This article is a continuation of part 8, which can be found here.
Content warning: there is some discussion of mental health issues in this article.
8th July 10.27 p.m. Back. Damp, chilly.
Ring-necked Pheasant, Willow Warbler, Song Thrush, Eurasian Oystercatcher.
Silence, 22.16 p.m. Thrush begins again. Oystercatcher begins again. Silance, 22.19 p.m. Huge unidentified moth.
9th July 5.37 – 6.17 a.m. Front. Overcast, dull, bit humid.
Goldcrest, Common Wood Pigeon, Eurasian Wren, Common Chiffchaff, European Goldfinch, Eurasian Blackcap. 5.40 a.m. Started to rain. Eurasian Blue Tit, windy gusts picked up, Long Eared Owl?? Eurasian Blackbird, Carrion Crow. Goldcrests sound like silver, if silver had a voice. Eurasian Siskin, Eurasian Tree Sparrow, Jasmine still smelling overwhelming – I can never make up my mind if I like it or not (the smell, not the plant). Crows flying in circles above, round and round, a Gull overhead. Common Chaffinch. Raining heavily now. Great Tit, Eurasian Oystercatcher. Siskin becoming dominant – Pweee – Phweee chitter chatter. Dunnock, European Robin. 5.56 a.m. Four Wood Pigeons land in the Seven (as I call the group of seven Scots Pine trees). Eurasian Skylark. Rain eased. A wren is scrambling merrily about in the Jasmine – I do believe the birds are getting used to my presence. Red Crossbill?? Yes, it seems they do live where I am – they live on pine nuts, and they are plentiful (6.06 a.m.). Crows very agitated about something this morning. Willow Warbler 6.11 a.m. 615 a.m. Dunnock lands on the fence in front of me.
10.51 a.m. A sludge-slow morning of pain having gone back to bed at 6.20 a.m. and fallen into a deep sleep until I was wakened at 9.30 a.m. How I hate the waste! More and more I turn into a person I do not recognise – still in pyjamas at this time, still unwashed. I sat and finished Susan Howe’s incredible book (My Emily Dickinson, North Atlantic Books. 1995). Before writing this, I cut the Jasmine. Perhaps the crows this morning were calling another of my small deaths.
10th July 20.00 p.m. Back. Just cooling down after a boiling hot, sweltering day.
Common Wood Pigeon, Eurasian Blackbird, European Goldfinch, Eurasian Collared Dove, Common Chaffinch, Eurasian Jackdaw, Goldcrest, Great Tit.
Been really ill today – massive amounts of pain, sleeplessness and very upset stomach. Had to go back to bed till 11.30 a.m. and then very shaky and sluggish, extremely dizzy, weak.
Eurasian Oystercatcher, European Greenfinch.
Chicks crying for food in the nest behind me. Don’t want to poke about. I can hear the speedy whirr of the parent’s wings.
Eurasian Blue Tit, White Wagtail.
I have been mostly catching up on workshop prep work and heat has eroded all my energy. I thought that…
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In the bottom right hand corner of the page, there is a pressed lily petal – I found this petal on the ground – it had fallen from my plant. It was already quite dry and I placed it in my notebook. I was inspired to do this by a line from a letter of Emily Dickinson’s, written in 1846:
“I send you a memento in the form of a pressed flower, which you must keep.”
I decided to send a few mementos to myself, for who else is going to send me one? I am not as successful with the maintaining of friendships as Emily was.
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(I have sketched a little plan at the top of the page to show where the trees are in front of our cottage - these are the ones I see from the front bench when I am doing my noticings from this point. I am trying to identify them – there are many rows of trees, so these are the main foregrounded ones. Back row, from left to right: Scots Pine, Ash, Sycamore, The Seven (all Scots Pines). In front of them from left to right: Elderflower, brambles, Plum, Holly, Norway Spruce.)
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…I wasn’t going to get out today, 20.00 p.m. Black-headed Gull flyby. Carrion Crow. Goldfinch in stout voice tonight. Made some watercolour leaf prints. 20.13 p.m., Yellowhammer, Barn Swallow, Eurasian Kestrel, Eurasian Skylark. So many white butterflies sweeping and swirling over the field. Eurasian Wren, Ring-necked Pheasant, Dunnock. The crop is ripening and full of Pigeons. Bank Swallow? (This I am not sure of) – they are calling plenty. Hear the Skylark’s song and search around the sky until you see its hovering speck 20.41 p.m.
11th July 7.48 – 8.07 a.m. Back. Already boiling hot, still.
European Robin, Goldcrest, Eurasian Wren, Eurasian Blackbird, Common Chiffchaff, Eurasian Linnet, Eurasian Jackdaw, Eurasian Skylark. Cloudless. Great Tit. We are sitting on the bench like a pair of solar panels. Eurasian Blue Tit, European Goldfinch, Western Yellow Wagtail (not sure, possibly?), Eurasian Oystercatcher, Carrion Crow, Mallard.
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Here I have written *cat / Pheasant / egg encounter, Stamfordham, late morning. I made this note to remind myself to communicate the memory later on. I was on my friend’s farm again, doing a little bit of Ragwort checking again. My friend has a tabby cat who always follows us around when we are in the field. He went into the long grass, when a hen pheasant suddenly flew up, squawking out in great distress, right next to where we were standing. She did not fly far.
The cat seemed very still and intent on something, so we went to check. There, in a sculpted swirl of long grass was a clutch of about a dozen large brown eggs – it was the pheasant’s nest. My heart pounded in my chest, and I felt breathless at witnessing this secret. The cat was attempting to lay on the eggs, so my friend scooped the cat up and we immediately left the nest area. I do hope the nest remained private and that the eggs safely hatched. Three days later they were gone, no sign of them at all. I hope the cat did not return and damage them. I hope our accidental human intrusion didn’t cause harm. I have worried about it ever since.
I did find this Pheasant hen feather in the field further up, and painted it as part of this incredible experience.
21.43 p.m. Back. Finally cool, damp grass, peaceful.
Eurasian Blackbird, Ring-necked Pheasant – where are all the birds tonight? Not a peep. Not a cheep. It’s a beautiful evening – the thistles are bursting into white fluff. A fairy evening.
21.54 p.m. Dunnock. I spent an hour with people this evening and it did not go well. I am here to try and untangle myself. Perhaps all I was meant to record tonight was peace and a distant train. One Blackbird calling from Ovington way, one answering from the trees to the S.E. I’ve finished my cup of tea. The purple clover has a wonderful luminescence – bee purple? Pipistrelle, 10.30 p.m.
12th July 5.04 a.m. Back. Damp, so fresh outside, incredible silver weights of mist floating just above the wood – what is the name of that wood? On the other side of the riverbank. Again, why don’t I know (if there is a local name for this area of trees, I do not know it and map research brings up nothing. It is a substantial wood that runs along the other side of the river for a few miles)? No sleep last night. Mind won’t switch off. Lying there damp with cold sweat. Dizzy.
Carrion Crow, European Goldfinch, Eurasian Blackbird, Common Wood Pigeon, Eurasian Blue Tit, Dunnock, Eurasian Magpie, Eurasian Wren…
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I have been really struggling to recover from a debilitating, distressing episode in my mental health. I have been debating whether or not I ought to talk about it and have had to refrain from doing so until the most acute feelings connected to it have somewhat subsided, for my own sake (though these feelings are by no means fully gone). There was controversy earlier this month concerning a famous book – a book about a journey through nature, illness, hardship and place. I won’t name it here, nor will I comment on the many articles about it, and there is a reason for this. When the news story broke, I read the article with shock and confusion. A couple of hours later, I started to shake, and I felt ice-cold. Okay. Deep breath. Here’s the confession. Suddenly, with terrible clarity, my brain told me that
I was the one who had written that book.
I was the one the article was about.
I was the one who had done the terrible things the article claimed.
I had been Found Out.
I was about to get all the horrors I deserved.
I was a horrible person.
It was me.
It was me.
It was me.
I was guilty of everything.
I was exposed.
Believe me or don’t. How can someone who seems to have some intelligence, someone who writes essays and poetry, who makes art believe something so nonsensical? Surely, she’s making it up (I hear those whispers). Part of my myriad mental health issues is a specific difficulty sometimes in recognising when something is real or not. I cannot predict when one of these episodes is about to occur. I don’t always suffer from it on such a large scale. There are always daily small moments, but every so often, there is something cataclysmic like this. I did touch briefly upon this in my last therapy sessions, but they came to an end, and I am still waiting for the High Intensity version to come about (the waiting list is long). My therapist tried to offer me a vague system to help in the interim – to try to help me find an exit route from these confusions, but this all rests on knowing that you are about to enter one of these states and have the time and opportunity to reason with yourself.
I went to bed and didn’t sleep. I got out of bed and tried to do a crossword in the book of them I leave on the table (one of my go-to distraction methods). It didn’t work. I was hollowed out with fatigue. I went back to bed and eventually shivered myself back to sleep. I didn’t make it out to the birds until 8.31 a.m. the next morning.
I didn’t write the truth of these feelings in my diary of that day. I told no one. I kept my struggle to myself – I have learned to be cautious with what I reveal. Many do not believe you, or begin to give you the side eye, then a wide berth. Tittle-tattle behind your back. The word ‘mental’ has been flung at me so many times in my life that I fear it, sense it ever haunting my steps. Having had this word used toward me as an aggressive insult since I was a small child has damaged me irreparably. I didn’t write these feelings down as I was in denial of them – I had discovered a positive act, which was helping me with ‘betterness’ (this nature noticing diary) and I didn’t want this part of me intruding upon it, spoiling it. I often fall into the trap of thinking I can move away from that part of myself; escape and carry on without it. I cannot and should not. I am me and that is that. I must live with that.
I ought to have written to a trusted friend to ask them if it was me that had done it – but friends are so few, I dread losing them. I am ashamed to show them my levels of ‘mad’.
Of course I did not write that book. That book is nothing to do with me, though I have read it. I was rigid with terror for about three days – I found it hard to look out of the windows at the front, in case an angry mob had descended. Angry readers, TV crews, microphones shoved in my face. Every time I went on social media, I dreaded an influx of tagging from angry, disappointed contacts. Many people posted opinions on it (which of course is there right to do), and I read them and all the comments underneath obsessively, with nausea in my throat, high, whistling breaths and a dreadfully dizzying beating heart. My head was swollen with indescribable noise as I waited for hatred to come my way. It didn’t, and I relaxed a little. Enough to realise that I wasn’t responsible for the book in any way, shape or form.
When this adrenaline-fuelled panic state began to lessen, I began to feel layers of shame and embarrassment because of my reaction. As logic began to resurface, my cheeks burned. How did that happen to me again? How could I have thought I have written that book? I admit that I often do not recognise my own work, especially if it has been a while since I have seen it, or if I wrote it in a different mental place. But this was on a scale that humiliated and baffled me.
I was also ashamed of my failings – why hadn’t I spotted the holes in the story? I admit there were places where I had questions. But I put that down to my own failings – it was my fault I was misunderstanding, no matter how many times I reread. It was my rubbish brain and its lack of knowledge. It was my lack of nuance. I have embarrassed myself many times by making my misunderstandings public and it is deeply mortifying to have someone gleefully pick apart your mistakes (and I have had social media contacts who only ever responded to one of my posts if they could do this, and that is on them, not me). So, I kept my uncertainties to myself and assumed it was just me being me.
How thankful I have been for the birds – for the flowers, sky and trees. I have turned to them increasingly, need them more than ever – need them right down into the depths of my soul. I have kept on observing, kept on recording, kept on noticing. They are what is real – magically, reliably, eternally real. My pen makes the shape of their names, my paintbrush the shape of their bodies. And so I am not cured, but carry on.
“…there is another sky, ever serene and fair, and there is another sunshine,
though it be darkness there; never mind faded forests…never mind silent fields—
here is a little forest, whose leaf is ever green; here is a brighter garden, where not
a frost has been; in its unfading flowers I hear the bright bee hum…”
From a letter written by Emily Dickinson, 1851
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Jane, I think you are super brave to share so much with us. It's a very hard thing to reveal the self to others, and then leads to huge doubt that it was even the right thing to do. I think that those of us here who are listening (well, reading) will understand and will be with you (insofar as we are able) in your struggles, as well as getting so much pleasure from your creative work--always. I'm fully with you in the real saving that trees, birds, flowers, all the myriad insects we can observe can grant us. My joy this morning was being woken just before 6 a.m. by the sound of a woodpecker drilling. It has made me smile all day despite feeling totally washed out because I'd had almost no sleep (yes, pain mostly) through Friday night (it usually gets me a day later rather than the following day--I have felt dreadful and untethered and with so little concentration today, but tomorrow will be better). I hope it's okay to share this with you. No need for any response. I hope you will be feeling better by tomorrow.