Beauty is a topic on which endless tomes and treatises have been written. For some it is at the centre of their lives, while for others it is a topic of academic interest. It can ignite passionate and heated debates while others shrug their shoulders at its mention. A bit like love, really. For me, the notion of beauty carries an uneasy ambivalence, like a small pebble caught in the shoe, impossible to ignore even when I tell myself that it does not matter.

My unease is not so much linked to what we deem worthy of being considered beautiful, but the whole concept of beauty and whether it matters. On the one hand beauty can be a distraction, a seduction, a veil to hide things behind, from ourselves and others. Oppressive regimes often use aesthetics to express their power and create a façade behind which to hide the violence and repression.

Having a well developed sense of beauty does not imply having an equally well developed sense of ethics and morality. The pursuit of beauty itself can be deeply unethical and have damaging consequences for those in its pursuit as well as for others. Vast industries have sprung up around bodily ideals of beauty often with negative health consequences for those who make use of them: steroids to create a toned body, chemicals to give skin and hair the desired colour, injections, implants and other surgical procedures to create the ideal shapes of lips, eyes, breasts, stomachs. Though the current techniques of the beauty industry are new, the phenomenon itself reaches back in time. For hundreds of years corsets were used in the west to create desired body shapes from flat to hourglass shaped, while in China small and deformed “lotus feet” were considered an emblem of female beauty, achieved by binding the feet of young girls. In other places and at other times, other ideals dominated, some more painful and damaging than others.

Outside of our own bodies we also employ a host of techniques and tools to pursue the ideals of beauty dominating at the time. In gardens, chemicals and mechanical means are used to eradicate the presence of plants, insects and other beings we consider weeds or pests or that simply don’t fit with our plans and notions of beauty. Less intentional but equally devastating are the consequences when particular places become famous as ‘beauty spots’ and the large numbers of people seeking out this beauty end up creating problems such as erosion and disturbance or conflict with wildlife. Some places have been ‘loved to death’ in this way.

What is considered beautiful often seems arbitrary or rather linked to the looks possessed and endorsed by those in power. As such, standards of beauty and the ability to live up to them (whether in your body, home, garden or other areas of life) can and do act as powerful tools of exclusion and value. When internalised such standards can impact our mental and physical health contributing to feelings of worthlessness for those of us who do not live up to them.

Despite all of this, I find it impossible to completely dismiss beauty as irrelevant and something we should try to get beyond. Beauty can touch our hearts and change our minds. For the Romantics beauty was a doorway to awe and wonder, something also expressed in many spiritual and religious traditions. Here, beauty is seen as the expression of goodness and the divine. Noticing that beauty is still here, despite the ugliness and destructiveness of so many things at times feels like a life raft, something to hold on to when things threaten to overwhelm and leave me in despair. The thought that there is still beauty in the world, not as a superficial surface gloss but a deeper, inherent characteristic, can help me to keep going.

Noticing beauty can also be a way of coming to care, and maintaining or creating beauty can be a means of expressing care. However, here, too, there is an ambivalence, if it means that we only care for that which we deem beautiful. Many conservation charities know only too well that it is far easier to raise funds for cuddly looking or charismatic animals compared to insects, reptiles, fungi or plants (apart from those individuals or species that impress us with their size, longevity or some other outstanding characteristic).

However, it also works the other way round: when I approach others with more attention and a care-ful intention, it can alter my perception of beauty. Many years ago I did an evening class in life drawing. During those classes I noticed how looking at bodies with such close attention made me appreciate them in a different way regardless of whether or not they were conforming to current ideals of bodily beauty. Wrinkles and the curve of a belly all held their own beauty. At the same time, though, my gaze and intention turned the individuals who had arrived at the arts class to model for us into objects, no longer seen as a person but as lines, shapes, surfaces, at least for the duration of the class. Similarly, when I take photographs trying to capture the beauty in my surroundings. It can help me slow down, notice and appreciate things and details I might otherwise have missed, while at the same time it can also reduce things to surface aesthetics. Hunting for the perfect image I can forget to pay attention to the sounds, smells and other senses and ‘just being’ in the moment and relating to the land and its beings as kin and relations.

In old folk tales with roots in European cultures beauty is often present as a defining characteristic of the central character. It usually comes alongside goodness, the two characteristics going hand in hand, the outer expressing an inner quality. The exceptions are those stories where outer and inner are in contrast with each other such as in the tales of the Beauty & the Beast, Lady Ragnell and Tatterhood. In these tales, outer ugliness is hiding the true value of a person, and the challenge is to see beyond the surface to the beauty and truth hidden underneath. In other stories such as those involving a deal with the devil, evil is conversely dressed up as beautiful and only small details such as the smell of sulphur, cloven feet, a tail or discrete little horns offer a warning about the true nature of the one who offers a seemingly irresistible deal.

The existence of these two different kinds of folk tales speaks to my own feeling of holding two competing understandings in my hands: on the one hand there is beauty as shallow, often arbitrary, or even misleading aesthetic; on the other there is beauty as a manifestation of a deeper truth about the world. As I’ve grown older, I’ve come to understand more and more things as ‘both-and’ phenomena rather than ‘either-or’. Beauty seems to be another case of this. I’m not always successful at holding the ‘both-and’ nature of things within me, especially when one understanding seems to contradict and exclude the other. My mind wants clarity, wants to put things into boxes so that I know where they are and how to act.

If beauty is mere surface, I can condemn it as smoke and mirrors, a distraction and false god, as the Puritans did and be proudly happy in my ugliness. If, on the other hand, it is an expression of the goodness of the world, I feel the urge to pursue it regardless of the cost. But if it is both, things become more complicated, less straightforward. I need to ask again and again and in each instance about what letting myself be guided by beauty and pursuing beauty does, what it implies. When I experience something or someone as ugly or beautiful, where does that ugliness, that beauty lie and what does it do to the way I interact with them? When I let my care for the world and other beings express itself through creating beauty (or at least attempting to do so) what are the consequences for those beings as well for others?

As so often, I will leave you with these questions rather than any firm conclusions. Feel free to leave a comment if these questions are also alive for you. I’d be curious to hear what beauty, and its twin shadow ugliness, means to you.

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\Flotsam: Debris in the water that was not deliberately thrown overboard, often as a result from a shipwreck or accident.

Jetsam: Debris that was deliberately thrown overboard by a crew of a ship in distress, most often to lighten the ship’s load.1

Fragment 1

Walking along the sea shore my eyes are drawn alternately between the far away horizon marking the edge of the immense, ever moving, restless body of water, and those immediate, near things, which have accumulated on the beach itself. There are stones, sea weed, shells of snails and mussels, driftwood and then there is all manner of human-made debris. The latter is mostly plastic and other synthetic materials: bottles, bits of fishing nets, string, crates, buckets, cans and bits of glass. Paintings and photographs of the seashore mostly do not show these things, focusing instead on the beauty of the rocks, the pebbles, the waves, the sand. If these other elements make an appearance in representations of the sea and coast it is usually as part of campaigns and beach cleans or, occasionally, pieces of art.

Fragment 18

Some of the things washed ashore, such as empty bottles, were most likely thrown into the water deliberately, the ocean treated as the ‘away’ place that will swallow up and hide that which is no longer deemed useful, that which we do not wish to see or deal with. But away is a place on earth, or rather a spot in the Pacific: the place where plastic and everything else sooner or later ends up if it is not washed ashore or salvaged before then, slowly but surely forming a new continent, but one that is afloat and made up of plastic and everything else we do not wish to see.

Some of these things would still have been in use, swept over board or torn away by the wind. Some of these objects are still recognisable while others are only fragments or have been so worn down by the action of water, air, salt, movement and sharp teeth that their original shape and function can only be guessed at.

Fragment 7

Flotsam and jetsam are things lost at sea, but only become so once they are washed ashore and are found by someone else. What is lost can be found, but not all that is found has necessarily been lost. In the past, sometimes coastal communities would light fires on shore to confuse ships’ navigators and cause shipwrecking in the hope of being able to salvage valuable cargo. Piracy carried out from the safety of the shore, in the hope of creating flotsam and jetsam that was potential treasure.

Fragment 13

Though most things washed ashore take the form of garbage there are still the occasional reports of whole containers of commodities or someone’s personal belongings turning up intact after having being swept off a container ship in a storm. While it is easy to shrug the shoulders at a multinational corporation losing a container full of their wares, more heartbreaking are stories of families losing all their possessions on route from one home, one life to another, and having to beg strangers to return the material manifestations making up the frameworks of their lives.

Fragment 10

In 2012, a football washed up on an Alaskan shore. The ball had hand writing on it which made it possible to trace the ball back to its owner, a 16 year old boy, who had lost his home and all his belongings more than a year earlier when an unusually strong earthquake off the east coast of Japan temporarily turned waves into mountains, killing more than 19,000 humans and causing the partial meltdown of the nuclear reactors at Fukushima. The football was one of a handful of small fragments, leftovers from a no longer existing “before” returned by the waves but removed in time and place from where they had been taken.

Fragment 16

Sometimes people still write messages and entrust them to the sea, sealed inside a bottle or other water tight container, hoping not just for the waters but for fate or mystery to receive their message. These messages are always for another place, another time, someone not known, undefined, in the hope that the unknown will make itself known, that there will be a response, a return. The allure is the mystery, and in its own way it is an act of trust in invisible forces though the investment is minimal, no more than the cost of a bottle and a piece of paper. Many messages are no more than a “Hello” a “I am here. Where are you?”. How many others, though, have entrusted their life stories, their sorrows, their hopes, their fears to the waters’ mercy, hoping that at least the ocean would understand, would receive what a human soul alone cannot bear?

Fragment 11

The ocean has received many things from humans, some of them expressions of our darkest secrets: political prisoners of authoritarian regimes taken out over sea in helicopters, their bodies jettisoned from up high, fragmenting upon impact before sinking down into a watery grave. Before the onset of human air flight and on an unimaginably vast scale, the ocean was routinely used to dispose of bodies no longer useful to those who made a trade out of selling and trafficking human lives in the trans-Atlantic slave trade. These were not only the bodies of those who had died in the overcrowded and under-provisioned conditions aboard the slave vessels, but also the sick, the wounded, and those who were too troublesome to constitute good ware. Humans reducing other humans first to commodity and then to waste. Their bodies, their existence erased forever, no resurfacing, no coming ashore, but being absorbed back into the cycle of life and death beneath the waters. Maybe there is some grace in the latter, that at least their bodies were not turned into historic artifacts to be prodded by latex-covered hands or exhibited in a museum show case.

Other bodies, more recently washed ashore, have in contrast been turned into news items, their images travelling across the globe, selling clicks and paper copies while sparking fear as well as compassion. But even those images do not convey the lives of those on the move, their stories, their struggles, their hopes, their worries, and soon these pictures are washed away, by other, more recent, more dramatic ones.

Fragment 4

In 1845, the Franklin expedition consisting of two ships set out from Britain in an attempt to find the north-west passage around America. None of the people aboard ever returned. In the years and centuries since some bodies, stories, papers, artefacts and the remains of the two ships have been located. Some of the crew members who had survived long enough to attempt to reach safety overland carried books and wallets with them to their death. Seen from the distance, we wonder at their choices. What compelled them to carry these items which were of no immediate practical value to their survival, and was their great wisdom or great folly in carrying this extra weight with them?

Fragment 21

What are we each of us carrying with us, unwilling to let go off? What we choose to keep and what we choose to let go before it is swept away may well determine whether we live or die and how we do so.

And in the sleepless nights, do you sometimes like me wonder what will those who come after make of our choices, what will they be able to build from the fragments we leave behind and which may wash up on their shores?

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It has been a while since I have posted anything here or indeed written much at all. Those of you who write, whether for yourself or to share with others, will most likely have experienced your own versions of the ways in which words sometimes seem to flow freely like a river in spring, the result soaring up on invisible wings while at other times, every word is a struggle and seems to fall will a heavy thud into murky waters, immediately disappearing out of sight. When I started writing here on Substack late last year, I was hoping it would help me be more consistent in my writing practice and that it would be a place to explore questions, work through experiences, search for ways to respond in a meaningful way to what is happening in the world and connect to others who are on a similar search. Then the new year came and it seemed that anger, hatred and fear ratcheted up, reaching new heights, burning like out of control wildfires everywhere. Or maybe it was just that these fires were in more visible places, their toxic smoke amplified by media attention that is lacking in so many other parts of the world where violence and atrocities are ongoing and have been for a long time. Many writers here used and continue to use their words to speak with sensitivity and insight about what was and is happening and/or tried to offer small glimmers of light in the darkness.

For me, the words would not come. Instead a blanket of heavy hopelessness and pointlessness smothered everything. My mind was telling me that letting myself be silenced by feelings of disempowerment and hopelessness only serves to support the continuation and escalation of violence and hatred. However, knowledge of the mind is rarely enough to change how we feel. Maybe ironically, these feelings were deeply connected to the very question that I was hoping to explore here: how do we respond to the perma-crises and breakdown and all their ugly and heartbreaking manifestations in a way that is meaningful and compassionate? Though the question had lost none of its poignancy and relevance, I could no longer imagine that I would ever get closer to any kind of answer or have anything worthwhile to say about the topic.

When I am gripped by such feelings of hopelessness I try to remind myself that nothing ever remains constant: the world and the trajectories things seem to be on change no matter how fixed or set in stone they seem So does my own ability to meet what is happening. Sometimes I remember the work of Irène Némirovsky, a Ukrainian-French writer who lived and wrote in the first half of the 20^th century. In 1942, she completed the manuscripts for two stories which eventually were published under the title “Suite Française” in 2004. The two stories were the first part of what she had intended to become a five piece suite of interconnected stories, all engaging with the invasion and occupation of France by Nazi Germany. Irène Némirovsky herself was Jewish and never managed to complete her book project as she was detained and subsequently killed in Auschwitz by the Nazis. Her fate is as tragic and singular as that of the millions of others incarcerated and killed at the time as well as today. Hers is more widely known because of her writing.

What strikes me is that she was able to write in the way she did even as the world around her was burning and she could not know what would happen. Not only was her own fate uncertain but also that of her adopted country. The world as she had known it had disintegrated, her family forced to flee from their home in Paris, their livelihoods gone. Despite the resistance within occupied France and other countries fighting against Nazi Germany, the future must have seemed dark with the possibility that the occupation would last a lifetime or more, and it must have seemed doubtful that her words would ever be read by anyone. Nevertheless, she kept writing.

I wonder at the hope she must have carried as well as the compassion to be able to write as she did. While the world around her was falling apart, she at the same time looked at what was happening and looked beyond. Her writing shows a clear eyed observation of the ugliness as well as compassion that springs into life when the normal social rules are upended by war or other catastrophes. She saw the selfishness and ruthlessness as well as humanity and compassion amongst her country people as well as those who had come as invaders and who would end up killing her. The notes she had made for the three additional stories to complete the Suite Française show that she imagined a future where things would change again.

The ability to imagine a different future and the hope coming with it feel like an essential prerequisite for meaningful action. Some writers and thinkers speak disparagingly of hope and argue for the necessity of letting go of hope in order to act, but hope can come in many forms and shapes. Some kinds of hope do indeed prevent rather than enable action. This is when hope takes the form of wishful thinking. It is the kind of hope that absolves us of responsibility telling us that ‘someone’ (whether scientists, the UN, those in power, the market or some undefined benevolent entity) will find a solution and it will all resolve itself in the end and that therefore, there is no need for us to make any uncomfortable choices or change the way we live. While more optimistic in flavour, the story that ‘there is nothing I need to do’ is in its own way not so dissimilar from the feeling that ‘there is nothing I can do’, both absolving us from the need to respond, to change.

But I would argue that this is not the only kind of hope that exists. There are more conditional and limited forms of hope that tell us of the possibility that life will continue though not in its current form and maybe not even for us. It is the hope that says that something will be able to grow out of the wreckage that we seem so intent upon causing for our ourselves and our fellow beings, human and more-than-human. For me, it is supported by taking a step back and out, like the astronauts in the recent Artemis mission looking back at the earth from afar. The look from the distance reveals not only fragility (as was the case for the astronauts) but also how Earth and life have come through many cataclysmic events: meteor strikes, mass extinctions, changes in the atmosphere and temperature regimes. This kind of hope does not necessarily translate into action, either, and it, too, can be used to absolve us from responsibility. But trusting that something will survive should not blind us to the suffering that our systems, our ways of life are causing. There are things we can do to lessen suffering now and try to help prepare the ground for future possibilities even when we do not know what the future will hold. What we do and how we respond helps to shape whatever comes after.

Holding on to that perspective helps me when the darkness is pressing down on me with all its weight. However, it still does not answer the question of what constitutes meaningful ways of engaging and responding when we cannot see an impact, an outcome. Different people find different answers; some engage politically from within the system, some go down the route of traditional activism and protest, some focus on the inner work of transforming themselves in the hope that ripples will spread outwards and others yet tell us that we need to reach towards post-activism. I still do not know which of these make most sense and maybe I never will. The not knowing and doubt are another force that can leave me frozen in paralysis even while accepting that maybe there is no definitive answer. Here, the words of the poet Rainer Marie Rilke in his Letters to a young poet (1934) are helpful as he talks about the importance of “living the question” and accepting doubt, not as an immobilising force, but as something that keeps us on our toes, helps us sharpen our skills of observation and awareness. It is another thing that I do not fully know the shape of, but it speaks to me of accepting the not-knowing and keeping going even when it takes the form of stumbling and falling rather than striding ahead purposefully. And so I will leave you here, not with a neat conclusion or a ten point action plan, but on a stumbling, fumbling, falling step of unanswered questions hoping that you, too, are finding ways to keep going even in all of this and without any certainties.

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You stand at the edge of the forest trying to see what lies beyond, but the tall, silent trees do not allow you any insights, cutting off the flow of sunlight as if a knife had rendered the world in two: on this side the light dancing through the meadow grasses and flowers, accompanied by the buzzing of insects and the far-off sounds of people’s lives: the hum of cars following the lines laid out by traffic planners far away, the shouts of children, bits of melody drifting on the air. On the other side there is only darkness and silence, both alive and expectant.

You had heard of this place, had hoped you could avoid it though part of you knew it was there and that sooner or later you would find yourself here, at its edge, like everyone does at some point in their lives. Though you had no intention of coming here, ever, you know that this is no coincidence. This is not just any forest, it is the Forest with capital ‘F’, the dark place where monsters and witches are waiting, have been waiting for a hundred years. You can practically feel them holding their breaths as they are watching to see what you will do next, whether you will step into their realm or not.

You know that this is the place where any who enter may not come out again, and if they do, they will not be the same. But it is also the place where you may find the magic castle, where the fairies might invite you to join in their dance and the Fisher King is guarding the Holy Grail hoping for redemption. It is the place where you may find who you really are and where your purpose lies. You know that there is still time to turn around, to walk away, to refuse the call, go back the way you came, back to your old life with its nine-to-five working hours, bills, rush hour traffic, quarrels about whose turn it is to empty the dishwasher and evenings spent watching the latest netflix series. But you also know that if you do, you will sometimes, in the small hours of the night, when sleep refuses to fold you into his comforting embrace, still sense the Forest waiting for you, hearing the far off hoot of an owl penetrating the triple-glazed windows of your city home and you will wonder, what would have happened if you had crossed that threshold.

All your life you have heard the Forest’s whispers and song, humming deep down in your bones. But now that you are here, all is quiet, expecting your decision. Never have you been so afraid as you are now, looking towards that darkness ahead of you. Those who have been into that forest and come back out could tell you that even now you are not afraid enough, though kindness would stay their tongue knowing that they cannot help you now and neither can your fear. You look back to from where you have come, the sunlit daytime world where you know the rules, where you know your way and what to expect. You take a deep inhale and then you step across the edge into the dark.

Thank you for reading!

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Some years ago, when I had left behind the only permanent job I’d ever had to pursue a degree in mythology I became interested in notions of lost and found. Maybe this pre-occupation was linked to my own doubts at the time as to whether I had lost the plot completely or had on the contrary found what really mattered, or whether it was maybe somewhere in between.

The below collection of images are the outcome of that initial exploration of lost & found.

We talk about loss of life, loss of heart, loss of direction and lost time.

Other losses remain unmarked, unspoken of, and maybe sometimes even unnoticed by ourselves.

The biggest losses may often be invisible, absences like black holes, swallowing up light, not letting anything back out again, only noticeable through the impacts on everything around them.

What we find can be as varied as losses.

We find love, meaning or insight, objects lost by ourselves or others, fragments of existences that we can only guess at.

These finds may be experienced as treasure, as gift, as trash.

Which one it is depends on the finder and the circumstances.

Humans are not the only beings who find or lose things.

Plants find places to grow.

Animals find food, shelter, a mate.

Water finds its course.

Sometimes we may not want to be found.

Not all that is lost is found, and not all that is found was lost.

While we search for one thing, we might find or lose something else.

We might not know any of these things at the time.

Maybe not ever.

What things have you lost or found that have been significant? Feel free to share in the comments.

One thing that does seem clear to me is that the dynamics playing out amongst humans in such stark ways at the moment are also somehow connected to the way we are relating to the more-than-human world, at least in mainstream, western cultures. Though I feel a deep longing for more reciprocal and respectful relationships, my own connections to the more-than-human remain troubled and sometimes contradictory. Here I offer a few snapshots and thoughts on some of aspects of the multi-faceted nature of these far too often ambivalent relations.

Raptors

England, 2018: A friend and I arrive at the bird of prey centre on a sunny May afternoon. It is not a place I would normally visit with its connotations of turning wild animals into a spectacle for tourists. We are here in order to pick up frozen mice used to feed wild owls in their nest boxes when they are briefly captured for research purposes (another story altogether…). As we arrive at the centre, a stack of what looks like pizza boxes is being unloaded from a van. On closer inspection, we see little chicken feet sticking out of the ‘pizza boxes’: a take away delivery for captive birds of prey. Inside the centre, raptors from all over the world sit on perches in little stalls along a small path, their feet securely tied to their perch. One bird has been taken from its perch, momentarily released to be flown in front of a group of people in wheelchairs. One of the centre staff gets the bird to fly to his glove. He then goes to hold the hands of some visitors in his so they, too, can have this close encounter with birds that we normally only ever see from afar.

The bird is eventually returned to its perch, and another one is set to fly. This one is a black kite. At first it dives at the handler, as if to attack. Calmly, the young man waves it off and explains that this one is quite bad tempered and always starts off by going after him. I wonder whether I would not do the same if I was kept bound for most of my existence and only occasionally let off the leash, quite literally. The kite circles a bit, then sits on a perch and only flies again when the handler holds up bits of meat for it. Quicker than we can blink, the kite snatches the offered meat from the man’s hand.

After the show is over, we stay behind and chat to the people working there before collecting the dead mice. The head of the centre shows us his newest acquisition: a Siberian Eagle owl, only a few weeks old. She has been bred in captivity like all the other birds here, which are mostly sourced from breeders in different places in the UK. The young owl is just developing her adult feathers and is half fluff and half proper feathers. She has impossible large, orange eyes with beautiful eyelashes and blinks slowly in between looking curiously at us and everything else around us. It is difficult not to fall immediately and hopelessly in love with this creature, which when I offer her my hand gently nibbles at my fingers. The head of the centre explains to us that he takes the owl home with him every night in order to make sure she gets used to humans. He is clearly passionate about the birds and sees the centre as a way of educating people about raptors, hoping to inspire awe and curiosity rather than fear and hatred, thereby helping reduce the persecution which these birds are still subject to.

Despite the sadness of seeing these magnificent feathered beings sitting on their perches like curiosities at a funfair or live merchandise, it is difficult not to feel the fascination at being able to see them so close up and even touch them. He tells us that the birds are tied to their perches so that they will not attack each other and that they could, after all, fly away if they wanted to whenever they are set to fly. But then again, they have never lived in the wild, so how would they ever survive, and how would they be able to choose a freedom they never knew? In captivity they undoubtedly have an easier life and most likely also live longer than most wild birds do. And maybe they will indeed help their wild relatives meet with more positive attitudes. When we finally leave with a bag full of frozen mice, half my heart stays behind, lost in the yellow eyes of a Siberian Eagle owl while the other half beats uneasily in my chest.

Encounter

Uganda, 1997: I am walking through the rainforest with a friend. We are both students, attending a course in tropical biology. Several times a day we follow the same route through the forest, monitoring the insects on a particular kind of plant as part of our student project. We come round a bend in the path and see three black-clad people crouching on the path. My first thought is that they must be some of the other students, but then I realise my mistake: these people are not human; they are chimpanzees.

We stop and crouch down on the path, looking at the chimpanzees, who are looking at us. We sit there, silently, watching each other. Their eyes are dark and round, their faces with expressions that I cannot read, but I know that not only are we being seen, we are also being evaluated in some way. The chimpanzees are watching us and thinking about us, just as we are watching them and thinking about them. I do not know what they think or what form chimpanzee thoughts take, but I know that this is not a subject-object encounter, but an encounter between persons that happen to belong to different species.

At one point, my friend wants to get closer and all hell breaks loose. All three chimpanzees are now jumping up and down, shouting at us. We sit, terrified, afraid they will attack, as we know they can do. Though they are smaller than us, they are much stronger and can rip us to pieces if they choose to. After a while, they calmly sit down again, having made their point, and apparently satisfied that we have understood. A little longer we sit and watch each other until they get up, turn their backs on us and silently disappear back into the forest.

Awe

Greenland, July 2015: I am on a ferry from Disco Island to Ilulissat, a town on the west coast of Greenland. I have spent a few days on the island, a temporary visitor, hiking up the mountains and along the coast, entranced and out of place. Off the coast icebergs float by in fantastic shapes, the dreams of some strange underwater creature risen to the surface. Sometimes you hear the rumble and splash of junks of ice coming undone and crashing down into the water. You never see them fall, only the aftermath in the form of icebergs rocking gently back and forth before finding their equilibrium again. Other times you hear the powerful yet gentle ‘whoosh’ of whales exhaling, air released after having been held in giant lungs and carried deep down below the surface of the sea. The whales themselves only show the arching shapes of their backs and tail fins, black glistening hills momentarily appearing before sliding out of view again.

The ferry is still tracing the east coast of Disco Island when suddenly a whale appears, not just breaching the surface with its back, but propelling his whole body out of the water and into the air. For a few seconds he is completely out of the water, flying through the air like an unlikely ballet dancer, before he comes crashing back down into the water with a heavy thump. Moments later the whale is back up in the air again, another gravity defying flight. I have seen this on television, but never in real life and now that it happens it seems entirely impossible. The animal is bigger than we can take in, and it defies understanding how they can do this.

With his underwater hearing the whale is no doubt aware of the ferry a hundred metres or so away from him. He must have heard the ship’s approach ever since we left the island harbour. And certainly whales have long ago made the connection between the sounds of ships and the death that our kind still bestows on them. Is the jumping then a kind of defiance, a dare, a threat, an attempt to communicate or does it have nothing to do with us at all? It feels like an act of joy, sheer exuberance at being able to do this, like a child cart wheeling just because she can.

‘Awe’ is the only word that can describe the feeling that arises as I watch even though or maybe because I do not understand either how it is possible or what it expresses. My understanding of the world begins to crack as I come to know, to really know deep down in my bones that the world has brought forth creatures such as this, mysterious giants who can erupt from unknown depth to fly through the air, and that they still persist, that they are still with us, despite everything.

Rook

North-east Scotland, 2020: Every year in spring or summer, there comes a time when the local farmer shoots rooks, crows and pigeons. Rats, who in the farmer’s (and most other humans’) world also belong in the category of ‘pests’, are dealt with by poison. From time to time, a white van arrives with big letters saying ‘Pest Control’ on its side. The white van is the only sign of the rats’ death. The rats themselves presumably crawl off into a sheltered place to die when the internal bleeding caused by the poison sets in.

In contrast, the death of the rooks is very public. Not only do the shots reverberate around the farm, but usually one dead rook is tied to a fence post or other prominent place on the farm by a string around its neck. The hanged body of the rook makes it look like a medieval execution has taken place, feudal warlords impaling the heads of their enemies on stakes, bloody signposts for others to read.

It feels violent and aggressive. At the same time, though, it is an acknowledgment of the consciousness of the birds, an attempt to communicate across species boundaries. It is an old farmers’ way of trying to scare off birds, and it may even work. Birds in the crow family are known for their intelligence (as measured against human constructs of what makes up intelligence) and react when they come across another dead bird. Those who study their behaviour say that even carrying around a piece of black cloth can cause crows distress as they think it might be a dead member of their species.

So, maybe, in its own gruesome way, the hanged rook means the farmer will shoot fewer birds, and maybe I should be pleased about that. Nevertheless, the unease and the feeling of being in the middle of a war remain.

Dancing on Volcanoes

Iceland, August 2018: This place has a Martian beauty to it: entirely alien, barren and desolate, but with a surreal beauty. Created out of many-coloured rock, rock that recently was liquid fire and flowed over the land, consuming everything that it met on its way. It is a beautiful and deadly landscape. You can see where the lava stopped its flow, and steam rises out of the earth like the breath of a buried dragon. In school, I learned about the fire flowing somewhere deep down below our feet. However, this made no more impression or felt more real than if someone had told me the moon was made of green cheese. Standing here inhaling the smell of sulphur in the air and feeling the warmth seeping out of the ground suddenly makes the truth of it tangible. This feeling is reinforced later on in the Icelandic museum of volcanoes when I enter a room filled with one large installation: a scaled-down model of Iceland sitting on top of a giant pillar of orange fire stretching from the floor all the way up to the ceiling. Knowing this aspect of the world brings with it a feeling of vertigo: we are literally living our lives on top of a pool of fire, separated from it by a thin crust of cooled down rock floating on top, like the skin forming at the surface of a pot of boiling hot milk.

In the same museum, a wall with a row of screens shows video testimonies of people who have experienced volcanic eruptions. Some tell of having to flee their houses in the middle of the night as rivers of fire came flowing down the mountain, others of days as black as night and sheep whose eyes were stuck together by the falling rain of ash. How can we understand such forces and make sense of them? Death as part of the food chain is somehow understandable, even though we mostly try to deny that we are part of it. But this kind of death on a grand scale that does not seem to serve any purpose, how do we make sense of this? How do we live floating atop a sea of magma? How can we dance on top of volcanoes?

Gardening

North-east Scotland, 2021: I’m on my knees in the vegetable patch with a trowel in my hand. It is April, and the sun is beating down from blue skies. The air temperature is no more than ten degrees and this morning the ground was frozen, but it feels hot in the sun now and the ground has thawed. In the farmer’s fields next door, the wind is picking up the soil and carrying it out over the North Sea in a miniature dust storm.

I dig the trowel into the soil where a dandelion is emerging and bring up roots, soil and earthworms. Much has been written about the beneficial effects of gardening, which often makes me wonder at the apparent dissonance between the experiences of others and my own. To own up right here: I am a deeply conflicted and accidental gardener. I never wished for a vegetable garden, but ended up in an old farmhouse with a large vegetable patch that has been carefully tended and handed down over generations. Though nothing was ever said, there is a sense that renting this house comes with an obligation to tend to this vegetable patch. If not for our own sake, then for those who come after. Over the years, I have come to appreciate the ability to go out into the garden to pick fresh produce, minutes before putting it into the pot. Nevertheless, I still feel conflicted about my own role in the garden.

After all, what does it mean to look after a piece of land? Looking at the surrounding fields, I see monocultures of grains, grass and trees. Each species confined to neatly delimited squares of land. ‘Looking after’ in this case comprises planting a single species, applying fertiliser and pesticides. This provides nutrients and kills off any insects or weeds that might impede the growth of what the land owner or manager wants to grow. The care in this case consists of trying to optimise conditions for the one thing that will benefit us. It all looks neat and tidy and not like the mess that is our vegetable patch. However, in the autumn after harvest, when I sometimes go to sit in the the stubble field next door, there is a silence which is not of peace but of death. Nothing grows and nothing moves after the crops have been sprayed with pesticides to kill them off before harvesting. If left to its own, life quickly comes back in the stubble fields and clear cuts. However, it is usually in a diminished form, simpler and with fewer species compared to what it could be.

In the garden, we try to be less destructive, to be more mindful, to allow for more diversity, more life. And yet, we still hold on to the power to control what shall exist here and what not. Dandelions, couch grass, creeping buttercups, thistles, cleavers and many others are all pulled up and put in the bucket to make room for broccoli, kale, carrots, courgettes and lettuces. Others, such as clover and violets, we tolerate to some degree, as long as they don’t become too dominant or grow too close to the plants we want.

Killing a wild animal to eat means only taking the life that you will consume. But when tending to plants or animals that we intend to eat later, we invariably end up taking the lives of many other creatures: plants and animals that are in the way or that are competing or threatening to eat what we want to eat. Others are casualties we didn’t intend to harm, but that we harmed nevertheless. No life can exist without causing harm to others, but where do we draw the line? How much harm and what kinds of harm do we allow ourselves to cause while maintaining our own lives? Some say that the important thing is not to take a life without a good reason, but what makes up a good reason and according to whom? Would the dandelions agree that wanting to grow peas for me to eat is a good enough reason to uproot them? Is this even the right question to ask?

Working away in the garden, I also notice how it changes my relationship to the plants and animals I encounter there. On the one hand, there is an increasing awareness, a noticing of things I would not notice without spending hours on my knees, my nose and eyes a few inches off the ground. The different smells of individual plants as I pull them out of the ground, the fluorescent blue dots along the side of some of the earthworms, the clumps of slug eggs, shiny like pearls, buried in the ground. On the other hand, I can feel myself sliding into a judgemental frame of mind, classifying plants and animals as good or bad. There are weeds that seem intent on taking over and smothering everything else, pigeons that pull up every brassica seedling they can find without ever eating a single one, and slugs that in a single night can decapitate entire trays of seedling, leaving not a single one alive though none have been eaten up entirely. I feel the frustration rise in me at the wasted labour, at having to start all over again, at the relentlessness of it all.

At the same time, though, it also makes me aware that just as these other beings are thwarting my plans, so am I thwarting theirs. The plants have put all their energy into producing seedlings, which I pull up, or into fruits, which I pick and eat before the seeds can ripen and disperse.

At times, I manage to admire the tenacity and ingenuity of these other beings. The way a slug seems to be able to smell a ripening tomato from a mile away and squeeze through the smallest crack and abseil on a thread of mucus from the one open window in the greenhouse’s roof. The way that couch grass can move long distances underground through the soil, sending up little shoots from time to time in order to thrive wherever a possibility arises, carrying on when there is no possibility, coming back after it has been uprooted. The way that brambles and cleavers climb over everything and put down new roots whenever they come into contact with the ground again. If we need models of resilience surely these are it.

I am still not at peace with gardening and I still do not know what I am doing or how to handle all these conflicting notions and feelings. The only thing to do seems to continue searching for a better compromise. How we could produce and provide food for humans on a larger scale in a less destructive manner, I do not know. I look at the fields around me and know that this way is only death even though the farmers care. However, their care mostly focuses on humans and a few domesticated species in line with what western, mainstream culture in general advocates. And the values, policies and economics of western mainstream societies do not support farmers in finding compromises or providing much space for other beings. And so I continue crouching in this little patch of soil, silently negotiating with myself and the beings I encounter how to deal with our overlapping and sometimes conflicting claims to space and existence in an uneasy and never fully resolved way.

Here, I want to concentrate on one kind of story that seems all-pervasive in western mainstream culture. It is the story of the hero. We find his story all around us, in films, books, newspapers, social media, advertising, and politicians’ speeches. Fictional heroes can bring a sense of great satisfaction and redemption, while real-life heroes are honoured and upheld as examples. Both kinds may help to restore our belief in humanity and constitute an ideal to aspire to.

One indication of the importance of the hero concept can be found in the form of a list of 339 synonyms and antonyms for the term ‘heroic’ (https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/heroic). Examples of some of the synonyms include ‘daring’, ‘noble’ and ‘intrepid’. Doing something heroic thus involves ‘having or involving recourse to daring or forceful action’ (https://www.thefreedictionary.com/heroic). Being a hero involves courage and sacrifice. These sound like good traits and something that is needed more than ever in these times when trouble is all around us. So, what is wrong with our love of hero stories and any dreams we may harbour of becoming heroes ourselves?

One aspect of the dark side of our hero fixation is the expectations that come with it. During Covid in the UK there was a call to ‘clap for carers’ at a fixed time every week to express gratitude to the public health care workers whose professional roles involved dealing with those falling seriously ill. Healthcare professionals were framed as heroes who willingly accepted the risk of infection and the long hours of extra work demanded of them. Being cast as heroes, however, meant that they were and still are expected to selflessly sacrifice themselves for the good of the nation, while the wages they are paid are not enough to cover basics such as food and electricity. Those who expressed unwillingness because they feared for themselves or their families were met with condemnation, and their demands for a decent wage have been met with laws threatening to take away their right to strike.

Hero rhetoric is also used in many other contexts to silence or coax the unwilling. In wars, soldiers are framed as heroes who are expected to give their lives for the greater good of the nation, group, place, idea, or whatever the fight is supposedly about. Being a hero, you earn adoration, especially posthumously, but it seems you simultaneously sign away any other rights. Those who do not wish to fight are declared traitors, cowards and are jailed or executed.

Another dark aspect of our adoration of the hero is that it tends to influence how we interpret and meet difficult situations. In the stereotypical story, the hero must overcome adversity or an enemy through an epic struggle. In the more interesting of these stories, the hero may be conflicted and the struggle may not just be against external forces or enemies but may also be an internal one. Nevertheless, the emphasis is on fighting and overcoming.

That these stories influence how we attempt to deal with many problems can be gleaned from the language of war and power that is usually employed in many real life situations. We must mobilise, soldier on, stand up and fight, overcome, be strong, not give up. In short, we must be heroes whether it’s in the context of our jobs, relationships, and personal problems or whether it’s in relation to wider societal and global problems. Within the framing of heroism, the only outcomes are winning or losing, and, usually, for one part to win the other must lose. The beast, giant, self-doubt or whoever is deemed the enemy or obstacle must be overcome and preferably killed, not accommodated, befriended, or understood.

This logic is at play not only in armed conflicts and our personal lives, but also in the logic of the free market where the best ones supposedly always win and, in the process, create a wealthier, if not better, world. The same logic and story guided colonial enterprises and still plays itself out in relation to human and more-than-human beings around the world. In relation to nature, we speak of ‘ecosystem services’ and it is taken for granted that we are the rightful receivers (or takers) and judges of the value of these services. If it does not serve us, it does not have any worth and can be discarded. This attitude was stated most starkly by Enlightenment thinkers such as Francis Bacon who spoke of fighting, torturing, and subduing nature so that she would reveal her secrets and serve man. The gendered language and the similarities to tactics employed against human beings in colonised regions was certainly no coincidence.

The story of the hero is also the story of individualism. Though the hero may have friends and allies, we are never in doubt who this story is about. It is the hero’s exceptional qualities and decisions that determine success or failure and that are central. The hero story is thus one that celebrates the extraordinary and the powerful and extols us to become special and better than others. The special qualities of the hero can vary, and some stories use the hero model to promote or praise qualities that run against the current hero fashion. Instead of the gifted wizard it is the kind hobbit who saves the day. Nevertheless, even then the hero stands out and is different from the dull, average person.

The hero narrative is not a new one but goes back a long way. Many old folk tales and myths follow the model of the ‘hero’s journey’: a man, or occasionally a woman, sets out on a dangerous journey to save their people, their love, their honour, or to win a treasure. The ‘hero’s journey’ is nowadays also used to describe the process and task of self-development. We are all our own heroes, the centre of the story. If we manage to fight and overcome inner and outer enemies, we will not only become fully developed humans, but our heroic nature might even be recognised by others, and we might become social media stars, if nothing else.

It is tempting to think that the alternative to the hero narrative must be that of the anti-hero, a type of story that also abounds in modern fiction: stories of hapless losers, of selfish and conflicted individuals unable to live up to the expectations placed on them. Despite their shortcomings they may remain likeable and often are more recognisable and closer to our own experiences than the heroes. While they can help us to accept we can’t all be heroes, in their own way they still contribute to cementing the heroic as the gold standard. They are losers precisely because they are judged against the hero figure that they don’t live up to. We might sympathise with them and recognise ourselves in them, but we are not in doubt that, really, they should get their act together and do better. Their failings are typically individual, unless they are a noble victim which is just another kind of hero, albeit a tragic one.

Is there a way to truly do away with the hero which does not in an underhand manner reinforce the distinction between heroes and anti-heroes? In a wry essay entitled The carrier bag theory of fiction, Ursula le Guin, author of numerous fantasy and SciFi stories, calls out our obsession with the hero and ‘his pointy sticks’ that are used to beat, poke, and split open. Referencing the stereotypical image of the cave man and his pointy stick, she points out that even in that case the main part of the story is left out. Only a small percentage of the diets of pre-historic humans consisted of large prey such as mammoths or aurochs. Most requirements were met by (mostly) women patiently digging up roots, collecting nuts, seeds and fruits, and trapping small animals. What good is a stick, she asks, if you do not have a container to hold and bring back those essential foods? No bag means no food or water, other than the miniscule amounts you can hold in your hands at any one time, especially if you also have a baby or small child to hold.

However, the bag and the types of activities associated with it don’t make for very sexy stories, as le Guin points out. How much drama can you get out of the patient and endlessly repetitive bending down, picking, and putting away, often done in a group where nobody sticks out, because no extraordinary qualities are needed? Only when a hero is required to protect the quotidian, or a hero from another story enters with a pointy stick to disrupt the tedium of the everyday does the story become interesting. This is what we have been taught to expect of a good story.

Nevertheless, Ursula le Guin challenges us to attempt to create these other kinds of stories and the values they represent such as collaboration and appreciation of the everyday and the small. In some of her own works she experimented with ways of doing so. One example is her strange collection of fictional anthropology of the future called Always coming home where she imagines the kind of stories, daily routines, and rituals a people of the future have developed after an unspecified cataclysmic event. Another is the figure of the wizard Sparrowhawk in her Earthsea series. Though he starts out as a powerful, if conflicted hero figure, in the end Sparrowhawk loses his power and everything that comes with it. Rather than killing him off in a heroic manner, Le Guin follows his struggles to adjust, live with the loss, and learn who he is when he is no longer a highly regarded and respected wizard, but just an ordinary, mostly disregarded, middle-aged man.

Another place we can find examples of a different kind of story is in the old tales. Even though most myths and fairy tales with roots in western cultures follow the general pattern of the hero’s journey, many stories from other cultures and a few with roots in western soils follow a different pattern. Some are so different from western tastes and expectations of what constitutes a storyline that they may seem bewildering and even pointless to listeners or readers brought up in a western dominated context. The protagonists are often non-human and there might not be the kind of resolution in the form of triumph or tragedy that we expect.

Other tales may appear to follow the established model of the hero’s journey but conclude with a different kind of wisdom. The characters set out full of confidence and courage to redeem or win a love or treasure, but at some point in the journey they come to the realisation that they don’t have what it takes. What they are facing is too strong, too vast, too shrewd for them to ever have a chance. In these stories their failure is part of a necessary development. Only once they realise and accept their own helplessness, once they are at their wits end, broken and full of despair, do things shift and help suddenly arrives. The help itself often takes the form of something small and seemingly unimportant: a bird that brings little morsels of food, a musical instrument, a mouse.

Many of these stories are associated with journeys to the underworld where ordinary human daytime knowledge and strength are not much use. One example is the story of Psyche, the young woman who evoked Aphrodite’s anger first by her beauty and then by causing Aphrodite’s son, Eros, to fall in love with her. Through her own failings, Psyche loses Eros and must seek out Aphrodite to ask for help in exchange for offering her services. In response, Aphrodite sets the young woman a number of impossible tasks. At each task Psyche despairs and decides to take her own life. Each time, when she has just given up, help arrives in the shape of different non-human beings, from ants, to an eagle, to a tower.

Looking at the world around me and at the havoc wreaked by humans like myself following a logic of overcoming and subduing, I often feel a sense of deep and bone-wearying despair. I have been out on the streets, have seen police with their faces set in a blank mask advance in their combat gear, each side fighting to save aspects of the world they know and love, whether it’s the environment or the stability offered by a state apparatus. Meanwhile nothing much seems to be changing other than divisions growing ever deeper and the situation becoming more desperate.

Now, I am no longer sure what to do. I am no hero and I am still trying to figure out what it means to live well in a way that honours myself, the world around me, and the many relationships between us. Like Psyche, it seems that, time and time again, I need to admit my own defeat to learn to listen to the voices who know better than me, whatever form they may take. What comforts me is the knowledge that those voices are still here and that the journey ahead doesn’t need to depend on the heroic power of pointy sticks, as long as we remember to weave carrier bags to carry enough seeds of different kinds to nourish ourselves and those around us and plant things for those who come after.

I’d love to hear what stories you are finding helpful in navigating these times.

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In the small, local arts group which I am a part of we are currently working with the topic of the sea. It is a topic that resonates deeply within me. Below are some of my own responses to the inexhaustible mystery of the sea hoping it will bring you a bit of a saltwater breeze no matter where you find yourself.

Becalmed

That night the sea went so still it seemed to have turned into treacle. Any movement was so slow and languid that it might not have been happening at all. In response they found themselves breathing in the most shallow of ways. It was as if their lungs refused to fill and empty while that great being, which had been there since before the time of the songs and the time of the mountains, was so motionless, so quiet.

At the time they all wondered what it meant, this uncanny stillness, apart from the obvious that they could go nowhere while their sails hung limp from the masts like the sodden clothes on a drowned corpse. Some said it was the quiet before a great calamity, like the night when the fiery meteor had streaked across the sky. Others said it was a sign of blessing, while yet others talked about pressure systems and temperatures and said it had no meaning at all beyond being an accident of numbers. Later, of course, everyone claimed that they had known all along, and that their statements at the time had been correct if only interpreted in the right way.

At the time, though, they all wondered, and held their breath while they waited for something they could all sense but which remained elusive and just out of reach of their conscious minds.

Drift Wood

Look at me.

Tell me, what you see.

Take me in your hands, let your fingers run along the lines that my own growth and the water together have etched into my body.

Now close your eyes, bring your face close to my surface, inhale.

Can you sense the lingering molecules of forest floor and woodland life still locked away in this fragment that remains of me?

Tap your nails against my grain, listen to the echoes of the past, and tell me, what stories, what voices do you hear?

Is it the story of the seed, so full of potential, and yet so dependent on chance?

Or the story of wood, the name of a material, a body, a community of beings, where I was one among many, connected through air, water, mycelial filaments and chemical substances to those others around me, those who were similar and those so very different from myself?

When you look at me, is what you hear the echoes of the chainsaw that came to claim my body, the rumbling of the mobile timber mill, in a matter of minutes turning most of my trunk into standardised planks, while animals scattered in all directions, seeking refuge somewhere else?

Or has your imagination leapt over that part and gone straight to what it was that those planks were used for? Are you dreaming up an old boat builder who lovingly and with great care selected and cut and bend each plank into place before assembling it all, and then with brush in hand painted the name of a long dead sweetheart on the stern? Or do you not harbour such romantic notions and instead assume that I was just a tiny part of a fence, a gate, a pallet or some other prosaic use?

Do you ask yourself how I ended up in the sea, how long I spent there, smoothed down and tossed about, passively following where the current took me? Do you wonder whether I journeyed across the world or came from close to home, just a mile or two down the road from you?

Now open your eyes, look at me, and tell me, what do you see?

Pacific

They say
there is a place
in the middle of the Pacific ocean
where all that is lost
sooner or later
washes up,
always revolving
but never going away;
a new kind of continent
slowly forming
made up
of all that we’ve lost
or have thrown away.

And I wonder how long
it will be
before we ourselves
wash up on those liquid shores,
slowly turning 
over and over
in one place
without ever
moving away,
and will we then
find webbing 
between our toes
and salt water 
in our veins?

Meeting points

Cliffs stand steady
rocky feet
rising 
from bedrock underneath.
Standing still
holding firm
not waiting 
but being
while moving so slowly
that we’ll never see;
flowing into 
the embrace of water
coming twice a day
in and out
and in again
ebbing and flowing
like sighs or breaths
while within 
a million stars, 
a million lives
come into being
to vanish soon again.
And others 
moving through:
jellyfish,
killer whales,
basking sharks,
eels and salmon
follow their own paths
as the moon circles 
and the planets spin
in a spiral galaxy;
while the universe
expands
and otters play 
in moonlit waves.

Sea Painting

If you wanted 
to truly paint the sea 
you would need to repaint 
the same painting 
over and over 
again; 
not new paintings, 
but the same one 
erased 
and overlaid; 
not daily, 
but constantly, 
the paint never drying, 
one wave, 
one tide, 
one weather system 
after the other 
coming, 
receding, 
constantly changing, 
always the same.

Like many others I, too, feel the heaviness of the dark often weighing me down especially on overcast days, when it feels as if daylight never fully manifests itself. The limited number of hours in which there is some kind of light also make it necessary to think more about when I do what. Sometimes this can devolve into a kind of “light panic”, trying to fit as many things as possible into a short span of time. At the same time, I also need to take into account my own rhythms, which parts of the day work best for sitting down to think, read and write, and which for being more physically active. It’s not always a puzzle that I manage to solve.

Compared to more northerly places there is still plenty of daylight here in southern Scotland. I can only guess at what it is like to live north of the Arctic circle where one of winter’s manifestation is the long polar night and variations in light are not linked to the sun’s position in the sky but to the phases of the moon, cloud cover and occurrence of northern lights. Some who have had the experience say it is not the long winter night but the constant light in the summer which is the hardest to bear, the challenge to find rest when the sun seems to demand that we remain active like trees and plants never ceasing their photosynthesis as long as there is light. In contrast, the dark invites us to rest, to settle down, turn inward, compost. In times and places where people’s lives were more closely attuned to the cycles of the seasons as they manifest at higher latitudes, the winter was a time for indoor pursuits: making and mending, stories and songs shared around the fire, the source of warmth and light. Winter not as a time of isolation and depression but a different kind of togetherness though I’m sure it brought its own challenges.

Clock time and a market system demanding constant (and preferably ever increasing) labour output, mean that most of us no longer follow this ebb and flow in activity. With the aid of electricity it is tempting to think that we can escape the change of seasons and the dark by lighting up the night. Though we have decoupled our rhythms from those of the planet, our heavy reliance on artificial light also seems to have made the dark more fearful and dreadful. If you ever move around in the dark using a torch you’ll know how this makes everything outside of the small area lit up by the beam of light appear darker and more impenetrable, a wall rather than an expanse of depth with its own areas of relative light and shade.

I feel immensely lucky to live in a place where there is very little light pollution and nothing much to fear from the dark other than stumbling over things. It enables me to go outside into the night, at least when I remember to overcome my own reluctance and preference for the easy comfort of light and warmth. When I do, and it is a clear night, I am reminded of the things that only the dark reveals. For one there is the beauty of that great river of stars that is our galaxy running across the sky. It is only in the dark that we are able to see beyond the atmosphere of our planet and the sun, and we can get a sense of how this planet of ours is part of something so much vaster and more mysterious than we can grasp. And then there are shooting stars, the hooting of owls, moon shadows and the leafless silhouettes of trees revealing their inner shapes, a different majesty from their clothed summer daylight countenance. In these moments, I feel grateful for the dark and the gifts it offers if we are ready to receive them.

While the darkness of the night makes me feel connected to that which is above and beyond the earth, there is also the darkness below, within the earth. Many of our terrestrial animal-kin seek shelter and give birth in the darkness of dens, holes and caves. While most of us think of safe places as lit up by plenty of light, darkness can enfold us in safety. The dark is also generative: Seeds sprout from the darkness of the soil and we take our beginning in the lightlessness of the womb. The potency of the dark is attested to by the effort our ancestors put into creating hauntingly beautiful paintings in the depths of caves.

Like many cultures, Celtic traditions honoured and celebrated not only the light but also the dark. The winter solstice is one of the turning points of the year, but before that the festival of Samhain, on the 31^st October, was celebrated to mark the beginning of the new year at a time when the dark was still increasing. It is a good reminder that new things don’t spring into being suddenly with the return of the light but that renewal often requires a lengthy period of darkness where nothing seems to be happening other than that it is getting darker and darker and all we see above ground is deadness and decomposition. It is a thought that I find hugely comforting in this time when darkness seems to be deepening all around.

Scottish folk tales feature a group of beings called Selkies. They are shape shifters, most of the time living in the sea in the form of seals, while occasionally coming up on land, taking off their seal skins. In doing so, they take on a human form. The most commonly told story features a fisherman who comes upon a selkie in human form, and takes her skin. Without her skin she cannot return to the sea but is forced to stay on dry land. She marries the man who took her skin, has children and stays with him. After many years she finally finds her skin again and without hesitation returns to the sea leaving man and children behind. Not long ago, on a walk down to the local beach I saw the head of a seal sticking out of the water, looking curiously toward the land, but disappearing down below every time I tried to fix it in my binoculars. The following are the words that came upon my return.

You know how this one goes, don’t you? It’s the story about the lonely man, wandering along the beach by himself, coming upon a group of beautiful people dancing naked in the moonlight. Like you and me, he knows who they are, these beings out of the depth of the sea. He is out of his depth, too, or maybe up where he doesn’t belong, like a fish on dry land, heaving, gasping for breath. But he wants, oh, how he wants! The ache and hollow inside him are such that he wants to grab, to grasp, to hold on for dear life, if not his own, then at least someone else’s. And so he takes one of the skins, because he knows that to have control of someone else’s skin is to hold power over them, to take possession of their very being. He takes that which is not freely given, forces a marriage upon one of those beings, who rose from the blue.

Nowadays, we’d call it abduction, rape, coercive behaviour, and the selkie might have gone to court. But then again she might not, given the low conviction rates, the intrusive questions, and the censure that would surely follow. Like, come on, what was she thinking, dancing naked in the moonlight? Surely, she was asking for it!

You know the story, and so many others like it. You also know that in the end, she manages to return to her rightful element, the sea, after many years on land, helped by one of the children that resulted out of that unholy marriage. But you also know that this is no happy ending, neither for him nor for her. In her heart as big as the sea itself, she has somehow managed to find compassion, even love for this grasping, yearning man, who can only think to fulfil his longing through force, through control. And then, of course, there are the children, too, descendants of two such different realms, though like their father, they seem firmly embedded on dry land and cannot, or choose not to follow their mother back into the sea, the place that holds the origin of us all. And so she leaves not only him, but the children and half her heart behind, but return she must, because she cannot be herself up there, on dry land at his site, and is slowly dying while she tries.

We know the story, and know the truth contained within. Not a truth just about grasping and controlling men, but a truth about all of us, we the insatiable ones, the ones who have learned that the only way to achieve something is to take, to control, to consume. But now I ask you to close your eyes and dream. And I ask you, what do you see? Is it a world where the villagers on that long lost shore once a year took their instruments, their finest foods and produce down to where the water meets the land, to celebrate the beauty of all that is, inviting those beings of the sea to celebrate with them? Or is it a world, where the lonely fisherman saw the beautiful girl, and resolved not to take the skin, but quietly slipped away, holding her image as a treasure in his heart always, letting it suffuse the music, the poetry that he created in those long, dark evenings, alone in front of his hearth, but grateful still that, just once in his life, he had been allowed to behold such a thing? Or do you see not a man but another young girl, a girl of the earth, not the sea, but entranced by those creatures come out of the depth, so beautiful, so free, so unlike herself? One, who instead of taking the skin, went to gather wildflowers and berries, which she quietly placed on the skin of the one who entranced her the most. And who, every full moon since would bring the best of what she could find, what she could create down to the shore, offering it to the beloved, that otherworldly being, who would sometimes come and sometimes not, and who a few blessed times gave herself to the other, earth and sea united briefly, grace unearned despite all the offerings, all the efforts of the earthen one. Or is it something else entirely that you see? Close your eyes and dream, and then, I ask you, go down to where the land meets the sea.