The life that is living you

The life that is living you is older than you, it has lived many lives before, passed on through generation to generation. Consider well its past and all the lives it has lived before it came to live you.

Ask what of it will pass on beyond you? Ask what of it radiates out from you?

Knowing this is to know that you are merely its guardian, its custodian, its keeper; it is on loan to you just for now from this planet that has let you be born and has sustained you through every breath you take.  

But an eye blink in its journey

The life that is you has lived a million lives before:

it was your mother,

it was your father,

it was your grandparents,

and your great-grandparents,

it was all your ancestors

back and back through time

until it was the first people;

and then before,

when it was not quiet human

but human becoming,

and then not so human becoming,

more ape,

more proto-ape,

more mammal that would become ape,

more early mammal,

more proto-mammal,

than anything recognisably human;

and then reptile,

and before,

even back to before any life crawled on land,

even back to that that swam in the sea,

to the sea microbe rich,

to many celled,

to single celled,

to the first life,

to the very seed of the first life itself.

We are all the first life grown old

with the passing through so many lives;

so many ways of being,

till,

just for now it flows through you.

What are you but an eye blink in its journey?

A sculpture by Henry Moore

Henry Moore (1898 - 1986): 

Large Upright Internal External Form 1981-2

Womb, coffin, embracing arms, protecting, foetus, man-to-be inside the parent, woman-to-be inside the parent, double womb, phallic and vulvic interwoven, cycle of life, conception, birth, death, renewal, eternal dance of being and becoming, nurturing, containing, love, child, love making, cycle of the child becoming in their turn the parent, enclosing, enwrapping, enveloping, procreative, fertility, fecundity.

There in all seasons, in all winds and weathers, in light and in dark, in moonlight, in starlight, frost rimed, mist wreathed, sun backed, wind whipped, rain lashed.

And the sheep graze and walk on.

I passing by on a summer's day with one I love, she saying some words, I others. I could see both the womb and the coffin, she only the womb. The sculpture's shadow now playing in my mind, it enigma's and ambiguities.

Pagan Roots/Routes

The routes that weave in and out of my roots, through wood and down dene, know of hop and beating the wassail – a man leading a wild procession with antlers on his head, all set to sing to the apple trees, to conjure forth fruit for the cider strong enough to bend the legs of the hardest man. A green man smiles forth from the ceiling of the church where sheela-na-gig exposes herself for all to see and Christ hangs on a fruiting bough, full in green leaf and growing yet. 

Doubt not the pagan depths from which all this is sprung. 

It is no accident that the Jesse Tree is close by at the mouth of the Gavenny, or that yew and thorn are to be found in every church yard. Each spring is formed into a well that bears the name of some saint or other, but was holy long before the first saint trod the earth, it healing spirit known and loved. The very word holy itself sprung from the words for a well, the hole from which the waters flow.

“Ah”, says the priest, “we baptise you with water”. “We always have”, the pagan says. 

“He died upon the tree” the priest says. “Just as he always did” the pagan says “to give us fertility, see”. 

“He rose again” the priest says. “Just as he always has”, the pagan replies “in fruit and ear of corn”. 

“He is our one true God” the priest says. “As you will” the pagan says, “but we will leave an offering at her feet none-the-less. And turn the coin in our our pocket on the full moon, and touch wood for luck when we need”. 

“Our pews are empty and the church doors locked” says the priest. “But we still cast a coin in a well for luck” says the pagan “and leave flowers by the wayside for the fallen”.

Flowers

She used to buy herself flowers a lot. “To cheer herself up”, she would say. Lots of flowers, even when we had very little money. Her need - to “cheer herself up”: my knowing that they were paid for with money we did not have; funny money, scary money, plastic money, money that becomes septic money; or if she was being “good”, not being reckless, not using borrowed money, not “just going for it”, then with money needed for basic stuff. Later we would be short of stuff that mattered, essentials, stuff that must be got, that had to be paid for come what may – a spending vacuum into which, like a black hole, what little I had would be remorselessly drawn. But, hell, she so needed the “cheering up”. She'd spend on the flowers. Later I would reach into my pocket for the dog's food.

Take a living thing, cut off its root, its connection with earth, that which nurtures and sustains it, its means of survival and the substance of its being. Put it in a jug and watch it die. 

She always bought flowers, no matter how poor we were. I watched them die. 

“Can't you see they are dead”, she would say, “Why haven't you thrown them out? Do I have to do everything? Why can't you look after things properly? It would not have taken much effort to have noticed. You never notice. All these dead flowers everywhere. Always left. You just don't care.”