August 2020

It is a period of wrapping things up in a wider sense of the beginning of the harvest season. To me it makes absolutely sense and after all is said and done what is left is a simple life, gratitude, people that we love, fulfilling work and creativity in every day with self-awareness, but not analysis. We are now done with analysis, I feel, and shifted towards moment-by-moment daily values and really breathing life in as it comes. This year has brought so many improvements to the ways things run, which is applicable to individual lives and the collective, and it is good to be able to look back and be grateful for having arrived at this point in the year and see how things were and how they are now through our own personal creation, tweaking, restructuring and letting things fall away as needed. The difference is huge. I am excited to start reaping the fruits/rewards of the seeds that I planted back in March. I remember that period of confusion, trepidation and nervous excitement of the unknown. Planting season always keeps me sane and grounded. Here we are with my land bursting with fresh organic produce that ends up on my plate and in my body. Very satisfying, indeed.

This summer for the first time in many years I am not depressed. I get seasonal summer depression (SAD in reverse) every year with no fail, but not this time. Instead I have been happy and noticed how I enjoy everything, however small, and gratitude has gone up a level also transforming to this shining light that doesn’t go out, but just accompanies me in everything that I do. I am able to be more and for longer and find it a lot more natural, up another level. I have learnt to stay in one place and be okay with it. I am slower and more intentional and what has been the most useful change is simplifying everything even more. For years I have had up to three jobs and multiple projects on the go all at the same time. I slowly reduced and culled in that area and this year it is the final alteration, I hope, to the whole work dynamic. I actually want to have just one job from here onwards – this is alien as you can imagine, but necessary. As always my way of living and being has been 100% intuitive and I attribute satisfactory results to my intuition, which I have never distrusted. I don’t know any other way to live at this point and it has truly changed my life many years ago when I stepped into understanding that my inner voice is the one I need to follow. My intuition is my magic.

My trip to Scotland this year has been utterly different too. I did wonder in the last year if things were going to change following a lot of work done on it last year and struggles and turmoil last summer. It did change in a very natural and gentle way. My predictions were correct and my work paid off. As I drove on empty roads in Argyll on the way to the islands I was surrounded by pine forests and wild flowers everywhere. I saw a cloak of grief not being there anymore. The lump in my throat was no longer there. I felt free, almost flying. I could finally exhale with ease. Sadness, overwhelm and confusion cleared up, evaporated and all I felt was the land just being there, unchanged, unshaken and blooming as usual. Immense comfort entered me and it remained unchanged for the duration of the trip. I felt happy every single day. I reached some sort of completion on my journey of seven years. The number, I realised, was significant, as every grief that comes my way is always intense and lasts for seven years exactly. This was no different.

Today I can say that the feeling of contentment and calm is here within me and very welcome it is too. Being back home is like slotting into a place that holds me. It is comfortable, snug and functional. It might not be my soul home, but it is a secure base, something I created and share with people that I love. There is beauty in that for sure. I look forward to autumn and winter immensely and getting back to writing and creating.

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The Loch of my heart

A beautiful melody of your heart brushes against a shore

As I stand in trance-like state amidst the symphony that is your waters

Silvery shimmer like a thread connected to my inside

I spill my musings into a flow of the sacred grey depth

Loch Tay is a dream that is continuous

Without interruption it comes to my imaginings again and again

The deep calm waters touch into my unconscious like a life’s mystery never to be discovered

But what an ecstasy it is to wonder

To gaze upon the expansive body that takes me places of indescribable power, beauty and spirit

Image: clivecatton.co.uk

Answering the ‘call’

 

Isle of Mull, Scotland 2017

I heard the call back in 2013 and when stepping upon this land my heart exploded. I was tossed and turned with internal screaming, bursting into tears of joy and confusion. Struck by sheer magic and meaning of what it was like to belong to a place I never knew existed.

It took me years to work out what had happened back then when I first visited Scotland. Every year since then I can not bear be parted from it. It hasn’t been easy going back and stepping into the land that knew my soul so well again and again and having to leave it behind every time consumed by nothing less than sheer grief.

I am still in that place of neither here nor there, desperately wanting to go and needing to stay, having to live the life I have here, which is glorious in many ways. I am content yet deep yearning never leaves me for the place that stole my utter being and grabbed hold of me so tightly.

With each passing year the pull of the land continues, in fact, it has intensified with each summer when I would make the same journey and every winter when my heart would pine for it. I fought against it and even tried to convince myself it wasn’t real or happening just to test yet the answer was always the same. It is in my bones so deep I can’t be separated from it physically or spiritually.

I lived there before a long time ago and died a gruesome death with my blood spilling directly on the earth and penetrating its cells. I was of the land like a native animal that recognised smells, sounds and colours of every season the land had dressed itself in. I am still of that land, I am still that animal. I can taste it and its distinctive smell never leaves my senses. It is a particular sensation instantly recognisable by me. I can reach it at any moment yet physical separation remains too much to bear.

I live with my heart open and always listen carefully and intentionally to what the next step might be…

 

Pregnant Earth

I am not a summer soul. Year after year I experience a withdrawal as days get longer and the sun gets hotter. The build up to Summer solstice is particularly difficult with doubts, uncertainties and complexities I feel lost in. It is in parallel to my feelings about the Full Moon phase when things come to a culmination and then start to fade as a waning moon. I am not good with the Full moon and withdraw every time only to come out to shine with each New moon – my favourite time.

I notice how my outings in nature become infrequent and my engagement with the earth subsides. I find working in heat difficult and the sight of weeds overwhelming. Even my blooming plot brings on a sense of helplessness as everything doubles in size and spreads across the plot. This is it, it is a feeling of overwhelm, a time when I feel u contained and my vision obscured. I begin to miss crisp autumn/winter mornings when I could go into the woods and see right through it with walking anywhere off the path without having obstructions. This is something I can’t do in the summer as overgrown paths and greenery covers all from view. It can feel suffocating and adding a heat into the mix I am powerless. It is a time of rest, sleep and seclusion for me.

Many years ago I myself was in the last weeks of my pregnancy at this time of year, ready to release, and my experience was somewhat similar to how I usually feel in my uncertainty and resistance to summer. Perhaps, that association stayed strong within me, a difficult time, something I am only now connecting with. Perhaps, summer is also a reminder of that time when I felt overwhelmed.

With Litha coming next week, a time when the sun stands still in its fullest glory and the longest day of the year is upon us, I am in anticipation, as if waiting for a relief, a time when things once again start to wind down slowly. I feel the waning from that day forward and always feel relieved and let free.
In summer I go North to landscape of mountains, lakes and space around me. I feel free in that landscape and in need to see ahead of me unconstricted by the overgrowth of forests. This year I am taking a crossing to an an Isle of Mull over the sea to experience an open road with mountains and waters shaping the landscape.