finding solace in midwinter
Solstice, shortest day, longest night.
I’ve been thinking a lot about darkness since we travelled in September. There are darknesses that are fertile. There are darknesses where we choose to shelter. The daily cycle of night for those of us who do not work at night, the times when we wisely pause to nourish and regroup.
Going underground to germinate in the warm dark earth.
The safe space of a womb or a cave.
The opportunity to nestle in the midwinter darkness for those of us with warm homes in (relatively) stable places.
And there are darknesses that are bleak, that may come to us unbidden.
Howling gales or consuming flood waters that leave no place to hide.
Cities of rubble that once were ‘home’.
The driven quality of so much of life lived at a speed that darkens the mind with fog.
Watching thousands of people march under a banner of hate.
In September Adam and I were in London on the day of the ‘unite the kingdom’ march. We were having breakfast in our hotel when we noticed clusters of people (mostly men) walking by. Some waved union jacks or cross of St. George flags, others were wrapped in them. A few were in fake chain mail, the St George cross emblazoned on tunics over their ‘armour’. The evening before, my trans daughter had shown us pictures on her phone of people dressed like this. People on a mission to rid the world of people like her…
Just a few, we told ourselves.
They kept coming. Bigger groups, till they were not knots of people but a throng, a mass. Till I said to Adam, we’re watching history walk by us. I’m going to talk to them.
Adam didn’t think this was a good idea, was worried for me. But I’m an ageing white woman — all but invisible to them. So I went out into the bright day on the cusp of autumn, sun shining, families crossing the road to go about their ordinary Saturday, the road eerily empty of cars.
I walked alongside them a while, choosing someone to speak to — two men — shaved heads, one draped, one carrying the ensign. I asked if they could tell me what the march was about. ‘Freedom of speech’ they both agreed. What is it you feel you can’t say? ‘Anything. We can’t say anything.’ Are there particular issues? ‘No, it’s not that…’ One man peeled away, the other looked puzzled, then smiled — ‘It’s like, if you go to America, you have to swear allegiance to the flag to get into the country. And in schools, they have to swear allegiance every day.’
I did not say that the pledge was not required to visit the US or that the school picture is complex, varies by state, can be opted out and four states have no requirement for it all. I wanted to listen.
‘It’s like they know who they are. We want our country back. We’ve lost who we are.’
Glancing at the mass in front and behind him, it would have been easy to jump to stereotypes. It flashed through my mind — well I can see who you are — predominantly men, mostly 30 – 60, all white… But that sense of loss — whether manufactured by those manipulating fear for their own ends or from the overwhelm of modern life or… wherever it arose from — the dark places it leads to is tragic, for those who feel it, for those who become the targets of those who feel it.
People I grew up amongst, the people who parented me… A memory of my mother telling me to wash my hands after a handling coins — you don’t know where they’ve been, a black man might have handled them. Teesside’s population in the 1960s so overwhelmingly white that I had met no-one who wasn’t white in my first seven years. Though another day my mother said she’d had to get off the bus and wait for another because a black woman sat next to her.
Back in the hotel, I watch the barista busying himself more and more anxiously. Trying not to glance out of the window. Occasionally he catches the eye of a colleague, equally busy tidying the already pristine breakfast area. They half nod, grimace. I’ve chatted to the barista on a previous visit when I was on my way to a funeral. He told me about being raised by his grandmother. She’s returned to Nigeria and he was aching to see her, saving to visit while she’s still on this earth. Born in the UK. His colleague British Asian.
The barista’s well over 6 foot, looks wide and strong.
I go to the counter and ask what it’s like living in London, nodding towards the window behind him, the crowds still coming. ‘I’m afraid every time I walk in the street,’ he says. I see his colleague nod. ‘But the worst thing is, I’ve got young children. I’m terrified for them all the time. I keep thinking we should leave, but this is where I’m from. I don’t know where we’d go…’
Later that day Elon Musk would address the marchers, call for the dissolution of parliament, speak of the
destruction of Britain, initially a slow erosion but now rapidly increasing with massive uncontrolled migration.
[…] Whether you choose violence or not, violence is coming to you. You will have no choice. You either fight back or you die, that’s the truth, I think.
There are darknesses that are so bleak.
Incitement to violence and racial hatred masquerading as free speech.
My trans daughter telling me about another assault.
And for a moment I’m a child again. Air as thick with hate and fear (parading as honesty or pride), as it was with sulphur fumes and smoke from steel furnaces and chemical-plant towers.
The promise of Winter Solstice is that the darkness will abate, that the light will not get any less, but will grow.
How do we make that true in our suffering world?
How do we make it true while not looking away from the truths of this broken world.
How do we find solace that is grounded and real, that lives in the marrow of uncertainty?
There are no easy answers.
But I read this:
MY HEART IS A BOAT (EXTRACT)
We’re outside a pub
and she’s yelling,
telling me to,
Get back on my boatMy friends say, she’s just racist,
but I put down my rum
and walk over and ask,
Do you need a hug?I stand with open arms
as wide as a map of the world,
and she bursts into tears.
I hold her for a while.
From With Love, Grief and Fury by Salena Godden.
I’m writing a novel in which the struggle to welcome strangers is at the heart of a community under pressure, deep in a life-threatening winter. Strangers who might be the return of light and warmth, not the threat that some fear… yet still the fear clings…
My novel won’t end the darkness any more than Salena Godden’s startling poetry and courage, but it is not nothing to keep creating. To face the questions. To go on gathering. To defy the insane goads of productivity by making rest a sacred pause.
There are darknesses so bleak they make us want to curl up forever, howling. Anguish and confusion are familiars to all of us at some point. And when those times come pausing is not giving up, but wintering. It’s taking the space to nourish, regroup, ground. To listen to body and heart.
And in that pause to sit with the natural world. The earth and her non-human plants and creatures have their own time, one that asks us to let perception shift as we pause. One that offers herbs as compassionate healers, their work slow and deep. Willing to sit with our grief and fury and confusion. Ready to soothe… with no thought of haste. Always insisting that light will return.