To Where Does It Lead, This Walking?

To where does it lead, this walking? Past sea-lashed stacks and blocky towers of granite, shattered into cubes, to wind-bashed headlands drenched in spume and spray. Through lush-green tunnels of feathery tamarisk, humid as the tropics, wet-warm as rainforests, dripping with hart's tongue ferns and frothy with meadowsweet.

Read more of my Cornish-coast-path prose poem at Roselle Angwin's Qualia and Other Wildlife . . .

Camino

I’ve always loved walking. I like the simplicity and freedom of it. No tying or troublesome equipment needed — just a serviceable pair of feet. Planes, trains, ships, cars, bikes, horses and donkeys all limit you in one way or another. With foot travel — barring walking on air and walking on water — you can go wherever you want, whenever you want. You don’t have to look at a timetable, you don’t have to wait for a ride, you don’t have to spend lots of money and you don’t have to buy loads of gear.  All you have to do is point your feet to the north, south, east or west. Walking creates an intoxicating sense of possibility you don’t experience with any other form of locomotion . . .

This is part of a post on the Camino I was invited to write as guest blogger on Roselle Angwin's  Qualia and Other Wildlife. You can read the rest of it here . . .

Poem For The Autumn Equinox 2015

I was struck by Roselle Angwin's latest poem, Birthday. Thanks, Roselle, for letting me reproduce it here.

Birthday

At dawn the air is dense with contrails almost not-there,
yet meadow, hedge and sky are all a-glitter: the time of year 
when small migrating spiders launch their bodies into space
on less than a breath, and mesh the light. They can’t know 
where they’re landing or even if they’ll arrive; but autumn’s
glow is richer and the day brighter for their risk. Microscopic,
their trust in life is one that we can’t have, with our 
knowingness, the way we lumber through our years;
and oh what I’d give to rest this body on space and sky
like that, not caring where I’m going, if my fragile tensile arc
will lasso the future, if I’ll ever get there, or who comes with me.

The Journey Is Home

Blog friend Roselle Angwin has recently written an excellent post about pilgrimage. I love the idea that the need for pilgrimage may exist as an archetype in the human collective unconscious, and that the art of living . . . is about recognising that every moment, every action, every journey, every destination, is sacred, if approached in a spirit of presence, with soul.

Photo courtesy of Roselle Angwin.

the journey is home

A constant stream running under my conscious thoughts is my preoccupation with the notion of pilgrimage: what it means in our 21st century world, how to do it in a secular society, and why it's important.

This stream bubbles to the surface each year around March, as my heart starts to fill with the forthcoming writing retreat that I lead on the magical and sacred Isle of Iona each April.

When Chaucer was writing in English (a departure from Latin) in the late 14th century, April was a traditional time in mediaeval England for making pilgrimage.

'Whan that Aprill, with his shoures soote
The droghte of March hath perced to the roote
And bathed every veyne in swich licour,
Of which vertu engendred is the flour;
Whan Zephirus eek with his sweete breeth
Inspired hath in every holt and heeth
The tendre croppes, and the yonge sonne
Hath in the Ram his halfe cours yronne,
And smale foweles maken melodye,
(That slepen al the nyght with open eye)
So priketh hem Nature in hir corages
Thanne longen folk to goon on pilgrimages
And palmeres for to seken straunge strondes
To ferne halwes . . .' (Chaucer's original Prologue)

'When April with its showers sweet
Has pierced March drought unto the root
And bathed each vein in liquid power
From which new strength creates the flower;
When the soft West Wind with sweetest breath
New life has breathed in copse and heath
In tender shoots, and the young sun
In Aries half a month has run,
And small birds start Spring's melody
(Nightbirds who 'sleep' with open eye),
Then nature stirs the hearts of each
To make folk long for pilgrimage,
And travellers to tread new shores,
Strange strands, set out for distant shrines . . .' (my 'translation') 

And so we too set out to some kind of stirring — for restoration, for renewal, or on account of some undefined longing.

Pilgrimage comes from the Latin peregrinus, which in turn means a wanderer, a traveller, a stranger. (I love that it also names a bird, a falcon.)

Although of course it has been associated with established religion, I believe that the need for pilgrimage exists as an archetype (maybe for renewal, remaking) in the human collective unconscious. We could call the 'hero's journey', the motif, as Joseph Campbell saw it, behind most of the world's great myths, or the journey of the Fool in the tarot, as an expression of this universal archetype. Wikipedia tells me that there's a book written on this: Jean Darby Cleft & Wallace Cleft, The Archetype of Pilgrimage: Outer Action with Inner Meaning. The Paulist Press, 1996. ISBN 0-8091-3599-X.

And that's a beautiful definition to my mind: outer action with a corresponding inner purpose or meaning. 

This is the journey to fuller consciousness, wholeness. 

For me, the art of living is something to do with making every moment count. (Or rather, the aspiration to do so.) And it's also about recognising that every moment, every action, every journey, every destination, is sacred, if approached in a spirit of presence, with soul. 

Implicit in such a journey is the spirit of openness, of trust, of sharing silence and conversation, solitude and belonging, story and poem, self with self or self with other. Pilgrimage doesn't have to be to a sacred shrine. It doesn't have to have any traditional religious significance.

Something in us longs to rest, to be still even as we're moving, to be fully present in this moment, on our journey on this tiny planet around its star in the trillions of stars in this arm of the spiral Milky Way galaxy. Of course, our lives tend to lead us towards the opposite: towards acceleration, distraction, accumulation of more and more (whether objects, Facebook friends, Twitter followers, or experience) with less and less time in which to appreciate it.

How would it be to slow down, to let every footstep, every breath, every moment really be richly enough?

And so we can quietly follow a longing for renewal while recognising that we don't even have to go out of our front door to make a pilgrimage — though it might be hard to explain to neighbours or nearest and dearest who don't get it that we're 'on pilgrimage' in our silence and slowness within four walls. (After all, what is a retreat but a non-moving pilgrimage?)

Or we go out of our front door not knowing what we're seeking but knowing that the longing is taking us. And we go slowly, embracing with such relief the sense of stillness that will come and visit us if we invite it, even as we're moving.

What we are doing on any journey undertaken with this focus, intent and presence, is bringing ourselves back home. That's all — in its smallness, its hugeness.

ROSELLE ANGWIN

Thanks to Roselle Angwin for permission to reproduce this piece. Roselle's blog qualia and other wildlife can be found here.

The Day After Valentine's Day

The experience of loving, that now disappoints so many, can actually change and be transformed from the ground up into the building of a relationship between two human beings, not just a man and a woman. And this more authentic love will be evident in the utterly considerate, gentle, and clear manner of its binding and releasing. It will resemble what we now struggle to prepare: the love that consists of two solitudes which border, protect, and greet each other.

RAINER MARIA RILKE Letters to a Young Poet

I ain’t lookin’ to compete with you / Beat or cheat or mistreat you / Simplify you, classify you / Deny, defy or crucify you / All I really want to do / Is, baby, be friends with you.

BOB DYLAN All I Really Want to Do

Monday you can fall apart / Tuesday Wednesday break my heart / Thursday doesn't even start / It's Friday I'm in love.

ROBERT SMITH (from THE CURE) Friday I'm in Love

Our history books refer to it 

In cryptic little notes, 

It's quite a common topic on

The Transatlantic boats; 

I've found the subject mentioned in

Accounts of suicides, 

And even seen it scribbled on

The backs of railway guides.

Does it howl like a hungry Alsatian, 

Or boom like a military band? 

Could one give a first-rate imitation

On a saw or a Steinway Grand? 

Is its singing at parties a riot? 

Does it only like Classical stuff? 

Will it stop when one wants to be quiet?

O tell me the truth about love.

WH AUDEN Tell Me the Truth about Love

Love is not vain because it is frustrated, but because it is fulfilled. The people we love turn to ashes when we possess them.

MARCEL PROUST  In Search of Lost Time: The Guermantes Way

Sickly-sweet Valentine's Day is now over. Did your relationship survive it? Roselle at Qualia and Other Wildlife has some wise words to say on the subject:

Eleven Things to Give Up in Relationships

Here are some things that commonly block our ability to give and receive love. Giving them up can only make you happier!

The idea that your partner or anyone else is here to make you happy and to meet your needs. Your partner is here for his or her own journey on this earth; if you can support each other in your journeys and adventures then you have a chance of real happiness. 

The view that you and your partner sail in the same boat. You are, always have been and always will be in two boats; the choice is whether you steer side-by-side for the same open sea, or shore, or not. What you have in common is the ocean. 

The need to merge or fuse with your partner. True union isn’t possible except when two individuals are clearly differentiated, knowing themselves and their partner as distinct entities. Work instead on knowing who you are, and seeing clearly who your partner is. That way, there’s a chance of real love and interdependency rather than co-dependency. 

The need for that Other to be like you and to agree with you. Showing another who you really are, and engaging with who the other is, is an act of love; needing their agreement and approval before you can be who you are can be narcissistic, egotistical and insecure. 

Controlling, whether by fault-finding, withholding, blame and coercion — or by praise. All are manipulations, and driven by fear. That doesn’t mean to say you can’t appreciate, out loud, who your partner is, nor ever express something that's pissing you off — it's more whether you are co-opting this to serve your fears. (There's an associated issue here: that of self-disclosure. This is a prerequisite for intimacy, but it's important to be aware of whether we use this as a manipulation to have the other reveal him- or herself to us, or as a genuine desire to share who we are with that Other without necessarily expecting reciprocity.) 

The association of love with mind-reading: 'If you really loved me you’d know without my telling you what I need.' Instead, commit to knowing for yourself what you really need, and be willing to show that to your partner. Equally, learn from him or her what s/he needs. 

Expecting the other to always 'be there’ for you'. It’s simply not possible when the other has his or her own life and journey, and s/he is not your mother/father. 

Taking everything another says or does personally. While you may be offering him or her a 'hook' to hang their stuff on, another person's 'stuff' remains their stuff, and probably says more about them than about you. 

Reacting. Instead, learn to respond. What this means is denying yourself the momentary satisfaction of blowing the other out of the water with emotional heat (you might feel it, but that doesn’t inevitably have to lead to exhibiting it), instead seeing clearly what the situation needs from you. You may still find you need to raise it with your partner anyway; if so, it helps if you can give yourself time to calm down so it isn't merely an attack. If you take time out, you may find you don't need to launch anything at him/her, but adjust an expectation of your own, or at least trace the roots of your reaction and its previous baggage (because there usually is some). 

The need to blame — self or other. Instead, take responsibility and change a pattern for the better. We’re all human and we all get it wrong sometimes as we learn, and that is simply how it is. Learn to love yourself; then you can love another. 

Struggling — with yourself or another — to be anything other than who you are/the Other really is. 

But you don't have to believe me; just try it for yourself . . . And no, of course I don't manage it myself all, or even much, of the time!

And this list clearly could go on and on, and no doubt at some stage it will.

ROSELLE ANGWIN Qualia and Other Wildlife

The Power Of Vulnerability

Photo: Roselle Angwin

A recent, powerful post from blog friend, poet and writer, multi-talented artist, craftswoman and workshop facilitator, Roselle Angwin, from Dartmoor:

I've been thinking about vulnerability recently, and what courage it takes; what an art it is. And how crucial it is to intimacy with self or other (whether or not that latter's sexual).

I think it might be useful to mention here that by 'vulnerability' I don't mean emotional manipulation, victimhood, martyrdom or self-indulgence. I mean simply a willingness to stand in who you are, weaknesses and strengths, and let another see you.

You have to be pretty strong in yourself to risk others seeing you as you are, no masks. More, you need to have grown beyond navigating your life according to others' approval, and whether it's offered or withheld.

You need to be living from your own centre out; and to have moved beyond the need to make ego and pride the be-all and end-all. It takes a certain depth of humility; and it takes being able and willing to carry on being vulnerable when others reject it, or kick you.

It takes being willing to keep on being 'out there' when others withhold — without demanding that they change, but knowing that you're going to keep on keeping on anyway.

After all, that's how the world gets in; and without the world getting in, how can we experience interbeing and empathy? The most rewarding experiences come from deep exchanges; deep honest authentic exchanges.

My daughter posted a shared snippet on her Facebook page recently: 'It's easy to take your clothes off and have sex with someone; people do it all the time. But opening up your soul to someone, letting them into your spirit, thoughts, hopes, dreams, fears — now that's being naked.'

I know this is not a new thought, but I am reminded how often we'll let other things stand in for vulnerability and intimacy: sex, for instance. Or food, booze, shopping, heated debates, clever talk, words that sound good but convey nothing of depth. Even silence — because of course there's silence that's evasive as much as there's silence that is shared.

I wrote once: 'The connections we make with each other are as good as the connections we make with ourself'. Intimacy and vulnerability, true openness, require a willingness to know oneself first and foremost, and to keep learning about oneself and the world, and to find a way of accepting oneself, strengths, weaknesses, triumphs and fuck-ups alike.

This means facing one's deepest fears about not being, ultimately, loveable as one is.

What's brought all this to mind (not that these things are ever far from my mind) is that I've had some very profound exchanges with people recently; or perhaps I should say that I'm currently meeting a number of men, specifically, on a deeper level: men who are not afraid to be open, tender, vulnerable — and not wimps. (I don't mean in romantic or sexual engagement, I simply mean in the course of daily life/work.)

There are of course always people who are willing to challenge the mores that tell us to walk in armour and that the world's out to get you, especially when one moves in alternative circles and if one leads the kind of retreats, or goes to the kinds of workshops, talks, campaigns, poetry or eg 5 Rhythms dance events that I do. I have always had close women and men friends both who are emotionally open in that way. But suddenly, partly in relation to my work, the number of people in my life who've made a transition into this kind of strength, coming from a sure and authentic centre, seems to have increased swiftly. I guess this post is to acknowledge, honour and thank these people. You make a difference.

What is happening in all our lives, individually and collectively, percolates to the surface at certain times, perhaps, more than others. We live in extraordinary and challenging times, and I suspect this is one of those 'surges', where there's a collective shift going on, an acceleration, at the moment, in counterpoint to global brutality, violence, anger and hate — in which I include, albeit in dilution, the defence mechanism of cynicism.

I've had a useful lesson recently, though, in the fact that others don't always want your vulnerability, or are threatened by it. What I'm learning at the moment is how to stand firm and let myself be vulnerable without forcing that on someone who, for reasons of their own, doesn't want it; how to keep one's counsel and hold still while not closing down oneself. An overtly (so to speak) open person can perhaps be just as much a threat to the wellbeing of a more reserved person as vice versa: it's not helpful to make judgements here, only to notice, and respond accordingly. (The image that comes to mind is the incongruity of a nun in a habit on a naturist beach — or a talkative nudist in a silent-order convent! I've been trying to avoid this obvious and seemingly value-laden analogy, but it keeps impressing itself. Neither's 'wrong'; they both just value different things.)

And of course the world, and our 'significant others', will continue to challenge us. That's how we grow; not in solitude on a mountainside in the Himalayas (though learning to love solitude is a prerequisite for all sorts of other strengths), but in active relationship.

This morning my Tricycle Daily Dharma dropped this into my inbox:

'Relationships work to open us up to ourselves. But first we have to admit how much we don’t want that to happen, because that means opening ourselves to vulnerability. Only then will we begin the true practice of letting ourselves experience all those feelings of vulnerability that we first came to [Buddhist] practice to escape.' Barry Magid No Gain

Here's to the strength to remain soft and open on the outside, and firm, clear and strong on the inside.