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In case of emergency

16/5/2020

Friday 15th May

Well, Monday I had my first retraumatisation attack in quite a while, and Wednesday I had another, and the rest of the week I’ve been teetering on the edge.

It’s been a very humbling week. “And I was doing so well...”

I’m still feeling on the edge right now, but I thought I’d try writing from this position, and see what comes out. When I say edge, I don’t mean edge of the cliff – I mean the edge of retraumatisation. Fortunately, I have not been feeling suicidal.

Maybe what I share will help others of you dealing with forms of post-traumatic stress feel a little less loony – or less lonely in your looniness! – and maybe it will help others understand the experience a bit more. And maybe it will help me feel less lonely and loony too.

Of course, this corona virus crisis is stressing and testing most of our systems – whether they be economic systems, family systems, governmental systems or just plain old individual nervous systems.

Ah, just jump in, Stephen.

This week I’ve experienced levels of anxiety and dread and self-attack that I haven’t experienced in ages. This has been proper retraumatisation territory. And whilst at times it’s felt quite hellish, there’s also been this forensic reporter inside me, fascinated by the experience.

Fuck – this is how I used to feel a lot of the time. For several years. Sure, I could muster a brave enough face if I needed, and quite often “became myself” in social situations, but I lived with these levels of anxiety and dread, and with regular retraumatisation attacks, for hundreds upon hundreds of days. Having just experienced a few days of this territory again, I’m amazed that I survived. I really don’t know how I did it.

I used to wake up in the mornings not wanting to be alive. As if life was a curse, and as if the day ahead was an ordeal bequeathed to me by a careless god. I knew this wasn’t “the real me” – but I got so used to it that it almost became the real me. And I bundled it all up with an old and awkward sense of profound shame. It’s shameful to be so unwell. I need to fall apart. Pull yourself together. I need to fall apart. Pull yourself together.

It took me ages to realise – and honour – that I was suffering from some form of post-traumatic stress. In particular: the trauma of being sent to boarding school, and having to survive there, year in, year out. And then the more I read about trauma, the more I realised that all my personalised inner madness, that I’d felt so ashamed about, was actually quite a normal experience of living with unhealed trauma – including the sometimes debilitating amount of shame surrounding traumatic experiences.

Looking back, I can see that this week’s retraumatisation attacks had been brewing for a while – almost like an electrical charge rising in a nerve cell, or perhaps in a storm cloud. Loneliness and anxiety have been slowly building for a while now, and came to a head Monday, fuelled – ahem – by my morning coffee. My anxiety levels shot up really rapidly, and something in my being “tripped.” Suddenly every aspect of my life looked and felt bleak – utterly bleak. I wandered around in this convincing bleakness for a couple of hours, tightening the knot, not quite knowing what was going on, but when I looked in the mirror and saw such a ghostly version of me staring back, I suddenly realised: “Fuck, I’m having a retraumatisation attack.”

Fortunately, over the years I have developed a tool kit to manage my condition. And I’d recently updated my “In Case Of Emergency” cards, which were still lying around in my kitchen. I picked them up and read them one by one...

(1)
Feeling really distressed and/or dissociated?
Everything totally bleak?
Then you’re probably having a retraumatisation attack.

Ah, that explained the bleakness. And the dread. That deep, bone-aching, stomach-kicking dread – as if something awful and humiliating and uncontrollable is just about to happen. As if everything is bound to go wrong.
I can still feel the tendrils of this bleakness and the dread, as I’m writing, but they are slowly loosening their grip. Sometimes they feel like the tendrils of an ancient curse.

(2)
Remember: This too shall pass

Not just good advice for getting through bad trips and whities. Good advice for retraumatisation attacks too. And the fact that it was actually me – another, saner, wiser version of me – who wrote this, with real knowledge, really helps. This isn’t my stoned mate talking to me – this is me. A kind and caring version of me, who has gone to the effort to fine-tune and print out cards that will guide me through this time. I’m weeping as I type this, touched by my own kindness.

Because unhealed trauma can feel so cruel. And people with unhealed trauma can be so cruel to ourselves. And so, so hungry for kindness.

(3)
And whilst it may feel fucking awful right now & shockingly convincing
(a) This is not real
(b) This is not personal
(c) This is not the real you

Oh my, it is shockingly convincing. The retraumatised state is so shockingly convincing. Whatever old trauma is still buried in your system, when it surfaces – it can feel like you’re actually reliving the original terror or desolation or disaster. I know there’s lot of fancy brain science to explain this. But – and this is really hard to convey to people who haven’t experienced it – the experience does feel so fucking real, and so confusing when overlaid with present-time reality. I am currently safe and sound and surrounded by beauty, and in touch with my friends, but my system is going: something life-threateningly awful is happening, or, something life-threateningly awful is about to happen... It’s like inhabiting a temporary madness.

(4)
IGNORE ALL thought processes & conclusions that are not 100% KIND
(i.e. probably 99% of them)

Oh my, this is such good advice. Ages ago I realised that I can’t really stop the thought processes, or their conclusions, but I can – when I remember – not take their conclusions seriously.

Any subject right now – the world, corona virus, work, money, love, home, purpose, writing, health, old age, festivals – leads to terrible conclusions right now. You could give me a feather and I’d poke myself in the eye with its shaft.

This is not a good week for making any policy decisions. Please call back when feeling more human.

Oh, there is a lot of old violence within my system. Because I had to ram down so many survival instincts and strong emotions just to get through a boarding school day. Day after day.

There’s a dynamic meditation that I do, about an hour long, and it’s been really vital this week. Monday’s session I discovered an old urge to hit myself, and allowed that out into the open (without actually hitting myself). Wednesday’s session I discovered an old urge to punch and batter my dad until he took me back into his protection. Today I was back on the steps of my boarding house, screaming the “No!” that I never could scream.

It takes patient work – and both vulnerability and courage – to face and allow and integrate these old urges and energies – but, properly integrated, I’m beginning to discover that they can actually act as fuel for the journey, rather than obstacles to be pushed back down or pushed away.

Still, confronting one’s own inner violence ain’t for the faint-hearted, particularly if you have a peace-loving self-image (or public image)...

(5)
Be gentle and kind
Love the wounded boy
Act kindly
Go for a walk
Tell a friend
Let Nature hold you
Have a cold shower or swim

Fortunately, I have been really developing my kindness practice this year – towards myself and towards others. So my gentleness and kindness muscles are up and working. It’s good to practise these qualities during the good times, because you definitely need them in spades during “bad times” like this week. My fallback position is to act kindly, even if I’m not feeling kind.

I can sense myself holding back on writing about loving the wounded boy who seems to exist inside of me. That old macho part of me that judges such inner work and delicate language as sissy – boys don’t cry, and men don’t need to access their inner child. Funny to feel that sort of old school male self-censorship arising. Ho hum. Brick by brick shall we dismantle our prison walls.

Because, in my daily solo life, learning to love my inner boy is actually one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever done, although I do sometimes grieve at how much pain is held in his young body – and therefore my adult body too. I’m learning the patience of a parent nursing an unwell child. And the unconditional love too. He did so well to survive what he had to survive. And he still needs so much love and reassurance and safety and welcoming and space – to feel what he could never feel, and to say what he could never say. Every day I remind him that he is welcome. It wasn’t always so.

A big challenge when actually retraumatised is to find the inner adult space that can hold the child – because sometimes my adult self so fuses with the traumatised child that they’re practically inseparable. Loving the wounded boy also becomes loving the distraught adult. Which begs the question, who is loving whom, and who am I really? Seriously, when I find myself holding both my weeping adult self and my weeping child self, I sometimes go existentially dizzy. And then when I let that version of me be held by Life...

Telling a friend is really important when I’m having a retraumatisation attack – someone who will check in with me until an attack passes. But I still find it really difficult to make that call. I told a friend on Monday, but didn’t on Wednesday – I think I felt a bit of a failure at having two attacks so close apart. Failure? Failing what or whom? More of that old self-cruelty arising. As I said, it’s been a humbling week.

It can be problematic with friends, though, because everyone’s understandings of trauma and post-traumatic stress are different. Similarly every friend has a different relationship with emotional discomfort, and with their own inner wounds. If you break a leg, everyone knows what to do. But if you regularly break apart, well, you get dozens of different reactions.

Over time I’ve worked out who can cope with what, and what sort of responses I can cope with too. And I’m slowly, slowly learning to ask for what I require too – after all, it’s an infantile fantasy to assume that people know what you need. Vulnerability is the key. And the biggest challenge. Fortunately, I’ve got a handful of people that I can call if I’m really wobbling, and they know how to handle me. Mostly I just need someone to keep a loving eye on me until the worst of the wobbling is done.

Actually, the frustrating thing about this week is that I can really sense that a good, long human cuddle – we’re talking horizontal and at least half an hour – would re-set my nervous system. I’m hungry for animal warmth and co-regulation. I’m sure I’m not alone.

A cold shower or a swim in the sea sometimes works wonders. Can literally end a retraumatisation attack just like that. Alas, that hasn’t been the case this week, but each time I’ve spent in or under cold water has definitely calmed me down a bit.

It took me ages to realise that retraumatisation is fundamentally a physiological issue. I wasted hundreds of hours trying to work things out in my mind – as if some accurate insight would suddenly settle my nervous system.

Oh yeah, DIY and making stuff with my hands helps too. Keep it physical and keep it outside the knot-tightening head.

(6)
Transmute those old beliefs:
This is unbearable
I can’t cope
I can’t ask for help
There must be something wrong with me
I deserve to suffer
I am all alone
I cannot trust any one
Life is punishing me
There is nowhere safe to go

I am safe
I am loved
Life loves me
I am Love

Trauma is not only a physiological phenomenon. Whatever our age, it seems to me that we make up “beliefs” in order to deal with the trauma. It took me a couple of years of observing myself during retraumatisation attacks – and allowing myself to voice these things – to discover my particular set of survival beliefs. I keep on updating them as new insights emerge.

The sad thing is, not only did little me feel compelled to formulate such beliefs in order to survive, I can see that they have driven so many of my allegedly-adult life choices. No wonder I’m the rip-roaring success that I am. As always, the challenge is to be kind and loving towards these beliefs, and to the one who believed them, whilst not believing them any more.

(7)
I LOVE YOU
&
Life loves you
&
your friends love you
BIG TIME!

I really like this last card. It’s literally a message sent from a kind me to a struggling me. It reminds me of reality, even if I’m not quite in touch with it at the time.

Saturday 16th May

Well, what a difference a night makes. Actually, what a difference a Zoom party makes. Yesterday was my mate Nick’s birthday and I’d agreed to play an opening set at his virtual birthday party. We both checked in during the afternoon – it’s been a difficult week for both of us – but I said I was still up for playing, and quite enjoyed spending the evening listening to tunes.

I’ve been to three or four Zoom parties now, and it seems like we’ve got the hang of it. The DJing, the dancing, the communication, the constant (and often very funny) visual mutual entertainment... and there was a point later on in the evening when I was dancing away in my cabin, and feeling delightfully light in my body, and looking at the screens of twenty odd other folk, and I really felt the collective joy and vibe that we were all emanating and sharing, and I suddenly realised, “Oh, I’m back.”

I’m back.

It was as if a part of my soul had returned. The part, or parts, that had been missing all week.

And when I awoke this morning, despite having had several hectic dreams, I realised that I was still “back.” Although I still feel a bit shaky, and vulnerable. A paranoid hint of: this OK reality is less real than that desolate reality.

But I’ve done my morning walk, sat in the arms of my new lockdown oak friend, done my morning exercises, and... I feel reasonably human. Just the normal levels of lonely lunacy. And I feel sweet and gentle and kind and generous too.

Wow, it really is like being two quite very different people.

I’m not going to write much more. The day calls. And I’m not too sure if I’ve got any sensible conclusions or suggestions. I just sat down yesterday with a need to write about this week, and here I am.

Maybe it’s worth saying that my pre-existing levels of self-isolation and my DIY approach to trauma work are – how to put this kindly? – not to be recommended. In many ways I’ve been using poison to cure poison. There are healthier and kinder ways to do this work. But I might as well share some of my experiences – fuck, I would have been very relieved to have read shit like this in my darker days.

Oh yeah, I had this thought this morning in bed. What advice would I give to someone who wants to support a friend who they know, or suspect, is dealing with unresolved trauma?

Well, everyone is different. But here’s a possibility. Access the most unconditional love you can – by all means necessary. Unconditional love for yourself, and unconditional loveyou’re your friend. And then contact them and say something like, “Hey, I can see that you’re struggling, and I was wondering if you want to talk about it?” And if they do, you could say something like, “Could you tell me what it’s like when it gets really bad? Because I’d really like to know and understand. So that I can love and support you.”

Ah, just reading that out loud makes me cry. Yeah: be prepared for tears. Don’t try to fix anything. Hold them if you can and if they need.

And then... maybe at a different time – and preferably at a time when they’re feeling relatively OK – ask them if there’s any simple support you can give them when times are really testing, or even – if you’re prepared to make such an offer – in general. And don’t expect them to know what support they need. In which case, take a risk and make some intuitive suggestions. And keep the conversation open.

And then practise love and patience. Love and patience. And if you don’t know anything about trauma, then do a bit of reading. And every now if you feel they might require a bit of kicking up the arse, or truth telling, make sure it’s coming from your wisest most loving self. And make sure they want to hear it. Be aware that suggestions – however well-meaning – can feel like attacks to someone who is going through retraumatisation.

Having just indulged in some generalisation, how much of what I write is generally applicable I really don’t know. I’d welcome feedback from others.

But if you’ve made it this far, and have found my amblings and ramblings at all useful, then I’m happy typer.

May we all be full of loving kindness
May we all be well in body, mind, heart and soul
May we all know the deep peace that dwells at the heart of all beings
May Life move through us all with beauty and grace and joy

One Love
x
Stephen

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One for sorrow, two for joy...

27/3/2020

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Ah, what a corker of a sunrise this morning – they’ve been corkers all week. And what a corker of an early spring day it’s become. Zoot-suited rooks are commuting past me in both directions; in the paddock below a pair of magpies are hopping around together like teenagers in love; the local buzzard has just begun his or her patient, graceful, slowly spiralling recce of the valley; the hedgerows are officially buzzing with vernal green; the sea and cliffs are shrouded in a hazy – almost summery – mist; and the aforementioned sun is already quite high and hot and rapidly thawing the air’s nocturnal chill. Early spring in England – well, all across the British Isles – is a most marvellous time of year. Particularly as we’ve spent the last five months largely huddled indoors, weathering and mustn’t grumbling a long and soggy winter.
In my immediate field of view, I inhabit a quiet sort of coastal paradise. Non-human nature seems to be doing just fine right now – more than fine, it’s positively oozing with fecundity and activity. This is a very horny and entertaining time of year.
And yet.
And yet our human family is not doing fine. We have recently been invaded by a novel virus, which is particularly threatening to our more vulnerable family members. And we all know that the worst is yet to come – as I write (Friday, 27th March), South Africa has only just reported its first death from the virus. We don’t know if we’re looking at hundreds of thousands of us dying, or millions upon millions.

And alongside this virus has come a flood of – by no means coherent – information, a confusion of different emotional responses, and a multitude of fears for both the present and the future. And some.

And right now I don’t really know how to integrate these different worlds that are swirling around me, both within and without.

The world of gobsmacking beauty that surrounds me from dawn to dusk, and keeps watch over me at night, and which is growing and changing and flowering day by day, and hour by hour.

And the world of collective fear and collective anxiety and collective suffering.

And my responses of fear and anxiety and self-contraction.

And my responses too of care and compassion and love – and seasonal joy.

Ah, my body and mind and heart and soul feel like they’re being pulled in very different directions right now. It’s quite a virus to make sense of. And I guess we’re all feeling it, whether we’ve got it or not.

Maggie the mare and Reggie the pony have just entered the paddock...

And whilst friends and family – and millions more – are currently out there on the front lines, risking both lives and nerves, I’m sitting here in a cabin on a hill by the sea, wondering what a self-isolating writer can contribute to the effort. Even if it’s just: how can I help a friend or two not feel so alone? Or post a seaside picture that maybe makes a tired nurse smile?

First up – because it still needs saying: we must channel our deepest love and care and concern towards those suffering right now, and to those attending to those who are suffering. And if we don’t quite trust our politicians, then at least we must listen to the frontline workers. Now is not the time to take the piss. I am not particularly bothered about catching the virus myself – and both my parents have already passed away – but I would hate to be the one who passes it on to someone who passes it on to someone whose system can’t resist it.

Second up – I don’t know. I have no answers. Who knows quite what is going on, and where this will take us all? Who knows what it all means? Who knows whether we’ll all try to get back to business as usual, or a new vision of human life will emerge, or there’ll be some sort of civil war between the two, or if this pandemic is just a herald of worse yet to come? And how does this infection of the human family affect our response to our ongoing climate emergency? And a hundred more questions.

Who knows?

Right now, I am trying to sit in the unknowing – as most of the other seats are already taken – and give it some space. I know that this is a privileged space to be able to occupy. But I might as well put years of self-isolation to good use.

The robin has just seen off the blue tit in the battle for the bird table’s last remaining sunflower seeds...

This morning I woke with an anxious dread in my belly. I’ve only recently come out of a prolonged breakdown, and this anxious dread used to be my daily experience. So, of course, its reappearance has wobbled me quite profoundly. I realise that I am actually more vulnerable and less stable than I had hoped.

But I’m sure that the stress of this disease is stressing all of our systems – whether they be nervous systems, or family systems, or economic systems, or political systems, or even our systems of belief. Wobbling right now, I know, is both natural and ubiquitous. Life’s fundamental vulnerability and uncontrollability, and the presence of death, and the fragility of our social systems – all of these existential certainties, which many of our human family already know on a daily basis, have finally breached our Western cell walls of denial.

Instead of tightening against this anxious dread and wishing it were not so, I decided instead to give it space. Breathe into it, and let it breathe, whilst reassuring myself that experiencing it would not overwhelm me. And after a while it began to shift, and soon tears began to fall – which I soon recognised as tears of grief. Both personal tears and collective tears, somehow woven and asking not to be separated. So much grief. Grief for the ways in which we treat our fellow creatures (a recent media photo of hundreds of impounded and frozen pangolins flashed through my mind); grief for the ways in which we abuse and dishonour Nature (this is not a grief I access very often); grief for my own dashed attempts at being stable (although I did recognise some inner strength too); grief that the poor and the vulnerable will pay the heaviest price (as always); grief for unknown sufferings to come.

And then a very particular grief arose. And I remembered being a teenage schoolboy and looking at a poster by – possibly – the Peace Pledge Union. It mentioned the sum of money required to alleviate world hunger. And then it went onto say that this was the amount that the world spent on weapons every two weeks. And that ignited something in schoolboy me. A strong and innocent reaction: surely, if we can marry basic human morality to basic organisational skills, then we could sort this out overnight? And I found myself grieving the loss of this particular innocence – I’m weeping again as I write – and even felt grief that adult me has not been able to change those fucking awful statistics, that I’ve somehow let my younger self down. Maybe you parents feel this a lot of the time – as you see the world that we’re handing on to your children?

And then I started going political in my mind – dusting down my well-worn soap box – and my grief and tears almost instantly shut down. Boris Johnson this, Western consumer society that. So, I consciously dropped my inner political rant, and my grief and tears reappeared. It was fascinating to see how affronted free-flowing Life seemed to be by the presence of my ideological mind.

Two rooks are now chasing after the buzzard, attacking it from both sides. It dodges and then dips and then cruises away and out of sight. For the time being...

And as the tears regained their flow, I felt my heart opening and opening, but it wasn’t my individual heart, it felt like the heart of Life itself, and it felt – I’m grasping for words – as if I was in the presence of a limitless supply of love, and that this was the Heart that holds all of our hearts. And as I watched the sun rising on the other side of the valley, I felt as if the Heart inside my heart was a sort of mirroring sun, and love for the world poured through both. For someone whose heart has felt quite shut down for several years, this was an especially breath-taking experience. I felt like a winter pilgrim waking up to spring.

I don’t know what to make of any of this. Was my anxiety sitting on my grief, and was my grief an expression of love? Are these depths of love always present in all of us, even when we feel that they lie a million miles away? Does this mean that – if we source ourselves correctly – we can actually love without limit? Is this part of the wake up call many of us are hearing right now?

Maggie looks like she’s having a midday nap, but Reggie is still chomping away. There are no more sunflower seeds left on the bird table. And I really must make some lunch and then get off property – for my daily permitted walk – and get down to that damn glorious sea.

Take care. Stay well.

One Love

Stephen

PS Here’s Wednesday’s sunrise...
(musical accompaniment provided by Nina Simone and the local avian choir)

PPS A few weeks ago I remixed some of William Blake’s verses. I’m not too sure if you’re allowed to do that, but I did – and they seem pertinent to what I’ve just written about...

Auguries of Innocence & Eternity
(mindfulness remix)

Joy & Woe are woven fine
A clothing for the soul divine
For under every grief and pine
Runs a joy with silken twine

She who binds to herself a joy
Does the wingèd Life destroy
But she who kisses the joy as it flies
Lives in eternity’s sun rise

He who shuns a visiting sorrow
Invites three to call tomorrow
But he who welcomes Sorrow on his step
Lives for ever without regret

It is right it should be so
For we were made for Joy & Woe
And when this we rightly know
Through the World we safely go

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The last blog... (of this particular season)

7/3/2020

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Well, I do have to eat my words. Three words in particular. The title of my last blog entry: “A new chapter.”

When I took this celebration – that I have definitely closed an old chapter in my life and opened a new one – to an all-night party, and danced with it, I was quietly informed: “You have definitely closed an old chapter, Stephen, but you haven’t yet opened a new one. They don’t write themselves, you know.”

Which was very sound advice.

And it got me thinking. It’s fucking marvellous that the worst of my breakdown is over. The last three months – ever since I began this blog – have been my best few months in years and years. I’m still a bit of a loon, but having even OK day after OK day is a quiet form of relative heaven. But what do I want to do with this newfound OK-ness, which sometimes even crossfades into pretty goodness?

When I returned from my 2018 hitch-hiking pilgrimage I went on a plant medicine ceremony, and my instructions were clear: write up the pilgrimage, digest the learning, and begin implementing the learning.

Last year I had a good 5-month attempt at writing up the adventure, but hit a weird brick wall, which didn’t feel like writer’s block. Something about the writing wasn’t engaging the deepest part of me.

So, this week I began again. Sweaty Pilgrim v 2.0. I’m writing it in the present tense this time, which really tickles my imagination. And I’ve set myself the – very ambitious – goal of completing the first draft by Noisily (mid-July). So it definitely is bum on seat and daily graft and inspiration and taking care of myself. Wish me well.

Which also means I’m going to wrap up this particular run of blogging. I’ve really enjoyed checking in, and people’s feedback, and I think it’s really helped me find a conversational writing voice, which means I’ve hit Sweaty Pilgrim v 2.0 with my vocal cords already warm and in gentle song.

I’ve also decided to use Lent for a bit of an internal spring clean. No ciggies, no coffee, no spliffs, no booze, no wheat, no refined sugar... and only checking Facebook and the news on Saturday!

Easter Sunday sure is going to be fun.

Big Love – however, wherever and whoever you are,

Stephen

Here’s a sneaky preview of this week’s writing:
https://www.pigandink.com/eve-of-pilgrimage.html

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A new chapter...

15/2/2020

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Soggy, sodden, stormy, early vernal Saturday salutations to one and all.

Well, the more observant among you may have noticed that I did not post a blog last week. I think I had good enough excuses. Three days in Oxford followed by a four-day retreat in the gorgeous Slad Valley. Bloomin’ ‘eck – enough inter-human contact to last this Cabin-hermit a month or two. I feel like a lion who’s just eaten twenty-seven kilos of buffalo meat. Gonna take a while to digest. Excuse the burbles and gurgles.

Yesterday, though, a friend down in South Africa messaged me enquiring where this week’s blog was. Hmmmmmm. Lazipoetness almost got the better of me. “The dog ate my memory stick,” don’t quite cut it this week. I ain't got a dog, for starts.

So, here goes... freestylin’...

Funny and sweet how much of a seaside dweller I’ve become these last few years. Three days inland and some deep part of my being begins pining for salty air and the Cabin vista. A week inland and I returned – Wednesday night – positively sea-famished.

The Cabin seems to have withstood Storm Ciara, and is now holding Storm Dennis at bay. As I’ve said before, there’s no such thing as a dull day here, living on a hilltop overlooking land and cliff and sea. Or: even dullness contains its ever-shifting misty delight.

Having said that, the rainbows round here bring their own form of delight too. This particular beauty – occasionally doubled – serenaded the land and arched over the Cabin for a good half hour on Thursday. I almost began to take her presence for granted.

I awoke Thursday morning to my neighbours greeting me outside the back door. “We’ve missed you so much,” they said, lovingly. I think I interpreted their looks and words correctly. Flushed with reciprocal love, I rewarded them with a generous handful of sunflower seeds.

I love reacquainting myself with my avian neighbours. Their colours and characters, their pecking order, their feeding habits...

The finches seem happy to plonk themselves on the table chomping away with their finchly beaks, sometimes scoffing a good half dozen at one sitting. The blue tits zoom in – avoiding enemy radar – grab a solitary seed and zoom away. The great tits sometimes pause on one of the adjacent driftwood branches I’ve erected, scoff a seed, nab another and then fly off. One for me, one for... The blackbird is just about top of the daily pecking order – although the robin ain’t too sure about that. I say “the” robin, but actually there are two, often arguing territorial rights with one another. Ain’t seen any of the corvids yet – the magpies and rooks are occasional visitors, although they are as sensitive as racing horses, and even a twitch of my presence glimpsed through the double-glazing sends them flurrying off, not to return for a week or two. Cyril – or Cecily – the squirrel has already put in at least one appearance. Fair play. Usual slapstick routine – let him-her nibble a few seeds and then open the back door and chase him-her off, knowing, full well, that the comedy will recommence at a later date of his-her choosing.

Yesterday I watched two pheasants squaring off in the paddock below – for about an hour or more. It was a very stylised fight sort of dance, or dance sort of fight. Quite elegant at times, heads bowing, bodies arching. And there were a pair of magpies too, shadowing Maggie the Indifferent Mare and her sidekick pony. I suspect the hooves churn up the ground, revealing whatever bits and grubs magpies are partial to.

These little delights mean the world to me. My neighbours! So much pleasure, for so few seeds. Obviously, evolution has done the sums – and flying a return trip of forty metres must be worth the effort for the one little seed clamped in your beak. Imagine being able to fly forty metres on one sunflower seed! I’d neck a whole bag, and I’d be off, happiest man in the world, flying around looking for my Mother Ship.

I was thinking this morning: I am over/through the worst of my breakdown. That’s a remarkable thing to be able to say and share, without touching wood or looking over my shoulder. Sure, I still feel like I need a bit more time – maybe a full four seasons’ worth – in my chrysalis-cocoon, before properly venturing back out into the world. But: I am getting better. Enjoying every day – in the broad sense of the word. Per Dei gratiam. May beauty, grace and joy flow through me – and us all.

Of course: to be properly alive is to be fundamentally vulnerable. And sometimes I shrink from this vulnerability – sometimes many times a day. But ain’t that part of the work? To be intimate with oneself, to allow whatever experience is arising to arise – to be intimate with Life itself? Which inevitably means tracking when I retreat, shrink back, feel uncomfortable, fall back on old habits, withdraw my best presence, defend myself...

Was feeling a bit itchy scritchy and contracted this morning, didn’t quite know why. Then, all of a sudden, a big wave of missing mum rose within me, and I found myself spontaneously weeping, as quite strong grief flowed through me. And in the midst of all this, I found myself saying out loud, “I’m so glad we knew one another” – ah, I’m weeping again – “and I’m so glad we loved one another as we did.”

Such a beautiful thing to find my heart and soul speaking that sentence. Sometimes grief seems to need silence, sometimes tears, sometimes a hand or a hug, and sometimes words – often very precise words, I tend to find.

Ah, mum, I do miss you so much. You’d like it here at the Cabin, on a sunny spring day, anyway. Although you’d probably find the lockless little toilet-shower-room a bit challenging. You know what? I’d put a lock on the door, especially for you. And a bottle of white wine in the fridge. And we’d go into Seaton and spend a quid each in the lonely little amusement arcade, and remember our Skegness and Whitley Bay days, before eating chips on the seafront and staring out to sea, enjoying one another's silent company.

Hmmmmm. Another, much more gentle, wave of grief is moving through me – but woven with a love that currently has me smiling too.

Ah, think this blog is just about done. Gotta get ready for a party – Guy’s 50th at the Sparkford Valentine’s Hippy Bling party. My newest mate Keith – who lives down the road at Budleigh Salterton – has promised me a fitting from his wonderfully colourful wardrobe. Makes me realise how drab this middle-aged git’s wardrobe has become. More colour please, vicar. Let nature be my sartorial guide...

So, yes, a new chapter in my life has begun, of that I am now sure. Do you know how fucking amazing it is to be able to write down those words with confidence?

And I’m gonna celebrate this on the dancefloor tonight – and all the way through till dawn...

Seaside Love

Stephen
Devon
15th February

0 Comments

Seventy times seven

30/1/2020

1 Comment

The work is always inside you.
This knot does not get untied
by listening to the stories of other people.

The well inside your house
is better water
than the river that runs through
the entire town.

Mevlâna Jalâluddin Rumi

Well, I had quite a strong reaction to writing last week’s blog. Having written it Saturday, and posted it Sunday morning, I spent a lot of the rest of Sunday in waves of tears, source unknown. I just let the waves pass through me as best I could. Sometimes there was grief in a particular wave, sometimes regret, sometimes shame, sometimes loneliness – sometimes a nameless combination of currents and undercurrents.

During all of this emotional undulation I saw that one of the problems with last week’s blog was that I was trying to fit a very messy and chaotic and drawn-out and frightening process – or entanglement of processes – into a rather graceful analogy. And part of my being was reacting against that. Because that part of my being is hungry for coherence between my inner and outer worlds – and it’s particularly hungry for coherence between what going on inside me and what I communicate to others. I suspect that’s why my maverick churchwarden stepped in at the end of the blog, disrupting my high church sermon preparation with some low church mischief, reminding me that there is a price to be paid when you try to fit living, chaotic, possibility-rich analogue experiences into neat, wordy, formulaic, analogous boxes.

Yes, the caterpillar-to-pupa-to-butterfly-or-moth story is a rich analogy to play around with, but, no, it does not actually describe the fucking awfulness and lost-ness and stuck-ness and desperation of some of the times I’ve been through – and I suspect others in the middle of their own self-disintegration processes might concur. Could I have surrendered as gracefully and trustingly as a caterpillar? No fucking way. I was way out of my depths. Dread, despair and death – of old identities I took for solid – were sometimes daily company, as was a very delicate nervous system, which “tripped” under very little pressure. Did I enjoy having my old muscles of certainty broken down? I kicked and screamed most of the way.

These waves of tearful emotions carried on into Monday, and by Monday lunchtime I suspected I needed to do something more than just let them pass through me. So, I decided to do a little DIY ceremony. I was just following a hunch, that some sort of ritual and structure would help me find the information and insight and wisdom that these waves were carrying.

So, I did the washing up, swept the cabin, prepared the room, and lit half a dozen candles. And then I had some sort of arguable brainwave: if I gather together all the dog-end-of-winter recreational drugs in my possession, I probably have enough to launch me into a fairly altered ceremonial state. Did I want to do a DIY ceremony in an altered state? Yes. Were my motives pure? No – there was definitely some psychedelic greed in me. Greed for an extraordinary experience. Was there a deeper wisdom beneath this impure brainwave? Yeah, my inner wisdom felt like it could work through my inner stupidity – not for the first time – and I felt refreshingly enthusiastic for a bit of deep inner diving.

So, I mustered my end of season supplies: three quarters of an acid-infused fruit pastel (probably not vegan), a dozen old Scottish mushrooms (probably vegan), and the remains of a bottle of nicely-balanced CBD-THC oil (definitely vegan). Not quite a sacred cup of ayahuasca – but post-modern-higgledy-piggledy is how I sometimes roll. More Blue Peter than Songs Of Praise.

But, you know what? It all worked a treat. Dosage, set, setting, ceremony. The whole afternoon and evening – it was one of the more powerful ceremonies of my life. And somehow, I managed to journey deep whilst simultaneously holding and sometimes even directing the journey. I reckon I was focussed for about a third of the time, semi-focussed for another third, and drifting and daydreaming for the remainder. Given how far and easily my focus often strays, that’s a pretty good statistic for me.

Before I opened the ceremony, I wrote down my prayers and intentions.

I realised that a big part of the ceremony would revolve around forgiveness. In particular, I needed to forgive myself for the last seven years – because I have a lot of self-judgement about how crap I’ve been, and how much time I feel I’ve wasted. If only I’d been more skillful, if only I’d been more together, if only I’d known how to ask for help, if only I’d known what help I needed and so on and so forth... Painful to admit – to myself, let alone to others.

In order to forgive myself for these last seven years – whatever that phrase means – I realised that I also needed to truly accept what I have been through – whether my choices were wise or unwise, skilled or unskilled. To accept and to honour my experience as it’s actually unfurled. And to accept and honour myself, as I currently am. Otherwise forgiveness would run the risk of being a running away rather than a loving letting go.

My third prayer was both grand and specific: to ask Love to enter my heart and warm me from within; to really know Divine Love at the heart of my heart and the heart of my being. Why not? Why not just admit my lack of connection and my hunger and my thirst? I may love reading some of the mystics, and love quoting their words, but most of the time I feel on the other side of the mystical fence to them – and that they’ve definitely got something that I think I haven’t. Their grass looks a lot, lot greener, however much they try to convince me of the already-present-and-inherent greenery of my grass – or even the non-existence of the fence. I’m with Maggie the Mare on this one.

I stoked up the wood burner, curtained all the windows, smudged the room and myself, sounded the meditation gong, ate the pastel, drank half of the mushie tea, and took a couple of drops of the oil. I made sure the rest of the oil was at hand – in case I needed to smooth out the journey, bring myself back to earth, or perhaps even provide a gentle boost.

Quite early on in the ceremony, whilst looking for music to play, I stumbled upon my Funeral Playlist. In one of my slightly more melodramatic and thankfully-brief suicidal phases, I’d compiled a playlist of funereal music. Perfect! What a great way to honour both the dying process I have been through – and am still going through – and the fact that I didn’t actually kill myself.

Ah, and it was such a moving mix of music – it warmed my heart with sadness and longing and love. And I couldn’t but help think of James, who took his own life last month. One particular song – Flower Of Light by Nick Barber – particularly made me think of James, and I sang along to it, with him in my heart, especially the Rumi-infused chorus:

And even if you’ve broken
Your vows
A thousand times
Come home again
To the arms
Of the one who waits
In the stillness of the centre...

Even if James would have found it far too soppy.

It reminded me of one of those gentle, devotional Christian choruses I used to sing back in my evangelical teenage days. I’ll see if I can find it on Youtube and post a link at the end of this blog.

And then The Beatles came on with All Things Must Pass. Oh my – that song could be played at any funeral.

Sunrise doesn’t last all morning
A cloudburst doesn’t last all day
Seems my love is up and has left you with no warning
It’s not always going to be this grey

All things must pass
All things must pass away...

By which time I realised that I was in quite a high and altered state of affairs. The DIY cabin-shamanic brew was definitely working – not too little, not too much, but definitely pushing me to a liminal and creative edge.

It was time to turn and face my last seven years.

Seven years! I moved home to look after mum in March 2013 and she died in October of that year. What on earth have I been doing since then?

Simultaneously resisting and navigating my way through a fairly thorough and protracted breakdown, that's what.

How can I tart that up for my CV? I must have learned some transferable skills at least.

It’s almost amusing now – I thought it would take maybe a year tops to get over mum’s death, and then I’d be back on the film-story-writing horse, trotting out of sunrises and galloping into sunsets. Oh my... I swear that when I signed up to being me I should have read the small print.

Be Not So Fearful by Bill Fay came on, the last track of my funeral playlist. Don't know why that man and his music aren’t more well known.

Oh, I found myself sobbing properly snotty tears, and, once the music finished, a stream-of-consciousness forgiveness prayer began to tumble from my lips.

forgive me
my longing and my loneliness

forgive me my
broken heart
and my broken-heartedness

forgive me my violence
and self-rejection

forgive me my impatience
and my cruelty

forgive me my lack of wisdom
forgive me my lack of skill

forgive me my confusion

forgive me my powerlessness

forgive me my avoidance

forgive me my cowardice

forgive me my lack of love

forgive me my lack of connection to Source

forgive me my overload of shame

forgive me my lack of kindness towards myself

forgive me my self-judgment...

I just kept praying out loud and asking for forgiveness until I felt all prayed out and all forgiven out too.

And then I found a sung version of that prayer from the Hawaiian Ho’oponopono ceremony:

I’m sorry
Please forgive me
And thank you
I love you

And I sang it over and over until I was both the one asking for forgiveness and the one granting forgiveness, and even the song of forgiveness itself. I wasn’t interested in who was wrong or right, or even if anything wrong had actually been done – I just wanted to be free of all the unforgiving bonds that were binding me to the past, and free from my interpretations and free from my stories and free from my projections and free from my judgments and all that heavy, heavy, sticky stuff that weighs us down and tangles us up and saps our strength and keeps the possibility of joy at bay. That obscures our true nature.

Phew. I got to a point where I felt I’d done all I could to forgive myself – and Life, including God – for these last seven years. I still felt there was some more work to be done – a deeper acceptance, perhaps, or perhaps a deeper letting go – but I’d definitely got stuck in, dug deep, and now felt much more loose and free.

I had myself a little boogie.

And then my dad appeared, in both my mind and my heart.

Now, unfortunately, me and dad never really got on. We could have a whisky and a laugh together, or have a political argument or philosophical debate, but I kept him at arm’s length and largely out of my heart. He’d been my headmaster when I was at primary school, which was quite a headfuck for a five-to-ten-year-old son. And then when I was sent to boarding school, what remaining trust I had in him largely disappeared.

I’m sad to say that I never really got to know him or properly love him whilst he was still on planet Earth. But I am happy to say that my love for him has grown and grown since he died. As has my appreciation for his good qualities. Bizarrely, it’s still a living, changing, ongoing relationship. But to get to this place has involved quite a bit of forgiveness.

What did I have to forgive him for now?

And then it hit me: no, I was the one who needed to ask him for his forgiveness. For all the shit I’d given him.

So, once more, I free-styled a prayer, speaking out loud, tears streaming down my face, asking dad forgiveness for all the emotional stress and psycho-political hassle I put him through whilst he was still alive – my lazy school ethic, my many arrests, my dropping out of university, my imprisonments, my rude poetry, my slack work ethic, my failed relationships, my partying and drug-taking – man, I’d given him as good as I thought he’d given me. Forgive me, dad, forgive me...

It was such a relief and release to clean out our relationship that bit more. I felt so much love for him, and so much missing too. I’ll never again get to see him in that particular Colin Hancock fleshy form. Oh my, where do we go, and where is “he” now?

At which point, quite a technical revelation occurred.

Several years ago, during a plant medicine ceremony, I was instructed to install my mum and dad, and their parents, and mum’s sister, Doreen, in a very particular order in my heart. Which I did.

But I was now shown that the version of dad I’d installed was both inaccurate and unhelpful.

I’m grasping for words here, because none of this came in words as such.

I saw that I was still holding onto a picture of dad as a bit sad and depressed, and suffering, and wounded – and I was carrying this frozen, and unreal, image of him around in my heart. But this image wasn’t helping him, and it certainly wasn’t helping me. Instead, I was instructed to picture him already free and already whole and already beaming with Divine Love – and to reinstall that upgraded version of him in my heart. My dad whole and free and beaming with Love! As soon as I did this, I felt light and lightness flutter about my heart. And I realised that I had to reinstall all of my relatives in this new form – but could do so at a later date.

And I further saw that I’d attached myself to a detrimental story: that if I healed myself, then I’d be able to heal my parents and ancestors. But as long as I was carrying around wounded versions of them, I’d struggle to get well myself. But if I installed healthy and liberated versions of them in my heart – that was the best medicine for them, and the best medicine for me.

I think this is a fairly accurate rendering of what I was wordlessly shown. Does any of this make sense?

I sat down and sang the Ho’oponopono prayer to dad, over and over again, love beaming and streaming between us:

I’m sorry
Please forgive me
Thank you
I love you

I had myself another boogie, in order to digest what I was going through – also, my body really wanted to move and to be an integral part of the ceremony.

And then my mum appeared, or, rather, a sense of my mum. And even though I had thought that I had forgiven everything between us – and had been forgiven – I realised that there was still more to say. And I knew I wasn’t asking to be forgiven for things I’d done wrong – mum would have been aghast at what I was asking forgiveness for – but I needed to speak it out loud to her, anyway.

I was sorry for not being able to save her from her suffering and her pain, that I was not able – I’m weeping as I type this – to save her from her cancer and her dying and her death, that maybe I could have done more, that I couldn’t keep her alive, that I could have been wiser about how to support someone through death, that I could have been stronger... And in all of this I realised that I was still carrying this irrational “belief” that her suffering and death were somehow linked to my lack of skill, and to my lack of love.

And all sorts of strange sentences and sentiments came tumbling out of my mouth.

Oh, another wave of grief is passing through me right now. Time for a cuppa, and maybe time to do the dishes too.

The thing is, even though I knew I “didn’t need to apologise” – I gave mum the very best love a son could – just saying all this stuff out loud, well, it was medicine to my heart and mind and soul. I needed to get this stuff off my chest, however irrational it seemed.

And then I found myself apologising to her for the last six years, especially confessing my shame at not being able to cope. And it was obvious that I wasn’t just confessing – and releasing – adult shame, I was primarily confessing my boyhood shame at not being able to cope with boarding school, shame that I never got to share with her. Because I was ten years old and too ashamed and too vulnerable and no longer trusting, and because she wasn’t able – or emotionally and culturally equipped – to open up the deeper conversations that we both needed to have back then.

I prayed until I was exhausted.

And then I sat down and sang the Ho’oponopono prayer to her:

I’m sorry
Please forgive me
Thank you
I love you

Over and over again, asking for forgiveness, granting forgiveness, being forgiveness... Just wanting us all – me, mum, dad, my ancestors – to be free and whole and loved and loving.

And that phrase from the gospels about forgiving seventy times seven kept on coming into my head, like a chorus. When Peter asked Jesus how many times he had to forgive his sinful brother.

“Seven times?” asked Peter, half grasping the stick.

“Not seven,” replied Jesus. “Seventy times seven.”

The unfathomable mystery of forgiveness...

In the wake of these three journeys of forgiveness – of myself, between me and dad, between me and mum – something very sweet began to happen. I found an old ambient and electro Dub playlist on my phone, and was soon dancing around the cabin, feeling the forgiveness and the love and the release all percolating and circulating through my body and being. And as I danced, I was overcome with a real tenderness for myself.

As you may have guessed, one of my old survival mechanisms is to be very self-critical and self-judgmental (and, ahem, judgmental of others) – so it was really lovely to find myself genuinely acknowledging and appreciating myself: my beauty, my fragility, my vulnerability, my innocence, my kindness, my courage, my creativity, my imagination, my sense of humour, my faithful friendship, my generosity, my emerging wisdom, my compassion, my love of justice and peace, my playfulness, my honesty, my wordsmithery...

And I found myself praying out loud to God – almost the sort of “God out there” that I used to believe in when I was a Christian. I gave thanks for the mystery of what was happening in the ceremony, and for the cleansing and deepening of my relationships with myself and my parents. But I also shared with God my sense of distance and separation, and I shared my sense of hunger, and my tiredness at knocking at the door of the Divine, knock-knock-knocking at heaven’s unresponsive door. It felt good to be honest like that with a version of God like that. Even if the joy I’m looking for is supposedly already inside me, I’m still knocking and looking. I’m still a seeker. Still exhausting my seeking. My knuckles are sore.

I then read a beautiful piece by Rumi – Banners of Praise – and embarked on several other little branch line journeys – to do with my body, and my heart, and my relationship with the feminine – but I found I was increasingly losing my focus and could sense that the ceremony was coming to an end. It had probably taken three or four hours in all – I don’t know, I never looked at a clock, and I was in quite an altered state for most of it. At this point I really felt my DIY ceremony’s weakness – and I remembered those times, particularly with the Huni Kuin, when guitars had appeared and the ceremony leaders had brought us back to earth and back together with songs of praise to Pachmama, sung with pentecostal joy and innocence.

I wrote down some commitments that had arisen from the various journeys, smudged myself, and just as I was about to sound the finishing gong, I looked up and, there, through a gap in the curtains, I could see a sparrow hawk, sitting on a branch, twelve or fifteen feet away, staring back at me. I felt like it was a blessing direct from Mother Nature. But then hawkish she or he morphed into a very tall and comical pigeon with a gently pulsing iridescent chest, and then back into a proud and sage sparrow hawk, before flying off down the hill, low to the ground. Whether sexy shamanic hawk or mundane sub-shamanic pigeon, it was a thrilling avian meeting, and confirmed to me that the meat of the ceremony had been served and eaten.

And that I was still quite high.

I closed the ceremony, thanking all my helpers and guides, thanking my deeper wisdom and soul, and thanking the elements too – in particular Grandfather Fire.

I made up a bed on the floor next to the faithful woodburner, made myself a pot of fresh rosemary tea, and played music into the night, slowly drifting back down to earth, assimilating the wonder and intensity and information and insights of the ceremony.

Well, that’s one way to spend a soggy Monday afternoon.

It’s now Thursday. I’ve just been down to the sea for my daily maritime medicine and beachcombing. Even found a complete brick, sea-worn at the edges, but handsomely chunky! But it felt like a very old brick: solid red clay, no frog and no holes neither. I’ve heard that Seaton used to have a brick-making factory. Maybe every now and then one of the old sea-buried bricks rises and beaches itself? How long does it take for a brick to be rounded by the sea? Days? Months? Years?

Maybe that’s a better analogy. You’re a brick. The sea of life might break you into pieces, or maybe it will allow you to stay whole. But it will definitely smooth down all your edges. And there’s nothing you can do to resist it.
It’s been a satisfying beachcombers’ haul this week: one whole brick, one half brick, several rocks with sea-blown holes in them, several driftwood pieces for a driftwood spine I’m making, and a length of yellow and red rope which might well thread that spine. Daily finds and simple joys.

Hmmm, probably time I wrapped this blog up. As you can see, there’s been a lot to digest this week. I’ve been writing and pondering and dancing and moving with it all for three days now. Quite delightfully, my body is really involved with this process. There's a lot moving through my system.

This morning, during my morning prayers, I tuned into my freshly-reinstalled parents and grandparents – and they too were all dancing. I’m generally not a very visual person, but I could see the joy on their faces – and could see that they were all holding hands in celebration. And I could sense all my ancestors – a long and ancient spine of them – joining in the dance too.

I am still reeling with the delight of this vision, and the knowledge that these ancestral dancers are all in my heart.

One Love

Stephen
Thursday 30th January
Devon

Flower Of Light by Nick Barber, sung by Maneesh De Moor – I think:

P.S.
If you’ve made it this far – haven’t you got anything better to do? No, seriously: if you’ve got this far, I’m well chuffed, whatever you make of what you’ve read – or even whatever you make of me?

I’m not too sure I quite know why I’m writing this weekly blog. Just the decision – back in December – to begin sharing and blogging set in motion such remarkable inner events that I feel it must be good medicine for me. Whether anyone else finds it useful, or helpful, or entertaining, or annoying, or medicinal...

When I perform poetry, it’s often easy to see the eyes of the audience – and this makes the performance so much more enjoyable, because a sort of attentive loop of giving and receiving enters the room. It’s a bit more difficult out here in the digital world. I only publish the bloglink (sounds like a Lincolnshire bog sprite) on my Facebook page, and email the link to a self-selecting few (currently numbering three). Other than that I’m a bit shy. As you can hopefully see, I’m being quite honest and vulnerable and self-revealing here, even if there's often a part of me still trying to manage my image (haha). These are my choices, for sure. But any feedback or comments or encouragement or concerns or suggestions are appreciated – either to me in private, or in public below. Being a bit of a hermit, this is one of my major social outings...

If you want to be included on the weekly email list, drop me your best email address.

Phew.

Let's go out with a bit of Rumi – a great one for Imbolc.
If you're conceptually or linguistically allergic to the word "God", then just replace it with "Life" and see how it goes...

Banners of Praise
by Mevlâna Jalâluddin Rumi

Our fasting is over; it’s the feast day of Spring!
O dearest guest, welcome; sorrow be gone!
All praise be to God!

O Love once forsaken, abandoned heart be forgotten now;
your Beloved has arrived, and will forever remain.
All praise be to God!

Parting is forever parted; separation is severed at last;
union is united with no more delay:
All praise be to God!

Flight has flown and exile’s pain is banished;
distance is now distant; our nest is filled with joy:
All praise be to God!

The moon in the heavens, the rose in the heart of Love’s garden,
the King in his palace, the Queen upon her throne, proud banners show forth:
All praise be to God!

Life stirs in the root of a hair; fluid sap spreads through each tiny leaf;
green buds on the branches crown God’s dominion:
All praise be to God!

Let the despised enemy come, for he’ll meet our Defender;
we challenge his approach, for now in safety we say:
All praise be to God!

Flood me completely, with the fire of Love’s burning,
for now I can bear it and not burn away:
All praise be to God!

For now in certainty, my soul is free,
and all of earth’s sadness has dissolved in earth’s clay.
All praise be to God!

O chalice overflowing, poured out for these thirsty worlds –
we thank you, we bless you, and we drink while we pray:
All praise be to God!

The world lay parched for so long, an open desert,
until the dew glistened, and your breath
came on the wings of morning.
All praise be to God!

As we waited we were longing for Spring’s sun
to renew this life or ours.
Today, Jalâluddin’s warm breath arrived from the East.
All praise be to God!

(translated by Camille Helminski & William Hastie, with a few little tweaks by me)

1 Comment

These chrysalis days

25/1/2020

2 Comments

Well, despite overcast seaside days having their own ever-shifting misty-blue-grey entertainment value, they don’t put them solar shillings into that there solar lecky meter. So, here I am, down The Anchor on the seafront, all available rechargeable devices plugged into the spare socket next to the armless one-armed bandit, pint of Guinness and a packet of ready salted by my side, Saturday afternoon pen, paper and keyboard at the ready, walking stick by my side. Rock and roll...

On my way down the hill, short-cutting it through some self-wilded no man’s land I’ve nicknamed Troll Lane, I bumped into old Michael, aka the Bard of Beer, shuffling in the same downhill direction. Such a fey character, shock of white hair, long white beard, otherworldly trill voice and all – I swear he hails from a parallel non-digital England, which split off from this one about the time of William Morris and co. Hadn’t seen Michael in ages and was beginning to get a little concerned. Always good to greet and honour the older poets.

This week a friend posted on her Facebook feed a marvellous three-minute-long video of the life cycle of a Chinese luna moth. Hatching out of its egg, the tiny hairy creature – smaller than the pine needles upon which it feeds – nibbles and grows, sloughs its skin several times, changes colour (from black to red-brown to orange-brown to bright green), even at one point shedding its face, before spinning its own cocoon, from which it emerges four weeks later, swelling and pumping up its new – gloriously beautiful – Chinese luna moth wings. Oh my!

Hopefully I can embed the video at the end of this blog. It’s such a joy to watch.

OK, moths and butterflies are a bit different – for example, moths spin silken cocoons, whereas butterflies form hard chrysalises – but, as a analogy for human transformation, the journey from caterpillar through pupal stage into moth or butterfly sure takes the bio-poetic biscuit.

And watching this mesmerising video reminded me of one of the more mysterious events of my life.

Four years ago, when I first realised that I was not just dealing with grief and depression, I was dealing with old, unhealed boarding school trauma, I was signposted to a trauma-informed therapist. Alas, I never really trusted them – maybe I wouldn’t have trusted anyone at that time – and as soon as there was a reprieve in my symptoms, I beat a hasty retreat into the hills of self-isolation. However, one therapy session in particular stood out, and still stands out. It involved us exploring this caterpillar-to-butterfly analogy in some detail – especially the unsung process within the chrysalis, when the old caterpillar is broken down, and imaginal cells begin to divide and grow into the new body of the emergent butterfly. It seemed quite an optimistic process – and maybe, I thought, this unhealed trauma business was going to be over and done with quite quickly, a little bit of therapy here, a little bit of EMDR there, maybe with a few cups of ayahuasca thrown in for good shamanic measure, and then, voila!, butterfly me emerges back into the world. Plus: the butterfly was one of my mum’s favourite symbols – her being a priest and all that.

At the end of the session, when I left the practice room, I was hit with the strangest of sensations – it felt slightly eerie, and my body hairs bristled in response. It was as if an intelligence outside of myself was trying to communicate with me. I tried to interpret it. Don’t cycle home. Instead, cycle to the river and you will be given a sign. I was perplexed, as this kind of thing was not a regular occurence – in fact, I considered myself quite thick-skinned and slightly allergic to such metaphysical malarkey. For, whilst I am a balding hippie perfectly capable of believing half a dozen implausible things before breakfast, I also spent nine of my adult years in the utterly convinced materialistic-atheistic-realist world, and am aware that it’s probably a good evolutionary human trait to see too many tigers in the grass than too few. Obeying a message to cycle along to the river and await a sign – this could well be a sign of incipient madness. Still, what was there to lose? It was a beautiful autumnal day, and time spent by a river is rarely wasted.

So, instead of cycling back to suburban Florence Park, I headed down to the Thames – or, more precisely, to that stretch in Oxford they call the Isis. And I started cycling towards Sandford lock. Maybe I was going to see a kingfisher? That would be a delightful enough sign for me, and acceptable to both my inner mystic and my inner scientist. At a particular bend in the river, I was “led” off the beaten track and to a grassy curve, where I sat down – so it seemed, waiting for the aforementioned promised sign. I was quite excited about seeing a kingfisher. But, in my poetic experience thus far in life, kingfishers are a bit like rainbows – and rarely come bidden.

Hmmmmm. Maybe I am going a bit mad. Still, this ain’t a bad place to sit and ponder. Maybe I should wait until a kingfisher appears?

I waited five minutes, ten minutes, scanning the river bank for a kingfisher’s iridescent presence. Maybe this waiting for a sign is actually a message? To slow down and be patient...

And then I heard the prosaic chug-chug-chug-chug of a narrow boat, idling round the river bend. I looked up as it approached, and there on its prow was its name: Caterpillar.

I was gobsmacked. And tears began rolling down my cheeks – oh, I didn’t realise how utterly lonely I felt and how hungry I was to know that I was in safe hands, that all this pain and madness would pass. But how the fuck has Life arranged this?

And then another boat came chugging along. And upon its prow: Imagine. Imagine! Quiet laughter now mingled with my tears. I couldn’t make rational sense of it at all, but the bones of my soul sang with some sort of recognition. The Universe, I felt, was simultaneously reassuring me and playing with me.

And then I heard a third boat approaching from the rear: chug-chug-chug-chugging into view... If this one’s called Butterfly, I’ll eat my hat and retire on the spot.

But it wasn’t called Butterfly. It was called Dragonfly.

I sat there shaking my head. Caterpillar Imagine Dragonfly. Of course, as any self-respecting materialist-atheist-realist would enthusiastically point out, caterpillars don’t actually turn into dragonflies. But if that was the best the river sprites of the Isis could do with their available Scrabble-boat letters, it was plenty good enough for this landlubber of a doubting Thomas.

I cycled home in a wondrous daze, swinging by the Iffley yew to tell her my news and my woes and my readiness and eagerness to become a butterfly.

Oh, I’m feeling quite shaky now, having remembered all this. The hell of the intervening four years suddenly feels quite real, and my apparent progress quite vulnerable. Hmmmmm.

A problem with analogies and metaphors and similes and aphorisms is that, as well as enlightening us, they can also lead us astray. Or, rather, when I’m struggling, I’m more than happy to be led astray. The number of times I’ve desperately declared myself to be out of the woods, or emerging from my chrysalis or cocoon – well, I shudder to think.

Still, that post-therapeutic riverside message has remained with me throughout these self-disintegrating years. Maybe it was one of the secret things that actually kept me alive?

And, I’ve been researching the teleonomy and poetry of the caterpillar’s metamorphosis ever since.

What follows is what I have thus far gleaned – and I hope that any biologist friends will gently point out any errors in my understanding.

It seems that a certain caterpillar hormone – called ecdysone – is what causes the wee beastie to moult several times, but so-called juvenile hormones stop this process from prematurely proceeding to full pupation. A caterpillar moults perhaps four or five times in its leaf-munching life before it finally spins its own lepidopteral cocoon or encases itself in a snugly-fitting chrysalis shell. It appears that it is a diminishing of juvenile hormones that allows this irreversible journey into profound metamorphosis.

And this is where the action really begins. The bulk of the old caterpillar is forthwith broken down into proteins by a specialist enzyme called caspases, but a few of its old structures remain and are adapted – for example, its tracheal tubes and large parts of its gut system. But the bulk of the caterpillar’s muscles are broken down, forming a chunky broth of proteins. Meanwhile, imaginal cells - from the Latin imago, imagine – clustered together in imaginal discs begin to use this protein broth to grow and divide and multiply, dozens of cells becoming scores becoming thousands, becoming eyes and legs and mouth parts and genitals and wings. Scientists still don’t fully understand this process – tricky it is to observe objectively without affecting the subject in question, but it’s an outstanding example of fiendishly efficient biological upcycling.

At some point, when only it knows when, the former caterpillar emerges, eyes blinking, wings pulsing, readying for first flight – and nectar! Because butterflies don’t eat what caterpillars eat.

“Within the chrysalis, an inching, cylindrical eating machine remakes itself into a beautiful flying creature that drinks through a straw.”

Oh my, I’m suddenly really knackered. Time to head back up to the Cabin. Word count’s about 1600, computer’s on 96%, and phone’s on 88%, so it’s been an acceptably productive Saturday afternoon. Laters.

So then, vicar, do you think you’ve got enough material for tomorrow morning’s sermon?

You rude little churchwarden!

Going to say something profound, are we, vicar? About sloughing skin, and juvenile hormones, and breaking down old identities and old habits, and feeding those imaginal cells with the fuel of this disintegration, and trying not to resist the process, and leaving old food stuffs behind, and having faith and having patience and not rushing towards butterflyhood, but honouring the wisdom of the chrysalis stage...

That’s quite enough, churchwarden. My parishioners might be reading this, I'll have you know.

I'm not convinced they all come just for your sermons, vicar.

You’ve made your point, you cynical little low church caterpillar.

At least this cynical little low church caterpillar knows whether or not it’s going to become a beautiful butterfly or a hairy moth on the Day of Judgement.

How exactly does one know that, churchwarden?

I’ll see you in church in the morning, vicar.

No, churchwarden, come back! Come back! It’s a very serious question!
Am I going to emerge from all of this malarkey a beautifully blooming butterfly or a bloomin' hairy moth?

One Love

Stephen
Saturday 25th January
Devon

holometabolic haiku

caterpillar sleeps
dreams of things beyond its ken
all aflutter, wakes

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Brother Sun, Sister Moon

15/1/2020

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Ah, sunshine – sweet, sweet January sunshine. The battery monitor has gone from straight-mouthed to smiley for the first time in days. Storm Brendan, it seems, has passed. The sea got fantastically choppy back there, and the winds, well, they got properly stormy too. Such a joy to watch a tempestuous sea from a distance – wave after wave thrashing the shore – and such a thrill to stand on the moonlit beach and to feel its force up close and impersonal.

Was going to write this blog yesterday, but felt flat and grumpy and disengaged, which doesn’t make for great copy. But that’s giving up ciggies for ya – for the one hundred and twenty-seventh time...

A tad perkier today, although if someone offered me a ciggie right now I’d casually go, “Oh, go on then,” and proceed to suck its very soul out. Stupidest drug ever. And such a sacred herb too. Typical Whitie behaviour: take something sacred and turn it into an addictive, cancerous source of taxes.

I’ve been back at the Cabin a week now, and have settled in quite well. Something is shifting quite deep inside me, and whatever it is, I’m enjoying the occasional taste and smell of it. Fuck knows, I deserve some sweetness in my life. All the good habits I’ve haphazardly developed during my wilderness years – prayer, meditation, chi kung, frugality, gratitude, presence, immersion in the natural world – well, it now feels as if they are beginning to bud.

[superstitiously looks over shoulder to see if the gods are listening in]

It’s taken Cyril/Cecily the squirrel a whole week to rediscover the bird table and its easy pickings. We locked eyes today – and seemed to understand our different roles in the ensuing drama, nothing personal, I’d do the same as you if I were you.

A rook has been checking out the bird table too. I stood stock still yesterday for a good ten minutes and observed her/him suspiciously contemplating the whole scene from a variety of angles, before flying off without even a compensatory sunflower seed. “If in doubt,” seems to be the rookish wisdom, “leave it out, and live to fly another day.” I’d love to have a corvid for a friend.

Yesterday some sheep managed to find their way into the Cabin garden. I was about to usher them off the property, when I realised that the shaggy winter lawn could actually do with a good mowing – so, it was win-win, with some fresh sheep shit thrown in to seal the deal.

All these details fill my wintered belly with springlike warmth.

One of the drawbacks of solitude, though, is that I find it really hard to make myself laugh. I can induce the occasional smirk, or the odd wry smile, but rarely any proper laughter. I have to surprise myself in order to make myself laugh. So, this morning, at the beginning of my morning practice, when I heard myself saying out loud, “I’ve always wanted to be a monk,” I didn’t half chortle out loud. Oh my, it’s true: part of me has always wanted to me a monk, and here I am, leading a rather monkish life, hoodie and crocs and celibate socks included.

During my teenage years I cross-faded from a rather right-wing evangelical public school Christian into a nonviolent revolutionary evangelical Christian – but, in both guises, I was quite pious. I was serious about following Jesus and discerning God’s will – fair play to teenage me. And I remember when I first saw Zeffirelli’s film about St Francis – Brother Sun, Sister Moon – and what an impact it had on me. Here was a rich young man responding to the gospels in a way that made sense to me – and there was the beautiful Clare too, close yet chaste, which was a combination that suited me at the time, terrified as I was of both women and sex.

I’ve had a fondness for the Franciscans ever since. The only time I've done a "past life regression", when I looked down at my feet they were clad in leather sandals, and I was clothed in a rough brown robe – I was a Franciscan, some time in the fourteenth century...

Maybe if I’d remained a Christian, I’d have followed my predecessor. I’m not too sure how that would have worked out, although in my twenties I would have looked very cute in a full Franciscan robe.

But here I am, thirty-five years on, most days talking to animals more than I talk to humans, pondering the mysteries of Life, living simply enough, in daily gratitude, in love with Brother Sun and Sister Moon, still half terrified of... Ha!

Time to go feed Maggie the Generaly Indifferent Mare.

Ah, the sun has begun its afternoon descent, and a wave of loneliness has just washed through me. A desire, perhaps, to be held and to hold. The sight of a friend’s smile, the brightness of a friend’s eyes, the inimitable warmth of fleshy human company – someone to make me laugh out loud. And yet, and yet – this is my choice right now, to live like this, to be intimate with solitude and with myself and with my experience, whatever the weather. To be intimate with Life as it moves through me – sea waves and lonely waves and funny waves and all.

That’s new in my life: this sense of choice. This inhabiting the choices I make. On the whole, I'm not feeling like a victim at the mercy of forces I don't really understand – which is how I've felt for years. Is the worst behind me? Who knows?

But there is some peace percolating around my veins right now, and I give thanks.

One day at a time, and all that sensible jazz.

Stephen
Wednesday 15th January
Devon

My heart sings

Like an open book
that gently rises and falls
upon the chest of its dozing reader
is my love for Thee, oh Lord
Who art the ink of every word
and the very heart of the sun
that gave the light
that fed the tree
that made the page
upon which each word is printed.

Paper and skin and ink art Thou.
Intimate with all things.

Like the sweetness
of the salt
of the tears that mark the end of suffering
is my gratitude to Thee, my Lady
Who art the very iron in my blood
and the pulse
of the heart
of the moon
that pulls the earth
that tugs the tide
that makes the waves
that lap about my feet.

Sea and flesh and iron art Thou.
Intimate with all things.

Like the song
of the petals
of the flower
that opens each morning
to the grace and the hum
of the humble bumble bee
is my praise for Thee
oh Creator and Creation.

Nectar and pollen art Thou
honey and taste and tongue.

Intimate with all things.

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Back to Cabinland

10/1/2020

1 Comment

Ah, only got back to the Cabin two days ago, after two weeks inland: doing the Christmas and New Thing, partying, being ill, drinking whisky, smoking ciggies, eating vegan sausage rolls, catching up with friends and family, enjoying unlimited electrickery and Netflickery, drooping with central heating, floating in baths, indulging in a bit too much Facebook, pondering about the year gone by, and wondering about the year to come. Quite a lazy, hazy fortnight. Definitely in need of some sea breeze and sea-salty spittle to sting my cheeks and wake me up from my suburban slumbers.

It always takes a day and two nights, at least, to settle back into Cabinland. But today has been – still is – a fairly peachy day. I was even topless at lunchtime, collecting windfall twigs for kindling, and chasing off errant sheep – so gorgeous to feel the sunlight and sunwarmth upon my skin. I’ve reacquainted myself with my neighbours – Maggie the generally indifferent mare, the blue tits, the great tits, the robin, the blackbird, the wren, the finches. I even had a magpie visit the bird table – wow, such formidable presence and intelligence and awareness – although it flew off as soon as it heard the twitching of my nostrils through two panes of glass.

I’ve been drinking in the sea, so to speak. Oh my. It’s full moon today, and so low tide was particularly low. From my hilltop perch, I watched the waves beginning to form far out to sea, at first faint bruised lines of colour, swelling and deepening and clarifying as they approached the coast, shadow-waves lit by a low-slung sun, and then furling and quickly unfurling against the shoreline in explosions of froth and foam...

Half way down the hill, rabbits are now gambolling about in the late afternoon sun. I could be forgiven for thinking that all is well with the world.

This morning when I woke, I felt strangely vulnerable. I must have had a tense dream or two, and was slightly sweaty, and when I got up, my body felt exposed to the cold morning air. I lit the fire, pottered around, had a shower, made some breakfast – but I could feel that I was delaying my morning practice.

Because when I finally got round to it, I experienced what I feared: a sort of catching up with a sense of disconnection, like I hadn't quite put my body and soul and mind on the right way, and they were all a bit twisted and tangled. No wonder stopping still is sometimes one of the hardest of human activities. I had to really muster as much spiritual wisdom as possible to let everything just be. To allow this unease, this sense of disconnection – not to will it away or wish I was someone other than I am. To breathe my experience in. And to breathe my experience out. And to keep breathing, throughout my exercise and meditation and prayer. To keep opening to Life as it was showing up in me, not as I wanted it to be.

But this mustering of spiritual acceptance seemed to work, and by the end of my practice I felt established in an unusual peace, which has remained with me all day. It’s not always like this – I succeed in tangling the knot of self-contraction more often than I succeed in allowing it to loosen itself – but today I welcomed the knot, and felt it relax in the face of such genuine acknowledgement. There’s hope for this learner driver yet.

Truth is, I am quietly excited about the year ahead, and today somehow feels like my New Year’s Day.

I think that’s my blog for the week. Short and sweet. I did entertain ideas about writing about vulnerability, complete with Latin etymology et cetera – but then I realised those ideas were coming from a slightly pompous place. It’s a constant battle for me – between my armies of under-estimation and my armies of over-estimation. Ha! To be even vaguely realistic about oneself is quite a challenge. Say no more.

Peace between all warring factions!

Love and warmth to all knots!

One Love

Stephen
Friday 10th January
Devon

1 Comment

Gratitude

4/1/2020

2 Comments

“If the only prayer you ever say in your entire life is thank you,
it will be enough.”
Meister Eckhart

It’s New Year’s morn, and I’m up in Buxton at my brother’s new gaff, which is actually an old Georgian town house – cabin life this ain’t. I was in bed before ten last night – flat out with a bad cold, a seized lower back, an anxious nervous system and a glass of whisky. I think this is my body’s way of saying I’ve been doing too much these last few weeks – too many big emotions, too many parties, too many shocks and delights. Time for some serious horizontalism.

I’ve got a lovely photo from New Year’s day, 2013. It’s of my mum, half-enfolded in a yew tree. We’d both been down to my brother’s – then living in Tunbridge Wells – for New Year before going on a mini-road trip to Pennant Melangell in Wales, to visit the shrine of St Melangell. The yew was in the churchyard, as yew trees often are – or maybe, the church was in the old yewyard... Whether the pagan chicken came before the Christian egg or vice versa, it was such fun larking around with mum in an ancient yew. It was our last carefree time together.

A few days later mum received news that the “cancer markers” in her blood were up. “Probably nothing to worry about,” she said, in typical mum fashion – but we were both concerned. Within a few weeks, she’d begun radiotherapy, and I was able to move in with her, to support her through cancer and dying and death.

One day I’ll write about my time looking after her. It was both beautiful and gruelling – profoundly awesome and profoundly awful.

After mum died, I spiralled down into depression, but didn’t realise it was depression – I just thought I was crap at grieving and crap at life in general. It took me a year to realise I was depressed, and another year to realise that underneath the depression was my old unresolved trauma of boarding school. I spent the next four years both fighting and having a proper breakdown, whilst learning to deal with the uncovering of a highly traumatised system – and the correlating “belief” system that ten-year-old me formed in order to be able to survive the hell of boarding school. I know it’s possible to have a breakdown without falling apart, and it’s possible to face and manage and heal post-traumatic stress without falling apart too. Alas, being a self-isolating boarding-school-survivor English poet with tragic tendencies, I broke open, broke down, fell apart, and fought the process every step of the way. It wasn’t pretty.

But, somehow, I’ve survived. It wasn’t always guaranteed. I just lot my mate James – as I said in my previous blog, there but for the grace of Life and friends go I.

And so today, at the beginning of a new decade, I’d like to express gratitude for all the elements of Life that have held me through these self-disintegrating years:

Friends and family

First up, thanks to my friends and family for holding me in your hearts. I know it’s been an ordeal for you, seeing me suffering, and seeing me self-isolating, but I have always known your deep love and concern for me. I would be dead without you.

The random phone calls, the regular phone calls, the texts and audio messages, the hugs, the resisting the urge to fix, the reassurance, the compassion, the patience, the truth-withholding and the truth-telling, the advice withheld and the advice given, the walks in nature, the little acts of kindness, the little presents, the invitations, the holding me during retraumatisation attacks, the self-education about trauma, the food, the parties, the holding me in your arms and letting me sob out my ancient grief, the medicine of connection offered for my illness of separation, the laughs in the midst of everything... thank you.

My ancestors

During an ayahuasca journey several years ago I was given clear instructions about installing my immediate ancestors within my heart – my mum and her parents on one side, my dad and his parents on the other, and mum’s sister – my auntie Doreen – in the middle. Doreen had Down’s Syndrome and was the heart of both lines of my family – whenever she was present, there was love and kindness and laughter. So, these seven souls are forever in my heart, and when I connect with my ancestors, I imagine my ancestral lines radiating backwards through their hearts – and through the hearts of my great-grandparents, my great-great grandparents, all the way back to humanity’s common ancestors, and then back further, through billions of years of life on earth, and sometimes even all the way back to the Big Bang – after all, everything I am now was also present then, quarks and awareness and all.

Whenever I open a new bottle of whisky, I always pour the first dram onto the ground in honour of all my ancestors – especially mum and dad, who both enjoyed a good single malt. Dad used to scoff at this wasteful tradition. I hope he appreciates it now.

Alas, both mum and died quite young (dad at sixty-nine; mum at seventy-three). I miss them both, and, ninety-eighty per cent of the time feel unconditional love for them, and am aware of their unconditional love for me too – I just wish, especially with my dad, I could have shared this level of connection with both of them whilst they were still dressed in mortal form. But the truth is that they loved me as best they could, I owe my very existence to them, and I owe my existence to millions and millions who went before me – what an amazing ancestral mystery to ponder. We’ve all got an amazing pedigree, and remarkable back-up, and I believe that any love and gratitude sent back through our ancestral lines loops back into the heart of my being. Gratitude to my ancestors is a win-win practice.

The kindness of strangers

Oh my, the kindness of strangers – it rarely makes the headlines but sure makes the world go round. As any one who has spent time with me knows, I love chatting to strangers. As a well-seasoned hitch-hiker, I’m happy talking to any Tom, Dick, Harriet or Charlie – it’s one of my favourite pastimes. Quite often it’s just friendly-hearted babble, but I find that the more honest and vulnerable I am with strangers, the more remarkable our conversations. Some times people are so kind, so attentive. Even a gentle smile, or the briefest meeting of human eyes, can linger through a day. Over the last seven years I’ve met complete strangers who have ministered to my soul in ways they could never have imagined. Thank you.

The Cabin

Four years ago now, my mate Annie approached me to see if I wanted to buy into a cabin on the south coast that she owned with two others. Having stayed there once, I didn’t need any decision-making time. I was in. And, since then, it’s been my main home – although whenever I vacate it for my co-cabinistas, I do tidy up, smudge the place, and make it feel like it’s actually co-owned! It was, and is, the perfect English seaside bolt-hole, both comfortable and elemental: mains water from the local stables, a gas boiler and cooker, toilet and shower, wood burner, solar-panel-fuelled 12 volt system (with an inverter), and a million dollar land-and-sea-and-sky view. It’s held me well through over a dozen seasons now.

I’ve even learned some basic DIY skills. Fancy that – an English poet with power tools. You can’t imagine how manly and productive this makes me feel.

And whilst, in the beginning, I disappeared into Cabinland urged on by chronic patterns of self-isolation and shame (at not being able to cope), one of the gifts the cabin has given me is...

The gift of solitude

What are the differences between self-isolation, loneliness and solitude? I wish I had a pithy answer. The thing is – so it seems to me after six years of living out of the way and largely by myself – is that any exploration of aloneness will inevitably involve explorations of self-isolation and loneliness, and of both healthy and unhealthy solitude.

As long as my nervous system is faring well enough and I’m feeling relatively connected, I’m more than happy to spend a week by myself. Maybe that’s it: aloneness can be hell if you’re feeling separate, and can be a quiet heaven if you’re feeling connected. In both cases, loneliness ebbs and flows like the tides – if already feeling separate, a wave of loneliness can make me feel even more separate; if feeling peaceful enough, loneliness rides through me as a sweet and natural and tender sensation. If it lingers, then maybe I need to phone a friend and tell them I’m feeling a bit lonely. Or maybe I need to pause and say a loving kindness prayer?

Of course, there is no real substitute for human hugs and skin-to-skin contact. As for sex – I can count on the fingers of one hand...

Nature

Ah, one day I hope I can write poems that express my true gratitude to Mother Nature for holding me all these years. Tears are beading in my eyes as I write these words. Without Nature, I don’t think I would have ever returned from the labyrinth of suffering that I entered six years ago. In the Cabin, I am surrounded by Nature, some of it cultivated – in the English fashion – some of it coastal and raw and wild. Even when I’m having a horrendous day internally, ever-shifting beauty surrounds me, and provides a deeply-humming reality check – I can always see the Divine outside, even if I can’t feel or fathom the Divinity within. Even dull days are never dull – mists constantly shift, light ebbs and flows, the sea never stops lapping or slapping the shore...

The Sea

Ah, the sea, the sea. These last four years I have fallen in love with the sea. Several days inland and my body and soul begin to pine for it. A week locked within the land and I’m already planning my return. My body and soul can breathe properly and deeply in the presence of the sea.

To go down to the mid-winter sea just before dawn, and to watch the sun rising from its calm depths, first a pin-prick of fiery flame, but very soon a rising orb flinging forth a shimmering, dancing pathway leading all the way from the shore to the horizon...

To follow the sun rise’s annual clock – sweeping out to sea for winter solstice, and then returning over the cliffs and inland for summer solstice...

To go down to the pebbly harbour on a stormy winter evening and to feel the sea’s wild fury and brute strength...

To float around on my back, buoyed by ancient salt water, on a warm and sunny day...

To follow the tides – the Cabin tide time table is as important to me as the kitchen clock – and to find walks and caves only accessible around new moon and full moon – to keep on pushing the edges of my knowledge and exploration...

To watch the morning river mouth pushing out a comic sausage of river cloud several miles long, and then – now far out at sea – for the sausage suddenly lose its internal binding and to dissipate as misty haze...

To dive into a gentle wave with a nervous system on hellish fire, and to emerge seven seconds later feeling like a man reborn...

Cliffs and rocks

And meanwhile, the cliffs stand immutable. And the immutable cliffs they crumble. And a hundred million beach pebbles have their edges ground down daily, and Greenwich Rock Time makes me feel wonderfully insignificant, a mere flea’s fart in the grand scheme of things. The company of rock is solid, enduring company indeed. A quirky pebble is pocketed for the garden, or perhaps for a present. A fresh tumble of rocks has already received the attention of the fossil hunter’s hammer. Tens of thousands of tons of pebbles can be remoulded overnight – a shallow beach one day, a steep climb the next.

And one day, the last rocky outcrop of Britain will finally succumb to the tides of sea water and time...

I realise that I am giving thanks for the elements here: to sea and sky and land and fire – whether the fire of the sun or the fire of the burner. And giving thanks also for that quintessential essence that binds all four. Ameyn.

Animals

Ah, my daily creatures. The beady-eyed robin reminding me of my breakfast duties; the liminal wren skirting the edges of the decking on its morning meanders; Cyril – or perhaps Shirley – the squirrel raiding the bird table with cheeky timing; Maggie the mare and her loving indifference; the fearless rooks giving the encircling buzzards a good run for their money; the sparrow hawk on its early evening perch; the gangly-legged foals in spring; a badger bimbling down the lane, lost in uffish thought; the deadly patience of a bedroom spider; a passing dog offering and requesting a moment of love and connection...

Plants

The hedgerows, the local trees, the kitchen herbs, the winter rose, the black berries and yew berries, the daisies and the dandelions, the handfuls of sweet grass fed to my neighbourly horses, the snow drops that remind us that the bulk of winter is done, the lonely primrose, the unfurling ferns, the wind-shaken twigs and branches collected for kindling, the slathers of seaweed upon the beach – all this juice and all this joy...

Mushrooms

Every autumn is magic mushroom season across the British Isles. Wherever there’s sheep shit, keep your eyes peeled. Nibble one, pick one, nibble one more, see three more, nibble another and, lo, quietly-pulsing hamlets and villages of the blighters begin to appear all round – spiralling you down the rabbit hole of mirth and earth and laughter. Every now and then, a couple in the morning for the health of my system. Psilocybe semilanceata – abundant liberty caps of these isles – thanks for your medicine, insight and entertainment.

Music & dance

The world might be rolling downhill towards the fires of hell in a burning handcart, but it’s the best time ever to be alive for music – we have access to the most amazing ocean of music, past, present and futuristic.

Especially when I was looking after my mum, escaping daily into my music was fundamental to my wavering sanity. Or, rather: allowing music to transport me elsewhere, far away from cancer and looming grief...

Getting a digital radio and discovering BBC 6Music was a joy. Sure, some of the DJs are as annoying as fuck, but the range of new and old music keeps me well entertained, and several times a day I Shazam a new tune that tickles my musical biscuit. I just have to be quick enough to switch off the news when it comes on, because it acts like naloxone against the previous hour’s opiate vibes.

Buying a little Minirig speaker for Cabin life means I can entertain myself and have a cabin boogie whenever I want. It don’t rattle the walls, but it booms merrily enough. Well done, that Bristol crew.

Not to mention all the parties I’ve danced at, or played at, through these dark years. The dancefloor takes it all.

Music and dance seem to be two human activities that we humans do, on the whole, quite well – and without too many destructive side effects. Maybe a few people end up at their local A & E having been elbowed in the face during the Birdie Song, and, yes, there were Nazi swing bands, but on the whole we should be proud of ourselves.

Would I have made it without music? Who knows? Thanks – all you artists, producers, DJs, dance teachers and assorted musical people. More movement and dancing please, vicar, for me in 2020.

Booze

Booze is a controversial substance to give thanks for, but it can be a very rapid and effective nervous system calmer for someone with PTSD. The number of times a pint – or a gin and tonic, or a glass of wine – has made me feel human again – not in terms of taking the edge off a stressful day, but in terms of allowing suffering me a welcome hour or two of something passing for soulfulness... It would be churlish not to give thanks for this alcoholic influence. I’ll probably write more about my story with alcohol and drugs – and other forms of addiction – in a later post, but right now I give thanks for the grape and the grain and all those billions of transmutative yeasty beasts. Cheers.

Grandmother Ayahuasca

Ayahuasca is also a controversial brew, and yet it’s a medicine that I have profound respect and profound gratitude for. Apart from the first ceremony I ever attended – which was not held very well – all the other times I have taken ayahuasca have been in safe hands, in well-held spaces, and have been times of both healing and insight. These last seven years I’ve been on perhaps a dozen such journeys, and each one has given me jewels. One thing I’ve learned is that any ayahuasca ceremony is not just about the ceremony – it involves good preparation (fasting, intention and prayer setting, an attitude of trepidation and trust), the ceremony itself, rest and digestion, and then doing the “homework”. And the best advice I ever received for the ceremony itself was to constantly give thanks to Grandmother Ayahuasca – whether going through heaven or hell or the purging of purgatory.

I’ve only experienced joy on a handful of occasions during these last few years – oh my, I could cry at how little joy I’ve experienced – and most of these occasions have been during dawn singing following a night of a ceremony. Some of the purest joy I have ever experienced, thus far in my life. These brief joyful hours have given me untold hope – an experience of myself freed from my usual shackles of separation. The Grandmother Ayahuasca that I have come to know is benevolent, precise and expects me to fulfil my “homework” before I return. I give thanks for her intelligence, and for the phenomenal intelligence and bounty of Pachamama, whom she serves, and of whom she is a powerful manifestation. And I give thanks for all the leaders and organisers of these ceremonies. Haux! Haux!

Teachers

As well as having access to the world’s cathedralic library of music, we also now have access to the whole of the world’s wisdom. If only we know where to look, and how to discern.

The field of trauma studies is a burgeoning field, with new insights and studies and modalities appearing all the time. It can be a bit perplexing keeping up with it all. My entry into this field of understanding was through two early classics: Waking The Tiger by Peter Levine and Ann Frederick, and The Body Keeps The Score by Bessel van der Kolk. Oh my, everything that I was taking personally wasn’t personal at all – and these people had explanations and maps. This was a revelation. I wasn’t mad. I was just suffering from unhealed trauma.

When I first read Trauma, Abandonment And Privilege by Nick Duffell and Thurstine Basset, it was like finding my long-lost instruction manual. Written mainly for professionals working with boarding school survivors, I’d recommend it to anyone who ever went to boarding school, or who lives with someone who did.

When I came across the work of Thomas Huebl, my understanding of trauma went to another level, particularly of its collective and inter-generational dimensions. Even if you haven’t experienced severe trauma in your personal life, all family lines have unintegrated trauma running through them, and we are all born into traumatised collective fields.

Craig Hamilton – a North American spiritual teacher – and Joy Hicklin-Bailey, a local lass, have been godsends on my spiritual journey.

And, of course, Jalāl ad-Dīn Muhammad Rūmī, aka Rumi, has been a regular companion.

Big shout out too to the irreverend Ken Wilber and the Reverend angel Kyodo williams.

What I’m more and more realising is that, unless a teacher is specifically trauma-informed (either through their own experience, or through self-education), you have to tread really carefully when applying their psycho-spiritual advice to your own traumatised state. Insights into the perennial existential, psycho-spiritual and neurotic tendencies of human being don’t always translate into the fields of trauma – and if you’re not careful you can exacerbate your distress, or soon feel like the one loon in the classroom who don’t get it.

Iona

The holy island of Iona deserves its own prayer of thanks. I’ve been visiting Iona since I was nineteen – it’s seen me through my evangelical Christian pacifist days, my militant atheist days, my wannabe mystic days, both haggard days and holy days, and will surely see me through my dying days and beyond.

My brother, sister-in-law and I scattered half of mum’s ashes from the top of Dun I back in May 2014 – and of course a sudden flurry of wind blew the ashes all over us – and every year since I’ve returned to check in with my soul, and with mum. This October I spent a weekend wildcamping on the south of the island, and I experienced a level of connection – to my heart, soul, the land, the Divine – that I hadn’t done in years. A glimpse of things to come, in a place where truly the “veil is thin.”

Iona of my heart,
Iona of my love,
Instead of monks’ voices
Shall be the lowing of cattle;
But ere the world come to an end,
Iona shall be as it was.
St Columba

My practice

Although I’m sometimes a crap practitioner, I’ve developed a daily spiritual practice that – when I actually put it into practice – has held me through all manner of weathers and times. On a bad day, I feel like I’m going through the motions, but on a good day, a steady wisdom guides me, and reminds me that I am not just a bundle of self-contraction.

Forgiveness

Forgiveness is a remarkable concept, and an even more remarkable practice. One day I’ll explore it in more detail, but suffice to say it is one of my main practices, and a vital part of my healing process. Of course, premature forgiveness can easily send you miles out of your way, but delayed forgiveness keeps you in chains. When genuine forgiveness occurs – and, for me, it’s not about forgiving perceived or actual “wrong”, it’s about letting go of “the bonds that bind” – it’s as sweet as a summer stream on a hot and sweaty day.

Even though my mum and dad made some strange decisions about my life, and inadvertently wounded me very deeply, I know that they always meant the best. Every now and then, when I come across an old layer of, say, anger towards them, I try to allow that trapped energy to move through my system and try to integrate it and release it as best I can, and then try to discern when I am ready for another level of forgiveness. And when a deeper forgiveness arises, I feel it radiating through my ancestral lines, and love flowing even more freely in both directions. Forgiveness is vital for my health and vital for my liberation.

The mystery of suffering

I once came across an Indian mystic – I forget who – who said something like, “You only give thanks for the good things in life, and not the bad, and that is part of your problem.” Except he or she said it much more poetically and profoundly than that.

Giving thanks for the mystery of suffering – wow, that’s a really hard thing to do. But, otherwise, I’m at war with reality, which tends only to tighten the knot.

Maybe one day I’ll look back on these years and give heartfelt thanks for the burning away of falsehood and misperception and false identities and karma. I’m definitely not there yet – I still feel sorry for myself on a regular basis – but every now and then, during my morning prayers of gratitude, I try my best to give thanks for the mystery of my suffering, and the mystery of human suffering in general. Who knows how these things work?

My heart

Ah, my heart. My beautiful, wise, protective, loving heart. My heart that closed shortly after my mum died, and only re-opened a few weeks ago, but now – through a couple of recent shocks – has closed once again in self-protection. At times I have felt let down by my heart – who doesn’t want to live their daily life with an open heart? – but more and more I am coming to see that my heart has been holding me all this time. Thank you.

The Divine Heart

As has the Divine Heart at the centre of my mortal human heart, and at the centre of all hearts. I wish I could say that I currently feel in touch with the Divine Heart, but I can't because I don’t. If undigested trauma is fundamentally a dis-ease of separation – and I think it is – then most of the time I feel separate from the Mystery and I envy the mystics, however much I like to quote them – the lucky, lucky bastards.

I have argued countless times with God, and have almost exhausted my concept of a God who one can have arguments with.

One day grace – or exhaustion – will allow me to truly surrender. And then perhaps I’ll see that me and the Divine Heart have never been separate, not even in my darkest days. What's that verse by Rumi?

While he dreams of the pangs of thirst,
The water is nearer than his jugular vein

Thank you, oh Mystery.

(But please can you start using a bit more lube?)

Wow, it’s now midday on Saturday, three days since I began this blog. As they say, you can’t hurry gratitude. It’s been a good meditation with which to begin the new decade. Makes me realise how important a practice of gratitude is. And makes me realise how blessed I truly am, and – despite all my bouts of self-pity and self-attack – how well held I am, and how well loved I am. Which sure ain’t a bad thing to remember.

Peace to you – and all that you love.

Stephen
Saturday 4th January
Buxton

Keeping the faith

To open the stove door at dawn
and find some embers still aglow
within their comfy bed of ash
and to build this morning’s fire upon them
and with focussed breath
to burst it into flame

It’s as if some kind old soul
has been praying for me all night long
watching over me
keeping the faith

To peg my shirt and underwear around the warming chimney pipe
and to put the kettle on
to make my morning cup of tea

To clothe my nakedness
in the welcome warmth
of this relay race of grace

To sit by this window
and write this poem
whilst the sun
(from whom all light and fire and flame proceed)
rises gloriously through the morning clouds
to burst upon the sea
a path of such dazzling and inviting light

This
is the medicine
that daily
brings me back to life

2 Comments

Man down

24/12/2019

3 Comments

Christmas Eve

The first time I ever entered a seriously suicidal space, it really shook me. Suddenly I had crossed a line that I never thought I would – contemplating taking my own life. Only other people did that – weaker people – not me. As with a lot of things in my system, feeling suicidal was wrapped in shame.

It was three years ago, I was holed up in my cabin, in the midst of a long re-traumatisation attack, and I just couldn’t cope with my levels of pain and suffering – I couldn’t cope with my experience of being alive. It was too much. I wanted a quick way out. Whether this was true or not – the ability to be realistic can take a real bashing when you’re retraumatised – I felt like I’d been suffering for hundreds and hundreds of days on end. My being felt saturated with a terrible dread and each and every thought process led me to utterly bleak conclusions. These words fail to describe the horror. I was no longer orbiting around an inner hell – I had entered into it.

Living by the coast, the obvious method of killing myself was to jump off a nearby cliff. I couldn’t believe that I was imagining these things. But I found myself wondering how I would go about it – although I wasn’t sure I would really go ahead with it. But I knew I had crossed a terrible line – an old Christian line, a line of shame, an inner spiritual line, I don’t know. Rather than provoke self-compassion, this line crossing just became fuel for the fires of self-attack.

There was a knock on the door.

Nobody ever knocked on my door. Hardly any one knew where I lived.

I climbed off my bed, in my underwear, tears and snot running down my face, almost in an altered state. If it was someone from the nearby stables, they were in for a big shock.

It was James. An old party buddy who lived twenty-five miles away. He had just decided to swing by on the off chance I was in.

I told him what was going on. He gave me a big hug and took me on a walk, and took me to the pub. He knew what inner suffering was like.

James was my human angel that day.

Last week, with a surfeit of energy in my being and a surplus of love in my heart, I decided to phone James and invite him round for dinner. We hadn’t seen each other in over a year. I left message on his answer machine, and then another. It was a bit unlike him not to reply, so I went on Facebook and visited his page. Someone had posted a lovely photo of him from back in his early party days, and I clicked the heart response.

Then I read the caption – RIP James. Fuck, James was dead!

I didn’t doubt that he had taken his own life. And I wasn’t surprised. The first shock wave hit me later on that evening: this was not merely an unreal Facebook post; James was actually dead.

It took a while to piece together what had happened. He’d killed himself two weeks previously. And I’d only just found out. I got communicating with old party friends who knew James – and none of them knew. I think the news had just been circulating around James’s village, but hadn’t got out to his worldwide progressive trance tribe. I busied myself informing people – it was good to have a job to do.

The following morning I woke at five, wide awake. I could feel loss and grief moving through my being, and decided to go down to the sea. When I returned to the cabin, I sat down and wrote a poem – the first poem I’ve written in ages. It felt good to be channelling some of my grief and confusion and love into an act of creation. Sometimes ink acts like tears.

Yesterday I attended James’s funeral at Taunton Crematorium. Usually I don’t really like crematorium services – more precisely, I don’t like crem chapels – but the Taunton chapel is a strangely beautiful space, full of light.

I haven’t been to too many funerals: my grandparents’, my parents’, my auntie Doreen’s, the funeral of a friend’s child, a couple of others. James is my first close friend to die – give that I’m fifty-three, that’s quite late on in the friend-dying game.

The chapel was rammed – I counted a hundred people standing at the back. The bulk of them were people from his village, lots of them friends of his parents. There were a few party friends, but not as many as I thought there would be – I guess we all heard a bit late. Fuck, I’m glad I heard about his death before his funeral took place – I would have been gutted to have missed it.

Given the circumstances of his death, it was a good funeral. His suicide was addressed. One of his close village mates gave a tip top eulogy, and, instead of a hymn, ten minutes of progressive trance bounced out of the chapel speakers – what most of the congregation made of it, I don’t know. I shed a few tears. The reality of death takes a while to sink in. And grief has its own rhymes and reasons and rhythms. I realise that I know grief quite well – and seem to know how to let it flow through me when it arises.

After the funeral service, we were invited back to the village hall, where beer and wine and sandwiches were served. Some of James’s village friends had made a beautiful display of pictures of James, and there were pieces of his intricate artwork too. I’d inscribed a frisbee – James and I were keen frisbee buddies – and placed it next to another. Seems like he had a few frisbee buddies, the frisbee tart.

I got chatting to various of his village mates, and they invited me to the local, and many stories from their youthful days were shared. I learned a lot about teenage rural Devon village life last night, most of it unrepeatable in public. Cider, fags and snogs behind the village bus stop twoz not. They were quite a crazy and creative crew, and are already planning a big memorial party for James some time in the new year. We exchanged numbers and hugs, and I read out my poem to a group of them. I could see that it was going to turn into a boozing session, so I made my excuses and drove back to the cabin, along backcountry Devon lanes. I was exhausted when I got home.

Today I was meant to head to Oxford for Christmas, but at midday both my soul and nervous system said: chill, we ain’t going nowhere.

At the village hall wake, one of his friends told me how James had killed himself. I’d imagined that he’d done the old car-exhaust-and-hosepipe thing – he tried it once last year, but failed (and gave himself a hard time for not even being able to kill himself properly). I was shocked to learn that he’d hung himself in his own home – I won’t go into the details, but, fuck, he was obviously determined to kill himself that day. His mother discovered his body. I just can’t imagine.

Of course, we are all wondering whether or not we could have done anything to save himself from his suffering self. I learned that quite a few of his friends had exhausted themselves trying to accompany him in his deep pit of suffering.

For two years, James was my most regular friend. I can’t call him my best friend – because he was tricky, and his suffering dominated most visits. We did best when we were outdoors – walking the coast, visiting various pubs, chucking a frisbee back and forth. We were two buddies stuck in our own pits of pain – I was falling apart, and haphazardly trying to heal myself. But, even though I often felt in hell, it was obvious even to self-absorbed me that James was in a deeper hell. A fellow boarding school survivor, he didn’t seem to have any tools. He just wanted the pain to go away. A few years previously he’d gone travelling around New Zealand, and had really enjoyed himself – he kept on saying that he just wanted to feel like he had back then. James, I think, felt very unloved – and, weirdly, often made himself unloveable. It was easy not to take him seriously – sometimes we even talked about this. I found it difficult enough to listen to friends’ well-intentioned suggestions – James found it impossible. He knew he had to make some important changes in his life, but he just couldn’t muster whatever he needed to muster.

As the months went by, he became more and more harrowed, and more and more negative. I began noticing that my recovery time from his visits began to extend. His negativity and bitterness seemed to increase. Something inside him was turning rancid and toxic. Some of my friends thought I was a bit crazy to persevere in my friendship with James, given my own fragile state. But I really feared that if I withdrew my friendship, I would also withdraw a lifeline for him. I offered him a lot of love – as best as I could muster – and food, and was fairly non-judgmental (although you never once volunteered to do the washing up, mate). Every now and then we’d have an argument – sometimes he was harsh in his criticisms of me. Whenever I seemed to make any progress in my own healing journey, James confessed his envy. Whilst I admired his honesty, that’s not what you need from a friend.

A half-day visit from James would sometimes take me two days to recover from. In the end I had to have it out with him – I phrased it as responsibly as I could: I love you James, but I can’t cope with my reaction to your suffering and negativity any more – it affects me too much, and is affecting my own health. He took it well enough, but I could tell that I was giving him potential fuel for further self-attack. Wow, it’s hard writing this. Maybe I’m trying to justify myself? But I’m sure all this self-questioning, and replaying of past interaction is common to those who witness a friend committing suicide. Could I have done more? Could I have done anything differently?

We agreed – well, James didn’t really have a choice – to pause our friendship. I agreed to contact him around spring. I really had to accept that James might kill himself in the meantime. Alas, we never got to meet up – I’ve been through all my communications with him, and three times we tried to meet up this year, but never made it. If I’d been more peaceful in myself, I would have tried harder.

If I’d been a bit more together in myself, maybe I could have rallied some of his friends into some sort of emergency committee? I don’t know. I don’t know. None of us know. When I talked to his friends, they all said that in the last few weeks James had isolated himself more and more. As we all head into Christmas, I’m sure we’re all asking ourselves similar questions.

I don’t quite believe he’s dead. Because I think of him many times a day, he seems more real to me than he has for ages.

I found that once I’d seriously contemplated suicide once, it subsequently got easier to contemplate. I reckon I’ve been in a pre-suicidal state half a dozen times in the last three years. When I check in with close friends, several of them have said that at times they have had to “let go” of me – so determined did I seem to self-isolate, and so powerless did they feel.

During my second suicidal phase, I decided to explore the possibility in some detail – which cliff to jump off, and so on. If I jumped at night, on a low tide, then the sea would reclaim me. Still, some poor sod would find my body. I couldn’t get round that fact: someone would probably be traumatised by finding my smashed body. I imagined the jump, the falling through the air – but when I did this, I realised that, whilst falling, I would probably regret my decision. It must be awful falling through the air realising you’ve made the wrong move, and not having any cartoon powers. I researched another option: eating yew needles. Given my affinity for the yew tree, it had a tragic poetic feel to it, and in ancient days was a well-established method of taking your own life. I reckoned about a hundred needles would do it. But, I couldn’t find out if it’s a peaceful or tortuous way to die. And, again, someone would find my body. I’m always worrying about what other people may think. And then I heard a voice – the voice of a particular friend, howling out a “No!” of almost cosmic proportions. The voice of his animal grief and rage upon hearing that I had killed myself. It stopped me in my tracks. There was no way that I could put a friend through that. Still, I didn’t tell anyone that I had been contemplating suicide – I felt too ashamed. Only really weak and pitiful people contemplate suicide.

The third time I felt suicidal, I decided to let myself explore all the attendant fantasies – the reactions of my friends and family, my funeral, people’s recollections of me. I don’t know why I did this – part of me was interested to see if there was any useful information in these fantasies. The shock and consternation of my friends, the tributes paid, people wondering if they could have done more, the love, the heart-broken love... The good thing is, I realised how much I was loved. And I realised how much my friends would suffer, and how that heart-break would be carried for years. And I realised that there was no way I could put my friends through that suffering.

If I find myself entering suicidal fantasies nowadays, I try to remind myself that it’s just an indicator that I’m suffering a retraumatisation attack, and that I need to contact a friend and ask them to accompany me until the attack is over. I try to remind myself that I am very loved. And I still hear my friend’s voice, echoing through my bones: “No! Noooooooo!” I can’t quite explain the power of his voice and the power of his grief and the power of his love. Every one needs at least one friend who's prepared to argue with both God and the devil on their behalf.

But none of this writing brings James back. And I’m not surprised that he killed himself. The pit that he found himself in was so remorseless and so vicious, and he seemed so unable and so unwilling to make even tiny steps. I can’t judge him for that – I know these pit qualities in my own experience.

Ah, I’m suddenly exhausted. This is heavy writing. I had hoped to have something coherent and useful to say. But what can I say? A friend has taken his own life. And he ain’t never coming back – not in that unique, mortal James form that once I knew here on planet earth. It all got too much for him. And there but for the grace of Life and the love of friends go I.

Hopefully, the more we can talk about this stuff, the better – because already I’ve heard from several friends that friends of theirs have recently committed suicide. There’s so much unseen suffering going on. And so much love available, if only we knew how to ask for it, and how to let it in. And how to organise it, and how to communicate it to those we know are really suffering.

Ah, I miss you, James. And I’m sorry none of us could save you.

Stephen
Christmas Eve
Devon

Man down

“I wish I could show you,
when you are lonely or in darkness,
the astonishing light of your own being.”
Hafez

Ah, James
party buddy
frisbee partner
coastline walker
witty talker
mushroom hunter
mandala maker
plant whisperer
music lover
dancefloor groover
funny and faithful
friend

you
beautiful, fragile
(occasionally really annoying)
ever so human being:

it’s ages since we last saw one another
but I left you two messages this week
inviting you over for dinner
and you never replied
because you were already dead

What kind of excuse is that?

I woke this morning long before dawn
with your life and death and friendship and suffering beating within my heart
played “Another One Bites The Dust” in honour
of your dark sense of humour
and your love of a good tune

At the break of day
I walked down to the eerily mercurial sea
a bright waning moon hovered high above the cliffs

and on the edge of the shore
I let the incoming waves of your shocking departure
unburden my belly of grief
felt the absence of your presence
and the presence of your absence
and the nonsense of it all

let them salty tears fall
let them salty tears fall

And then
with futile rage
across the oceans of time and space I roared
“James, you ******* twat!
James, you ******** twat!”

Because all of our love
and all of our grief
can never bring you back
my friend
can never bring you back

(peace to you, buddy
perfect peace)

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These chrysalis days

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Gratitude

Man down

Stephen Hancock

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