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I’ve been reading Hagitude* and Sharon Blackie has got me thinking, as she always does. Today, she has me pondering what kind of elder I envision myself to wanting to become.
As any woman of my age, I guess, I see aspects of all the archetypes that I would want to claim, certainly bits of the Creative, bits of the Guardian, and lots of Granny Weatherwax (so pleased she got her due ‘shout out’ in the book) but the archetype that calls most strongly to me is that of the oracle, the wise woman, the sage. Actually - that's how I think of Granny Weatherwax, but she's open to interpretation.
If we believe in whispers from the universe then I should maybe take note. I should remember that one of the first things I did once I'd emptied this building was to burn sage within it, and talk to the walls about our future together. I should take notice that the plants that have thrived most strongly in my garden are the salvias, which my Turkish neighbour pointed out are sages. I also remember (constantly) Elffriend’s comment years ago about my being born to be an observer, a bard and a keeper of the mysteries. I’ll never be a bard, but I can certainly work on the other two.
Blackie points out that becoming elder is not about acquiring certain skills. We do not need to excel in herbs or potions or healing or ‘seeing’. We need only wisdom – and wisdom, I think, is merely interpreted experience. Becoming elder means understanding the journey-so-far, picking up the learnings-along-the-way, and being willing to share them. It is not for us to determine whether they are useful or not. Our discernment is in knowing what we have learned, and what we still have not yet grasped.
And then it is in finding the best way – our own way– to send that out into the world. And to trust that it will find its way to those it can help.
If we believe that our true callings nudge us all along our path, then I know I have ‘dabbled’ in writing since I was a child. If I'm honest, I still see myself as a dabbler, a scribbler, an amateur.
I never wanted “to be a writer” – I always wanted to travel. But I always wrote. I wrote stories that were ridiculed in junior school. I wrote poems for mothers’ day cards. I wrote letters to anyone willing to receive them, because I was born too early for blogging to be a thing. I found a website that would let me review books and share my travellers tales and the occasional poem or short story. They even paid me a few pounds for doing it.
It never occurred to me that I was being "called" to write. I just wrote.
To be fair, even now, I don’t want “to be a writer”. I have a lot of resistance around calling myself a writer, even though I churn out thousands of words a month, and some of them (I’m told) are actually quite good. My problem is that the notion we have of “a writer” is one that involves earning a living from it. Or being famous for it. Or building some other kind of career that rests up on it.
It seems to me that comes with a burden of publication and marketing and editorials and, like, actual work! I don’t want to work. I've put in my time on the work front. Now, I just want to write. I want to practice. I want to play. I want to learn. I want to grow. But I really don’t want all that business-y bit. I’ve been there, done that. Hopefully done enough of that to now be able to do a lot more of this.
If we believe that our true callings nudge us all along our way, we should listen to what we ourselves say. When I had stepped down a little from, but not yet out of, my corporate life, I remember saying to a former team member who was asking if I didn’t miss ‘management’ “Oh god no! Given a choice, I would just retire to my ivory tower with my books.”
I was given that choice. And so I did.
It wasn't about the ivory tower. It was about the books. Seemingly, maybe not just the ones I would read, but maybe also the ones I would write. In the latter context, I use the term 'books' lightly and widely.
I was never built to be the princess in the tower. I certainly wasn’t made to wait around to be rescued from it. Instead, I was clever enough to make sure my ivory tower was a bungalow. No ladders required. I was lucky enough for it to be one that has a good energy stream that runs from the front door to the back door, creating lovely swirls and eddies in each room along the way. And has different rooms in its garden. It has space - and wide windows. It is light and airy. I am lucky to have (at least for now) this place, I can call home.
I have my cottage / cave / sanctuary / temple.
I think it is also a museum of a kind - something I will write about another time.
You see, I think the really wise thing about the 'sage' elder woman, is that she has learned enough to know what to leave behind. I was SO reluctant to embrace the R-word - no, not that one! - the word "Retirement". That old-woman-done-with-the-world word. It's taken me about five years to figure out that, as elders, we have to (quite literally) retire.
We have to withdraw, for a while, from the world in all its current frenzy, so that we can work out what it is we have learned, and what it is that still challenges us, and how it is that we can best put this back out into the world in the hope that it helps.
The first 'wise' thing the 'wise woman' does - I now believe - is to know that she needs her cottage / cave / sanctuary / temple. I wonder if that is what Woolf meant by 'a room of one's own'. It isn't just about quiet and space and time - it is deeper than that. It is about the isolation of the cottage, the darkness of the cave, the safety of the sanctuary, the sanctity of the temple.
It is about things that we can have no concept of in our youth. Things that only become tangible once we leave more tangible things behind.
When I was reading Hagitude and Blackie talking about wanting her Baba Yaga Hut, I felt an internal shift. A “me too” moment. Although I’m sure my hut would look very different to hers, it would also house many found objects. I have stones and bones and shells and driftwood and feathers scattered around my spaces.
I also have "found text", that I have overlain on photographs which are really "found moments". Sometimes when I look at the pictures I see things that aren’t there: a lion’s face in the water, a giant moth on a branch.
Perhaps I am supposed to know what these things mean, but I don’t. Yet. But I do know that it is about the 'finding'.
You see, I already have a hut. A shack. Up at the coast. My beach-hut / sea-shack. There is nothing pretty about it, except there is a notice board of creativity, and there is cheap buddha statue, and there are pebbles, and wine-bottle shoe-stands...pretty is also open to interpretation.
The paint effloresces off the walls. The rain gets in. There is always sand to be swept out. The wall & ceiling have new cracks. The beautiful blue table is rusting already. The cushions and towels are damp. But the 'free spirit' sign is mould free, for now.
Pretty? Actually, yes, to me, it is. I open the door and it makes me smile.
Sometimes I sit and write there. And sometimes passing people talk to me.
Mostly, though it is more shed than writing-shack. I get changed in it and lock it up again and go into water. Or I dump my gear so that I can beach-walk unencumbered.
It is beautiful and useful, but it hasn't become what I thought it would.
So recently I have developed a yearning for another hut, one at the bottom of my garden. Facing west – down in the spot that gets more of the sun than my back stoop – especially now that my originally envisaged seating area has become a practice space and needs to be kept clear. At the moment, in my half-formed vision, I’m calling it a summer house…but that feels wrong…it will need another name. I haven’t even worked out what I want it to look like, only where I want it to be. I also have no idea how I would get such a thing in there. It will probably need to be built in situ. These are ‘not yet’ questions. I’m just sitting with the idea that I can have such a thing.
I have to be honest and say that I do not need such a thing, not in any practical way. I have as much me-space as anyone (even a writer) could possibly wish for. And yet…I think I want a nearly-outside space, one that doesn’t involve the ninety-minute-to-two-hour journey up to the coast. One that isn’t bounded by public transport timings. I think I want a place where I can be open to what’s living in my garden without having those things moving into my house. I’m not the most nature-connected person on the planet. I want a place that can be both exposed and sheltering.
Maybe I just want a tiny off-grid space. A liminal space that is both home and not. A place that is both safe and not-quite.
In the mythology, the sage, the oracle, the wise woman lives apart. She has withdrawn from society into her cave, her cottage. Cottage. Cage. Sanctuary. Temple. Traditionally such places are remote, inaccessible. High in the hills. Deep in the woods. At times somewhere at the bottom of the ocean. I wonder if that is an actual requirement. Why should it not as easily be here, in the wilderness of the suburbs?
There is no reason why not. So I am led to think about how I make this place into my cottage, cave, temple, sanctuary. And I hear a dear friend whispering you’re already doing it – remember things take the time they take.
Sitting with the idea – which has been a recurrent one over a year or so – that I can make this a sacred space – I know that what matters is that I tend it. Better than I currently do. That I treat it with love and care, this small plot of earth that is mine, and the home (cottage / cave / sanctuary / temple) that stands upon it. It is beginning to feel that this is part of my becoming elder.
There are also other things about how I'm living right now. How I shop. How I eat. What products I use in my home and on my body. Things I know I need to think about changing. Some things my body is, quite painfully, telling me I really need to think about changing. Again, it is not easy and will take the time it takes.
There are times when I think that maybe the first rule of sagacity is simple honesty. It is what it is and I won't lie to you.
Maybe this is also part of my becoming elder. Sorting out my own shit!
Meanwhile...I have kept Sam’s “welcome” cards from the late winter season at the coast and I have placed them where I can see them around my home. The power of words, and specifically that most healing of words: Welcome.
Well-come. It is well that you came, and I am grateful to have you here. She welcomed me into a space that we both love, and I have brought that feeling home.
Who or what is it, exactly, that I am welcoming into my home, into my cottage / cave / sanctuary / temple? That's still an open question.
Friends, certainly. Friendship. Also faith, gratitude, connection, beauty, wisdom, ancient knowledge. Time. Momentary time. Expansive time. Curiosity. Courage. Change.
For so long my question has been, “What do I need to know?” I feel that shifting, the question is becoming “What do you want of me?” What does the world want of me? What does spirit want of me? What do you (whoever you are) want of me?
Of and not from.
In the power of words, I see the difference. It isn’t “what must I give?” It is “how would you have me be?”
I don’t have the whole answer yet. I don’t quite know how to be, how to become, what I want to be…but I know some of the things I could do, to get started. That thought reminds me of a text I have up in my beach hut: I know where I am, I know where I’m going, I know what the next step is – and that’s all I need to know.
So now, I just need to take that next step...
* Hagitude, by Sharon Blackie ISBN-13: 978-1914613319
