the piwakawaka is talking to both of us
{1} interwoven: beginnings
Lovely people, welcome to the first of our interwoven adventures. I’m so thrilled that you are here. Moving forward, interwoven is available only to paid subscribers. But today, on this first day of getting started, I’m opening it up to all as a gift from me to you. I hope that you enjoy it. If you want to join us moving forward, you can subscribe here.
Now, let us begin.
time telling
Goldfinches in long grass || Tui returning to the nectar feeder || Apples falling faster than eating.
noticings
Fog creeping through the trees on the hill, playing hide and seek. Dalmatian coloured cows, that yesterday were far up on the ridgeline, now standing at the perimeter fence watching me. Birds, whose names I wish I knew, singing in the background. Closed dandelion flowers, protecting the butter yellow of their insides against the greyness of the sky. My dog Lupin, snuffling in the grass, letting her nostrils lead the way. A parrot, one then two, insistent in their chirping and flying overhead. Cows grazing, then looking up. They’re beginning to accept me, in this here, my sitting place. The falling surf of the Pacific holds us all, matching her rhythm with the opening and the closing of my cells.
dissent
From This Begins With The Body Of A Woman
“This begins with the body of a woman. She is falling, upward gazing, through a sky who’d forgotten its tune. She forgets, as she falls, there was ever anything besides falling. She forgets, as she falls, there was ever anything except the feeling of reaching, and missing. She forgets, as she falls, there’s a purpose for a body, other than the purpose of surviving.”
There are many autumn nights when the wind makes a sharp and sudden change from north to south, and the clouds of different types converge with the abruptness of two hands brought together in a clap. With the Pacific Ocean at the border of my front paddock, I can see the clashing of the weather as the different systems meet; the dark plum skies bringing full bodied rains in from the bottom of the globe, with the hot, frivolous, and wholly welcome winds that dervish their way and lick my cheeks from the hot-pools of the north.
I sit on my log beneath these winds, on my little farm on the South Island of Aotearoa New Zealand and I do not let myself sit easily. I’m feeling restless. The kind of restless that is familiar for the simple reason she’s greeted me many times before.
In truth I feel tired and perhaps a bit bereft. A strange gloom of depression lingers on the side. I understand these feelings to be both tangible and existential. Tangible in that for many years I have been working hard, learning, moving with a high degree of output and perhaps not the necessary rest. Existential in that the experience is almost atmospheric; a loneliness, a disconnect, an environmental, climatic, intercontinental grief that weaves its way inside me like a serpent searching for opening in soil. This darkness, even if it is familiar, is not a state of being I want to call my home.
I know that I need help, but I’m not sure what that really means. I know I want to help, but I’m not sure what that means either.
It occurred to me that the place in which I’m sitting- my place under the volcanic dome of Mopanui, bordered by the mountains and the sea- has been the place that I had spent the most time over the course of my whole life. Good chunks of my years have been spent in travel or in transience. Some of them running to or away from places to define who or what I am separate to those who birthed and raised me. Many of which I have worked in and researched. Those places, which extend both near and far, I have sought to know to best of my ability, but time or circumstance, or both have determined that it was short lived or superficial to the extent I desire now.
Perhaps, before, back then, it was more a question of energy and focus.
Now I find myself wanting something different. I spend my days writing, observing, speaking of connection, of relationships with animals, the non-human- specifically horses- and with people seeking full and vital lives. But it feels- glaringly, overwhelmingly- that these conversations are too narrow in their focus. That we’ve lost something intrinsic to our well-being, that ultimately determines our connection to each other: our sense of place, a sense of relationship with the land that both holds and witnesses us, for whatever length of time that ends up being.
That I have lost this.
And it’s for this I feel
a grief.
I wish to reject the push and grind, the distractions that cause me to notice things that are not worthy of my noticing. It is from all these conditioned ideas, this existential disconnection that
I
dissent.
What you are doing with me now is my attempt to remember the things that reside in the clay of my body, below the realm of what is conscious- my sense of place, my knowing of the land deeply and intimately. I want to remember it back where I can put it into words and offer it for sharing, to those who wish to remember also.
As Sharon Blackie says, it’s a weird type of sickness to not allow yourself to be fully in the place that you stand. I feel I have spent several years, for one reason or another, doing simply that. And now, as I have said, I choose to do it for no longer.
interwoven- the name of what it is we’re exploring together now- is a narrative observation, a series of invitations that you may choose to take on board or to discard as you see fit, as you voyage along with me. I feel that if I am truly to know the land and this place, then I have to let it lead. It’s for this reason that there is no strict line of enquiry that I am laying out for us to follow. We will spiral with the weather, the tides, and the seasons as they passage through the day. These practices, this writing has become, for me, another, everyday way that I attempt to save my own life. Or, at least, to call it back to the rhythm that I know it wants of me.
And I feel sure, that for someone out there- perhaps that’s you- within your own seekings and knowings of wonder that you might yearn to do the same.
Small Stories
barefoot
I am barefoot. I have fed the horses, and now on the concrete floor of the hay shed, I peel off my socks and shoes and step out into the slimy cold dampness of the newly sodden ground. To be barefoot in this moment feels a specific form of naked. A vulnerability. A direct connection to the earth no longer mediated by shoes.
Inside, my feet are used to free ranging. Outside, it is different. Here, they require an altered conversation. Walking is transformed. No longer a meaningless trajectory to get from A to B, but a conversation with the landscape,
a process of path noticing,
and of finding
and of care.
My skin exposed feet, with every movement forward, ask, hope, that the land takes care of them. They pay attention,
become seers,
of every edge that feels
sharper,
every rock that sticks out
slightly higher,
every patch that provides some form of
comfort
underfoot.
This land is for more than just your stepping,
the soil reminds them.
The toes pray their navigation systems are in order. That they can weave and wind their way across cluttered and occupied ground, ensuring they land with the minimum of harm to those living busy lives beneath them, that an absence of resistance be provided in return.
They remain light, alert. They cannot afford to be heavy with the weight of responsibility, the responsibility of carrying a body such as mine.
I recognize, with the constancy of shoes, my internal mapping system sent out through the soles of my feet fades to black. In a regular shoed state, messages from earth must fight to reach my head. I am a careless, lazy walker, despite my best efforts not to be. I am not required to notice how I might best support the land and where the natural pathways might open in return. I can simply decide it’s over there that I must go, and off it is I march.
When I am barefoot, my feet pick the pace, and my mind is forced to follow. If there are stones, there is no rushing, no matter how quickly I might seek to get to that place over there, or how little time my mind tells me I might have. Her opinion is secondary, superfluous in fact.
Barefoot, I require the outer soles of skin, the land that’s underneath it and the finer workings of my brain have a different conversation.
In my many years of working with the nervous system and its relationship to movement, I understand the toes function as antennae. Nerve endings extending from the edges of my skin, reaching out, checking the ground ahead for safety. Literally and metaphorically intuiting the way forward.
I look down at my feet and see in many ways they’re a metaphor of my relationship with the world. They are white, like base layer ceramics. From inside to out they are narrow, to the point where in the past, they’ve been hard to fit a shoe. The toes are long, elegant, or so they’ve been described.
I have hands that match my feet. Piano playing fingers, more than one person has remarked.
But I do not want elegant feet or piano playing fingers. I want to look down where I stand and have the words sing out my mouth,
those are feet that barefoot climb the mountains.
those are feet that barefoot show the busy mind the way.
those are campfire feet, whose ruddy complexions and calloused hides can sit and tell you stories.
those are feet that are joining, leading the dissent.
piwakawaka || fantail
I walk to my log on my way to write and as I wind my way through the trees, a Piwakawaka || Fantail flies so close I feel the breeze of her tiny wings as cascading waves of air across my face. Instinctively, I catch my breath, my bodies attempt to internalize the blessing.
I try to be still, stiller still, hopeful, maybe that if I become solid like a tree, she will somehow land on me, although I’m not entirely sure why this feels important. Perhaps, the landing I could take to mean something extra, indicate a specialness somehow, as though the interaction that I’m having is not already enough.
I sit down in the mud where my feet are standing, attempting to control the seconds for a few moments longer. Like my willingness to sit down in the mud somehow adds an extra dollop of deserving. Maybe now, she will come and land on me. She sings, speaks out loud, and I wonder if her friends are with her, perhaps outside my eye-line, or if, as I would like to believe, she is speaking directly to me.
Once, someone asked me, what if I’m wrong, in my expectation, belief that the trees and birds and the everything’s around me are talking to me back. That we are, in fact, in conversation.
The answer, to my relief, came and found me straight away.
Even if I’m wrong, I tell them in reply, believing it is so, that together we are talking, makes my life infinitely better.
So here I am, sitting in the mud. Writing to you.
The Piwakawaka is talking to both of us.
invitations
Your invitations for this week form part of an observation practice that I weave into my life daily, as well as encouraging you to actively define and outline your place; the one where you currently live. Both the Time Tellings and the Noticings are how I lead my journaling practice, and they will frame our experiences moving forward.
For your own purpose, you can choose to engage with these prompts however you wish. The aim is simply to be observant and to note day to day what you experience from a sensory perspective.
This week’s exploration of place we will get to shortly.
i. Time Telling
From Small Bodies of Water, by Nina Mingya Powles, Canongate Books, 2021
“According to the ancient Chinese lunisolar calendar, which is an agricultural calendar, each lunar month can be divided up into two jieqi solar terms. Each solar term can be divided into three micro-seasons. These micro-seasons mark a single event in the life cycle of plants and animals. This means there are seventy-two small seasons within one lunar year. Every five days brings a new season.
When I first learned about the seventy-two seasons, I obsessively translated and wrote down the most poetic ones I could find. I discovered that I was born during the month of lined clothing, in the solar term of summer’s arrival, in the season of untangling deer antlers. My mum was born during the season of the wild geese flying north.”
I was walking up the stone cobbled track that winds underneath a patch of tall Manuka’s and to my left, handful upon handful of goldfinches took off in flight. I stopped, completely overwhelmed and surprised to see not just one or two, but hundreds, perhaps thousands of them darting through the grass and then resting on the branches that sat against the skyline. They appeared like apparitions, absent yesterday and yet everywhere today. The season of the Goldfinches in Long Grass had begun.
The practice of noting changes in the environment around us will form part of the how we structure things moving forward, providing a backdrop to the changing areas of focus we explore.
For me, weekly, seasonal recording creates a more elemental relationship with time, and my participation with it. Delighting in the changes, on what thrives and what drops away from day to day and week to week is a reminder to not resist seasonal change but to take on what is necessary and let go of what is not; to flow with and not resist.
What signs and movements around you mark the season of your week?
From now on, we’ll create a habit of taking note of them.
ii. Noticings
From Shepherdess Magazine, Summer 22/ 23, p. 44, Reading The Water
“I’m like the mother figure behind the scenes,” Bronwyn, 63, says of her mentoring role for the professional anglers. “I encourage them to study the water, to pick up the stones and see the insects under there, train them to be observant. There’s a saying, you fish the water with your eyes first. You don’t just charge in. You watch those little ripples and pockets. You’re trying to learn to read the water.”
A list of noticings will change your life, and it’s as simple and as difficult as it sounds. One of the most precious resources that we have is our attention; if a deeper relationship with place is what we desire, then we want to dedicate time to giving it our sweet attention as much as possible.
I’ve heard this spoken about a couple of different ways, and the reality is there’s no right or wrong. Along with my seasonal time telling, I write ten sensory observations at the start of my writing each day. Where you sit, as you stand, don’t get into the place of needing to curate a time or space to make your list. This is just about improving your attention and observational skills.
Occasionally, I give them a poetic twist (I can’t help it, it’s just what comes out from the end of my pen, and let’s face it, we’re not at school) but really the aim is to keep it objective; to record and detail something as it is, without the need to make it something that it isn’t (our minds love to fill in imagined blanks which prevents us from actually seeing).
If developing your writing is something that interests you, then this is a powerful exercise in observation that will deepen your experience both with the world and with your words.
If you want to keep this away from the page and direct to your experience, then you can notice things as you walk and say them out loud. Go wild. Do it however you want.
Just pay attention daily and note things down objectively. Or occasionally not so objectively, as the rebel in me insists.
In any case, devote yourself to making a daily list. A list of tens things you observe, or that you captured within five minutes of dedicated attention. Written down, caught in art or said out loud in the spaces of your mind.
iii. The ground beneath your feet
David Whyte, in “CONSOLATIONS: The Solace, Nourishment and Underlying Meaning of Everyday Words.” David Whyte and Many Rivers Press 2015
“To come to ground is to find a home in circumstances and in the very physical body we inhabit in the midst of those circumstances and above all to face the truth, no matter how difficult that truth may be; to come to ground is to begin the courageous conversation, to step into difficulty and by taking that first step, begin the movement through all difficulties, to find the support and foundation that has been beneath our feet all along: a place to step onto, a place on which to stand and a place from which to step.”
What is the ground under your feet, and have you allowed yourself to know it? No matter how transient or temporary your experience may be?
If I was to drop a pin on an outline of the earth, in this place I sit in now, you would find me seated at the top of our front paddock, at the base of the steep, domed rise of Mopanui. I’m overlooking a tidal estuary known as Purakaunui Inlet, and although from my sitting spot, the inlet itself looks to form a bay, if my feet walked directly out and across her packed mud flats, I’d shortly find myself in the Pacific Ocean, on the eastern perimeter of the South Island of Aotearoa New Zealand.
This inlet forms part of the geographic zone that is My Place. I may not own her by any legal or human design, nor do I wish to. But I have walked her silken underbelly with my bare feet, swum in her salty waters at high tide and felt her acoustic song together with my horse’s hooves as I’ve raced along her shorelines. When I feel the tightness of frustration or the purple bruises of sadness on my insides; when the sun reflects off her in way that makes her topline shine like newly frozen ice, she has held me and welcomed me all the same.
If we let go of the limits of our place being defined or restricted to the land we own, rent, or that holds the foundation of a home, then we begin to develop a sense of place beyond what is formally prescribed. Our relationship becomes energetic as well as physical, intimate as well as geographical, personal as much as they are communal. The places that we witness, and the place that witnesses us just the same.
Our adventure this week involves identifying your place by bioregion and geographic zone. There are places we belong to that exist far from where we physically find ourselves, and whilst we will acknowledge those, this week’s adventure is of paying attention to the ground beneath your feet.
It may be that the place you find yourself in right now is not what you might define as “your place”. Acknowledge and record it anyway. The land is deserving of your attention.
We can be here now for as long or as little as life defines, and still allow ourselves to know this place, the one that holds us now.
You can draw it, outline it with words, or just take some time to intentionally consider your place.
end notes
I love to hear your thoughts and adventures. Feel free to share them in the comments or add them to the chat- I’ll be sending out a note inviting you to this week’s interwoven chat shortly.
Take care of your gentle selves,
xx Jane
Where is the place that you find yourself currently? I'm going to make a drawing of "my place"
later today (when I've finished I'll add it to the chat thread that I'm going to send you an invitation to shortly!), but I'd love to hear about the place you are in, and where in the world you are at the moment 👣
My place where I am now was familiar to me somehow when I came here even tho I had never been here before in my current life. The pull felt magnetic. A deep resonance. Love. I left to live in the desert for 6 years and then felt this land called me back home. So for the second time in my life I have a piece of paper and a mortgage to “own” something that is a gift and can never really be owned. I feel ancestors of this land supporting me here. I am in the US state of Minnesota. The Lakota Sioux once called this area home. Now it is referred to as the Driftless region . Bluffs and coulees along the Mississippi River, underground caves, springs, trout streams, fossils from a long ago sea bed, all missed somehow by the last glaciers. Hence the name Driftless. The little farm where I live with my animals is on the ridge top overlooking the Mississippi River, the closest little town Is Brownsville, MN. I am very grateful to be on this interwoven journey with you all!