Runner beans, violence and love
I've just finished planting some peas and runner beans. The runner beans surprised me with their maroon and gold cases. They were so beautiful. They were like magic beans. As i planted them, i wondered why i was doing this. It was bizarre. For just a little more than a pound i could buy a whole punnet in Sainsbury's. Why was i doing this? To see if i could, i supposed would be the short answer. Because anyone can do it. Because it's fun.
Because it's good for the kids. Because i want to see if i can do it.
We went to Scrabo today. After staying in it's shadow for almost eight years, we finally went there. Myself and the boys. Nathan, Oisin and Ghin. It was a windy but bright day and the woods were bursting with spring. Wood anemones gazed up at us with their starry yellow eyes. Bluebells began peeking. Tiny violets studded the ground. Primroses still gathered in clusters. Sorrel, raspberry, mint, brambles, everything had come to life. The beech has begun to put out its sweet greenness and on the floor catkins lay exhausted. Caterpillars, exclaimed Ghin. Yes, caterpillars, i said. Not wanting to spoil his excitement.
We are seeing lots of butterflies. Tortoiseshells all of them. Yesterday, just before the Children's Service, we were arrived in Glenlyon and one landed on the car. It made me think of Mama. Perhaps it was Mama coming to say hello.
...
Today, after the run in the forest i felt fantastic. For the first time since i began running sightly less than a month ago, running properly as in every day, i felt fit and more myself again. I'm looking up running routes in Rome and feel comforted that there seems to be lots of them. I think i'd like to do 6 miles everyday. I did six miles yesterday and although i felt totally wiped yesterday evening, i thought that this morning i felt incredible. And then when i went for my run today it was perfect.
I never thought that i'd still be running at 38. I hoped i would be of course, but i never thought that it would still be with me, the running bug. I remember when i first began running. I was 15 and convinced i was fat. If i wasn't fat then, i would certainly have been fat now if i never started then. And i know this because in the intervening years i did put on lots of weight. It was only when i began working in the RSPB that i was able to start running again. Having a place in the middle of some of the most beautiful woodlands by a river is to be truly blessed.
...
Sometimes i think that planting is magic. You put in this hard dry thing - this seed, that looks like nothing and you add water. And after a few days, it grows. Isn't that magic now? And what's more most of the things that i put in are things that you'd eat. I'm beginning to discover how much we have sacrificed in the name of civilisation. We have forsaken our connection with life - and in turn forsaken our connection with our own life. Our sense of ourselves as creative, useful beings. There has been a terrible disconnect. We have been convinced that we are either 'too good' to do something or else 'too busy'. And the irony is that the things that now occupy us lack authenticity.
Take my job for instance. It's a great job, but there isn't an awful lot that's authentic about it. I don't think so anyway. And i think sometimes that's half of conservation's problem. They have taken this atomised structure and run with it. It has not made connections - so much of the environmental sector is disconnected, disjointed. So people don't understand what birds have to do with them.
What do they have to do with us, indeed? There was a time when we were able to speak the language of birds. And then only certainly people could do it. Then only mad people did this. And then no one could any longer. We were only able to observe them. To look at them. Study them. There is no longer a connection, this deep mythic connection...
And what do we have to do with them?
Three years ago we were warned that 1 million species on this planet would be extinct by 2050. If we believe we are immune from that, we are kidding ourselves. What we are going through is a three years on prediction of this catastrophe. No one will say this of course. But it is true. Not only at the refugees who are washed up on the shores of the Canary Islands paying for the wasteful way in which we live our lives. We are as well. There cannot be so much of suffering without it impinging upon us...
...
Today i heard this Radio 4 thing on violence. Can you imagine asking this question...under what circumstances would you become violent? Surely we must have figured this out by now. We become violent when we are afraid and that fear causes us to become angry and that anger then makes us violent. I do not believe that people will be violent under any other circumstances. You could do something that looks quite violent on the surface of it - like kill an animal for food, but if the intent is not out of fear or anger, it is not violence. And i'm not talking about the detachment of a sociopath. Similarly, you may not do something violent, but if you act from fear or anger, then you do commit violence - i would put gossip into that category.
...
Another really stupid thing is taking place now. Some advisor of Gordon Brown has had to resign. Because he suggested a smear campaign against the Tories. Then everyone is so incredibly outraged. This is not British. This kind of bullying tactics do no become us at an institution.
Please. Wake up and smell the freakin' Starbucks. Politics is about bullying. What else is it? Listen to them disagreeing with each other for no good reason whatsoever. Look at the way they treat each other when it comes to getting on the greasy pole. People walk over bodies living and dead to get what they want in politics. Please. Why the outrage. The outrage because there are people who do not like what we does - the enemy - and people who want his job - the enemy within. There is no love lost in politics. It's a high stakes game - so please do NOT tell me there is no bullying. There is only bullying.
...
Finally i saw this post on YouTube about a man trying to hug a policeman at the G20 protest. He was giving policemen hugs and then when one of them told him to stop it, he made the policemen look stupid. On the surface, we was trying to give them 'love' - but really what we was doing was a form of violence. He was embarrassing them. You can be violent with love you know, you can. You can abuse someone in the name of love while giving them love. I saw it on YouTube.
Because it's good for the kids. Because i want to see if i can do it.
We went to Scrabo today. After staying in it's shadow for almost eight years, we finally went there. Myself and the boys. Nathan, Oisin and Ghin. It was a windy but bright day and the woods were bursting with spring. Wood anemones gazed up at us with their starry yellow eyes. Bluebells began peeking. Tiny violets studded the ground. Primroses still gathered in clusters. Sorrel, raspberry, mint, brambles, everything had come to life. The beech has begun to put out its sweet greenness and on the floor catkins lay exhausted. Caterpillars, exclaimed Ghin. Yes, caterpillars, i said. Not wanting to spoil his excitement.
We are seeing lots of butterflies. Tortoiseshells all of them. Yesterday, just before the Children's Service, we were arrived in Glenlyon and one landed on the car. It made me think of Mama. Perhaps it was Mama coming to say hello.
...
Today, after the run in the forest i felt fantastic. For the first time since i began running sightly less than a month ago, running properly as in every day, i felt fit and more myself again. I'm looking up running routes in Rome and feel comforted that there seems to be lots of them. I think i'd like to do 6 miles everyday. I did six miles yesterday and although i felt totally wiped yesterday evening, i thought that this morning i felt incredible. And then when i went for my run today it was perfect.
I never thought that i'd still be running at 38. I hoped i would be of course, but i never thought that it would still be with me, the running bug. I remember when i first began running. I was 15 and convinced i was fat. If i wasn't fat then, i would certainly have been fat now if i never started then. And i know this because in the intervening years i did put on lots of weight. It was only when i began working in the RSPB that i was able to start running again. Having a place in the middle of some of the most beautiful woodlands by a river is to be truly blessed.
...
Sometimes i think that planting is magic. You put in this hard dry thing - this seed, that looks like nothing and you add water. And after a few days, it grows. Isn't that magic now? And what's more most of the things that i put in are things that you'd eat. I'm beginning to discover how much we have sacrificed in the name of civilisation. We have forsaken our connection with life - and in turn forsaken our connection with our own life. Our sense of ourselves as creative, useful beings. There has been a terrible disconnect. We have been convinced that we are either 'too good' to do something or else 'too busy'. And the irony is that the things that now occupy us lack authenticity.
Take my job for instance. It's a great job, but there isn't an awful lot that's authentic about it. I don't think so anyway. And i think sometimes that's half of conservation's problem. They have taken this atomised structure and run with it. It has not made connections - so much of the environmental sector is disconnected, disjointed. So people don't understand what birds have to do with them.
What do they have to do with us, indeed? There was a time when we were able to speak the language of birds. And then only certainly people could do it. Then only mad people did this. And then no one could any longer. We were only able to observe them. To look at them. Study them. There is no longer a connection, this deep mythic connection...
And what do we have to do with them?
Three years ago we were warned that 1 million species on this planet would be extinct by 2050. If we believe we are immune from that, we are kidding ourselves. What we are going through is a three years on prediction of this catastrophe. No one will say this of course. But it is true. Not only at the refugees who are washed up on the shores of the Canary Islands paying for the wasteful way in which we live our lives. We are as well. There cannot be so much of suffering without it impinging upon us...
...
Today i heard this Radio 4 thing on violence. Can you imagine asking this question...under what circumstances would you become violent? Surely we must have figured this out by now. We become violent when we are afraid and that fear causes us to become angry and that anger then makes us violent. I do not believe that people will be violent under any other circumstances. You could do something that looks quite violent on the surface of it - like kill an animal for food, but if the intent is not out of fear or anger, it is not violence. And i'm not talking about the detachment of a sociopath. Similarly, you may not do something violent, but if you act from fear or anger, then you do commit violence - i would put gossip into that category.
...
Another really stupid thing is taking place now. Some advisor of Gordon Brown has had to resign. Because he suggested a smear campaign against the Tories. Then everyone is so incredibly outraged. This is not British. This kind of bullying tactics do no become us at an institution.
Please. Wake up and smell the freakin' Starbucks. Politics is about bullying. What else is it? Listen to them disagreeing with each other for no good reason whatsoever. Look at the way they treat each other when it comes to getting on the greasy pole. People walk over bodies living and dead to get what they want in politics. Please. Why the outrage. The outrage because there are people who do not like what we does - the enemy - and people who want his job - the enemy within. There is no love lost in politics. It's a high stakes game - so please do NOT tell me there is no bullying. There is only bullying.
...
Finally i saw this post on YouTube about a man trying to hug a policeman at the G20 protest. He was giving policemen hugs and then when one of them told him to stop it, he made the policemen look stupid. On the surface, we was trying to give them 'love' - but really what we was doing was a form of violence. He was embarrassing them. You can be violent with love you know, you can. You can abuse someone in the name of love while giving them love. I saw it on YouTube.
Comments