I spend time inside looking out. The sky changes a lot. Its shifts are rapid and dramatic. The trees change too, but over longer periods of time. The high levels of rain this year have encouraged an exceptional verdancy and abundance. Looking out, I can almost forget that I am in a block of newish flats in an old urban area. The person walking on the pavement below seems dwarfed by the splendour of the leaves. The road is very quiet for a late morning. The wheel of the year turns, approaching its summer zenith in this part of the world.
I am settling in to a higher number for my official age. In social gerontology, there are (or have been) three kinds of ‘old’: young-old (50-64), middle-old (65-74) and old-old (75+). I am now old-old and statistically immune from premature death. These classifications don’t quite fit my lived experience, but they are a sort of landmark all the same.
Elaine and I have been together for nine days following her repatriation and subsequent stay in a local hospital. We are learning how to live a new phase of our relationship where she has high needs and is housebound, and I am in a ‘caring’ role in the institutional sense of that term. We are learning as we go along and doing our best to be conscious about our experience as well as practical in an ‘activities of daily living’ sense. I think we are doing OK. We are establishing new patterns of day to day life and Elaine’s capacity is increasing.
Mostly I leave the flat only for shopping and other practical tasks and, because we are so well situated, these don’t take long. On Saturday Elaine and I both felt comfortable and confident with me going out on a one hour recreational walk. I continue with a regular practice and journaling. I still practice within a Druid circle (grove) and I find this healing and re-energising. At the same time my work has been referenced more to five personal commitments rather than to tribal membership, religious devotion or spiritual metaphysics. Recently I have been contemplating my commitments and checking out whether they still work for me. These are:
1. I will work from the stillness of the centre.
2. I will cultivate good will towards self, others, and the wider web of being.
3. I will cultivate positive health and well-being, within whatever constraints may apply.
4. I will cultivate discernment, creativity and wisdom, to the best of my understanding and capacity.
5. I will cultivate a life of abundance in simplicity, living lightly on the earth.
I do see a danger in lists like these: they can become a frozen and pious – an internal rhetorical performance. For me, contemplative inquiry keeps my commitments alive, suggesting revisions if necessary. This is my direction, going forward, in the unfolding chapter of my life.
On 12 May I wrote: “I hope soon to get some sense of how soon Elaine will come home, and what resources we will need for our lives going forward. It’s my 75th birthday on 25 May, and my best present would be to have Elaine home by then.” (1) Today is 25 May, and my wife Elaine is indeed coming home from the Gloucester Royal hospital. It has felt like a long absence for both of us and we are glad to move into a new chapter of our lives.
Yesterday evening I went Alney Island, a Gloucester wetland, for a brief contemplative walk. The footbridge near Gloucester docks has been repaired and after many months the island is easy to reach again. Back on the island, I loved its sense of growth and abundance in the summer evening light. I felt care-free. I had almost forgotten how much experiences like this nourish me.
This is a festive moment in my life: a significant birthday, Elaine’s return, celebrating a moment in the year that makes me glad to be alive. I feel refreshed, heartened and re-energised.
The Song of Amergin, here sung in Old Irish Gaelic, is the oldest known extant song in the Atlantic Archipelago*. The performers here are An Tuagh, whose core focus is the Gaelic-Norse traditions of northern Scotland. They have a YouTube channel, a Facebook page and an Instagram presence. The Song of Amergin is featured in their album Bard and Skald, as is a Beith-Luis-Nun Ogham chant. If you subscribe to the An Tuagh YouTube channel, there are commentaries on both pieces. The one for the Song of Amergin includes both Irish and English texts. However versions vary widely and An Tuagh have copyrighted theirs. I have included an open source English version below, to give some impression of what is being sung.
I am the sea blast I am the tidal wave I am the thunderous surf I am the stag of the seven tines I am the cliff hawk I am the sunlit dewdrop I am the fairest of flowers I am the rampaging boar I am the swift-swimming salmon I am the placid lake I am the summit of art I am the vale echoing voices I am the battle-hardened spearhead I am the God who inflames desire Who gives you fire Who knows the secrets of the unhewn dolmen Who announces the ages of the moon Who knows where the sunset settles
I have listened to An Tuagh’s rendition of the Song of Amergin a number of times, sinking into a sense of shared presence with something preciously archaic and other. An Tuagh are the intermediaries, helping me to catch an after echo of that time. I don’t have fully to understand it, but simply respond. I am grateful both to the old culture, and to skillful modern bards.
I am walking among trees, feeling refreshed and renewed after a long winter. This feeling is anchored by the return of leaves. I am present in, and to, the presence of new green. It comes every year, at slightly different times. I’m noticing the beginning of a beautiful verdant period. It’s re-appeared a little early this year and I experience this as a great blessing.
Where I live, the early spring has been wet and windy, often with dull skies. Nature has been alive and active throughout this period, but I have remained wintry in important respects. This weekend has changed me. I am aware of new green leaves and a strengthening sun. The latter may be visually dimmed by frequent of heavy cloud, but the leaves reassure me of its power in the rising year. Although we are still far from a full canopy in the woods, the life-force – in modern Druidry often called nwyfre – is strong. It’s a time for celebration.
I’m walking in my local park. It’s a dull day in the first half of March. There have been many such days, and I could do with more sun. I certainly feel lifted when it comes. At the same time the days are longer and Mother Nature is busy with the work of spring: an abundance of willow catkins is testament to this.
I get my strongest impression of the strength and fecundity of willow when close up. The individual catkins are clearer, more prominent. The colours are stronger. There’s the sense of a rich and vibrant ecosystem, powerfully alive.
Still images don’t provide movement and sound, or indicate the presence of the March wind. I have tried to capture this in my short video below, illustrating another aspect of this moment in the year. It brought up fond childhood memories of Kenneth Grahame’s The Wind in the Willows which begins with spring cleaning and includes the gently Pagan chapter The Piper at the Gates of Dawn.
Willow became important to me in my early study and practice of Druidry. I began a special relationship with a particular willow in Bristol for many years (2), which continued after I left the city and continues sporadically to this day. I also developed a private tradition of following the wheel of the year through a mandala based on 16 trees, all in easy distance of where I lived, with Willow the focus from 17 March to 7 April, hence presiding over the spring equinox (3). Checking in with the willows is a continuing feature of my walks, though I was a little early this year.
(1) Kenneth Grahame The Wind in the Willows London: Dean, in association with Methuen’s Children’s Books, 1991. (Ist ed. 1908. Illustrated by E. H. Shepard)
Highly recommended to anyone interested in Chinese traditional poetry and culture, and the way it is received in China today. I looked at an aspect of Michael Wood’s In the Footsteps of Du Fu: China’s Greatest Poet (1) in my last post (2). This is a full book review. The back cover provides an accurate basic summary of its contents: “For a thousand years Du Fu (712-70 CE) has been China’s most loved poet. Born into the golden age of the Tang Dynasty, he saw his world collapse in famine, war and chaos. The poet and his family became impoverished refugees, but his profound vision and his empathy for the sufferings of humanity endured, and have endeared him to readers ever since. … Broadcaster and historian Michael Wood follows in Du Fu’s footsteps on a pilgrimage through the physical and emotional landscapes of his life and work”.
The book, lavishly illustrated, is divided into 24 chapters. Many of these are headed by place names. Michael Wood visited most of them on his own journey, talking with scholars and enthusiasts and also taking time to observe the very different China of today. The narrative is somewhat tilted towards the last 15 years of Du Fu’s life, when the War of An Lushan (3) displaced Du Fu and turned him into an internal refugee, constantly on the move, for the rest of his life. It is also seen as the period of his best poetry.
The first chapters of the book emphasise the easy optimism of Du Fu’s early years. A new Emperor, himself a painter, musician and poet, launched a cultural rebirth. He was a patron of libraries and scholars. He ruled a prosperous and peaceful country. Du Fu writes nostalgically of childhood years in which “rice was succulent … the granaries were full, and there was not a robber on the road in all the 9 provinces of China”. Growing up in the city of Gong-yi on the Yellow River, the son of an Imperial official, Du Fu looked forward to a successful life as both official and poet. “I’d read everything and I thought I was superb”. He went to Chang’an and took his exams for the Imperial service.
He failed them. “In the blue sky my wings failed me”. For some years he went on a series of family supported wanderings, honed his poetic skills and became interested in the Chinese version of Mahayana Buddhism. Returning to Chang’an he failed the exams again, but managed to get a lowly official job, married, and began to raise a family. He settled them in Fengxian near the capital, a place that featured hot springs. Although he had to be available at Chang’an, he visited often. At this point his poetry began to show a concern for ordinary people.
Here at the hot spring the emperor entertains his court
And music echoes around the hills.
Only the rich and powerful bathe here.
But the silk they wear was woven by people,
women whose husbands are beaten for their taxes.
In 755, even before war broke out, China was devasted by floods and a resultant famine. Du Fu lost an infant son to starvation and wrote that he was ashamed to be a father. Famine threatened again, on the road, after the rebel victory:
My little girl bit me in her hunger
And fearful that wolves or tigers would hear her cries
I hugged her to my chest, muffling her mouth,
But she struggled free and just cried more.
Michael Wood provides a map of the family’s subsequent movements, generally in the rugged, often spectacular and less populated west of China. They could never settle for very long, as political and military conditions remained volatile and unsafe. I describe Du Fu’s sojourn in Chengdu in my pervious post (2). Towards the end of his life, conditions seemed to be easing and the family began moving back east via the Yangtze river, in gradual steps. This gives Michael Wood the opportunity to describe his own experience of the hyper-modern city of Chongqing, though Kuizhou and the spectacular Three Gorges area are more important to Du Fu and his work. Wood says that, “in the Gorges, though it had been at great cost to himself, Du Fu’s gift was creative and imaginative freedom”. His output was prolific, and drew on a meditatively close encounter with nature.
Crescent moon stilled in the clear night
Half-abandoned to sleep, lamp wicks blossom
In echoing mountains unsettled deer stir
Falling leaves startle locusts.
By this time Du Fu was worn down by asthma, diabetes and years of hardship. Though he got a little further down river, he never made it to his original home. Nonetheless he was able to be defiantly celebratory:
Old and tired, my hair white, I dance and sing out:
Goosefoot cane, no sleep, catch me if you can!
Du Fu died at the age of 58 in Changsha in Hunan Province. Michael Wood went there simply to complete the journey, but was rewarded with a new lens on Du Fu’s work and the creative tradition he came from. He met Professor Yang Wu at the University there. One of her interests is “the living oral tradition of poetry and the possibility of reconstructing the ancient music that might have accompanied it”. Research on ancient poetry and music is an expanding subject in today’s China. Du Fu’s poetry has been preserved in Hunan oral tradition as well as in manuscripts. A local tradition of poetry clubs has survived the early Communist period. Now it is reviving and being encouraged. Professor Wu and her students have been busy with making replica’s of Tang dynasty instruments – for example the qin, a seven-stringed instrument with strings of twisted silk. They are finding manuscript records of early musical settings, and sound-recording local people’s singing. For me this adds another dimension to Du Fu’s work – where he can be understood , in part, as the lyricist for music that was performed in group and public settings.
In the Footsteps of Du Fu is highly informed and engagingly written. For me is also a beautiful artefact, though eminently portable, not at all a coffee table book. I rarely buy printed books now because the print is too small for me. But I was fine with this one and the illustrations are a joy. Another reason for my strong recommendation.
(1) Michael Wood In The Footsteps of Du Fu: China’s Greatest Poet London: Simon and Schuster, 2023
(3) In December 755 An Lushan, a Turkic general in the Imperial service, marched on China’s then capital city, Chang’an, from North China with a quarter of a million men. They inflicted a series of defeats on the Imperial army and occupied Chang’an in July 756. An Lushan was assassinated by his own son in 757 but the war continued for 7 years. Tang dynasty China, whilst nominally lasting for decades longer, was never the same again.
Personal note: Michael Wood’s introduction begins: “if you love literature of any kind, you will have had one of those moments when you encounter a book that opens a window onto a world you never dreamed existed. Mine was at school when I first encountered Du Fu in A. C. Graham’s wonderful Poems of the Late T’ang.” I had my own version of the same experience, and still have my battered old copy. Du Fu is transliterated in that and some other translations as Tu Fu. The price, in the top left corner of the cover (see picture) is 4/- (four shillings, or 20 pence in post-1970 UK money). I have never been a formal student or scholar in this domain, but modern English translations of classical Chinese poetry have left a deep impression on me. Another poem from this collection can be found in this blog at: https://contemplativeinquiry.blog/2016/02/04/poem-a-withered-tree/
Michael Wood In The Footsteps of Du Fu: China’s Greatest Poet London: Simon and Schuster, 2023
This poem welcomes spring and also celebrates arrival at a place of safety. For a brief period in the early 760s the Chinese poet Du Fu (712 – 770 CE) had a cottage and garden in Chengdu, the Brocade City. It was a time of social breakdown in China and although from the landowning and mandarin class, Du Fu and his family had become refugees in their own country. At times, during their wanderings in the rugged terrain of western China, they were shelterless and close to starvation. Nonetheless, Du Fu retained an underlying resilience. Despite everything his capacity to notice, contemplate, feel, care and write were not compromised. One of his earlier poems, written when trapped in the rebel occupied capital Chang’an (City of Eternal Peace, now Xi’an), begins:
“The state is destroyed, but the country remains.
In the City in spring grass and weeds grow everywhere.
Grieving for the times, even the blossom sheds tears
Hating the separation birds startle the heart.”
As part of his following in Du Fu’s footsteps, Michael Wood visited Chengdu and talked to local people and tourists from other parts of China. Why does Du Fu matter to them now? One older local resident said that he came to the garden – now a well kept heritage site – “at least once a month” to reflect on Du Fu’s poetry. “For a long time we suffered, now we are better off, but today society is very materialistic, and spiritual things are going away. But I feel these things still matter, and here in this place you can go right into his mind: the thoughts and feelings of someone from so long ago. To me, this is a miracle. The garden here is big enough to get lost in, away from the public, especially if you come early in the morning. I sit in a corner and recall him, maybe read out one of his poems out loud, and reflect on it”. He described this as his meditation.
Below is an imaginary portrait of Du Fu by the artist Jiang Zhaohe (1904 -1986). It was done in 1959, during Mao’s Great Famine, described by Michael Wood as “one of China’s most shattering disasters”.
A familiar sight, in a familiar place. I’ve been living in Gloucester for two years now. This is the first February since 2019 in my personal life that I might call ‘normal’. The Covid-19 pandemic and relocations dominated the February’s of 2020-2023. Hyper-vigilant states aren’t such a feature for me in February 2024. My reduced anxiety has allowed a certain laziness and I have found it welcome.
Contemplating the image above, I greet these winter-skeletal trees as friends, today part of my internalised psychic territory. On this occasion, a 9 February walk, I call the afternoon ‘grey’ because of my initial response to the sky. The label has meaning for me as a first impression though it does over-generalise. Looking more closely, I find the sky turbulent and mixed. White hides the afternoon sun. There are indications of movement and change, and hints of blue. A slender branch yearns upwards to the hidden sun, pursuing fresh life and growth. That sun has moved well beyond midwinter. It may not yet be spring, but the days are longer and at times I experience a real warmth.
Moving on and now looking downwards, I discover a different world. Here there is evidence of both sunlight and shadow on the path. Mud and the puddles from refreshing rain too, with vivid green grass beside on the verges..
But the the most obviously verdant signs of annual regeneration in February 2024 are in the undergrowth beside the path. Here, in the picture below, is a feast of green freshness. New-appearing nettles are strongly present. They may sting to protect themselves yet they also nourish and heal. They have enriched our lives in many ways for a very long time. When I was ill with respiratory problems at times in 2021 and 2022 I valued them as a tea. I was pleased to meet the rising generation on my walk.
My memory of February 2024 will feature the colours grey and green as strong markers of this intermediate season. A blessing our lives, and a blessing on the land!
Yesterday – 3.30 pm or so – I was walking home swiftly from a shopping expedition. I was slowed down and halted by the water in Gloucester docks. It drew my eye and asked for a closer look. It had clearly been iced up in the previous cold night, and had been slowly melting in this bracing but above-zero day.
The sky is clear and I experience a strengthening sun now. I recollect that we are now several weeks beyond the solstice. The balance of light, shade, stillness and fluidity sends me into a more deeply meditative state, entirely trumping my original sense of domestic mission and wanting to be home.
Ice and water are made of the same stuff, manifesting in different ways. The patterns on the surface look still but tell a story of transformation – here, from fixed to free. Another drop in temperature could easily end and indeed reverse this process. In this space I see the same essence adopting different forms under different conditions. But here the change is gentle. The contemplative moment extends itself. I am open to the magic of nature. In such beauty, I find peace and stillness within my own being.
It is 3 January 2024, around 8.30 am. I repeat my best wishes to all readers for 2024 from inside the new year, as it begins to unfold. I contemplate the sky, uncertain about what this new year may bring. At some level I feel open and uncluttered, free of over-determined intentions. It is as if I have surrendered to a current.
My Contemplative Inquiry, once a formal structured project, has gradually evolved into a simpler and more natural-seeming contemplative inquiry in no need of capitalisation. This inquiry is wired in, no longer in need of much external input or formalised internal effort. I am aware of owing a debt to the formal structured project, with its inputs and efforts, for it enabled this evolution to occur.
The result of the early, more formal, years is recorded in my ABOUT section. It was simultaneously a gnosis and the discovery of a place to stand that felt right and made sense. “My inquiry has been a pathway to greater understanding, healing and peace. In the contemplative moment, I am living presence in a field of living presence, at home in a living world. This is not dependent on belief or circumstance, but on the recognition of what is given, joy and sorrow alike. I find that this simple recognition moves me towards a spirit of openness, a fuller acceptance that nothing stays the same, an ethic of interdependence and a life of abundant simplicity”. My inquiry today is about deepening, and living more congruently and confidently from this place. It is part of me now, and I foresee no end.
Contemplative Inquiry 