March - #movingslowly
Forwards with hesitation...
Hello dear readers and writers, friends and curious passers by, you are all so very welcome and appreciated. I send each one of you a huge and heartfelt thank you for taking a few moments of your day to be here and with it an apology for beginning with a rant!
I am in flux, my flow is hesitant…
I read many essays and stories here on
always in quiet awe of the thousands of eloquently spoken whispers of words that appear in my mail box. Even those that are loud in their rawness and shocking, those that shout of times I don’t understand, or places I’ve never, nor ever am likely to know hold me transfixed in their brilliant prose, depth and creativity.But, this week I read something scathing, something that halted me in my own meanderings both lyrical and physical. A short paragraph - not directed at me personally but rather at all of us who write of seasonal change, of nature and all the peace she carries unknowingly in the wind to calm and quiet the turbulence of living in this beautiful but cruel world we understand less and less. These words left me flailing in the muddy blur of uncertainty, wondering why anyone should want to mock a need so profoundly simple; to fulfil a desire to write for those people less fortunate, for those who are bound for what ever reason in concrete skylines with little or no access to the peace or solitude nature gives.
I feel angered by the assumption and generalisation that we, who write gently of our love for nature are simply wealthy housewives - yes that word was mentioned - who have nothing better to do with our time but wander, hither and thither, without responsibility or veritable reason.
As a result I have walked my hill - when my responsibilities and I assure you all I have many because I am so far from the label given it’s laughable - have allowed me, but written less. My camera, though not empty of my usual digital recordings, has held few shots that have delighted me, my spirit vexed. As I flipped through the memory of each encounter - I didn’t feel my usual passion. It will return, doubtless it will but this month of March has been tainted by sadness and frustration at such lack of empathy.
So here, in cautious continuation is the March issue of A Coloured Month.
A coloured Month…
How fast the year is passing, already a quarter gone! Nevertheless winter still had us clutched in her sinewy fingers for what seemed an eternity before she loosened her reluctant hold.
But Mother Nature, as ever, was up to her trickery, so clever in her deceptions of light and seasonal inevitability…
We were teased and cajoled as we bathed bare arms and face in the false hope of warm sunshine in the middle of the month, just enough to make us believe, just enough to delight the senses, just enough to feel cheated when the temperature plummeted overnight almost 20c taking with it the heady scent of violets, flurries of petals from blossoming trees, prolonging anticipation and causing need for more logs to stoke up stove - how foolish of me to think it was over!
And, as if this deceit had not sufficiently stymied all my spring plans, farmers in their monster machines spread manure in liberal abundance on every meadow, oblivious to everything but the perfect conditions for cultivating good crops and emptying their cattle sheds of winter residue filling the air with flying, stinking muck! It is their work, I know, I know… but the stench left hanging in the air permeates the house and my clothes - ‘Eau de cow dung’ or worse pig shit, to me is akin to walking into the perfume department of a large store the scent is so cloyingly nauseating and disagreeable.
It passes but not quickly enough!
“I'd like to go by climbing a birch tree~
And climb black branches up a snow-white trunk
Toward heaven, till the tree could bear no more,
But dipped its top and set me down again.
That would be good both going and coming back.
One could do worse than be a swinger of birches.”
―Robert Frost
Walking amongst Birch trees.
Did you know Birch trees have a calming and fragrant scent after rain?
Terpenes are released with the heat of the sun on the wet leaves and the scent has a welcome soothing effect on the soul.
Time drifts at its own pace high in the forest, on bare branches and weathered bracken, in footprints on paths. Each of my own steps echoed by the thousands before me. The small forest of silver birch - I give it much majesty in calling it a forest when it is really no more than a mere copse but it holds me captivated and to me worthy. Here is where I spend much of my time in March; it is the forest of invisible realms where if I sit quietly I can feel the mechanisms of an underworld beginning to wake. It is just shy of the highest point on the hill and still fertile enough to speak of days to come. Bound only by the movement of seasons, here I can breathe without fear of disturbance, here I can sit in their gentle whispering, scented leaves and find temporary sanctuary.
From my door, it takes me 987 steps up hill to arrive (I count them in almost ritualistic obsession) if I cross to the lone Scots Pine and walk the edge where my path of twenty years was ploughed into the soil last December. I painstakingly begin again. This time closer to the forest edge, this time there will be no question of a repeat…
I am followed by sweet songs of spring
I almost step on a young bird, a Brewers Blackbird - I think… when will I dignify these winged loves with recognition? Only for the sharp warning ringing from branches of trees do I halt my steps. Ruffled feathers with a slightly bemused and fearful face stare up at me. It is strangely large for so early in the year, perhaps a second brood from last year? It is possible....
I spy the black woodpecker twice more but distant, illusive still and daily I disturb the goings on of nest making of not one but two Sparrow Hawk nesting in gaps in the ancient continually moving stones of our home. They are very vocal in their annoyance, as if asking ‘us’ to leave.
Visible movement.
Fog and mist that dominated, obliterated even, most of last month feel strangely absent, even missed. Instead, the landscape is open and startlingly bright, replaced by vividly stark lines. Reflections in the lake ripple in sharpest clarity, clouds now have outlines above, like unfinished sketches in charcoal and chalk and cerulean blue.
And have I mentioned spring flowers yet?
Have I spoken of gaiety or the myriad colours that have exploded, like earth stars along every bank and field?
Dare I even begin writing about the way they make me feel as though at last I can breathe out, as if I’ve been holding my breath all winter! It is not possible to disassociate the tingling of relief from their almost dreamlike celestial appearance.
“It is spring again. The earth is like a child that knows poems by heart.”
― Rainer Maria Rilke
On days when sunlight fills the valley, I can believe Rilke when he spoke of children and poems…
I can almost hear their incantations…
And, as I write, wild cherry blossom runs riot, in all directions a puff of white in regular and vast milky clouds stand out amongst the still mostly bare branches of oak and beech, chestnut and ash - if we are lucky, if frosty mornings stay locked away, we will have a cherry summer!
“Words are, in my not-so-humble opinion, our most inexhaustible source of magic. Capable of both inflicting injury, and remedying it.”
― J.K. Rowling
Now, the sun has set after a stormy afternoon on the first day of April, as I close my shutters on the night, I spy Jupiter shining in inky blue to the north west. I can almost believe its twinkling light is a message in metaphor to the flowers… spring is here!
I wish you all a wild and beautiful month with love
For this months recommendations on
I don’t know where to begin?There are so many!
I try to shout loud about the quiet writers, those that have important words to say but for reasons unknown are unheard and I will continue to do so, however this month I cannot pass without mentioning The Villager by
who many of you may know already, of course, he is a published author with recommendations from multiple diverse people known or otherwise after all.Stephen Fry wrote; “One of the most enchanting (not to mention hilarious) writers around.”
Click the links -above in green and below - to read for yourselves Toms multitude of never boring, often laugh out loud funny letters, stories and Notes, you may even win one of his published novels as I did!
has just published the final chapter of her memoir, I urge you to begin at the beginning if you haven’t already! Kimberly writes from her beautiful soul with heartbreaking honesty and candor. I cannot recommend you read this more highly. Below is the link to the last chapter, here you will find the preface and links there on to each following chapter. Go!
And please, not a word because I haven’t had a second to read the last chapter yet!
I've always found the slicing and dicing of writing into categories a fools errand at best.
My writing is sometimes "nature", sometimes "social", sometimes "political", sometimes "personal", sometimes prose-ish poetry, sometimes poetic prose. Sometimes I write pure fiction, sometimes I write a kind of creative non-fiction. Sometimes poetry, sometimes I write beautifully and sometimes very poorly. People do choose to hammer signposts onto my writing, but they tend to weather quickly and blow away in the wind after a while.
I read your writing, Susie, because I love the way you write. I like how your writing makes me feel and think. I like that your observing the world and interpreting all that information in a unique and thoughtful way, which adds to my own experience. And I read it for the companionship of a writer that behaves in a way I behave, because I too spend time in nature, contemplating and being.
But naturally there are those who build up a hierarchy of things in their heads, who feel calm perhaps with believing somethings have more innate value, or authority, or power, or merely because the hierarchy of things in their heads seem to reflect back creditably on themselves. And these people are always attempting to convince you that the hierarchy of things in their heads should be taken seriously, that you should follow the same rules.
Personally, and I don't mean this pompously at all, but I'm not interested in people trying to convince me that there are limited (and limiting) ways of slicing and dicing the world, and I'm not interested in thier appeals to join them, however those appeals are disguised.
So I guess I'm just saying thanks for the writing, and thanks for the unique perspective, and thanks for mentioning there are those with their needs and their rules just as there are birch trees with a beautiful fragrance after the rain. Such is life.
You write for the readers who appreciate your lyrical prose, not for the fractious naysayers who thrive on polarising viewpoints. Don’t let the foghorns of disapproval drown out the sound of the waves. Beautiful writing, as ever.