Weathering Slow Read: Week 1
A return to writing...
Taking a look around…
Hello lovely Substack readers, it has been a long while since I wrote here. A whole six months in fact. Where does the time go?
The answer, I am hoping, might be found by participating in Ruth Allen’s slow read of her book, Weathering. Along with many of Ruth’s other Substack readers, I’ll be taking a gentle and soft-paced amble through one chapter of Weathering each week for the next nine weeks. So far it’s like being part of a fabulous online bookclub - so many ways into reading and reflection - with plenty of time for thoughts, feelings and imagery to develop.
Reflecting on the Introduction to her book, and her surveying of the landscape, Ruth writes
“…we are taking a look around, which necessarily requires a look back before we move forward.”
This is exactly where I am. Taking a look around. Since I have been away, my subscribers have increased three-fold. I thought this was an algorithmic hiccup at first, but it’s actually because two of my favourite Substackers
and recommended The River. What a lovely surprise. Thanks so much to you both.My look around sees me at a similar point of reflection (or inflection?) as Ruth. I am in a six month holding space, waiting to start another MSc (this time in Psychology) in September, and with a clearer focus on developing my coaching business as I move on from my full-time consultancy role. It’s the third wave of a career, that’s seen me try on previous identities of lawyer and career consultant, and will now evolve into something else. I am not sure what form this will take yet, and for now, I am happy for it to remain shapeless and unformed. In potential.
Looking back, I am seriously missing dance, my community and connections in Oxford and am knackering myself by returning there each week to try and bridge the transition. This doesn’t feel sustainable or practical, yet I haven’t been able to find another solution. I am, yet again, metaphorically and literally ‘between Rivers’. I think I may also be a ‘species of the gap.’ I long to be in one place, but most of my life feels in between and perhaps it is here I must find comfort.
Dance and movement is what I’ve left behind, and what I must come back to. That is a knowing that is impossible to ignore. In curious synchronicity,
’s ‘ A Dancer’ post, hit my inbox at the same time. A reminder to dance no matter what. To find your place on the dance floor even when you don’t feel welcome. To listen to the call. It has made me wonder how we support ourselves to continue these practices even when opportunities die out as we get older. Why is it harder to dance than to study psychology? There are a tonne of psychology courses available that I can sign up to at any point in life, but almost none out there that enable dancing full-time. In the times we are living, I can’t help but think that dance would be more helpful than endless analytical thought. Returning to intuitive embodiment and feeling, arguably a more reliable state, yet we persist with one and not the other.Why is one deemed worthy and the other, not?
Relating to/with nature…
Ruth also asks where would we place our relationship with the natural world? How do we experience it? To me it is a felt sense. I am and always have been a water baby. If I feel unsafe, water makes me feel held. I try and understand water as much as I can, yet it is always unknowable. I like this mystery. It ensures I sit alongside it and listen rather than try to control it.
My partner and I have recently returned from southern Kerala, where we were often the only two people in the water. There were some strong currents there, but after watching the patterns of the sea, the direction of the wind and listening to the shapes, peaks and forms of waves, we felt safe to go in. We knew we would be carried along the beach, and to expect it, and knew to stay relatively close to the shoreline moving in parallel with the dogs that walked upon it and the birds that flew above it. When we were ready to exit, we went with the water, being carried into the beach by a breaking wave. We could only know so far of course, but we would not have known anything if we hadn’t taken the time to relate to the water first, and judge based on our own instincts, skill and knowledge and what the water was teaching us.
I have all sorts of small gratitude rituals that I didn’t even realise I practice when out in nature. Saying thank you to the ocean, both verbally and by beach-cleaning whenever I can. I never want to use nature, I am learning how to be with it in better ways – and so Ruth’s questions on relating and resources for those relationships are timely. I shall sit with them too.
Colours of Kerala
The very small number of photographs I captured in Kerala, are perhaps another way of considering my relationship with the natural world. The majority were taken at Little Flower Farms, a biodiverse labour of love high up in the hills near the small town of Vagamon. It’s a true haven - a place of re-wilding, and a vision of eco-harmony brought to life by a passionate botanist who acquired some barren land up in the mountains and over the years re-introduced native species, and some complementary non-native species, to ensure a home for insects, amphibians, lizards, birds and many other animals. The longer we stayed the more we felt part of it, breathing into rhythm with the natural world around us.
It inspired me to paint for the first time in five years.
Thomas, who runs Little Flower Farms, is continuing his mother’s work, inviting people into a habitat of what might have been had we decided to work with the natural world, rather than take from it. A moment of presence, peace and joy, where it was wonderful to look around. And then look around again to see deeper and learn more.
Right outside our window, these juvenile bulbuls and their wildlife kin kept us more present and energised than any form of new technology.
How do we best nourish these relationships when forces outside of our control seem intent on destroying them?
To join the slow read of Weathering, see Ruth’s post here.
If you have any tips on how to reconnect with things we’ve lost do let me know in the comments here. Thanks for reading. I won’t leave it so long next time.
Lara xxx
Thank you Lara. I LOVE love love to see this. I love that the first week has prompted a rich dive. Really, it makes the book club feel worth while to know I'm writing towards you in this way :) And I adore the sound of Kerala. I am very drawn to colour in this stage in my life and feel thr acute drabness of N Hemi winters. The trip sounds so inspiring. And dance, yes! I hear you. I have been dancing weekly up here in Derbysbire for 2 years but the centre closed last year due to council bankruptcy and it's now only monthly classes elsewhere so I'm having to dance for myself the rest of the time, which involves remembering to do so. As you say, it so easily gets relegated behind other stuff that could wait. But I think that says everything about our broader cultural relationship with dance. Anyway, i'm wittering! I'm excited for the potential of this opening space between rivers for you xx
Thank you so much for reading and writing about dance. I totally agree, we need to just get back into our bodies sometimes. But kerala looks incredible and I'm so tempted to go back!!!