{Watching parakeets as I waited for a train in Dalston made me think of this piece I wrote about 6 years ago musing on ideas of identity and growing up. Aged 2 I would request to be left in a tree, I suppose so I could get on with being a bird without the distraction of grown-ups’ disbelieving gaze. I still feel like that sometimes.} High on Hampstead Hill, green arrows herald the dawn Sharp parakeets, second generation […]
Spring I’ve been weeding in the afternoon sun, my back aches in that typical dull way from bending, pulling against the long dandelion roots which snake deep into the damp soil. The broken plants smell green, peppery, a sharp song of sap and sweat, staining my arms with the spilt milk of their stems. My eyes itch, my skin is blotched with persistent nettle rash, flying ants crawl over my boots. I am happier than […]
{Written 1st March, West London} So this is interesting. I’m sat reading an article in the Observer about the issue of masculinity and the role models for men. It feels as if, as the traditional ideals of the 20th-century man – strong, stoic, repressed – begin to fade away, nothing has stepped into replace them. In today’s pop culture landscape there’s no single archetypal ideal that we are supposed to emulate. (Max Olesker) One on […]
I recently listened to Stephen Jenkinson talk about love and grief in an introduction to the film about his work ‘Griefwalker’ (http://orphanwisdom.com/griefwalker/). Stephen talked about love and grief as being the same emotion, or certainly intrinsically linked. His observations provoked my thoughts around these emotions and their relationship. For many years I have had two framed pictures I commissioned made of bridge cards, one of which reads ‘love’ and one of which reads ‘loss’. To me […]
Maybe at some point, and by God I hope it’s soon, we will realise there is no: ‘us and them.’ There is simply us. I think the ‘us and them’ reaction to everything from foreign policy to climate change is actually one that in some way offers comfort. If there is a bad guy, some monstrous, big business, factory belching toxic gas, fat cat, drug baron, gun toting, redneck, fundamentalist THEM out there…then THEY are the […]
Let’s imagine for a moment that we are part of this planet, in a real and very if you’ll excuse the term, wholesome way. We are part of the global ecosystem, we are part of its working, turning, exquisite balance. Not just some of us – not just the people who have remained indigenous, in touch, connected and in a deep and nameless relationship to the land that nourishes and protects them, not just those who […]
{ I was sat trying to do a Mindfulness practice one morning and I found myself thinking that I couldn’t wait for it to start having an effect – for it to make me a calmer, better, more Zen person. Then realised that actually the effect was in the practice, in the moment. } Stop looking forward. Whatever ails you contains its own cure. In waiting for the cure to take place you miss the medicine […]
sometimesophia 