The in-between

Just a note whilst the tale is on to brew

It’s raining here. A mizzling grey. There is a shock of daffodils on the table where I write, and my hands are still covered in blue and green paint from the row of tester pots I slapped on the wall this morning. Sea blues or oak greens, the incredibly privileged choices of my days.   

Tomorrow is February 29^th, the vanishing day. A leap year. And I truly hope it is. Can we make a collective leap into a new way of being in this world? Can we convince enough people to come with us, so it actually makes a difference? We’re off the edge of the map. The path ahead is not paved, or even worn, we must make it ourselves.

Boldly into the woods we go.

I promised you a tale for this liminal day, of Bear-kings and spring, of quickening, of love and of freedom. I don’t have it. All I have today is “make it stop”, and I don’t think any of you need to read that a thousand times. Although, I may fire such a missive off to my local MP later tonight, he needs to read it... All I have today is burnt out exhaustion and tears. All I have is my ancestors screaming, a head of steam building in this land, dreams too true and a mothers’ deep, sacred rage. But I will earth it down, hands in the soil, bare feet on that warming earth, back to the fire at midnight and love, always love.

My mind is a swirl of Yeats, ideas on Soul-Retrieval, my great-great grandmothers healing practices, those dreams too true, bears, asterisms, spring, ancient goddesses, fire and truth and freedom on the tongue. It’s on to brew. So dear reader, come see me on Sunday for a cup of tea and I’ll endeavour to have something of substance pulled from it all for you then. You can vote below for what you need most in this moment; fiction following on from Snow-White and her bear or a guided meditation, of sorts, similar to Grandmother of the Deepest Soil.

Today I’ll leave you with some reading for the in-between.

I received a copy of Seán Pádraig O’Donoghue’s Courting the Wild Queen yesterday and opening it to the first chapter entitled “The Bear King” felt like deep magic after my last post. It is both poetic and well-rooted and I’m excited to read on.

I’ve been opening this at random and it is both soothing and surprising.

And I’m reading a novel set so locally (within mere miles) and using such real local places and shops, that I’m finding it incredibly jarring. For instance, where the fictional characters grandmother buys her church clothes is the same shop my very real paternal grandmother bought her fancy clothes, she didn’t go to church, she stayed home and read Mills and Boone whilst my strict Brethren Grandfather went to his meeting, but that’s another story… I’ve encountered something like it before, there is a much-lauded recent book of folktales set in the landscape around our new house, landscapes I’ve been raised in and know well and whilst it is not jarring in the same hyper-real way it is jarring in that the tales don’t sit rooted in the landscape as folktales should, these sit on top of it, a set of tales painting English folk motifs onto Irish lands. The result makes for uncomfortable, colonial reading, however well it is written. Have you experienced either of these effects? And what is your preference in fiction, hyper-reality, or slightly obscured geography? You can drop me a note below.

Come see me on Sunday, it’ll be off the brew by then. Xx