Thoughts for Samhain, 2013

Guided by the Lonely Star,

Beyond the utmost harbour-bar,

I’ll find the heavens fair and free,

And beaches of the Starlit Sea.

Ship, my ship! I seek the West,

And fields and mountains ever blest.

Farewell to Middle-earth at last.

I see the Star above my mast!”

"Bilbo's Last Song", J.R.R Tolkien

On Thursday it was Halloween, or Samhain, the Celtic new year and the time when the veils between the worlds are at their thinnest, the time when we remember those who have gone before us, and in joy and celebration become that which scares us.

In neo-Pagan tradition, the West is often the direction of the water, and of the dead. It is the realms of the deeps and the setting sun. The way West across the seas is the way home, to the home beyond home, the Isle of the Blessed. In Irish tradition, the sea god Manannan Mac Lir guards the gates to the Otherworld that lie beyond the sea. That last and final journey across the seas is part of our myths and dreams, as Tolkien well knew.

In culture, dreams and stories the ocean is our trusted infinity, the depths from which nothing returns, the great vastness that enacts our ending.

On Tuesday, my sister linked me an article about the oceans, written by Greg Ray in the Newcastle Herald. (http://www.theherald.com.au/story/1848433/the-ocean-is-broken/) It describes yachtsman Ivan Macfadyen's journey from Melbourne to Osaka to San Francisco. When Ivan made the journey ten years ago, there were fish to be caught every day. This time, because of over-fishing and pollution, he caught just two. 

From Osaka to San Francisco, Macfadyen saw one whale, 'rolling sort of helplessly on the surface.' Here, the rubbish was so dense that they were afraid to start their motor for fear of the propellers getting tangled in buoys, ropes, nets and plastic rubbish. They returned to Australia with their yacht dented from the trash, it's yellow colour faded and bleached from the chemicals in the waters. Recalling his previous journeys, Macfadyen said:

"In years gone by I'd gotten used to all the birds and their noises.”

"They'd be following the boat, sometimes resting on the mast before taking off again. You'd see flocks of them wheeling over the surface of the sea in the distance, feeding on pilchards."

This time, apart from the waves, the wind and the thudding of debris against the hull, the voyage was made in virtual silence. For 3000 nautical miles there were “No fish. No birds. Hardly a sign of life at all.”

The responses beneath the article, and to friends I had linked it, were similar. What now? Is there any appropriate action to take to this article – ideally, an action that doesn't turn us into freaks and social pariahs, biting off the head of the supermarket clerk when we're offered plastic bags, lecturing families behind us who have forgotten theirs, raging at our friends for eating packaged salad and drinking from plastic bottles? (I don't do these things. I don't want people to hate me. But I think them.)

And I don't want to eat fish any more – except I do, and I'm a little afraid I might turn into the mother of Oskar, from Gunter Grass' The Tin Drum, who was so sickened by the thing she saw fished from the seas (a rotting horse head), that she died from gorging herself on any fish she could find, as if disgust and desire were – when it comes to the oceans – quite the same.

And maybe if we knew more about the relationship between disgust and desire, if we understood why we need – why we want – to get rid of all the things we are endlessly creating – to make and make and make and then shed and forget - then we'd know something more about what we're doing.

Is there any action we can take? And where – when we remember our dead – can we find a place for remembering that distant awful present that is our dying world?

Not to be depressing, or anything.

I just want to end these contemplations by thinking about darkness. This winter solstice, I broached the darkness of Ditchling beacon alone for the first time in my life, and danced under the stars. I dreamt that night that I had cut off my own electricity and what I loved was falling from the sky, and the next night I dreamt that I had eaten of the Nile, and life couldn't return to it.

These dreams seemed larger than my own stuff – and I think I only had them because I danced in the darkness. What I mean is – what I'm trying to say is – it's all very well to enjoy the dark at Halloween with companionship and celebration - otherwise how would we get through the winter?

But what if there was a way – a necessary way - to find that dark space inside ourselves and to step into it. I mean – the space that isn't full of stuff. That space that isn't about having. The place that is just like the infinity of the oceans – that we mistakenly think is somewhere outside ourselves.

Examples? I eat more than I should, and I know that I do it because beyond doing it is the hunger that feels like a cold night outside alone. I have been frightened of losing my partner to others – because beyond that duet of complicity is the space that reminds me of death.

What are our points of safety beyond which we can feel that infinite darkness, and would it make a difference to the oceans if we could step past them?

That's my Samhain thought.

Sea Lament

There is a wound
too deep for tending
there where the ocean turns
the rending.
In the darkness, there we weep.

We are the torn
and faded graces
ribbed in desolation's faces.
In the darkness, there we weep.

We are the grief
the ocean hears
We are the living
tide of tears
In the darkness, there we weep.

Dark to the song
a blue unbounded
Dark to the depths
the sea be sounded
In the waters, there we weep.
In the waters, there we weep.

The Song of the Albatross

Sunrise,

sunset

upon the wave

a great expanse

of flowing cave

sunset,

sunrise,

upon the land,

a turning bank

of burnished sand.

I am a great white gratitude,

upon the starry sea,

I see the ocean seven-tombed,

I see the world

the warders see.

the rolling rocks,

the stubborn skies,

the way the tender South wind lies,

the fish beneath,

the fish above,

the white canescent moon

I see the place,

the warder knows,

and knead the space

the wind has hewn.

I know the roaring patterns

of wind to lifted wing

the scale-enamoured oceans,

the fluxing shoals that ring against

the banked cliff face

a climate high

gull-scored with nesting song

around its feet,

a fishful foam

turning around

to rocky spume.

and when the stars

are gulfs of light

there comes the moon and I,

we glide the earth towards its girth

of ocean,

folding land to sky.

The things I see when flying

are maps of unspoke words

twixt krill and squid and shark and

breaker

life is a plexus shared by the speaker

death is a point that falls to the deep

opening out into limpets of light.

I journeyed through the journey

a million miles by sea

a million miles again by home,

and then I saw my broken bone.

I couldn't rise

I couldn't fall,

the human things

had thrown the pall.

lengths which catch the salty fish

and slam us in turn from our wings

reaching to the secret deep,

and thinking the enthundered meek

Shall I grieve

for broad white death,

slam to the keening grave?

In life and death

I field the planks

of earth and

greening waves.

A thousand, thousand slimy things

live on and so do I

I am the banks of rot

and feather

under the starry sky.

My death was like a greeting

of the ocean to the land.

My downward slant,

was ready

for the Kraken-kindled sand.

We are the journey bearers

we are the living shore

and when we cannot travel on,

when wings have gone,

we travel more.

Yet I would will,

my grey-white child,

to fly upon

my vital mile.

To keep my watch,

from sea to land,

to guard the salt-white glow.

Instead he was too young

alone

and pecked at gibes of

flummoxed flow

There is no sin in dying

nor killing when done well,

but there are things within the sea

that rise and rise, and cannot swell.

That rise and rise and cannot fall

and rot with a bewildered pall.

The endless sea

is ribbed with bits

that cannot be entombed and stilled

the lightning map

is torn and rent

by that which has no way to end.

We were a great white gratitude,

upon the starry sea,

we saw the ocean seven-tombed,

we saw the world

the warders see.

The rolling rocks,

the stubborn skies,

the way the tender South wind lies,

the fish beneath,

the fish above,

the white canescent moon.

We saw the place,

the warder knows,

kneaded the space

the wind had hewn.

Yet oceanic maps of life

are darker than they were

blinded by the blinding patch

from an encumbered shore.

And I would wish my children life

and not the living death they bore.

For there aren't

albatross enough

to guide the years in.

There are not living birds enough

to hear the weeded wonder sing.

Each wind-scaped bird

is like a grip

which holds a scope of land to sea

and if the birds

are killed by ghosts

each folded place,

will then not be.

The map is growing darker now,

this is a thing I've said,

and I would wish my children life

yet know that they are dead.

And we who guard the tidal night

we hear the rising thunder

and still we watch and still we sing

with wings of flummoxed wonder.

And I might wish for more than flight

to see the deep come to the height

to turn against the living ghosts

to rout them from their watching posts

Yet I am steeped to wind and sea

I am the journey of the free,

I watch and then I living rise,

I rise and then I fall

for watching, flying, dancing, dying,

I can do no wonder more.

Words Rain

Words rain –

breaking  in the gutter

shattering our sutures

and transfiguring the ground.

We have been wearing our umbrellas,

We have been shrinking in our best,

We have been scarfed and laid to rest

but words rain

down.

Words come and break the mirror

flowing deeper

than before

a sudden scattered light

a shard like-flight 

on wooden shore.

We had been sleeping in our shivers

And from pillar slung to pillar

But words rain.

More.

Till we take upon our heads

A ragged cap of motley

Till we rise up from our beds

And throw open all our doors.

Till we whistle to our wolfhounds

Till we clamber to our cliffs

Till we trip the trap of starlight

Till we whet our aching lips

Tomorrow we riddle

Today we ring

Yesterday we were singing.

To words as they cling.

They rain the grass to ribbons

And they rain the o to moon

They rain the foaming pebbles

And they rain the liquid tune.

They rain the new believers

And they rain the falling fool

Whose leap off the cliff-face

Is kiss-faced

Is liquid

And bliss-faced

Is word-paced

As they rain

down the dawn.