when times are dark
Slow morning. We’ve sat on the bed overlooking the sea, cups of herbal tea, writing and reading… Eventually, a late breakfast. Porridge with oat milk, a twist of salt, hemp and pumpkin seeds, a scatter of walnuts, plump blueberries and raspberries, a curl of honey and dollop of Greek yoghurt…
On the Primel headland, waves on both sides of the spit of pink granite, a young Patou (Pyrenean Mountain dog), a cloud of white fluff, curious and determined to follow us.
Un mot de moi seulement, et il fait ce qu’il veut, his human says, waiting for the pup to return.
We meet the Patou and his human again.
On a eu quatre jours de beau temps, the man says, fanning himself with his hat.
I look confused. The Breton accent sounds like he’s saying we’ve had four days of ‘bouton’. Four days of button? He says it again — ‘bouton?‘ I ask. Oui — he searches his English — sun! beau temps.
Spring and sun at last.
In the forest the rain began in early January and hardly let up into March when it became patchy till well into the month. Work seemed to follow the same pattern — torrential with a chance of hail.
But not the hail that falls on those in Gaza or Iran. Not the hail of vitriol and persecution that falls on those who find themselves in the gaze of ICE, those perhaps amongst the 7,000 recent rulings by judges that ICE has detained migrants without any proof of threat or wrong-doing.
Yet here we are at the coast as a new season turns
See! The winter is past;
the rains are over and gone.
Flowers appear on the earth; …
bluebells
narrow leaf sorrel
bigleaf periwinkle
stitchwort
gorse
blackthorn blossom
herb robert
fumitory
daisies
lesser celandine
primrose
white clover
dandelion
three-cornered leeks
See! The winter is past;
the rains are over and gone.
Flowers appear on the earth;
the season of singing has come
(Song of Solomon 2:11-12)
We watch a robin perched on a thorn bush, signing his life into the blue sky. The chorus joined by
blackbird
blue tit
water pipit
herring gull
linnet
chiffchaff
Cetti’s warbler
Linger, listen, connect — it is enough.
A couple of days before leaving for the coast, lupus delivered a new gift — episcleritis is a condition in which the capillaries in the eye enlarge making it look read and bloodshot. The right eye felt tender and bruised, sleep wouldn’t come. Compresses of rose and cornflower hydrosols helped, as did a tincture of vaccinium (bilberry for micro-circulation), rosa (rose for astringing and moistening the tissues) and filipendula (meadowsweet for inflammation and pain).
Winter has been plagued with costochondritis (inflammation of the cartilage that joins the ribs to the breastbone); a swollen ankle where the lymph is not moving; joint inflammation, especially in the right knee and righ side of the neck; a sudden skin flare that looked like several very large bites, but was histamine driven — my over-vigilant immune system looking for something to attack…
Always the right side — the side where the system speaks, where the threshold is lower. The side where how I meet and move through the world is more exposed. We are all asymmetrical.
Once I was a left-handed child, but such a thing was thought to bring bad luck and I was ‘trained’ to use my right hand. When my brain reorganised motor control, did the new order become more
effortful, more tense? Did posture and visual tracking change with the dominant hand? Did areas of chronic micro-load become sites of expression for inflammation?
Our bodies tell us so much.
Linger, listen, connect — it is enough.
Primel-Tregastal has two coastlines.
The next day we walk the long sandy beach, scent of bladder-wrack and salt, gulls serenading the sun, a lone kiteboarder zooms up and down the bay, close to shore, his opal-bright kite high on the wind. Sun bounces off water and sand, the wind is fierce as we walk into it, but we warm when we head in the other direction.
If we walk round the bay, across a few streets of the sleepy town and onto the headland, the terrain shifts. Not sand but rocks leading down to pink granite cliffs that march into the sea.
Over the bay at night the moon is a low-slung sickle, the stars luminous. A sky of transitions — winter constellations sinking but still visible, spring constellations rising. Orion’s three belt-stars low and sparkling. Sirius, lower and winking, always takes me back to Dodie Smith’s The Starlight Barking. Back to the dogs who choose humanity even during a time of threat of nuclear war… the non-human animals and other creatures that give us such abundance while we continue to threaten life on earth in every way possible. High overhead, to the right of Orion, slightly west and out to sea. is Capella’s steady gold beam, Gemini’s Castor and Pollux visible beneath its warm eye. To the east, above the Pointe de Primel, an arm enfolding the bay, is the Plough, and beyond its handle an arc towards Arcturus rising, a dazzle of orange.
Since February 28 at least 1,444 people have been killed and 18,551 injured by US-Israeli attacks on Iran, they include health workers and people from babies to 88 year olds, 168 were young girls killed in an elementary school in Minab…
This is a world of bloodshed and war. A world where my daughter sends a short video of my five-year-old granddaughter roly-polying across a field against a sunset sky.
This is a world where we are destroying the planet that gives us life. A world where the night sky is an astonishment of wonder.
This is a world where those that have work are too often being crushed by its sheer unbounded amount whilst others have none. A world where Spring arrives exquisite and abundant.
This is a world where autoimmune conditions and stress-provoked illness is epidemic. A world where we bump into strangers and share a moment of joy and kindness.
This is a world where for too long our species refused to see the writing on the wall. A world where human creativity and imagination still gives hope.
Another slow morning. Croissants and avocado, a pot of good coffee. Slow reads through Substacks I love, time to journal, to write.
This is the world that all should know. Food. Shelter. Joy.
There is so much we can do nothing about, but we can, as the wise and clear-eyed Marya Hornbacher recently reminded me, tell stories to live… stories of the earth savoured, of simple joys and generosity… not looking away from the darkness, but not letting the stories of darkness have the last word.