Hello dear ones, from my overheated and suddenly golden hill, I welcome you.
I hope no one else is as lost as I am in the fog of end of school year loose papers, never-ending land maintenance caused by sheep who have obviously been taking secret lessons from David Blaine and the incessant rantings of a dearly beloveds’ obsession with a certain wannabe king? All of this, not to mention the sudden heat, jar concentration, blur my words into incoherent jumbles on white pages that stare back at me in a spidery salmagundi devoid of a single sentence worthy of your precious reading time.
Ergo, the month of June grants me little—read almost zero—indulgence. The days bounce off the calendar like a string of broken beads, all glorious and shiny and warm, all enticingly summery as I watch each one disappear forever in the dust of time. I am in automatic gear, legs and arms are working, the engine is working too but refuses to connect to anything other than essentials which are vastly more numerous than those even vaguely synonymous with the wonders of wandering aimlessly.
On a day that feels like it takes forever in arriving, I have a morning to myself, to daydream, write a little, maybe... The house is empty of ranting and needy voices and arranged—meaning tidy enough not to be a distraction. The necessary—meaning most pressing but not all—chores are dealt with. There is a huge vase of fresh wild flowers gathered in the cool air of early morning on the kitchen table—campanula, yarrow, wild aster, toadflax and as I sit down to write, warm—not hot, yet—air pours through at last open windows followed by sunbeams dancing in dust motes—I did say most pressing tasks. And yet, even when so many words have crowded my thoughts for all the hours in between, still I stare at a page that feels like a battlefield I don’t have the energy to fight and then of course, there is this, this never ending shame of being human.
This is a time when it is frightening to be alive, when it is hard to think of human beings as rational creatures. Everywhere we look we see brutality, stupidity, until it seems that there is nothing else to be seen but that — a descent into barbarism, everywhere, which we are unable to check. But I think that while it is true there is a general worsening, it is precisely because things are so frightening we become hypnotised, and do not notice… Dorris Lessing
Two weeks remain before at least part of the fog will lift, what’s left, bound in hope, I can but pray will follow…
I want to tell you of this sudden summer, of how lush green meadows, just days ago resplendent in the vibrant colours and flourishes of spring, have dried into patchworks of yellowy beige, how hot breezes carrying dusty motes of golden pollen and seeds are as visible as clouds in the blue of this Solstice sky.
I want to tell you of how when the heat shimmers across the barley fields as hot air bends into the cool above, the haze is a palpable mirage of undulating light so iridescent one could almost believe there is such a thing as sun ghosts.
I want to tell you of how the tarmac on the lane burns through the soles of my shoes.
I want to tell you of how a certain delicate grass adorning the banks of the fields looks like liquid amber in the low sun at dusk and feels like silken threads brushing my legs as I walk.
I want to tell you of the hare I watched while hidden behind three oak trees as he meticulously washes his fur in early morning dew. How, with his long legs and slender toes, he preens every whisker, his ears, his elegant chest. How he scratches his back and the underside of powerful even longer hind legs with his teeth. How he knows I am watching but continues anyway.
I want to tell you of two more I watch quietly from the lane on an evening prior to this day; juveniles gambolling in the dappled shadow of forest shade, refining their acrobatics they leap, at times more than three feet in the air then twist back over each other as if the earth itself taught them these divine balletic manoeuvres from the very moment they realise they have feet attached to legs capable of such magic.
I want to tell you that one of these two youngsters has the exact same long ears as the newcomer—a Jack—I spy on three mornings consecutively, disappearing into forest undergrowth, one merle grey, one creamy white, both black-tipped.
I want to tell you how I believe my old hare—my muse for almost five years—is gone, curled into an earth form for all of eternity, how his bones have joined the underworld of mycelia and roots to feed the great mystery below and, thereby, I hope, sustaining a spirit I will never forget.
I want to tell you of the many hundreds of Painted Ladies that land on the pink-petaled wall of brambles behind the barn, of their resilience in a world hell-bent on eradicating insects of any kind.
I want to tell you, I am not a painted lady. I am not flitting and fluttering in frivolous flurries of pink flora, I am free-falling, flapping furiously with barely strength sufficient to stay airborne but no more. I hope that I am as resilient.
I want to tell you there are honey bees on my lavender but they are few, likewise Hummingbird moths.
I want to tell you of how the scent of trillions of Tilleul blossoms so heady and sweet fill my home, how I wish I could bottle it and send each of you a phial as a divine gift of nature from June.
I want to tell you how the hill and all those surrounding folds of ancient rock are shuddering with the weight of machinery, compacting their foundations and depleting their minerals, that the air is filled with the particles of their eons of wisdom and stories. How with each year those thundering tyres roll over the land they destroy another layer of stories, that these stories are forever lost in a whole universe of others we will never know.
I want to tell you how whilst sitting on an old Alder stump at lunchtimes, I watch barbel fish glide in a clear olive pond cleaning their lithe slippery bodies on scratchy weeds. How they can swim as many as five dozen miles up stream in a year to find the most perfectly oxygenated water for their diverse lifestyle, that they have taste receptors in their barbed whiskers, that their unique sensory systems are so anatomically adapted they contribute greatly to their place within aquatic ecosystems.
I want to tell you how, in complete awe of its colour, I saw a cousin of my dear friend Davids, Red Dragon glancing across the water then turn to bury something in the dampness of the bank. How he did not stop to say hello and I didn’t mind a tiny bit.
I want to tell you how all this wonder and beauty I am blessed with is fragmented by the horror of war, of what is tragically clear by the many tens of thousands of innocent people who have lost their lives—mothers, fathers, children, elders. How the full human cost is so much deeper. How some truths are too entangled in grief and history to ever be understood. How holding space for the unknowable is a kind of quiet witness I feel guilty in accepting. How I carry this ache, this sorrow, this refusal to look away which is not small. How it is not passive but bearing witness as a form of resistance. It is mourning. It is remembering the humanity of the world.
I want to tell you how hope, my own, is a dim but ever glowing light—small perhaps, but inextinguishable—that I pray somewhere, someone may be finding their way by it.
With love and desperate hope for humanity
Gonna sit with this for a day my friend. 🥲I’ll be back.
Thank you .. I am off to walk in an old-growth forest carrying your words in my soul and spirit. Words that offer solace and hope and trees that are testimonies to endurance.