Book Reflection - Branch from the Lightening Tree by Martin Shaw

I don't have a great attention span, especially for reading. I have finished many a first chapter of many, many books but rarely reached far into the second before being distracted by one thing or another. I do, however, have an ever growing reading list identified as I continue on the rewilding journey... So I'm going to post a few book-reflections (not book reviews) to help me keep focussed!

Branch from the Lightening Tree by Martin Shaw

This poetic analysis of myth was a fascinating read. Through well-known and lesser-known traditional stories, from the wastes of Siberia to the mysterious world of the Red King, Martin presents them through the eyes of a wilderness-rites-of-passage guide, demonstrating how the initiation phases are reflected in the journey of the hero or heroine of the story through image, metaphor and characater. Using personal and professional anecdotes, we see a real-life rendering of these stages and a suggestion as to the dangers of starving our lives of true myth and the addiction to our 'toxic imitiations' of ancient laws.

Here are a few of the gifts I received from reading this book:

"The boundless choas of living speech"
Samuel Johnstone

Martin Shaw writes beautifully about how oral-tradition story is a sort of collective consciousness of the tongues that have told it, the listeners who have heard it and the place in which it is told or is born. In the live storytelling setting, it is not just my story told in my way - that would be a presentation or a performance where the audience passively receive my images - rather the oral story exists within and between the myriad of minds in the audience and the teller's imagination, intonation and diction all held in the imagination of the place that the story is shared.

As a storyteller (or storycarrier) who works in the oral tradition, Martin Shaw demonstrates in his authorship, there is also a joy in hearing or reading a carefully written and crafted story- a version of the tale unique to that teller or writer that can then be boiled down till only the bones remain and be reformed and refigured by a new teller in a new time and place with new listeners. The written word has kept many of these stories in a kind of stasis between a loss and a revival of oral telling. Martin's clear passion for the written and spoken word is a lovely permission to love with wild abandon the "boundless chaos of living speech" and value and find joy in the written word.

Myth is "the power of a place speaking" 
Sean Kane as quoted by Martin Shaw

Here is a book that moves lovingly through the individual psychological map that myth can present, through archetypal analyses and towards a greater reading that begins to encompass society and our relationship to the wild. In his exploration of story, Martin finds a communication between man and the world he inhabits in the strange symbols, actions and encounters in these tales. After reading this  book, I'm finding myself pondering on the messages murmured by the starlings across the Sussex skyline or the running of a deer pack across a road rather than just admiring their beauty and otherness. Martin seems to write with an underlying assumption that the wild-world wants to communicate with those willing to listen. Mary Oliver's Wild Geese kept coming to mind as the wild geese overhead 'over and over announc[e] your place in the family of things'. Maybe myth and story are a way we can learn once more to listen to the earth.

Quantum physics teaches us that we cannot observe without affecting the outcome. To take this out of the laboratory and into our day-to-day living, when we see something in nature - a kingfisher's dive, a swallow's swift flight through a highly hedged hollow, a fox's footprints - then it is not as a detached observer but as the implicated observer -  we have interacted. To take this one stage farther, why not understand the movement of an electron through a specific slot or the movement of a crow as a message, as speaking a language specifically to us, at that moment? And as each electron's path through one observed slot rather than another has a power  to change the outcome of an experiment, maybe we should allow that which we observe to affect our individual path through life - look beyond the literal and find meaning.

"The place they are returning to is far more deadly than four nights on the hill, and stories become a place to both reveal and protect something of their experience out there in the bush. Bush soul is what we need, and then enough real human beings around us to craft that into some kind of significance."
Martin Shaw

If you love myth, nature, wildness, stories or are interested in the development of human beings and their relationship to the world, I can highly recommend this book. If you aren't, I would still give Martin Shaw's soundcloud a listen or check out www.theschoolofmyth.blogspot.co.uk for a taster of his ideas and work.

Next on the reading list - Spell of the Sensuos by David Abram

Why be an injured fox, when you could be an eagle?

There was once a young man who felt an emptiness and then a desire and then a great pull. It was as if a great rope had been tied around his heart, dragging him from his home, from comfort and security and his Mother's warmth, to search the deep forests and high mountains.

At times he thought he was searching for truth and at others he thought he was searching for meaning. One day he thought he was chasing a happily ever after and the next that he was searching for the words that would heal a dying King. One bright morning, he glimpsed the burning tail of the firebird and one dark night he shared a cup of wine with the wandering moon.

And still the rope around his heart pulled and tugged and dragged him onwards.

He met a man with the universe in his pocket and danced with a woman who was the midwife of the fairies.
He heard of a girl with a spinning top that kept the world turning and a boy who hugged a selfish giant.

But still the rope around his heart pulled and tugged and dragged him onwards.

He walked through forest and fen, through brush and scrub and over great rocky mountains.
He walked through snow and rain, through sunlight and moonlight following the pull of his heart.

One day, in the quiet darkness of a pine wood, he gazed into a dark pool (where it was said the Princess of the dream kingdom had once lost her golden heart) and realised that old father time had begun to turn his hair grey.

He moved away and continued walking, but slower now - mortality weighing him own as he went. Gradually, the pull of the rope around his heart slackened and fell away.

As he came to a clearing, he spied an injured fox lying beneath an old oak tree. Her breathing was shallow and her leg was injured. At that very moment he heard the rush of wings and feathers - from up above a great, golden eagle flew down with fresh meat in its claws. It  landed by the fox and placed the meat carefully by the fox's muzzle. The fox ate it hungrily and the eagle flew away.

The man was awestruck. This was more than chance - this was the universe speaking to him.

"The universe will provide me with what I need. The search has led me nowhere. I must let the universe provide me with what I need."

Ceremoniously and with great care, the  man walked to a great cathedral of beech trees - their trunks twisting up from Mother Earth as their branches reached up to Father Sky - and sat cross legged in the centre.

"The universe will provide me with what I need."

He sat. He sat waiting for the universe to provide.
Days passed.
The sun burned his skin and the rain soaked his clothes, but still he sat.
Nights chilled him to the very core and winds whipped his greying hair around his face.

"The universe will provide me with what I need."

Gradually, his strength ebbed and his body began to buckle and weaken.

"The universe will provide me with what I need."

As he began to slip out of consciousness and into a deep, black sleep, he heard  voice:

"Why would you be an injured fox when  you could be an eagle?
Why did you become an injured fox when you could have been an eagle."

Copyright Abigail Palache 2013

The tension of A-B and B-A
There's an exercise we teach on some storytelling courses where we explore the idea of moving with purpose (A-B) - identifying a task, completing it, deciding a new task, completing it etc - compared to letting things come to you (B-A) - waiting to see what catches your attention, walking over, seeing what needs doing when you get there, seeing where that takes your attention next. 

B-A is something I really struggle with. I'm the doer, the driver, the director - if I am without a task for a moment, the immediate compulsion is to identify a new one and KEEP BUSY! And that serves me well in many ways - I get things done! It also suits the world we live in and the way we live in it - as a secondary school teacher I felt I had to keep on task, powering through to-do lists and not let myself take a softer view of the world, a 'wait and see what comes' attitude, unless everything was complete and of course it never was. This forceful A-B attitude left me listless, exhausted and ill. 

If we are to take this attitude out of the education system and into the larger world of business, media and industry, there is a greater danger than to the individual. When we are only stuck on completing the task we have set (or been set), we become focussed and blinkered - the rest of the world fades away and the bigger picture or narrative is ignored. We become cogs in a machine, unaware of the machines purpose, just moving in our fixed orbits on our particular task. So is it any wonder that thousands of species are wiped out, people are left starving despite us producing more food globally than ever before, that credit crunches? No-one is looking at the big picture because we are just so busy and focussed on B. 

When I first heard this story, I felt like it was an affirmation of action, of doing and of moving. And it is - the inaction of waiting for the universe to give you what you need is acting like an injured fox whilst the doing, the giving, the acting is being the eagle. We see a misreading of the universe and an irritation with the man for being given the great gift of this magical vision and then acting like the victim! So, I thought, I'm doing it right! I am being eagle-like and making change and keeping moving. 

In August this year I made a pledge to act on what I knew to be true. Since making that pledge, the acting has not being a problem, but I have struggled with knowing what is 'true' - what is the right thing to do? Then I saw this story from another angle - the Eagle's angle. The eagle was not focussed on her A-B task when she went to help the fox. She was flying over the forest with a soft gaze, waiting to see what needed to be done and in doing so she saves the fox. 

Animals are not gifted with the ability (for argument's sake) to make a choice over their actions - this is the eagle of the human spirit. We can choose to continue and focus on A-B with a kind of impossible, unstoppable determination. We can choose to leave A-B behind and sit and wait for the universe to give us everything we need. Or we can choose a middle path (the hardest path some may say) of having that soft gaze to see what needs to be done, to allow B to find us and then have the courage, determination and focus to act upon what we find there. 

What I want should not be mistaken for complete inaction
Life is what it is about,
I'll have no truck with death

If we were not so single-minded
about keeping our lives moving,and for once could do nothing,perhaps a huge silencemight interrupt this sadnessof never understanding ourselvesand of threatening ourselves with death.Perhaps the earth can teach usas when everything seems deadand later proves to be alive.

Excerpt from Pablo Neruda's Keeping Quiet

Mirror of Matsuyama

This story is from before.
Before beauty was standardised.

Before beautiful had a reference point in your head of what it is and it is not .

Before photographs and photoshop, before catwalk models and sample sizes. 

This story is from those far off days when what was beautiful was all in the eyes of the beholder.

***

There was once a young farmer who had a small farm in the rice fields of Japan. 

And being a young man, he fell in love with a young woman and they were married. 

When he looked into his wife's eyes, he only saw  beauty and when she was with him, the world was more beautiful than it had been before. 

One day he set off for the city of Kyoto and he returned with a gift for his wife -  a shiny, smooth reflective surface, a mirror, surrounded by a black, bamboo frame. She had never seen a mirror before. As she looked into it, she had never seen her face reflected so clearly. And what she saw made her smile, because what she saw was beautiful. Her eyes beheld beauty as she looked into the mirror.

***

Here I have to pause and acknowledge one of those gremlins that sits in the shadowy part of my head and spits insults at this woman and calls her vain and imagines her looking like all those pictures in all those magazines - she has no cellulite, no spots, no wrinkles, no bags under her eyes, no fat bits, no rough edges. How dare this woman look into the mirror and be satisfied with what she sees? 

This is a story from before - before we told ourselves that self-love was arrogance, before we convinced ourselves, or let something other convince us, that we aren't beautiful, that what is looking back at us in the mirror is anything other  than beautiful. 

***

She looked into the mirror and she smiled, because she beheld beauty and what she beheld was beautiful. 

The mirror became one of her most treasured possessions (and why should it not - why should anything that shows us beauty be anything other than a treasure). If she was feeling sad, if she was feeling low, she could look into that mirror and be reminded of beauty. 

The young man and young woman, the young husband and the young wife loved each other very much. One spring morning, the woman gave birth to a beautiful, bouncing, black haired baby who had the same eyes and mouth and smile as her mother. 

They were very happy, but happiness does not always last; one cold, sad winter, the young woman contracted an illness and found she had to leave her dear husband and daughter behind.

In grief and sorrow, the man put away the mirror for it no longer reflected beauty, but only the absence of his beloved. He put all his energy, soul and spirit into making the world as beautiful for his daughter as was possible. 

One day when she was almost a woman, but not quite done being a girl, he called his daughter to him and told her tales of her mother, including the mirror. When the father went to bed, the daughter was consumed with curiosity and she went to the room where all her mother's belongings were packed away into boxes  and she found the mirror, with its black bamboo band.

She stared into it. Tears formed in her eyes and her breath caught in her throat.

That is where her father found her the next morning, surrounded by unpacked memories and gazing into the mirror, a sweet, sad smile on her face. 

"Father, father, look - the mirror is showing me Mother's face."

It was her own face she saw, but her father didn't tell her. 

He couldn't. The words were caught in his throat and tears were rolling down his cheeks.

***

So let me explain why this is on my blog. In the process of 'rewilding' I have found a huge amount of my time is spent reconnecting with myself as a woman, unashamedly loving myself and believing myself to contain that same wild beauty that I see in the naked, winter trees. And so I have spent a lot of time exploring narratives and stories about being a woman and this is one of them. 

We so often associate the mirror with vanity - the smooth surfaced pool of Narcissus comes to mind and a plethora of voices criticise us for liking or loving ourselves or thinking we are beautiful. But here is  story about a woman who was pleased with what she saw staring back at her and maybe we are angry with her and maybe we are jealous of her for being capable of looking into the mirror and beholding her own beauty. We are never  told that she fits the socially constructed standard of beauty, we are never told what she looks like at all, just that she is beautiful and she can see that she is beautiful. 

It would be wonderful to re-member a time where beauty could be about  beholding, instead of buying. There are these moulds we can go out and fit ourselves into and then we feel beautiful... Or   so we like to believe.

It is no accident, however, that it is her husband (her partner) that gives her the mirror - if we take this story as a model of the psyche as a whole, then it is important to find that hard-working, home-building part of ourselves and give the softer, feminine side ourselves the mirror so we can see, reflected back, the love and beauty we feel for that part of ourselves. But maybe that is too restrictive - maybe the story contains another message and one that is harder to swallow. If the young woman had been given the mirror by her evil step-mother who did nothing but hate and criticise, would the young woman have beheld beauty or would she have only seen the story she had always been fed- unworthy, ugly, unloved. If the evil step-mother is just a media-fed part of our psyche, we can start to deal with her but if she is a living, breathing person who formed what we thought of ourselves when we were very small, then to believe that we are beautiful is much, much harder. It is often said that you can't receive love until you love yourself, but it is also much easier to love yourself when you have been loved by others. So loving others is an act of loving ourselves and loving ourselves is an act of loving others. 

Admit something: Everyone you see, you say to them "Love me"
Of course you do not do this outloud, or someone would call the cops.
Still though, think about it, this great pull in us to connecct.
Why not become the one
Who lives with a full moon in each eye
That is always saying,
With that sweet moon language,
What every other eye in this world
Is dying to Hear
- Hafiz

Other stories on the topic of beauty - Strongwind (Algonquin), Olga the Cockroach