defines.

Watching in silence, we voiceless ones weep,
how Sir, can you find in dreamless fields sleep?
When hell spreads hot, don't say you didn't know,
from black shores we told you, we told you so.

An ocean of regret

Soft waves break,
delicate heart ache.
Salty foam, my tears,
on wasted years.

In soft sea sounds,
grace resounds.
Anchor me down,
before I drown.
An ocean of regret,
your leaving has left.

Not seeing the mountain

Sometimes the mountain

is hidden from me in veils

of cloud, sometimes 

I am hidden from the mountain

in veils of inattention, apathy, fatigue

when I forget or refuse to go 

down to the shore or a few yards 

up the road, on a clear day…

Denise Levertov

Sadness is

Sadness is a cold still bed. Folds of your breathing now only in my head.
That single white hair, Once I was nestled, there.
In the cave of your arm, that's where you would find me, if I could only.
But you preferred strangers' beds. Your fire's desire left my soul in cindered shreds.

I miss public transport

No longer living in London means no longer having the luxury to spy at strangers on my tube journeys and draw them. Exchanging London's smog for Scotland's bog has been a change to say the least. But this pastime is one of the many that I am starting to miss...

Nature is a mirror

Ocean, tears, rain
All the same.

Cheers

Sugar ticks and selfie sticks
Cobbled streets basted in oil slicks
Swipe to the right peepshows
Broken sleep, wandering where your mind goes
I wish I had never led us here
If I could only clamp my eyes and plug my ears
The City of corrupted fiends
Your behaviour my soul demeans

Litter-strewn and vomit-soaked
Lines of mandy, nitrogen-oxide smoked
No room to breath, no space to sit
Stiletto heels seemed for you a better fit
Offering the City what was once intact
Your affection, like a summer's day, a vanishing act
Now wrapped up in knowing what I lack
Short skirts in taxi cabs, both black
Frayed wit and hollowed eyes
Walking past off-licences stacking putrid pork pies
And cornish pasties
And kebabs

What do I do now without you here
A place so easy to feel your worth does not exist, as I disappear
Half-awake on trains where no one speaks
Internally focused on what the iphone leaks
While I hear sirens and tyrants' bank balances soar
More, more, more
Embracing the fast, gin-soaked race with some trendy herb
Festering mattresses retired to the kerb
Steeped in rain and melancholy
No longer necessary
(Like me)
Beside boozed-up lads banishing love with another round
Don't worry mate, plenty other birds around.

The anatomy of melancholy

Being 'in love', like being 'in imagination'. The concerns of everyday life all dissolve in the daydream and halo of the other.

Is it an illusion to be distrusted? Do we reject what the soul presents to us? Something so pure and simple at the time that will eventually lead us astray?

Does love make us blind to the flaws of another, or does it make us see the true angelic nature of a person? Is it all just an illusion, a trick of light that makes us see what we want and abandon reason?

Does it distort more than reveal? If only I could stop what I still feel,

Goodbye London Town

“This world is your best teacher. There is a lesson in everything. There is a lesson in each experience. Learn it and become wise. Every failure is a stepping stone to success. Every difficulty or disappointment is a trial of your faith. Every unpleasant incident or temptation is a test of your inner strength. Therefore nil desperandum. March forward hero!”
― Sivananda Saraswati

With these words echoing in my hollowed soul, I march on. The Scottish Highlands beckon. And so I load all the shrapnel into a tin can, move to the folds of the mountains up north to start a new chapter in my life. London has been a hard but fair teacher, and despite it being a challenging move I will miss it dearly, and all those that made my time so healing over this last year. Three and a half years here have brought many new experiences into my life, and it seems almost impossible to be able to encapsulate all of them and their impact in one post. I have volunteered in the house Handel lived for most of his life, learnt about what weeds you can eat, enjoyed very civil high teas, been offered lifts by strangers and hitched rides on lazy canal boats. I've sunbathed on locks and overcrowded parks, and sampled only a handful of the hundreds of museums the city has to offer. I've explored cobble streets Dickens, Shakespeare, Hemingway once walked on, cycled up the Pall Mall on many occasion (my favourite car-free stretch of London), eaten dinner in a 1940's disused underground station, sampled cuisine from Ethiopia, Korea, Vietnam, Hawaii, the Caribbean, Mexico and wandered through China town on rainy Chinese new years.

I've eavesdropped on many a Polish conversation, drawn people on public transport until they noticed me, dressed up as a zombie, fed foxes, seen street art that made my eyes pop, guerilla gardened, poked around Victoria cemeteries, walked through the Thames tributaries in waders, fallen asleep on night buses, minded the gap and found to enjoy the unique delights of a British carboot sale. I've hugged 100 year-old oaks, seen where Walter Gropius, Marcel Breuer, and Moholy-Nagy lived, been to folk festivals in old abandoned war-damaged chapels and acoustic concerts by log fires. I've fallen in love with food markets, learnt about natural dyes and raw food, lived in London's first eco-village, become a cyclist, shopped at food co-operatives, planted trees, volunteered at peace gardens, learnt about foraging, built clay ovens and attended climate change protests. I carry all these memories with me now to a new adventure.

What I've held onto to so long no longer exists, with each exhalation I learn to accept that a new breath needs to replace the old one. I lost my best friend year, but as a truce London offered me many new ones to help mend my broken heart. As well as this new chance to live mindfully in the mountains. I hope to share those experiences soon. London, you really have been a treat.

Be ground

Some more wise words, this time from Rumi:

"Be Ground. Be crumbled, so wildflowers will come up where you are. You've been stony too many years. Try something different. Surrender."

“You only lose what you cling to”

In French, you don’t say ‘I miss you'. You say ‘tu me manques,’ which could be taken as ‘you are missing from me.’ Missing from me, like a beating organ, or the flow of blood.

 A limb that was, now no longer. A hand to hold, a mouth to taste, so soon discarded, now replaced.

You filled your time with another so quickly.
Deaf and dumb with each new kiss, as if the dream of us did not exist.

He is no longer mine

It has been over a year since I have blogged, and it would not make sense to continue writing without acknowledging one of the major tremors that occurred toward the end of last year. The man I loved most parted ways with me. Going through all my photos over the year, and deciding what to write about had a heaviness attached to it. My memories all had him in each of the frames, and it feels like a heavy burden for me to carry them all on my own and not share them. Maybe it is like a wound that needs to be drained, sharing my sadness to lighten the load somehow. This was one of the last photos I unknowingly took of him and remains one which epitomises him best: a soft and tender soul, with a hint of sadness in his face I foolishly did not see at the time.

Mr Handsome turned and walked away, and I turned to medication. In hindsight a decision that I will never make again, and one which I would not recommend to anyone. At the point where I could no longer distinguish my own thoughts and sensations from one another, I stopped taking the medication and decided on taking a less numbing approach, another Vipassana meditation course (an experience I will share too). Thankfully going again solidified my practice, and if nothing else reminded me the inevitability of change and impermanence. And now as Valentine's Day approaches (the horror among horrors of days stuffed with notions of rampant consumerism) I recall this poem to what love honestly is, neither red roses nor blue violets:

Valentine by Carol Ann Duffy

Not a red rose or a satin heart.

I give you an onion.

It is a moon wrapped in brown paper.

It promises light

like the careful undressing of love.

Here. 

It will blind you with tears 

like a lover.

It will make your reflection

a wobbling photo of grief.

I am trying to be truthful.

Not a cute card or a kissogram.

I give you an onion.

Its fierce kiss will stay on your lips,

possessive and faithful

as we are,

for as long as we are.

Take it.

Its platinum loops shrink to a wedding-ring,

if you like.

Lethal.

Its scent will cling to your fingers,

cling to your knife. 

And so I journey on my own from this point. Do wish me luck, and I do hope to write and photograph some new stories and interesting things in the near future. This blog too will change and adapt to something new soon..

Polish pretties

Another autumn, and another visit to Poland. This time exploring new parts of it, and being pleasantly surprised by the contents every time. Beneath the at-times crumbling Soviet union blocks and stern comebacks from strangers lies emotive responses to difficult transitions, a visit to any art gallery shows how artists are tackling issues of its dark and difficult past. Wandering through a forest park dedicated to Communist miners in hometown Katowice, having my fill of old family photographs again, and visiting a nearby turn of the century mining residence of Nikiszowiec was rich in history and meaning.

Visiting Wrocław was a colourful stroll past renovated buildings, beautiful town squares, fresh food markets (oh the forest mushrooms!), museums and riversides. One is reminded through street photographs that much of the city was destroyed during WWII, but its colour, charm, and scattered tiny gnome sculptures are a treat to explore. There too my mum and I came across the first vegan restaurant I was to see in Poland (the most delicious one at that and always busy), and shows the slow and steady changes that are arising. All for the better.

Brighton abundance day

A happy outing to an apple orchard in Brighton with Mr Handsome and the Polish fairy at Stamner Park's annual abundance day. The day was filled with apple crumble, children pressing juice, a wander through the quiet woods and permaculture sites, tasting some of the 30 apple varieties found just in Sussex, spying pretty country cottages, tree climbing for the best fruit, and story telling in the orchard. And if in doubt with what to do with all those extra apples, cut them into round slices and dehydrate them for a snack later. Nothing more rewarding than seeing where one's food comes from, and sharing it with friends.

Shambala mandala

Festivals are a big deal in the UK. You cannot really say you have had a summer unless you have roughed it with a pair of wellies and some camping gear in some green field in the countryside for the weekend and come back disheveled and needing a scrub down. Shambala was a cacophony of glitter, secret gardens, swamp creatures, pyrotechnic dragons and glowing tulips. You could go for a communal yoga session or charlston class in the morning, head for a permaculture gathering or art workshop in the afternoon, watch a movie or a band or go on fun-fair rides in the evening. I came across fire-spitting horses, shaman rituals, gypsy caravans, friendly Polish faeries, cowboys and indians, glow-in-the-dark earthworm costumes, burning effigies and unicorns. The odd disgusting campsite did however spoil the mood (British festival goers are notorious for leaving everything behind at festivals, these organisers had some scruples however and had a recycling scheme in place, but still could not motivate everyone to clean after themselves), a seeming normality for first-world folk to throw things away after one weekend-use. Nothing like this atrocity though. Mental note: NEVER go to Reading Festival. EVER.