A Meadow Year
It won't look like much until it blooms
An oak tree
1I was talking with a couple of weeks ago about how our years ahead were shaping up, or not. Some years, there is a project that takes all our energy, like At Work In The Ruins did for him, and Found and Ground did for me in 2022. Those years, there’s one huge thing standing out as the focus of our energy, totemic, like a spreading oak in the middle of a field. Other years, it can seem like our energy is scattered and broadcast in all directions. It can feel like all the work we are doing, the research, the admin, the writing, the organising, doesn’t seem to add up to anything, let alone something grand.
Last year felt scattered for me. I did lots of interesting things, the book came out to great reviews, I wrote here every week and sowed seeds for future projects. Yet by the end of the year, single again and exhausted from a winter tour with a friend where I hadn’t seen a dry sunny day for over a month, I found my grain stores empty and my heart a blasted winter field, unfit even for crows. I hunkered down in my flat unable to start writing the new book, puzzled as to why I was so empty, until I remembered what grief does to the body. So I waited.2
Talking with friends is like spring water to me, which also means I sometimes neglect it in favour of another cup of strong tea when I should return to the source… Talking with D last month, the image of a meadow came to mind, and set my heart at rest. Perhaps you too are sowing seeds by the handful, hoping that some of them will take. They will: not all of them, but some, for sure. Writing job applications or writing songs, digging an allotment, mending a marriage, organising a community event, making a living, studying, recovering from illness. Maybe this year will be a meadow year for you, a bit of this and that, a few weeks of flurry then a pause, for it all to begin again. It won’t look like much from the outside, or the inside, sometimes. Some days we’ll compare ourselves to illustrious friends and momentarily feel like failures.
But one day by sunshine, grace and good rain, our meadow will bloom. No one else would have thought to sow the poppy by the aquilegia, or the meadowsweet by the red clover, but it’ll work, because we put sackfuls of our good energy and intent into it. Then we remember how we spent days removing the toxic rubbish, clearing up what others had dumped on us, and emptying the silted up channels, so that clean water could flow back in to the land from the greater stream. Most of the work was in non-doing, we’ll remember, in leaving things alone to germinate in their own time. To trusting in the mycelia and worm-work, which is rightly out of our hands.
And when it blooms, life will fly in on the wing from all directions. The goodness of it will be honest and beautiful. A meadow is not just one thing and you can’t point at it with one finger. It’ll need us to climb up a tree to take the breadth of it in, with the sweep of a whole arm and a sigh, then finally we can clamber down again to lie back in the long grass and rest.
A fallow field
I have been enjoying recent posts by
including this one from last week, about fallow fields, forgiveness of debts and a sacred levelling in Mosaic law. Modernity requires us to use ourselves up, to see our time, energy and attention as fungible resources rather than as expressions of yearnings of soul. This is profoundly damaging for health, relationships, as well as for the Earth. A grateful response, scattered with the wild seeds of my own week, follows.Year of Jubilee A Sabbath year of the heart all debts deemed repaid nothing to be grown this season but that which plants itself field mice, vetch and fallow deer thistle, buzzard, fox today they scraped the irate flesh found it not a threat I toast this with pastel de nata and coffee with a friend we speak of the love wars missions, wishes, loss no gauze left in my kit threadbare wounded men now must cut their own cloth and field dress their gashes or chew mush from ribwort mending, feeding, washes I am heading back to church the cliff the field the forest for a whole year by myself an anchorite of edges thanking cells that – blessed day - won’t overgrow, clump, smother forgive us our debts the heart-workers came to plough found the landlord no longer landed but standing, plaiting her hair no seed for them to fetch only lilies, ribwort, vetch
Making sand of the mountain
In January, I noticed the Explore Notes feature on Substack was full of post after post of people writing about writing on Substack. How to get your first thousand followers, how to get a six-figure book deal from it, then how to teach people the secret to your success via viral posts and webinars. Some other, perhaps more writerly, writers were frustrated, surely the newcomers could write about something other than writing on Substack? Anything!
But I thought, well, clearly I was missing a trick.
So, here is my expert advice. If you follow it to the letter I am convinced you will gain untold success, influence and wealth.3
‘Follow these simple guidelines to make your fortune writing on Substack’
At the head of the track, look back and call to the others Once over the pass, collect all the ammonites within reach Four pollarded maritime pines will mark the way, leave fossils as gifts Fill your bottle, as this is the last place to gather water until Bealach na Bà Shout loudly so the Cailleach knows you see her Be glad the waterfall is slowly making sand of the mountain Looking both north and south, feel the stretch but make no choices Interleave every straight thought with a curved one Resist the urge to end the sweep of the brush’s line with a point If a cormorant passes to your left, turn around and ask at the first house for honey If you receive honey then pass it back amongst the others, using heather stalks as spoons At the western shore the gate opens so go through it onto the sand Don’t be late, I will meet you at the Black House on the spit’s end The last 600 miles take between 5 heart beats and a year or so There is no direct path between the spit and the gate Between my grandmother’s dream and The Run in full spate That is why we always carry questions, love and good hard cheese.
This week’s good things: I am researching images for the section about making and using artist’s pastels in my next book. I have come across many works I did not know, including some from the 18th Century that rival oil paintings in their technical refinement and several in their beauty, too. You can enjoy some of them in high resolution, at this interesting blog.
My podcast section now has all previously recorded audio from each of my posts. In future, each audio post will get uploaded separately as a podcast as well as the usual in-post voiceover. This feature means that people can listen via their favourite podcast apps, listen to several one after the other more easily, and have simpler ways to save it for re-listening. It was well worth the effort just to know new folks who are not Substack users can now more easily find my writing. I can already see via a chart that people have begun to find the Uncivil Savant via Apple podcasts, Overcast and other providers.
If you also regularly record your written pieces as audio, I recommend setting up your podcast section including the RSS feed suggestions. It was very easy. I am keeping it simple, just adding a paragraph from the piece and a link to the original posts in each ‘show notes’. In future I may record specials, such as interviews or music features, but for now, here it is. carolineross.substack.com/podcast
And this week / month / year’s bad things: I don’t write about the wars in Africa, the war in Ukraine, the imprisonment of half a country (Afghanistan’s entire female population), the concentration camps of Uighurs in China, or the genocide in Palestine. I don’t know how. I don’t have the words and far better writers than me do. This should not be mistaken for not caring or not knowing what is taking place. My personal actions in the real world are mainly financial, some joint fundraising with other earth artists and regularly writing to lobby my (useless) local MP and the Prime Minister. It is a matter of deep shame that my so-called government is happy to fund and arm another state’s government who would stoop to bomb hospitals, or leave a 6 year old girl to die in a car for days in horror, surrounded by her dead kin, and not to allow her deliverance to safety. Indeed, to kill those sent to deliver her.
I am sadly not surprised. We have entered a machine-like era of governmental indifference to others, turning a blind eye to war crimes and crimes against humanity. The ordinary people ourselves, however, are not indifferent, and we do what we can, both locally and further afield, according to our consciences, resources, and responsibilities. The people are not our corrupt governments, not in Israel, not in Palestine, nor in Russia or Britain. May we all experience peace, despite our overlords’ attempts to make it impossible, just so that their war machine can continue to be fed, which is good for their business interests and lust for power.
May we work for lasting peace and pray for genuine peace.
To anyone praying for one side’s victory and dominion over another, rather than that all souls can live in dignity and safety, whoever they are, then I hate to be the one to tell you this, but that’s not God you’re praying to.
Excuse my slightly croaky, whispery voice this week. I recorded it at night, with a new equipment arrangement, after teaching chi kung online for 90 minutes.
Patience doesn’t come naturally to me, so there may have been some complaining, and probably swearing, too…
If that happens, please do pop back and take out a paid subscription to Uncivil Savant. Thank you.
'Churn anaerobically'. Love that. It should be some kind of new version of actors' 'break a leg!' But for writers.
So love your words about the meadow, the fallow field, and most of all, your instructions for making your fortune on Substack, into which I settled with such delight that I've read it at least five times. Reminiscent of Neil Gaiman's poem Instructions, it tickles me even more for the presence of the Cailleach, the reminder to fill your bottle with water and to carry good hard cheese.
Also, the reminder that the last six hundred miles will take whatever time they take.