All the feels & quite a lot of other things including metal detectors

Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul,
And sings the tune without the words,
And never stops at all,

And sweetest in the gale is heard;
And sore must be the storm
That could abash the little bird
That kept so many warm.

I've heard it in the chillest land,
And on the strangest sea;
Yet, never, in extremity,
It asked a crumb of me.

• Emily Dickinson

Delilah, our most petite and blonde hen with an indefatigable spirit, is missing. There is no evidence of anything that might be awry, no scattering of feathers, or God forbid, body parts. But she has not come out this morning to eat, which could of course mean that she is broody and sitting on a massive pile of eggs behind a tree in the garden. Charlie and I have walked and searched and whistled as we do, and brought with us sunflower seeds, her favorite treat, but nothing. It's pouring with rain, and her two compadres, Margot and Prune, are fluffing up their feathers underneath the awning by the back door, making disapproving noises. It's a sun awning really, but they like to be there, outside the dining room window, so I have reeled it out a couple of feet as shelter, and brought them something to eat and drink as they ruffle themselves up against the downpour. They are our happy band, our curious, friendly, intelligent ladies, who patrol the garden by day, and come sit by us while we have lunch or a cup of tea under the silver birch tree. But, there has been an infestation of red mites in their hen house, and I use that perfect tense optimistically. It's probably still home to a family of mites, and despite scrubbing, bleaching, power washing, spraying with mite killer, and rubbing great handfuls of diatomaceous earth into each crack and crevice (wearing yellow rubber gloves, gumboots, old shirts and dish towels around our heads), these tiny, mighty bugs are very hard to get rid of. Therefore, Margot and Prune sleep on the perches outside of their house (still within the protection of the cage) but Delilah has gone rogue and prefers to live in a tree (like that book by Calvino). Our garden is walled on all sides and where there are gates there is also chicken wire and we feel that it's pretty well protected. No bunnies (fingers crossed) and no foxes (one hopes fervently). The lower garden, where the raspberries, the apple and plum trees, the courgettes and pumpkins and spinach grow, is less protected and is surrounded by normal post and rail and barbed wire fencing leading onto the fields where the horses from the livery farm next to us graze.

But one of the results of red mites in a hen house is that hens a) refuse to go in side, and in extreme cases b) stop laying. Mine haven't laid since the day Charlie left for the Cannes film festival, which is early May, unless of course Delilah has a secret stash of eggs somewhere that we've yet to find. I live in hope. I blamed it on Charlie for months. "You're too bonded!" I lamented.

Delilah

Here's the funny thing about having chickens, even a few of them; one does become fiercely attached and protective. I love my girls.

One of the things that happens to you in late middle age (this is probably old age but that's just a step too far for me) is that you start to think about your purpose and why you're here. Think about it, you are a child and then you're a student and then you work your arse off trying to make something of yourself in the world, and then raising your own children while still working hard. The only stillness I can remember, the only times I haven't actually been working is either on a horse, walking a dog, or, frankly, slightly drunk at a party. The slightly drunk part, the squiffy part, the oh-aren't-I-sparkling part is what you needed to do, what I needed to do in order to deal with the stress of the work in the crazy business that I chose to be in, and still am in.  I wore "good at dealing with difficult men" as a badge of honor, without looking at all at the toll it was taking on my already traumatized little body. The habitually waiting for the yard arm to hit 6 or 7 depending on how desperate you were. ("It's cocktail hour somewhere in the world," my elegant east coast friend would say.) How satisfying to open the fridge and grab a cold bottle of white burgundy, filling up a glass. It was a sturdy companion to whatever you might already be doing (cooking supper usually) and became a daily ritual, come rain or shine. Now, when you take alcohol away (as I did six hundred and two days ago**) there leaves a really interesting space, a vacuum, a void, that needs to filled with something. And I've filled it with seeking. I've filled it with a great and intriguing journey of discovery and healing, and it's quite revelatory. You see, when you stop doing and start being, everything changes. Every little thing in your life changes, because suddenly everything is more expansive. There is spaciousness in your head, room to breathe, and room to feel. Everything shifts deeper inside, and suddenly you're not interested in surface things (I mean, let's not exaggerate, I love silly things too!) and you don't have time for any bullshit. I dread dinner parties where I'm sat next to a man who wants to talk about nothing. I laughed so much when one of my besties told me she was stuck at a dinner like this where she became desperate to find something to talk about when the man next to you turned to her and said "Do you Ski?" Later, walking out, she turned to her dinner companion and said "just remind me of your name - it's Johnny Clayton-Smith yes?" and he smiled and said "I'm the 4th Baron Leicester." We laughed and laughed. And yes his name has been changed for this purpose.

"Trust in the slow work of God" says Pierre Teilhard De Chardin. "Your thoughts become your reality" says someone else, mostly all the accounts that pop up in my algorithm on Instagram. I try to remember this. If you want anything in the world you have to trust that as long as you show up and do the work, the universe, or God, or the divine intelligent design, whatever you call it, will meet you half way.  But you have to have clarity about what you want. You have to be able to picture it, to imagine it, to bring it clearly into your mind, well defined and without fuzzy edges. And this, for me, is hard. My mind works in a very strange way; I see endless possibilities and options always. Here are a thousand ways you can spend your day, and each of them feels meaningful. Which one pulls you in the most compelling way? And how do you decide? For me, and maybe for you, I've realized that like one of those metal detectors with the very satisfying buzzing sounds that vibrates higher and louder when it gets near a treasure, my body reacts with a trembly fizzing sensation when it's near something that it vibes with. And similarly, it sends me an "I don't like this vibe" when I'm about to embark on something that isn't in my best interest. (It works very well near baked goods too, particularly croissants from my favourite bakery in Nettlebed). 

+++ I interrupt this transmission with this note. I just heard a bit of an inquisitive 'bok bok' sound outside my window. Delilah is back! +++

I believe it's easier to be in touch with this inner radar if you don't use alcohol, at least for me. The numbing effect of alcohol - and I say this with love as a years long fan - doesn't allow you to feel the bad stuff, but by the same token, doesn't allow you to feel the good, so all the tiny, fine tuned little hairs that feel energy are blunted. And in blunting them we lose our way, we lose sight of where we are supposed to be in the world and what it is that keeps us in alignment, in our stream, in our flow. (Wonderful piece in the Guardian on Flow here).  And stay with me here. In finding that track, that stream, where you're supposed to be, in completely acknowledging that you are where you are supposed to be, perfectly and beautifully aligned, and by not questioning that, just being in it, everything will miraculously become available to you. All the things you need. It's as if by being still and quiet and as Ram Dass says "Be Here Now" then everything collides and colludes to give you all that you need. Your job is to accept things as they are and not as you think they should be. This is equanimity.

I have a friend who is so connected to the creative project that she is working on that everything she touches becomes a tiny thread which is inextricably linked to the whole world she is exploring. Everything she tugs at reveals something even more marvelous and relevant and revelatory. It's quite inspiring.

This post is about hope and how it exists in the world. If you allow yourself to be still and be with it long enough. Our purpose here on this planet, for this minute of time that we have, is to heal ourselves and to put healing back into the matrix, back into the world. I think so much about the Maharishi Effect whereby the consciousness of a whole group of people can be raised by one percent of its population practicing meditation. ie similar to the Meisner Effect in physics, individual consciousness can affect collective consciousness. It's massively hopeful and it's something to hold onto when the atrocities in the world are flashed before our eyes daily in the media and we feel less than powerless to help.  And it's not just through meditation. There are very simple ways that you can change the lives of those you come into contact with in your daily comings and goings; smiling genuinely, asking people how they are, letting people through in traffic, calling a friend. Random, tiny things that will radiate out in ever-expanding circles.

There is no need to be afraid of it, to be ashamed of it, or to think it's not cool. We're not 16 (do you remember when being an enthusiast was about the most uncool thing you could do?) and so why not embrace it?

I wish you all a very happy weekend.

** I said a few weeks ago that if I cared about what people thought of me, it would prevent me from expressing myself clearly and accurately, so I stopped. But my intention is not virtue signaling. This is only my experience with alcohol and I know many many people (98% of my friends) who are lovely and kind and wonderful and effective and drink alcohol without it any adverse effect. You do you as the kids say.