Sheila Smith
Continuing Professional Development Officer, West Lothian Council

Tales from the Riverbank

As part of our Glen Prosen workshop, we participated in two very contrasting activities which clearly illustrated for me the rationale of the Natural Change Project.

 We had been asked to choose an example of social change and analyse the catalysts involved. We set off up the hill and periodically interrupted our walking with the telling of our research stories, to be continued later in the tipi round the fire. Subjects ranged from grand international movements (revolution, resistance, rights and railings) to smaller, more local struggles. All were absolutely valid and fascinating. The atmosphere evoked was serious, ominous, portentious.

The second activity was a request to make a personal response to the change process by interacting with nature in some creative way. The natural arena for this task was the riverbank; appropriate, as we had already identified the river as a powerful metaphor for change. We ranged along the river margins, eventually settling on an individual spot, choosing some natural materials and working on our creations. We were in the flow. The group then visited each person’s site, viewed the installations while the artist explained the meaning. The riverbank had become an art park. Things of subtle beauty and meaning had been lovingly formed, arranged and displayed. Natural treasures had been carefully crafted, meshes woven with twigs and reeds,  lines traced with lichen and leaves, little scenes daubed with earth and adorned with stones. Although the meanings were often deep and always serious, the atmosphere seemed playful, light, and liberating.

 This activity was for me so much more intense and affecting then the previous day’s exercise. Engaging creativity, expressing feelings and immersing ourselves literally in nature was such a vivid and profound experience in comparison to the cerebral, rational and analytical exercise of the day before. It would seem that words are not enough. Natural change has to be experienced before it is talked about and lived before it is explained. We can and do hear it but we have also got to feel it.

Snow Man

In preparing for the next phase of the Natural Change Project, the residential in Glen Prosen, I realise I have been in defensive mode: planning to protect myself against the elements, layering up against the cold and insulating myself from all real and, fuelled by the many recent TV programmes about life in the Arctic, imagined privations. Coming across this poem has given me a different perspective. I don’t completely understand it but it seems to say something about extending our boundaries into the natural environment, shifting  in and out of the ego perspective. It reminds me that we are both part of and separate from the natural world and the realisation again that nature is always there, irrespective of us. A useful preparation, as well as the thermals and flasks. 

Snow Man
One must have a mind of winter
To regard the frost and the boughs
Of the pine-trees crusted with snow;

And have been cold a long time
To behold the junipers shagged with ice,
The spruces rough in the distant glitter

Of the January sun; and not to think
Of any misery in the sound of the wind,
In the sound of a few leaves,

Which is the sound of the land
Full of the same wind
That is blowing in the same bare place

For the listener, who listens in the snow,
And, nothing himself, beholds
Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.

Wallace Stevens
– from Harmonium , 1923

Involuntary Simplicity

White is the new green. Since the snow arrived, we have been, in our small neighbourhood, summarily conscripted to the sustainability movement. The recalibration effect of being snowbound for a fortnight has taken us back to simpler pleasures and more sustainable ways of living. Our cars, looking like big, badly bubble-wrapped packages, are littered round the roadside, going nowhere. Work has been done from home, provisions have been communally organised.  We have renewed our sense of community. So would we become volunteers when the thaw sets in and we regain freedom of movement and choice? Would I?

The positives are piling up: walking daily in the fresh air through pristine snow: being creative with basic ingredients: not spending money: undertaking immediate and necessary physical tasks: getting satisfaction from eking out resources; tearing up the diary and living in the moment; appreciating home comforts; being a neighbour and citizen not a consumer.

So what’s not to like when the ice melts? Where is the rub in the rural idyll? Hardship does not come into it. It has only been two weeks. Isolation has hardly been the issue either. With broadband and mobile phones, television and radio, we have as much contact as we want with the rest of the world.  We have always rated home cooking more highly than eating out. Social life has continued in a different form. Cosy chats in the kitchen instead of the glamour of the urban gin palaces and tinselled emporia.

But it’s worth thinking about the potential barriers to signing up to this lifestyle for the longer haul: it is no surprise that the ego is beginning to look for a get out of jail card. The ego rails against the restriction on freedom, the compromised autonomy and the limitation of choice represented by no quick getaways in the car, no ordering online (no point, no post) and no exotica in the supermarket when we eventually manage to get there.  Limes and coriander are the new basics aren’t they? The ego was never going to like being buried in snow for long.

 And there is something else: lack of novelty is harder to pin down but has something to do with the constant influx of the new in one’s life, new ideas, the next big thing, new copy, new stuff, the ever changing stimuli needed to feed restless appetites, self-expression through knowing, having and being the latest, the most original, the best.

So one of the most challenging aspects of voluntary simplicity is coming to terms not just with not needing new stuff (several little black dresses are partying on their own in the wardrobe with nowhere to go), but also the more subtle things like not getting to the coolest café, not knowing about the next big thing, withdrawing from the frontline of recognition. “I’m out there, therefore I am” might have to become, “I am secure in myself, therefore I am”. That really would be le dernier cri.

Footnote: the secret of happiness has now been revealed; the secret of happiness is, as previewed by one of our group in Knoydart, a dry pair of socks.

Snows and Silences

once a birdbath, now a snowcone

Snows and Silences

The snow which has fallen, flurried, mounded, masked, morphed and so firmly adhered to and re-shaped our lives here in Scotland in recent days, could be considered a kind of meteorological solo. It has afforded us an opportunity to live very differently for a period of time. Nature has been an inescapable force in our lives and we have had to submit to its power. Normal routines have been suspended, priorities have radically shifted, and there have been, for some of us at least, greater opportunities for silence.

 Just as there is more than one type of snow, so there is more than one type of silence. Sara Maitland, in her extensive and fascinating enquiry into silence*, identifies two seemingly incompatible traditions: the ego-surpressing, self-emptying silence pursued by the early hermits and later by the great monastic orders and the self-expressive, ego-affirming silence sought by the romantic tradition and valued as a means of accessing emotions and facilitating the expression of individuality and creativity.

 My own solo seemed to reflect both these silences at different times. The early part of the day was taken up by heightened sensing, intense experiencing of the environment and the almost frenetical creation of a linguistic response. In contrast, the later part of the day took the form of a meditative walk, when it was enough to meander at a slow pace through the environment, not thinking about very much at all, not needing words.

 Sara Maitland sees silence very much as a positive thing, countering the prevalent western view of silence as a negative, a deficit or absence, “something waiting to be broken”. She positions silence not as the opposite of language but as a separate state. She notes that recent neurological research shows that while language is processed in the cerebral cortex, silence, or at least the areas of the brain engaged by meditation activity, is processed in what in evolutionary terms is an older brain area, the sub-cortex or brain stem and limbic system.  This in turn suggests the existence of a pre-linguistic or semiotic state of consciousness,

 “It seems to me that silence offers those people who want it a return journey into the semiotic, the seedbed of the self.”**

 When words “fail” us or we experience ineffability, could this be because we are experiencing the world from a different, more ancient, consciousness? Is it possible to experience reality without the mediating effects of language? Language defines us as humans and plays a triumphant role in defending our egos. Who are we and what does it mean when we cannot access words?  I am beginning to get the message that the more extended our concept of self and the more permeable our ego-boundaries, the more likely we are to find out.

*A Book of Silence: a journey into the pleasures and powers of silence

Granta 2008

** ibid, Pg 281

The Perfect Picnic

The Perfect Picnic

As the vividness of the Knoydart experience retreated and the peaceful internal space it created became harder to access, I clung on to a couple of physical reminders: the remnants of a slice of carrot cake scrunched up in foil, retrieved from the bottom of my rucksack; the evocative feu de bois aroma from the camp fire which had permeated my jacket. In time the little package of cake crumbs disappeared into the bin eventually and the jacket went into the wash. I still have the glittery precious stone given to me by a group member because she had two and I had none. And I still have the photographs.

This photo brings back a special memory. While we were engaging in difficult conversations and dealing with complex emotions, Rob had been giving his attention to making a fabulous carrot cake for us and then bringing it down to the beach with a hot drink. It was the perfect picnic.

This is a particularly beautiful memory now on this very wintry day, looking out at a  whitened out landscape where picnic possibilities are unlikely. It is a particularly useful memory for me as my mind has been taken up with endlessly trying to make meaning of the recurrent themes of silence and language, maps and metaphors and of course engaging in daily skirmishes with toxic egocentricity. It strikes me now that I can struggle with the meaning of silence and the problems of ego all I like, but I cannot deny the simple life affirming pleasure of beautiful food eaten outside. This stands for itself and doesn’t need interpretation. Some things just are. So thanks for the memory Rob.

LBD

LBD

Girls’ day out 

We went to town 

BFF Ego and me, that’s 

MOI, MOI, MOI 

>>>>> 

OMG, a LBD, she said 

OTM,  not OTT 

So very TOI so why not 

TRY, TRY, TRY? 

>>>>> 

Be more, not less, she said 

Become someone 

Like you but more, ‘cos it’s a 

TEN, TEN, TEN*  

>>>>> 

Give it a whirl 

Said the party girl 

You’ll get what you want 

LOL. LOL. LOL 

>>>>> 

I said pax Ego 

It shall  be mine 

To the ball I shall go and I 

BUY, BUY, BUY 

>>>>> 

Some things were not for sale that day 

The dress being more but less 

Lied, not satisfied, wasn’t very 

ZEN, ZEN, ZEN 

>>>>> 

False friend Ego 

When will it dawn that to 

OWN, OWN, OWN is just a 

CON, CON, CON 

*poetic licence

Enlightened Times?

Leve ignatius hyem

One aspect of life that we share with the natural world and which forcibly reminds us of our status as human animals is our relationship with light. Light was a theme of our time in Knoydart when we spent many hours outdoors. Our instinctive response to the fading light levels of autumn influences our energy levels, our food and drink choices, our sleep needs and notoriously,  in the light starved north, our mood. The changing of the clocks at the end of the month prompts the usual debate about how best to align time with light. The controversy about daylight saving is even more heated this year with a private members bill going through parliament in Westminster which proposes a three year trial of Single Double Summer Time (SDST = GMT+2). This would mean endless light in the summer and even darker mornings in winter but an extra hour of light in the evening (GMT+1). The arguments about safety, energy saving and social benefits are being rehearsed once more. But we cannot socially engineer nature. And in our production oriented culture driven by our presbyterian work ethic, there seems, for the majority of us, to be no avoiding the artificially imposed, unnatural schedule of the working day. The requirement that we get up and return home in darkness without seeing natural light all day means that not only are we doing, rather than being but that we are doing in the dark. No wonder we feel benighted. I admire Tom Hodkinson from The Idler and his courageous attempts to live a more naturally attuned life.  Leve ignatious hyem*

*Winter is lightened by fire, phrase used in medieval calendars

see article by Tom Hodgkinson here

The Map is not the Territory*

There was something about the Knoydart trip that took me a while to “get”. In my previous experiences of group excursions into wild places, it was only a matter of time before maps made their appearance. Released from rucksacks or map cases, they not only represented space, they took over space, unmanageable wads of unruly paper, fluttering uncontrollably, wrapping themselves randomly and never re-folding themselves back into the same configuration. Map readers trying to get a grip on where they were and pin down where they were going.

So the magenta pink 1:50,000 is a surprise omission from the packing list and from the environs of the Old Byre, leaving more space for us.

But Dave’s apparent lack of interest in maps makes me realise. We don’t need maps here because the map is not the territory and we are here to experience the land directly without the conceptual overlay or mediating influence of the OS Landranger. We are here to make our own maps, from our beliefs, our original perceptions and constructions and the sets of relationships we create.

 Just as there is the slightly surprising realisation that Knoydart exists both before and after us, there is a cognitive shift, an “aha” moment of experiencing the landscape from a sea approach, a stalkers’ path, a drove road or a direct ascent.  A further reconceptualisation to make the map from the solo perspective, from immediate, direct, sensed, touched, viewed, heard and smelled experience.  So we will be taking our own maps back from Knoydart, maps which, being drawn in our minds, don’t fly in our faces or demand advanced origami skills.

 * Alfred Korzybski, 1931

Going Back

During the discussion of transition it strikes me that that going back is what we have been doing here all along. Going back to the land, back to echoes of a simpler life. But more than that, in a parallel process, creating a new metaphorical relationship with the land. Going back to a closer relationship with the land and re-making the meanings that the land suggests. Discarding our old hyperinflated and debased language and reinterpreting our lives through a landbased currency we minted ourselves. By taking it down a notch or two we recalibrate our personal economies. We create a new economy of language and meaning.