I'm not sure where to begin. It was the moment when I was meditating in the churchyard, under the great yew tree which is either 500 or 600 years old, depending on who you talk to, which sits kitty corner from the field with the great barrow in it -- where apparently the dead were buried during the Black Death -- when the nice young Irishman I was listening to on a guided meditation on Spotify was instructing me to listen to my breath, and then the sounds around me, to the left, to the right, in front of you, behind you, to the more distant sounds in the wider world. I could hear a tractor to the left of me, the rain all around me, the faint hum of a train, the wind in the branches of the tree, but no birds. Not one bird. My face crumpled up into the strain of listening and I felt an ache akin the pain I feel seeing the two dead badgers on the side of the main road (the A4 - I say a prayer for them each time) and I tried again, even harder, through the rain, while listening to my breath, to hear a bird, but nothing, just a grim, grey birdless silence. And then, quietly and in the distance beyond the church, maybe in my garden, the faintest sound of a little wood pigeon, 'oh my pooooor tooooe betty,' it sang. And the tears welled up. The relief was so profound because recently I've been pretty sure in my anxiety-strewn state, that the world is ending. I'm not saying this to be funny, or with irony. Every day there seem to be signs of it. You know how you're supposed to note glimmers of joy or gratitude? You know how the great mindfulness teachers give you instructions to find the path to happiness? This is the opposite of that. At first it was the ox-eye daisies, hundreds of them, everywhere, on the sides of the motorway and in the woods and places you've never see them before, even in our garden, doh-see-doh-ing with the roses against the wall, and then the foxgloves, as if people had lain down great carpets of foxglove turf, like those wild flowers squares you can buy to create a field in your garden, so that everywhere you looked there were pinky-mauve bells, whole woods dedicated to them, in astonishing abundance. You could only stop and gape. And then, only yesterday, my brother posted a whole field of meadowsweet, close to the Oslofjord, in a place where in years gone by, there were only one or two bushes of the stuff, amongst sparse bits of vetch and some wild raspberries, enough that you would think twice before snapping off a bit for the table (meadowsweet is legendary in being tough to snap, mind you, but it always looks lovely in the wildflower bunches we pick on the island in Norway). My theory, which is a little feeble, and not well thought out, and comes from a feeling rather than anything scientific, is related to the time my father cut an almost full inch-wide loop of bark from the apple trees so that they would produce more fruit. The strip almost meets itself, allowing a tiny gap for the sap to get through, tricking the tree into thinking it's dying, thereby producing a bumper crop of apples. First the daisies, then the foxgloves followed by the meadow sweet, and then the birds?
My world is ending theory is compounded by a few things, and has been thwarted by a few things, for example, Le Pen not winning in France on Sunday. A Good Thing. And Keir Starmer's appeal to everyone to help him reset the country - and frankly, I thing we should all stop bitching and help him do exactly that. I mean, why not? Everything is a complete mess. We all need to pull on our big girl panties and start thinking about the good of the nation. We all need to help the Daily Mail realize that their way of thinking is just sooooo ten years ago. It's dull, isn't it, when there they are splitting hairs, creating great storms in their teacups, pursing their lips at everything that can get a reaction out of their readers. It's so dreary. There will be great swathes of the world that will be uninhabitable by 2050 (twenty five years time, less than one generation from now), mostly sections of the Middle East (ironically where the modern world was formed) and Africa, but a band across the center of the globe, where people will be unable to regulate their body temperatures enough to live because of the excessive heat. And God knows how many animals will be wiped out (41,000 species are endangered, including lions, tigers, leopards, rhinos, elephants). So I'm wondering exactly what is more important that putting every single resource into saving this one planet of ours. Please watch this beautiful film by Carl Sagan. This point of pale light, the lonely speck in the great cosmic dark.
But I digress. I'm not proud of my theory, but it's not really a stretch. Everything is always dying, from the moment it is born, so why not the earth? And do we really deserve this place? Mankind is the invasive species and has done more harm than good, arguably. (Exceptions include miraculous stuff like the seed depository in Svalbard and the Hadron Collider, as well as divining for water, Mozart, quantum theory and so on. This piece of music too (we heard this at the 50th anniversary concert of the Pangbourne Choral Society, and I was not alone in bursting into tears when the voices came in. O, Zadok! Just imagine this in the Falklands War Memorial Chapel, light pouring through the stained glass windows in at the height of midsummer.)
The chickens aren't laying either. And I really don't know why. We've checked for red mites and doused their pen with disinfectant. Andy the rat guy has been here three times and placed ominous black boxes of death all of the garden, held down by bricks. I thought at first that perhaps I was spoiling them - mixed sunflowers seeds, blueberries, chopped up apple and cold pasta on a daily basis - and maybe this was messing with their laying ability. So austerity crept in and now it's just layers mash and water and a tiny bit of scratch in the morning. Margot is an ex-battery hen and too old for laying, but the girls Delilah and Prune - are barely a year old, so it's a conundrum. Maybe a cockerel would inspire them. But have you seen the way those boys behave? Poor, poor ladies would need special padded knickers. I've recently seen a video of a trained crow on Instagram, and I'm wondering whether I should train them to do something more useful as they're not producing eggs. They follow me around the garden and rush to greet me in the morning, like tiny feathered dinosaurs so I know they're biddable. And they are awfully sweet, the way they clatterr up onto the bench outside the kitchen window so they can watch us while we eat breakfast. Delilah will do anything for a half strawberry, strumpet that she is.
Meanwhile, the rain continues. I am cheered by India Knight's Substack and you should be too. Do join!
Alas, it hasn't stopped raining for, I don't know, a decade? This is NOT good for anyone's mental health. It's July, for goodness sake.
When I struggle, there is a lot of breathwork. I battle, I really do, with being myself here, in England, by saying things like "breathwork" knowing I will be judged. "Honey, you're not living in California anymore, with your iced matchas, your kundalini yoga mantras, your breathwork, your spiral dynamics." It's not that radical a concept. I believe I might have hit my Who Gives A Flying Fuck decade. I don't really care if people think I am mad. I am. I have to be true to myself. I am a nut and I am outspoken and eccentric and I'm overly emotional and hug too much and talk to strangers in the market. And when I struggle, I struggle HARD. Since Friday, (the new moon in Cancer I am reliably informed) I've felt absolutely haywire. As if I've been hit by lightning. Like Doc Brown in Back to the Future, with lightning bolts coming out of the sky behind me for pathetic fallacy. In fact, I had four friends for dinner on Friday night and I could hardly get through the day. "It's as if I've taken mushrooms" I said to Charlie early in the afternoon. "Listen, guys, I'm just in the weirdest mood, I'm so sorry," I said to my friends who had arrived early to watch the football, hoping to God that they wouldn't judge me. I had managed somehow to put flowers around the house (it's amazing what you find in the garden when you think all the flowers have disappeared; enough for four or five vases and the dahlias haven't even started yet!) and lay the table (one of my great pleasures in life) and sort out relatively simple food (local beef, asparagus, new potatoes with chives and parsley, apricot torte with cream, some cheese) but it was such an effort. It's never an effort. I don't drink so wine couldn't help. Everything was hard. My whole body was vibrating as if my self had evaporated. It was hard to stay in the room. I wanted to crawl up in a cozy ball in my bed with the dog. There was no sparkle left. No pizzazz. Nothing. Just a shell of who I thought I was. Thank God for good friends who understand. The thing I fear most in the world, if I'm honest, is losing my mind. Going mad. Going properly batty. And then I think of Julian of Norwich, being boxed in with bricks, being fed through a crack in the wall, and using that to commune with God. It's both terrifying and a relief. But you have to have faith in the process, don't you? You have to have faith that the only way through the crazy is through. There is no burying it or dodging it or thinking about something else, or blanking it out with wine or anything else. It's just there, this crazy, nutty, vibrating now. Put on your hardhat (put on your red shoes and dance the blues), it's going to be one hell of a ride.
I think the moral to this story is that if you ever think the birds aren't singing anymore, just wait and trust and have faith, and you will hear the wood pigeons. Charlie always tells me that there is blue sky behind the clouds; we just can't see it. I think about this all the time. I think about this when I check in on my girlfriends who are suffering. I think about it when I wake up in the morning and I've forgotten to remember to be happy (as in "happiness is a choice"). I feel as if I should have it printed poster size and pin it to the ceiling above my bed so it's the first thing I see, so it isn't groundhog day again, and we have to go through the same process to get back to homeostasis (this feels more like stasis, or freeze mode). I've listed here before all the things that we have to remember to do to feel okay, and it isn't getting any better. We can't ignore everything that's going on in the world, even if we avoid the newspapers. Everything Is Really, Really Bad.
You know I can't end on such a negative note. It goes against everything I believe in. Here are some things I love at the moment. Hopefully they may bring you joy too.
1. Meggan Watterson's book on Mary Magdalene.
2. This amazing interview with Ken Wilber by Elise Loehnen.
3. This song by Villagers, which I discovered while driving home late on Saturday night, quietly through the lanes and hedgerows of the Chilterns.
4. Tomato tonnato, purloined from India Knight, but via the NY Times app. The best lunch!
5. Now You See Us, Women artists in Britain 1520-1920 is a wonderful exhibit currently at the Tate Britain.
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