The University of the Self #100

Birdsong, Botany and Betterness Part 27

Birdsong, Botany and Betterness Part 27
This article is a continuation of part 25, which can be found here.

Image description: this is my watercolour painting of a Eurasoan Linnet. The painting is done on white textured watercolour paper and there is a green wash in the background. The bird is facing to the rightand is standing, side-on, holding a twig in its feet. The birds head is mottled brwon and grey, its wings are pink-brown and back and white, its tail is balck and white. Its undertail and underbelly are shades of pink-brown, pale cream and brown-grey.Its eye is black pupil with a white dot of light.

My 100^th article!

Today is a special day for me. Since beginning my University of the Self on 9^th March 2024 I have read, stitched, painted, printed, photographed, sketched, researched, interpreted, navigated and written my way through 100 articles. I know that I am only the tiniest drop in the ocean that is the writing world, but it feels like an achievement to me. I have written about writing, mental and physical health, art, crafts, books and nature, and how these things are intertwined into my very being, how they make me who I am, how they help me cope with the highs and lows of life. I wanted to take this time to thank everyone who reads my articles – I have been lucky to attract a small number of subscribers and followers, and you make me feel a lot less alone. I am so grateful for your support and encouragement. The production of an average of five articles a month is often challenging, but that challenge in itself keeps me going. In the writing world, it is easy to feel ignored, abandoned, uncertain and alone. Writing here keeps me believing that there is a point, even the smallest point to what I feel driven to do – that I might make the smallest difference. Writing here keeps me writing. Keeps me hoping, though often the hope seems small. Writing keeps me alive. More importantly, the one thing nnobody call tell me here is that my work is not the right fit.

Image description: a page from a notebook - the page is cream with faded stains and marks upon it. The page is divided up into rough assorted square sections with cream cotton stitches. The page is covered with cellophane. Under the cellophane is a selection of flowers and leaves I have pressed, including Viola, Himalayan Balsam, Chicory, and a selection of rose leaves.

Image description: a page from a notebook - the page is cream with faded stains and marks upon it. The page is divided up into rough assorted rectangle sections with cream cotton stitches. Written around the stitching in black ink are lists of birds and some notes - these birds and notes are listed below.

…I can no longer fathom how to cope with the human world. How to exist in it as it continues to turn into a place of stress, fear, worry and danger. I no longer know how to exist inside of it, how to articulate its implosions, its heartbreak, its growing terrors.

8.24 a.m, a two-minute-long series of deep, low-sounding calls – sounded like hammering, is my best description – very rapid and alarming – I feel baffled by them – it took a while to decipher whether it was hammering, or some sort of machine but it was a bird – sounded close and loud. App couldn’t identify. My heart is beating very fast. I wonder what it was? It was very exciting and a little discomfiting. Willow Warbler, Eurasian Moorhen, Common Redstart. Hoverflies attending to the Japanese Anenome’s delicious faces. 8.33 a.m.

9.04 a.m. Back. Still only a mild breeze, already so much warmer – in fact, quite hot. Less cloud now – clouds look skinny and boiled away. My glasses feel too hot where they touch my nose. A number of Eurasian Jackdaws flying west over us. One lone Western House Martin dipping above the field. Some work is happening nearby – road or rail, I’m not sure. Machinery thrumming and clanking. Heat and light shimmering through the dry-golden grass. Time seems very much connected to my soul right now – I can feel its passing like a pull, like a tug to my chest, as if it is being extracted from my being. Perhaps this is what deep noticing over a long period of time does – it must realign all the compasses and measuring systems inside – time becomes somehow tangible, tidal, ebbing, flowing. I never realised before that time can manifest so physically. Time is a piebald horse fragmenting the day by plodding back and forth across its field. Every time I exhale, I feel the tug of time leaving my body and there is an exquisite pain in this sensation.

Image description: this is my watercolour painting of half of a split-open conker shell. The painting is done on white textured watercolour paper and there is a grey and brown wash in the background. The open shell is facing to the front and is cream coloured. One large conker takes up most of the space. The conker is red brown and shiny, with a large circular cream and brown centre. Some of the green spiky outer shell is behind.

Two Eurasian Wrens have been balancing on the toppermost nettle stems. I cannot truly understand how little they weigh – how inside them is every organic item necessary for life – how can they be filled with heart, lung, bone, liver, kidney, brain, eye, tongue, how can they possess leg, foot, tail, wing, beak, head, feather, how can they manufacture their volumes of song and weigh nothing? Have you ever held a tiny bird in your hand and been baffled and mesmerized by the fact that you can sense no weight? Not a gram or and ounce of body. And yet, what you hold in your hand is alive, contains all the building blocks of life. This is the pure alchemy of birds – this is one of the greatest mysteries. Perhaps humans cannot understand this as we have evolved into heaviness.

“For me, being in the outdoors is revitalising, rejuvenating, and inspirational. I can’t help but feel that the mountains hold some king of innate power. The gravity of their beauty and grandeur pulls me in and ignites my desire to explore and discover. During my journeys I find a deeper connection between myself and the majesty of these wild places.”
(from ‘Titcomb Basin’ by Lizzy Dalton, read in the anthology ‘Waymaking’, Vertebrae Publishing)

First-time recording of a European Pied Flycatcher – I accept it because I have seen them along the single-track road to the Whittledene Reservoirs and have wondered what species they were, having noticed the very definitive white wing patches. I am still slowly working my way through the big bag of cooking apples – have to make a gift of a crumble for someone – for the person that gave me the apples. I am useful. I am useful. 9.36 a.m. nausea is finally lessening, though entire legs wobbly and weak. Dizzier than I thought – just stumbled into the woodshed doorpost. Temperature 20°C. I have just had the thought – it occurs to me now that it might actually be hard to emerge from these sessions of deep noticing, so immersed I am. I am always a little disoriented, spinning. It’s hard to immediately switch focus back toward the human milieu.

About 3 p.m., it suddenly rained sharply and heavily. The sky had been darkening from about lunchtime. The temperature seemed to plummet, and I had to put on a jumper and a pair of socks. 3.46 p.m. and I have just been to check the thermometer – it reads 18°C which is a surprise as it feels much colder. The wind has become quite gusty too.

Image description: a page from a notebook - the page is white. At the top in red ink is printed ‘November’ and a drawing of a green leafed plant with bunches of orange berries and sone Sloe berries. Written under the pre-printed text and images in black ink are lists of birds and some notes - these birds and notes are listed below.

18.07 p.m. Back. 19°C. A nice, warm evening, rain has stopped and the sun is out, which is creating some incredible contrasts in the sky. The fat, dark blue/grey clouds are so sharply defined they don’t look real – they look like artist’s impressions. Some ice blue shining behind. Over the riverbank trees to the south, a layer of grey then a huge area of stunning, smooth white cloud. That’s what makes the skyscape seem unreal – the fact that all the clouds look so smooth, as if all their edges have been sanded. Which doesn’t really make sense after I’ve just said how sharply defined the clouds seem. To be honest, this sky doesn’t make sense. It’s both beautiful and terrible – Rivendell and Mordor.

Bright swipes of sunlight, huge dapples – I’d love to be able to see the field from above right now – have a bird’s-eye view. There is still a lot of green in the trees – perhaps the bit of rain we have had has put a pause on early autumn. The castle is gleaming the colour of perfect yellow sand. My son is here, telling us about his football. I have learned over the years to make the right noises. Oh, what a beautiful evening it is – if only I could bottle it, and keep it stored for the winter, like the taste of apples. The colours of the wildplant field are so subtle and complex. I wonder if it would be possible to count all the different shades. I have just thought how wonderful it would be to make an autumn colour wheel. Light, resting on top of everything.

Image description: a page from a notebook - the page is white. At the top in black ink is printed ‘Garden tasks in November’. Written under the pre-printed text and images in black ink are lists of birds and some notes - these birds and notes are listed below. The page is edged with green marbling pattern.

Hardly a bird to be heard anywhere. Only Common Wood Pigeons and Eurasian Jackdaws in the sky. Some hours contain these strange absences. The birds keep to their own timetable. They aren’t there on tap. Nature’s cycles are complex and still so unknown to me. I’m a willing student. How long my novitiate stage will last, I don’t know. It doesn’t matter. Common Chaffinch, Eurasian Linnet. 18.36 p.m.

19.51 p.m. Just seen a very large, very large low definite shape – I am certain, almost entirely certain that it was a Swift. The curved scythe wings and tail were so distinctive. They are still in the UK even until November – some stragglers are with us in the late months.

20.16 p.m. Back. The sky is incredible – from the south the neon rose pink begins, and towards the north, the colour is even more pronounced – bright lemon blue – white light as far north as I can see with huge horizontal swipes of vivid pink. Grey candy floss above. The sky has truly been a spectacular theatre today. The last atmospheric refractions of the sunset are becoming pinker again as the light sinks back into the Earth. Orange glow.

Image description: this is my watercolour painting of two plums. The painting is done on white textured watercolour paper and there is a grey wash in the background. The plums are red, orange and yellow coloured. The plum on the right still has its stalk in the top and the other plum leans affectionately against it.

Carrion Crows still call. Tawny Owls begin their dusk serenade. Just a subtle trace of pink new on the east horizon. A Ring-necked Pheasant bugles last call. First Pipistrelle. The pink has faded from the north horizon – it has become lilac when mixed with the blue-grey. A plane is taking off with its lights switched on – it looks like a golden planet.

I can hear the bat’s sonar cheep. Such a strong impression of night descending – when I stand, I might bump my head. As night falls, the field smells more spicy. 8.36 p.m.

Image description: a page from a notebook - the page is white. At the top in black ink is printed ‘November’. Written under the pre-printed text and images in black ink are lists of birds and some notes - these birds and notes are listed below.

28^th August. 6.58 a.m. Front. Beem raining through the night. All is chilly-damp. Pools and droplets over everything. Stones in the garden glittered, their colour enriched by the wet. I always love seeing this small miracle – how wetting a pebble, cobble or stone seems to instantly add an intensified layer of colour to the entity. Sky mostly grey, with hints of blue behind – a plain-looking sky, a workaday sky. 13°C. No breeze – I can only describe it as a cold, fresh movement of air. Two of my last flowering Snapdragon blooms have fallen off so I have placed them in this book to press.

“When I lived in a small cottage on a farm
I was so lonely I talked to insects and sheep.

I watched gulls comb a cloud-spiralled sky
by the slurry-pit,

stared at a robin
who came into the house
and sat on my shelf for thirty minutes.”
(from ‘When I lived in a Small’ by Alyson Hallett, read in the anthology ‘Waymaking’, Vertebrae Publishing)

7.09 a.m., two Mute Swans made a spectacular, slow flight over me, from east to west – it took them a whole minute to pass from sight. One flew in front of the other. I do not see swans every day but they seem to know when I need them most. 7.13 a.m., a Eurasian Jay began calling (or “barking”, as ED (Emily Dickinson) writes) from The Seven – it took a fraction of a moment to spot it, but the sound is easy to focus on. Then I had to put the garden parasol up as it has just begun to rain lustily – so I am afraid I disturbed it and it flew from out of The Seven, left into the Ash a few trees down. Lovely flash of its flight.

I have been wakeful all night, wondering why I can’t seem to write like I feel I ought to write. Do you know, I sometimes think it is a human curse that so many of us seem to be a frustrated ‘something’. My son, for example, has always been a truly talented goalkeeper – ever since he was small – he practised a lot as well, and has made thousands of epic saves since playing for many assorted school and grassroots teams since the age of nine. Yet he always craved to ‘play out’ – one of his coaches once called him a ‘frustrated striker’. Actors want to be singers and singers want to be actors. And there’s me – blessed with poetry yet always in terrible anguish because nobody wants my essays and prose.

I have tried to learn from ED (Emily Dickinson) and to make some sort of uneasy peace with accepting it will never happen – that I cannot write in the right way – that I must learn that the true value is in the writing itself, the layers of privilege which mean that I am able to do it, combined with the layers of sadness that my physical and mental health have distilled my body and mind to this. How fortunate to have the time to do this, people say. What they never ask is how does it feel to have created a such a paradise out of all you have left? People have a way of making you feel guilty about your life when they have no clue what your life has been or what you have been through. Every day I am alive is a day where I withdraw a little more from the world. I cannot solve the world. I cannot take the pain from people, I cannot stop war, genocide, greed, hate, fear. I wish I could.

You see now why I needed the swans so much. I saw a fragment of their lives and so I can believe in them a little more. A Dunnock just anointed the fence four feet from where I sit, and has now flown into the Norway Spruce, 7.40 a.m. It told me, forget about the people who judge your life and know nothing about you and I will try.

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