As much as I like to crow that I have life plans and am moving towards goals, I am pretty much blown around by what my brain says is the focus of the moment.
ADHD, autism, whatever it is, when the hyperfocus calls, I answer.
Not that they’re even hyperfocii, because I do get other stuff done. I rarely disappear for hours or days down the rabbithole, and forget to eat, drink, wee, or shower. I want to say ‘I’m not that bad”, but to be honest, I suspect it has more to do with being an undiagnosed AuDHDer for many years, and just having to knock those urges on the head to get shit done.
Maybe my overruling the hyperfocii is my hyperfocus.
Anyway, while I like to call writing my calling, my reason for being alive, my career, my job, my passion, it could well be a Special Interest. I don’t want to reduce it to that. I don’t class it alongside dinosaurs, aromatherapy, and reading.
Right now, as I finish off Season of the Wolf, and start looking towards what to do with my writing coach in June, July, and August, I can feel the urge in me to sit down with tarot, with astrology, and that side of my life. Where’s my witchcraft at? My hippie wants to come out for air.
I want to say ‘Oh, not now, not when I have a vague plan for writing.’ But I know saying ‘not now’ makes no difference.
Do I say to my writing coach ‘looks like my brain is going to be elsewhere’, only to find the tarot and astrology passion lasted 2 weeks? Do I somehow try to incorporate my hippie into my writing? Beats me.
I’m so tempted to have another go at ADHD meds to see if they resolve this. But, since the experiment with them lasted 2 days and has had an ongoing depression, Ex Dys, and existential angst effect, I’m leery.
Ah, the joys of my brain. Dear brain, how can I turn all this to my advantage?
I have spent a convoluted morning unpacking, reading, posting to Instagram and Facebook, reading, attempting to write poetry, reading, and generally feeling flat and as creative as a brown dwarf star(not at all, a burnt out thing).
Somehow, all this has lead me to what is either an appalling memory,
dissociation,
or alienation from my own writing.
Because there’s fewer short stories, I can usually trace my inspiration, my intention, and the general plot, even from scraps. But not always. Oh, it’s not the “I dreamed an amazing story, woke up, wrote some notes, went back to sleep. And when I woke up in the morning, the note said: ‘the black glove, Tim, American politics’.”
I usually have some slight memory of writing a story. Usually.
Poetry – well, we’re in much dicier territory. There’s A LOT of them. Many’s the time I’ve turned to my support worker and said: “What the actual fuck? What the hell is this about? Why? Who? When?”
Now, when I enter my ‘flow state’ I have no consciousness of time, body needs, anything around me. It’s pointless me playing music. I don’t hear it. I often don’t feel my feet falling asleep. My poor bladder has to fend for itself. I’m told this is hyperfixation. It may well be. I have the ADHD badge.
Later, I will not have any memory of what I’ve written, nor be able to recognise it later. Channeling? It’s been suggested. But if so, the dead poet using me is also keen on dinosaurs, space, fabric, tarot, science fiction, and dance.
I don’t know if I just have a shite memory, but if so, why do I remember everything about Bentleigh in the 70’s, and Carrum Downs in the 80’s and early 90’s, but not my own work?
Do I dissociate when I write? It doesn’t feel like it. I never have a sense that I am sitting in the back of my own head while something or someone else looks out of my eyes. That’s a very definite state and I know if I’m doing that.
Is it alienation? Do I not, on some level, want to own my work?
I honestly don’t know. This morning as I wrestled with The Giant Blah Feeling of ‘nothing to say’, suddenly there appeared on the page a quite decent little poem that I didn’t know was in me. It was about a small moment, or series of moments with XP. Nothing exciting, but it still needed saying. And I didn’t know that until I came back to myself and saw the page.
I like the idea that I enter an altered state between the worlds, and make magic.
I started learning to belly dance in 1989, the year I was pregnant, and birthed, ThirtiesGirl
I have been a student of belly dance ever since, with sometimes big gaps where I did stuff like raise children, work, write, etc
I was a professional for a while, but never loved it like I should have
I taught belly dance for a number of years, mostly at neighbourhood and community houses
I retired from it all around 2011
I still float around the edges, occasionally dancing at a hafla or fundraiser
I was, and still am, a darned good teacher.
With that info out of the way, I can tell you that I have a new support worker. E The Blonde comes on Tuesday mornings to help me database a rather large back catalogue of my writing. She makes sure I stay on track, take regular breaks for a wee dance, and generally keeps me going with what is rather boring work.
E The Blonde has noticed the large gap between her dancing and mine. Thus, I am teaching her a few belly dance techniques. She says I explain it well, am a kind teacher, and that I should still be teaching.
Very flattering stuff. I ponce about once she’s left. “Yeah baby, I still got it.”
In recent years, I’ve been talked into doing a few belly dance taster workshops at local libraries, as part of their ‘try something different’ programmes. I take along the business cards of all the belly dance teachers I know in the eastern sutures.
Many of the students get excited and want to learn. I make it easy. I make it fun. I make them see their bodies a kind light.
They want to keep learning with me. I have to give them the bad news: sorry wimmin, I no longer teach regular classes.
They pout. They want me – sweet, funny, older me who has a round tummy, saggy boobs, glasses, and a wry attitude to aging.
Yes, I could kick it all off again. I could still teach a class or two, but there’s no way.
I burned out on teaching week after week.
Teaching belly dance isn’t like teaching yoga, where you make a lesson plan, and show up with a mat, and a phone full of Deva Premal albums.
Teaching belly dance means a speaker, a phone full of music, a lesson plan, a new choreography each term, and enough of each prop of the month for each student(veil, finger cymbals, veil fans, folkloric sticks).
Yoga students don’t want a performance opportunity. Yoga students don’t often want notification that a master teacher is in town. They don’t want to go see concerts and haflas.
So it’s very kind that people still want me to teach. But no thanks. I’m in a different phase of life now. Writer.
Bucket lists have become pretty popular, but if you don’t know the term, it’s a list of stuff you want to do before you kick the bucket. These lists sometimes become ‘shit I need to do this summer’, and it’s a task list.
No. I don’t want a To Do list. I have one as long as a piece of string tied to another piece of string.
I’m talking about: let me consider all aspects of my life and see what I fancy doing that I haven’t yet done.
I’ve pulled a few images from a quick google search.
Well, let’s see. I’ve visited Stonehenge, gone on a cruise, visited all 7 continents, studied and got my Bachelor of Arts, fell in love, learned a new style of dance, learned to ride a bike, did yoga, attended a school reunion, etc etc etc.
It’s definitely time for a new bucket list, one that is meaningful, delightful, and exciting to me. I have to bear in mind that I’m 60, not 20, so some of the more daring things no longer appeal.
To that end, I’ll shortly be getting together with a girlfriend: craft paper and textas(markers) at the ready, so we can begin brainstorming our new bucket lists. An afternoon in a cafe, preferably with access to books for inspiration, and a wifi connection in case we need google help. Tea, more tea, and cake at the ready.
What do a couple of 60+ women want to get up to? We have no more fucks to give, so just about anything non-hip-breaking goes.
Tarot Deck: The Lost Forest (new to me, straight from Kickstarter).
Spread: Joanna Powell Colbert, from the Gaian Tarot.
What do I leave behind in the Old Year? The Chariot. The initiation of movement is the feeling I get from The Chariot in terms of this question. It took quite a lot for me to ask for help with my writing, and to accept that help. But there is forward movement now. The lion speaks to sudden strength, but the lion is built for the sprint, not endurance, and the male lion becomes so overheated whilst running, due to his heavy mane, that the lionnesses in his pride do the hunting and chasing. He is there to defend the pride against all threats. The woman sits easily astride this sprinter as they leap over mountains. It took a lot for this powerful animal to get going but now he is supported from below, and guided from above. I leave behind that ignition point, and accept that I am now always moving forward.
What do I open up to in the New Year? The Hierophant. Greater, further reaching spirituality. The branches of the tree curl upon themselves, which suggest a conserving of my spiritual energy this year, turning it inwards rather than outwards, but there is also growth from the murk to the more vibrant colours. I can expect a more attuned, spiritual year, if I make it so.
Key Opportunity of the New Year: 10 of Oceans. Family connection, loving family. The humpback and her calf swim free and companionably side by side, while a breaching whale is in the distance. The peace of the deep ocean. A time for me to reconnect with my firstborn, forge a new thread by admitting my vulnerability(humpbacks are endangered). My daughter and I have started talking about our difficulties in communicating, and we have both put connection on our vision boards for 2024. Here’s to it.
Key Challenge of the New Year: The Mystic(High Priestess). A sphinx in stillness, awareness only the tip of the iceberg, with mystery underneath. Allowing myself my High Priestess quiet time to drop into sacred space, as I have done just now, and remind myself that I am not just Imperial ambition, but also priestess, scholar, channeler of the divine. My words are the oracle. I feel this relates to my deep poetic work.
Hidden concern: 2 of Fire. A phoenix emerges from its egg after 1000 years. The incubation of ideas, new hatching. Do I have it in me to not only generate new work, but also step fully into cronedom now that I’ve turned 60? Can I leave behind old stories and emerge anew? There is still one egg not hatched, but that is not for now. Perhaps in another ten years, when I’m 70, that too will hatch and I will be a new person all over again. Do I have it in me to rebirth myself more fully as a writer, grandmother, mother, wife, and other chosen roles, for the reality is that every day, I choose all of these and more.
Deep Wisdom/Counsel: 10 of Earth. Bulbs lie dormant for years before they blossom. A long term investment in self, as well as a long term investment in material matters, including finances. Completion of a cycle, too. My astrologer, Stella Woods(Stella Starwoman) twigged me about checking my investments and finances, and here is another reminder. The shadow of the tree is huge, but still there is blossoming. Search out the shadow.
Key Theme of the New Year: Knight of Fire. The veins of the volcanic lizard courses with magma, granting them boundless energy. Fearless and bold, they make their nests in active volcanoes. Energy, passion, enthusiasm. This salamander or fire lizard not only generates its own fire, but lives in a fiery environment. Always heated, always burning.
And I’d like to complete this reading with a card from the Rebel Deck: The Oracle With Attitude.
What is 2024 all about for me? Shit is going down with your job: reevaluate, change your perspective or fucking quit.
Well, if writing is my calling, then my job is…..carer? And yes, there is currently shit going down. Miscommunication with the support team while my husband and I were taking a break meant my offspring having a meltdown and losing their shit in an angry way, so that an incident report has been filed. Sigh.
2023 started off with me recovering from my shoulder replacement Dec 9. I weaned off the big drugs and mostly managed with Panadeine. Rehab started with massage, and lead to exercises, and I am now completely recovered, and have full movement and no pain. Complete 100% success.
Annual Capricorn lunch with MotorcycleMan.
I employed Carina Bissett as my writing mentor, and that has lead to a successful writing relationship. As I’m still unmedicated for ADHD(diagnosis came around August), trying to rewrite a novel proved too hard, and in the end, so did rewriting a bunch of short stories. I got about 4 done, before I switched, very successfully to poetry. End result: a new book of retold fairy tale poetry to offer to publishers next year.
I participated in two belly dance concerts this year, one of which saw me changing up my costuming and make up to express the pain and frustration of my shoulder replacement. I went very goth, fusion, and scary.
I briefly tried African dance, and while I liked it, the one hour drive to the class, and the stress of the drive and finding parking proved too much for me.
I participated in THIS IS ME, a diverse modelling day, and found a new coterie of girlfriends who are immensely supportive. I wore belly dance gear, and got a huge round of applause.
I did a trip to Byron Bay in March, but did not stay in my usual haunt, a small AirBnB apartment. Instead, a different apartment that I didn’t like very much, and discovered was much further from town and the beach than advertised. However, I did get to swim every day, and beach walk.
My daughter and her family came to Melbourne for Easter, and a grand time was had hanging out with them.
Concerts attended: Wendy Rule x 2; The Herberts x 2; The Retro Stars x 1.
I started getting more ear piercings, with a view to having a row of rings all the way up to the tip of both ears. To date, I have 5 in each ear, and now need to space the piercing dates out more to give the cartilege time to heal.
My plan to have a big back tattoo by the time I turned 60 has not eventuated, but is not off the table for the next year or so.
I did get eyebrow, eye liner, and lip tattooing done. The eyes were successful, brows fantastic, but the lips were not. My body just pushed all the colour out within days.
PizzaBoy and I viewed Healesville Cemetery with a view to natural burials there, but burial markers are not allowed. We’d have to be found with GPS coordinates. The only marker is an ugly painted stick shoved in the ground any old how. This does not suit my daughter, who wants somewhere to go to talk to us, so we are now considering our next move in terms of Final Resting Place. We chose Healesville because it’s one of the cheaper options. I’m personally against cremation because of the pollution aspect.
I finally qualified for NDIS funding, but not enough funding to get what I wanted. So, more documentation, distressing paperwork and assessments, and I’m back in the system for review.
I employed a support worker in 2022 to help with organising my writing files. Alas, young Josie succumbed to the call of academia when she took some time off to write her Honours thesis, and did not return. I did employ a second support worker, but she only lasted 3 sessions before she abruptly announced that she’d rearranged her time table and no longer ‘did Thursdays’. I am worker-less atm, as I simply can’t face advertising and interviewing again. People apply without reading the ad, without fitting the criteria, come to the interview then complain that it’s boring and where’s the fun craft and outings stuff they like to do, or they turn up for the interview, then spend their time sorting their time table and payments on their phone, or organising a house move for themselves. Nope, no thanks. Once I get more funding, a team leader can be paid to find someone for me.
I was back in Life Writing class for 3 terms at Ashburton Community Centre, then took time off. I completed the first draft of my dance memoir, and about 1/3 of a short memoir about my mum. I had then had enough of me, me, me, and thought I’d sample something different.
It turns out that Chinese brush painting did not take my fancy when I discovered how fiddly it was.
PizzaBoy and I were briefly in a neurodiverse DnD group, but the group could not organise themselves to meet more than thrice, so I’m presuming the group is now defunct, and I can take it off my mental backburner. I don’t really like DnD anyway. I find it boring.
Theatre attended: The Rocky Horror Show; Chess; War of the Worlds;
I travelled to England to join Wyld Tribe’s Return to Avalon tour, and see some sights of my own. Places visited include: Harry Potter studios; Tower of London; the London Stone, Mithraeum, British Museum, bookshops, Glastonbury, Stonehenge, Avebury, West Kennet Long Barrow, Silbury Hill, Wells, Salisbury Cathedral, Tintagel.
Saw the Barbie movie.
Workshops attended: various writing ones; a tea blending class; wreath making.
I went to Perth and then the Pilbara to Sisterhood Rising, where I lasted nearly 2 days before I came down with covid, and had to cut my time short.
We said goodbye to our beloved 24 year old ginger cat Angel. Some of his ashes are in a memorial glass globe that lives on my desk.
I found a new integrative doctor, who upped my thyroid meds, and added a few other things that have me feeling a lot better.
I end the year with a much-anticipated trip to Antarctica to celebrate my 60th birthday, come January 9th.
I’m pleased with my year, even though low energy, low thoughts, and illness had a cloud over some of it. There were a lot of good outings, good people, family harmony, and laughter. I dared a couple of new things, had new experiences, and produced a book.
Im looking forward to 2024, my 60th year, where I get smarter, faster, fitter, and wilder than ever.
I used to know a woman who made standng stones. Jean Lowe waited until her husband had retired and her children had left home before enrolling in art school to study ceramics. Vases and cups were not for her: she crafted rock, reverting her clay to its elemental form, re-wilding the smooth material through the application of fire….She was in her seventies..working in her studio, and still hefting her stones about, pinching their crags into existence, and smoothing out channels and pools to collect rainwater….She was adamant they were not birdbaths. To her, they were more akin to people, figures standing in the landscape like the ones she’d seen at Carnac and Bodmin, eerie and friendly all at once. She loved the idea of her strange stones being installed in polite suburban gardens, bringing with them a hint of otherness.
***
After a while, because I can’t resist it, I say: “Is it nice there, in your head?”
A pause. He turns to me slowly, his eyes blinking as he surfaces. “Sometimes I feel like my mind is growing branches,” he says.
“Yes,” I say, delighted at this point of contact. “Yes! I know the feeling exactly.”
“And every time you talk to me, you cut one of them off.”
***
You take off your shoes when you come home. You do it to keep the floors clean, but also to show how you trust this space to treat you kindly. You do it to spread your toes. When you take off your shoes, you show a little of your interior, your holey socks and your rough heels.
***
I thought back to my meditation training and remembered our teacher telling us how he’d left his wife and children to go to India and study with the Maharishi. He learned a lot about himself there, he said. He sat alone in a cave for months and wrestled with his soul. It was hard, but ultimately worth it….Next to me a woman raised her hand.
“How did your wife manage?” she asked.
“Well, I’m sure it was tough for her,” he said. “But she knew it was important to me.”
I’m ashamed now that I didn’t see it: the patriarchal way that we frame spiritual development, the way that men get enlightenment and women get to look after them while they do so, all the while being mocked for the compromised practices they create in the scraps of time that remain.
***
We have to fight for our ability to pay attention. It is not given. It does not assert itself as a need until it’s far too late. I am only just beginning to understand that my burnout was the result of multiple losses, each one of which seemed so small that I thought it didn’t matter. I willingly surrendered my meditation time because I thought it would a vanity to demand it. I gave up reading and time alone and long hot baths and walking. I gave up silence, and standing in the garden at sunrise. I let those moments become overrun by work and care and I was surprised to find that, without them, there was nothing left of me.
***
The moon is an excellent confidant, but there is only so much she can do. Danger, when it is always imminent, does harm. It doesn’t need at actually arrive. You exhaust yourself in the act of forever looking over your shoulder. Your body readies itself to fight and never quite discharges that chemical cocktail. You channel it instead into anger and self-pity and anxiety and hopelessness. You divert it into work. But what you really do, with every fibre of your being, is watch. You are incessantly, exhaustingly alert….Waking in the middle of night, I remember something that I used to do. I pad downstairs to greet the moon, and then sit in a garden chair and kick off my slippers. I let my bare feet make contact with the cold patio tiles, and I feel the tingle of exchange between the earth and me, the instant reciprocity. As the moon keeps watch, I wonder how I could possibly have forgotten this. And I wonder how I can remember it again.
***
There are two giant waves travelling endlessly around the earth, and twice a day we see their full volume. We barely sense the scale of what is really happening, because we only ever witness it locally. We rarely stop to think that they join us to the entire planet, and to the space beyond it.
***
I want to learn to pray, but I don’t know how to pray. I want to put my hands together, but I don’t know what that would mean. I don’t want intermediaries. I don’t want interpretation. I want to speak plainly and directly to an entity that I can’t quite perceive, and I don’t have the language for that.
***
We sit on the lawn and break the bread, eating it dipped in hot coffee from a flask. Then we each in turn spend time alone with the spring. The waters are scented with the last gasp of summer – mint and rose – and the crumbling stone looks proud in its dressing of leaves. I prop a piece of the Lammas bread against its arch, in the hope that some birds will find it. Either way, between the birds and us, the well is populated again. The two of us have woven enchantment, reconnecting this place to its old meanings and finding new ones of our own. It didn’t take much. It was the simple work of willing hands, an act of listening, a commitment to seeing a place that had become invisible.
***
A part of me is always suspicious of groups. I am by nature a solitary animal. I like to do things my way, and in my own good time. I’m resistant to timetables and demands on my attention, and to the kind of politics that always seem to arise between adults who join clubs. I hate organised fun. Overall, I prefer to make my own ad hoc arrangements with a couple of close friends.
***
Fire is the shadow side of enchantment, the dark, gleaming sorcery from which we can’t turn our gaze. It shows us the wild danger that still resides in nature, the power it retains to devour and destroy. It is impolite, contagious, capable of catching from house to house while we stand helpless. It licks our palms like a moth in cupped hands. We have not understood this earth’s full potency until we have recognised fire.
***
Reading is the whole of me, the foundation upon which I rest, and these days I cannot do it. It is a dirty secret that I must keep, and ugly act of faithlessness in an author….I cannot shepherd my attention towards a page of text and take in any words.
***
If you know your stories – if you understand the mythologies of your land – then you can leap from a sunlit stroll with your dog into the ancient, chthonic wood.
***
Play is serious. Play is absolute. Play is the complete absorption in something that doesn’t matter to the external world, but which matters completely to you. It’s an immersioin in your own interests that becomes a feeling in itself, a potent emotion…It is the pursuit of pure flow, a sandbox mind in which we can test new thoughts, new selves. Play is a form of enchantment.
***
My own play has been with words. Like many autistic children, I grew up thinking that this wasn’t the right kind of play – or that it wasn’t play at all in the eyes of the adults around me, who urged me to get outside, to pick up some dolls and make them fashionable, to run around a bit. I didn’t want to run around. I wanted to write.
I was nine years old when I started telling people that I was planning to become a poet, but I had been writing before then. The impetus was there, the desire to connect things together. I remember one summer holiday when I sat at my mother’s abandoned typewriter and hammered out a time-travel farce largely based on a film they’d shown at school on the last day of term. But there was a moment when that play hardened into something more serious. People were asking what I wanted to be when I grew up, and I wanted to be a poet.
It was cute at first. ‘A poet, eh?’ the adults would say, and raise their eyebrows. I knew they were laughing at me, but it was friendly enough. Everyone enjoys a little pomposity in the prepubescent…By the time I was thirteen, my literary ambitions elicited something closer to disgust. The sentence ‘I want to be a poet’ produced grunts of laughters from fellow teenagers and outright suspicion from adults….’You’re a clever girl,’ said my school’s careers adviser. ‘Have you thought of working in the prison service?’
***
Through all my brave rejection of the writing life, I had been making one basic assumption: that writing was my path to reject. In that hour spent in my makeshift study, I learned many things: that a childhood talent does not necessarily translate into an adult one; that your craft will die if you don’t nurture it; that your most profound thoughts seem shamefully thin when they’re at risk of appearing on a page. Above all, I learned what happens when you turn away from play. The most beautiful reaches of your attention degrade within you, leaving behind a residue of bitterness and frustration. In playlessness, your adult self is not nurtured, but strangled.
***
Deep play is a labyrinth, and not a maze, a twisting path with no destination. The walking is the thing. You are the walk. There is no end to it. Your only reward is more of the same – more wells to fill with your attention, more fires to tend. And every now and then, for reasons beyond your control, those fires will go out.
***
Not so long ago, it was common to believe that dragons had actually lived in the British landscape, perhaps having only recently died out, perhaps still hidden in underground lairs. As late as the nineteenth century, there are accounts of country folk treating newts with great superstition, believing they were dragon spawn…
***
A Brocken spectre: a person’s shadow cast onto cloud cover by a low-lying sun, stretched out into eerie proportions by the angle of projection. This effect is heightened by the fact that the shadow is often disconnected from the viewing subject’s feet, breaking our familiarity with the form….Brocken spectres often seem to inspire feelings of terror or doom in those who encounter them.
***
Our ancestors had a more agile way of travelling through the world, dancing between what they could observe and what they could construct, spinning out meanings as they pased through the wild. We think we’ve advanced since then, but instead we’ve jettisoned our capacity to accommodate the complex interplay of symbolic and rational thought, the scientific and the enchanged. Both have their own mode of wonder, their own sublimities, their own awes. Where a seething ecosysgtem once flourished, there is now the silence of the explained world.
***
When we know the detail of the places we inhabit – when we tend them with our own hands and walk them with our own feet – we enter into a conversation with our places that is mutually nourishing.
***
Slowly, carefully, I rest the backs of my fingers onto the bees, and I feel their heat, their life, their motion. Then they disperse, and I am touching the honey they have set in their comb, ready for winter.
‘Taste it,’ he says, and I do, awkwardly unzipping my hood to reach my mouth. It is floral, sweet and slightly lemony, pleasingly bitter, more complex by far than anything on a supermarket shelf…Here, in this moment, an understanding is captured: of the world as it tastes to a bee, of flavours so ephemeral that they can’t be bottled.
***
I am told that in Singapore, the dandelions so often cursed by English gardeners are traded on eBay for good money. Those who buy them are in awe of the delicate orbs of their seed heads and admire the bounty of a plant whose leaves and petals are both edible. What is invisible in one place is beautiful in another. We even degrade them in their naming – in colloquial English, dandelion (itself deriving from ‘dent de lion’, or lion’s tooth, referring to its jagged leaves) is a wet-the-bed.
***
Did the sky lose a little of its magic when we can to understand that celestial bodies are made of exactly the same molecules that we find on earth? Perhaps. But then the night sky has now become rare in a different way, fading from view beyond the electric glow of modern life.
***
More often than not, I find that I already hold all the ideas from which my enchantment is made. The deliberate pursuit of attendion, ritual, or reflection does not mystically draw in anything external to me. Instead, it creates experiences that rearrange what I know to find the insights I need today.
Last time I Tor Travel blogged, I had just left the fairy dell of Trewethett Mill.
From there, we trundled off in Anarchy Annie, our little travel bus, all of us already warm, and getting warmer, as the day heated around us. One whole mile down the road and we pulled onto the side of the road and walked up, turning onto the path that lead us to the glen. I had my white Cancer Council hat on, and wished I didn’t. I was sweating into the hatband, and when I sweat hard, I get a peculiar ache around the external occipital protruberance, both sides, right where my neck joins. My scalp gets wringing wet, and I truly ache from how much sweat is pouring out of me. This is no Fine Victorian Lady’s ‘glow’. This is working class sweat. It makes me want to scratch my scalp off, but madly going at my head is considered unpleasant for all around, so I confined myself to occasional pokes at the area.
Off we went. Narcissia kept up a strong pace. She walked far ahead of the rest of us as we strung out along the dappled dirt path. Ferned and mossed embankments rose on both sides for some of the path, and others, the creek was visible. No breeze at all.
I took plenty of photos, even as my energy plummeted, and I trudged along, knowing if I threw a hissy fit and quit, I’d still have the long walk back to the bus, and then have to hang around without lunch or cold drinks until everyone came back. Besides, I had my swimming togs in my backpack, and I was going into that water. I’d already said out loud I was doing it. I couldn’t back out.
Onwards.
Sometimes small insects hung in the air, and a few times, we walked through clouds of what I presume were thrips. Suicidal ones buzzed at me and stuck to my wet face and body. I no longer cared. Like a blown horse, my head hung, and I flopped one foot in front of the other.
Steep steps at times, like knee high. Good thing I’d not missed leg day at the gym, although we’d started calling every day leg day on this trip.
Once again, the younger members of the group were keeping an eye on old duck me, to make sure I didn’t keel over, or trip going up a step. Thankyou.
The air was syrupy, and it was hard to smell water through it. I’d had the luxury of being out in the countryside for a few days now, so the smells of nature were no longer new to my city nose. The greens were vibrant around me, and everything was growing and glowing strongly in the summer sun and heat.
The group reformed at three fallen logs that were covered in coins inserted into the wood. Offerings for the fae folk, I was told. I did want to scratch my head then. Was it all metal the fairies didn’t like, or just iron? Tolkein’s elves liked a bit of head bling, at least in the movies. Oh right, offerings for the spirits of this place. What they wanted with stacks of old mouldy coins, I didn’t know. There were so many coins pressed into the logs that I wasn’t surprised when I was told by staff at the cafe later that the logs were replaced every now and then, to provide space for a whole new gang of coin shovers.
We all inserted coins into the logs, like the good tourists and spiritual people we were, and off we went again, slogging along towards the cafe. All I could think of was sitting down, drinking about 50 litres of cold something, and perhaps having a little stressed cry.
Finally, up the last few steep steps, slippery from nearby water, and into the cafe. I could do little but just sit. I shook, trembling all over, and my vision was blurry. MidWife bought me cold elderflower lemonade, and I downed as quickly as the fizz would let me. And honestly, my mind will never let me just enjoy something. It has to keep up a running commentary of utter bullshit. “If you drink now before you eat, it lessens the digestive juices you’ll have to dissolve your food. You already suffer from reflux sometimes. Why are you doing this?” Shut up brain, I needed the fluid before I could even contemplate food.
The sugar and cold did me good, enough so that I reduced my trembling to occasional leg quakes, my heart rate went down, and I stopped feeling sick. I ordered food, and while I waited, scoffed a packet of salt and vinegar crisps. Justification: I’d sweated out salt too.
Next to our table was a wooden wishing tree, where people had written their wishes onto flimsy cardboard leaves and attached them to the tree with ribbon. “Happy, healthy, strong, creative, wild Satya” I wrote.
I sat long enough that I recovered my equilibrium, and ceased sweating enough to drown a buffalo. Let’s hear it for fizzy water, sugar, salt, air con, and food.
The next stop was, of course, the gift shop, where there was jewellery aplenty, and useful blue hand towels for those who decided to dip in the water but hadn’t brought a towel. Brilliant. I bought one, because we had more sitting on damp surfaces ahead of us on other days.
Then, down the walkways to the waterfall and creek itself. St Nectan of Hartland supposedly was a monk who moved from Ireland to Wales. He spent some time in Trevethy as a hermit, and it’s believed he carved his cave above the waterfall some time in the 6th century. According to legend, he rang a bell in times of stormy weather to warn people of danger in Rocky Valley.
Rushing water sounds grew as I descended the stairs(yep, moar stairs). The the bottom was the shallow run off from the waterfall, which poured through a circular hole in late Devonian slate(according to the website; according to me, black). Part of the Trewillett River.
MidWife, DansGirl, and I changed into our swimming togs, much to the surprise of people sitting around the edges of the water spill. No changerooms. Undies off under our skirts, bottom half of bathers on. Take arms out of sleeves, remove bras. Haul up bathers as best we can. Take off clothes. Ta dah – 3 women over 40 in their togs, ready to go wading. I noticed a few people with young children up and left.
The shallows tumble over many, many pebbles and stones, and plenty of loose shale. Which made stepping into the freezing water barefoot a challenge. MidWife and I hobbled our way through the water. My feet ached, stinging, and then going numb. Sometimes I couldn’t feel rocks under my feet, but certainly my instep sensed the hard shape of them.
Nearer the waterfall, the shale deepened and our steps were more unsteady, but we blundered on. We were going to get under that water, no matter what. The rest of the women on the tour, and a few onlookers(who may or may not have been stunned at our little white bodies) watched as we edged closer. MidWife held my hands as I dipped my shoulders under the cascade, and screamed from the cold, then emerged. We posed for photos, and then DansGirl waded out and MidWife held her hands as she leaned all the way back and stuck her head under.
Phones were out, and cameras. We were BRAVE women, or CRAZY, or something.
Oh, that freezing water was agony, and so welcome after that very long hot walk. And I’d done what I’d said I’d do – get under the waterfall. I was pleased with myself.
After a bit more wading, we gathered to far side of the creek, and did a meditation. I drifted in and out of focussing, as I took in the sounds, smells, and even the taste of the water on my lips.
In the middle of the water were a number of stone cairns, built by those who wanted to say “I was here” without graffiti. I’ve learned that, quite often, minute creatures live under the stones picked up to build a cairn, and it’s better to leave them where they are. But people want to leave something to say ‘was here’.
Clouties, or cluties, are ribbons or strings attached to trees and bushes at sacred sites, with a wish whispered into them. I’ve seen strips of lace, calico, cotton, thread, satin ribbon, silk, and once, even a baby shoe tied to a tree. However, many of these take a very long time to decay, and some not at all, and are not natural to the environment. So, raffia has become popular. Raffia fibre comes from raffia palms and will at least decay. Most raffia is dyed, so…questionable? Anyway, we each had a strip of raffia to tie to a tree or bush. Most of the cluties were tied to the bush nearest the steps, so I went a little further afield.
“Oh honey,” I said to a thin, unclutied bush, “let me tie this to you loosely, because I dig that you don’t like restriction any more than I do. Who needs lacing and corsets, right?”
And I left my strip of yellow raffia behind with a wish that mirrored the one I made upstairs on the wishing tree. Why do multiple wishes when one will do? Everything I want can stem from those thoughts. If I’m strong, healthy, have stamina, a good outlook, then the writing, the travel, the dance, and everything else will flow.
After walking back our bus, we got underway to Bath, which would be our home for the next 7 nights.
Once again, due to the piecemeal fashion of my notes, and Facebook posts, I find my numbering system of the days up the spout, so here is the second Day 8. It’s not the same day as the previous Day 8. It’s the next day. I blame wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey things.
We were back late from the Fairy Festival the previous night, so were a little late in rising. I had already determined I wasn’t doing the second day. I needed time out from noise, people, and some solid rest. Down time. However, I wasn’t going to miss a late morning visit to Carnglaze Caverns, set on the southern edge of Bodmin Moor(a place preserved in folklore, and spooky tales). The caverns were hand-dug for slate, after the open cast quarry wasn’t producing what was needed. Three large caverns were carved out, and there’s shafts(unaccessible) for copper and tin mining, all building part of Cornwall’s heritage.
There’s a quick briefing, and hard hats are handed out. By chance, I was given a blue one to match my dress. We descended fifty steps into the first cavern, where water seepage has, over decades formed a deep, still pool of fresh water. Modern underwater lighting gives it a green cast, and it was beside this magical, underworld, fairy pool that we drew up seats, and Narcissa took us through a meditation, and sound session. Other visitors to the caverns stopped by to listen. The echoes around the chamber were beautiful. Narcissa has a lovely, strong voice. I remember many years ago, when I was regularly singing kirtan every Friday night, and singing it for myself during the week, my voice became a lot stronger, and more able to stay on pitch, and in tune. Narcissa sing a great deal when leading and facilitating groups, gatherings, and events. I found myself envying her voice, and kept having to bring myself back to my own present experience, where I’d chosen to express voice through writing, and my hands, rather than throat and mouth.
While occasional drips fell from the ceiling, and one single drip ran off a small stalactite and created a series of outward ripples on the pool, we each had our own experience of meditating in the caves. MidWife said that she was a flatlander and that underground wasn’t her natural habitat. Even though I’m strongly, astrologically Earth signs, underground only felt comfortable for me because of the water nearby. Scorpio Moon and Neptune in direct alignment – water sign. Caves are okay for me, as long as I know where the exit is, and no one tells me how far underground I am.
It’s said the old miners kept aside the crusts of their Cornish pasties to give to the cave fae who lived there. There’s a model of one such creature hidden away in a small crevice, only visible to those who stop on the prescribed 30 minute walk through to look around, and most especially UP. Again, when I can transfer my photos from my phone to my computer proper, I will add pics to the posts.
After doing the obligatory photo snaps around the cavern, after our meditation, we emerged back into the summer heat and light. There are beautiful gardens and surrounding woodlands, and a walk around is a must, looking all the while for small fairy figurines. I opted to sit in the shade rather than tramp around, because I was tired and felt clumsy-footed and unsteady. The stairs around the gardens were steep, and in some places, the slates were loose. I saw myself perhaps falling into nettles, so I sat, and enjoyed seeing small birds flitting around, and butterflies doing their thing.
The gardens were packed with summer wildflowers, ones that I only see in English wildflower specialist gardens in Australia, so getting to see what has been written about and painted so often was a real treat.
After we left the caverns and gardens, we went for lunch as a group, then back to Woodland House in Cawsend where six of the women got ready for a second day at the festival, and me and one other lady stayed behind to rest. I didn’t sleep, but I did get some reading in. I was desperate to finish TO SIR PHILLIP, WITH LOVE by Julia Quinn.
Everyone was back by around 9pm, and it was an early night for all. The next day, we were off, further south.
While all the fun of the Stonehenge Visitor Centre called, lunch was a priority. Breakfast at the Ibis Hotel at 8am was a fair while ago, and we hadn’t yet learned, as a group, to buy plenty of bus snacks.
Lunch was the usual gluten and dairy compromises(oh to be vegan, rather than have sensitivities to gluten, dairy, tomato, chili, and many other of the nightshade family, because England has really gotten on the vegan wagon, but sucks to you if you’re gluten-free). Ah, my first can of elderflower lemonade. It still doesn’t hold a candle the elderflower drink I had in the visitor centre at Culloden in Scotland, but I relished it anyway. Cold, wet, refreshing, that hint of elderflower.
The Visitor Centre was magnificent, with incredible visual displays and enough information for my history geek self to geek on out. Great strides have been made in excavating and x-raying around Stonehenge to discover the lives of the builders.
Some of the others took the bus up to see Stonehenge from behind the ropes, but I knew we had after-hours private access, so I wanted to hold off until then. My last time inside the stones was 2012, before dawn, in pouring rain, where I watched FairyFloss have a long talk with the Greek/Roman god Apollo as Sun God.
When I last visited Stonehenge, I felt something was taken from me, a key to my writing life. For a long while afterwards, I was ready to go back and demand its return. However, like parts of Stonehenge that have fallen or been shifted over the years, my mental health and my writing focii have shifted. Some things have fallen away, others resurrected in a different way. Last year, 2022, was my second Saturn Return, in astrological terms, which Amaia, the other facilitator of this tour, said was a reckoning up of my life, a re-assessment as to what mattered most.
What comes up, over and over, is to use my remaining years(I plan to live to 150) to write the shit out of everything on my computer, and create a whole lot of new stuff.
Onwards to the gift shop. MidWife and I concluded that we love looking at kitschy crap. Little knitted dollies? Sure. Snowglobes of Stonehenge? Great. Felt dolls of neolithic men and women? Yep, I’ll take a photo of that. There were the usual coffee table books, historical accounts, suppositions, theories, postcards, pop-up Stonehenge books that looked very vulval when opened up, sarsen and bluestone jewellery, and there was a man selling mead.
In the middle of the gift shop was a replica of two standing stones, with a lintel over them. They were life-sized, and likely made out of plaster-of-paris. An American tourist was trying to find the price on them. They were for decoration only, but he really wanted to buy them. How he thought he’d pack them in his suitcase to take home to Ohio, I don’t know, but I helped him look, for my own amusement.
I bought myself a pair of faux gold standing stone earrings, as part of the pact MidWife and I had – buy only jewellery to stay within our luggage allowances.
Late afternoon into early evening, our group went for dinner, then returned to Stonehenge. We were taken by bus to the stones, and allowed past the ropes inside the circle. Stonehenge pops up out of the landscape, smaller than you think it will be, but still impressive, dark, and imposing. Ravens, smaller than Australian ‘Little Ravens’, and much smaller than the Tower of London ravens, pecked around the landscape, keeping a careful eye on us. One legend says they are the guardians of Stonehenge, and the larger sacred landscape of Wiltshire and Somerset.
My focus narrowed to the sound of my feet on the ground, and Stonehenge growing larger as I walked. As a group, we stood between two of the stones, and with respect, asked to enter.
“Ancestors, I am here,” I said to myself.
There was no great sense of permission given, no feeling that Stonehenge was giving me back anything it might have taken in 2012, but I felt very present in my body suddenly, and was ready to experience with all senses, every moment. I kept reminding myself to feel daytime heat radiating from the ground and the stones, see the colour of the sky, look at the changing hues of the setting sun, listen beyond other visitors who carried on their normal conversations as they ticked Stonehenge off their mental bucket lists, and got their selfies.
“Mark said that we should try the lager next time we’re in that pub.”
“What’s your data plan like then?”
“Alice, did you want to get ice cream after this?”
They weren’t going to disappear suddenly, so I tuned them out. We sat in circle again, and yes, we all took plenty of photos, including selfies, and group shots. But we also wandered off, each to their own experience, to listen to the stones, feel any vibrations, do the forbidden and lightly touch them, and yes, I licked Stonehenge again. Last time it tasted of moss and rain. This time of nothing. It felt…tired. Or maybe that was me.
Two guards stood to the side, and our guide talked mainly to the others. We all noted that she emphasised, before we got off the bus, not to get naked. She was insistent. We wondered if the brass bells we all wore on our backpacks prompted this. “Oh, aye, we have a right lot of hippies here. Better tell them not to nude up. They seem the sort.”
If you look hard enough, or out of the corner of your eye, faces appear in the stones, like a Rorschach Test. I was reminded of a scene in a Diane Duane novel, where one character imagines she’s back on a planet she worked on, and huge stone creatures only partly in the ‘real’ universe were speaking to her, and there was a smell of burning. I thought at any moment, the sleeping stones would say something, or move.
The sun set, and with it, our time inside the circle. I dearly wanted to stay longer, sleep amongst the stones, dream with them, but we were all herded back onto the bus, counted, and counted again. Back to the Visitor Centre, back on our own bus, and off to Cricket Field House, our home for the first few nights.
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