I’ve spent the last few days dreaming near ancient rock. It can change you, you know? Or can solidify a position within that was hiding beneath the waters of consciousness. A friend said a while ago, ‘Instagram isn’t an airport, you don’t need to announce your departure’ ? and I love that because it’s so true. But I feel I wanted to write something this morning before deleting the app from my phone this evening. I love Instagram, its blend…
It’s the strangest thing, to look back on events years after they’ve happened with new eyes. To see the woman I was from the perspective of this woman I’m becoming. Once the mountain speaks to you nothing can ever be the same, and yet I tried, I really tried so hard to keep everything the same. Until eventually I had to understand that it’s all the same. Do you believe in predetermination? That our outcomes are already set? Have you…
I’m not sure any of us knows what true freedom is. A friend said to me recently that we experience our first personal violation when schooling begins & I felt that ring true in my bones. More of us question the systems that have nurtured & dismantled us in equal measure & we’re trying to carve new ways of living out of the rockface of capitalism. Freedom is the freedom to be a total shit, & this is where people’s…
I’ve really enjoyed cooking again lately. Slow travelling in the van, finding lovely local farm shops and parking in new locations inspires me. It’s not something I particularly push, more that the urge to cook comes and goes.Something that’s been slow-flowing in the deep waters of this Self is the need to understand why I do certain things, and why I can find some healthy habits difficult to maintain.I suppose where I’m at is the belief that when the internal…
You’re adopting the patriarchal, colonialist mindset when you ignore your heart’s wilderness, or when you feel that you have the right to shape someone to your will; when you know what’s best, when you ignore or minimise or pander to power; when you forget yourself in the pursuit of external values, or worse – when you ask this of someone else. Text reads:Just because you don’t understand what someone’s doing – doesn’t mean they’re wrong. Just because you can’t see…
I had thought to write an inspiring caption for this short film of yesterday’s beautiful wild encounter (swipe left). I took off clothes, swam naked and free, but sometimes I find it hard to write with joy when there’s so much misery in the world. I read the words of a man who worked in an industrial pig farm and the disgusting ways he abused innocent animals just because he could exercise some power. I then felt overwhelmed by the…
When I’m away from people the world makes sense. I can walk or cycle these rolling hills with a glorious heartfull of belonging. Every atom of this beautiful earth is deeply sacred so that I can simply exist in these spaces and just breathe.Still, the need to connect, to understand and be understood is a deeply human attribute that I also possess.People give me intense anxiety, but I’m learning to work with it, to slowly feel my way into being…
It’s occurring to me why Suzanne Simard’s Finding the Mother Tree has struck such a chord in my heart. Yesterday I remembered this poem written over a decade ago (first poem in the Prophecy: conversations with my Self pamphlet, from 2010, available as free download from my webshop, link in bio). What Simard is writing about, I knew all those years ago. Well, I didn’t have the understanding that Simard writes of because I’m not a scientist, I’m a poet,…
Continuing from yesterday’s blog about Finding the Mother Tree, I was reminded of this photo I took a few days ago when we were riding the mtb trails at Drumlanrig Castle (as an aside there’s a cheeky little old-skool 8-ball black run there that’s a lot of fun when added to the red route with challenging off-camber rooty descents and super-skinny trail, but it’s also totally knackering for exactly those same reasons and I needed a couple of days off…
I’ve been raving about Finding the Mother Tree by Suzanne Simard to friends for a while now so wanted to share some thoughts on this occasional review section of the OUTSIDER blog. Some elements of this book are difficult to read, especially explicit detailing of scientific experiments made in commercial forests through the spraying of toxic glyphosate herbicides designed to kill off all other plants who might be ‘stealing’ nutrients from trees marked for harvest.Simard writes, “I stared at my…