After discovering I'd been heading in the wrong direction with my life's work for the longest time, I was lost. I decided to write daily, without any preconception of what to write, in the hope it would become a map for me, revealing a path forward in real-time. I hope these little pieces of writing, are solace and support to anyone who is lost or flying on a trajectory they no longer want to be on.
14) Loss
I have been having a recurring dream since I was in my early teens. The dream may unfold in different locations, with diverse people - maybe family - living or dead - or people I've never met and are purely created by my mind. But always the same theme. I'm trying to get somewhere on public transport and I'm lost or confused or can't find the right platform or bus stop. The dream is accompanied by feelings of anxiety, even panic.
It seems the dream comes when I am confused or concerned about my way forward in life.
I walk this morning not long after sunrise. It's another golden, sunny day with a strong breeze. The terracotta clay that makes the soil where I live is clodded together in clumps and yet is slippy underfoot. Making my way to the little woodland's edge, my walking shoes become caked and heavy with mud.
The wind-braided air tastes fresh and cool on my tongue after yesterday's heavy and continuous rainfall.
My chest and stomach feel stuffed full with emotions that are almost impossible to pin down into one coherent picture. Sadness, loss, melancholy, longing, gratitude - all facets of the same feeling.
I sit under the old Oak, the one who stands alone at the edge of the field, presiding over the dell.
I'm careful not to ask for anything. It would be so easy to pray for myself, to ask clemency for my woes, to beg the Oak to show me a cure, a path, some meaning.
That's not why I'm here. Not to take. I want to be here to share sacred space and to honour this venerable tree.
I decide to script a more intentional rune at its root. To choose what I write there, a mark of respect and reverence for them.
I admit I Google and come across the rune Othala or Ethel in the Anglo-Saxon tradition. It means home, belonging, legacy, and ancestral wisdom. It seems the perfect rune to exalt this tree with. I use twigs and acorns dropped from the tree itself and the vermilion red leaves gifted from a nearby Pear tree.
Leaning against its solid trunk, I run my sensitive fingers over its craggy bark, feeling its fissured, rough texture and I'm held, for a few moments, in silence.
I circle the trunk and then take my seat on a fallen branch. All I can hear is the wind rushing through the leaves and cows calling in the distance.
I ponder on whether Oaks feel loss and am presented with a countering viewpoint.
In Autumn, as Oaks drop their leaves in preparation for their shift in focus from over world to the underworld, they also release their seed into the unknown.
This loss, this release is in some ways their most potent time, one of the reasons for being.
Is this sense of loss in me in fact an indicator of something completely the opposite of how I've grown to identify these feelings?
Stepping from under the tree, no longer enveloped by the sound of the wind through the leaves, I hear Robins chiming across the dell and a single crow flies cawing across the pale blue sky.
I realise I'm an unreliable narrator of my life, even of my emotions. That makes me laugh. And offers me freedom.
15)Devotional Poetry
I just thought I saw the phrase 'devotional poetry' and that sang in me.
Devotional writing. Devoted to the Divine and devoted to this expression of the Divine - me.
It's something about serving the sacred.
I know people are sacred but somehow it's different, where I'm being pulled, and maybe it's temporary.
But it's about serving the formless, the unknown, the holy in a way that maybe isn't visible.
Placing runes at the base of trees, seeing Oaks as cathedrals.
This is something to explore. Maybe I have to be thoroughly immersed in the formless before returning to form.
I saw the words 'sacred rites' as well and was moved.
There's some resistance here, in response to what I already perceive as poetry, as priestess, as rites.
But where I'm looking is behind those concepts and my opinions about them.
There are things that just don't resonate, that I feel almost an allergic reaction to.
Maybe it's like the waves of grief that come after separation from one we loved, contractions that birth a new life without them and the grace of letting them go.
Maybe the allergy is just a wave of dropping concepts, navigational.
It's the simple things that seem the most miraculous to me now. I watch my hands as l fill the
measuring cup with laundry liquid, unscrewing and pouring, all the muscles, nerves and tendons working together effortlessly to complete the task. Now there's a miracle! And there too is beauty and grace, the flawless design of my body-mind.
I have a tendency to complicate life, mostly by thinking it should be different to how it is, but also by not just taking a moment to revel in the incredible wisdom that is present.
Everything is infused with it
The Oak tree is not in a state of acceptance or surrender, to my mind.
Instead, their very being just simply and flawlessly reacts with instinctual wisdom to whatever is happening in the moment.
That's the potency of life. And the possibility.
The previous installment of this series can be found here:
Moved, as always, Kate. I "restacked" one of the passages on Notes because the simplicity and profundity of it struck me as too important not to share. Thank you for sharing your heart the way you do. xoxo