Sanctuary ...
... for Knots in the String.
It’s a truth universally acknowledged that the world is in turmoil.
I saw footage of most of the major European leaders together with President Zelensky seated in the American president’s office and wonder how much of the world sees it as Europe vs USSR. Not the USA and its former allies vs the USSR, but Europe vs the USA and the USSR. That’s how awry the world appears.
How times have changed – only a week ago, VJ Day was celebrated and we saw the King and Queen weeping at the words from a 104 year old veteran of WWII, Capt Yavar Abbas:
"We seem to have learnt nothing…The killing of innocent men, women, children, and even babies goes on. And the world, with some honourable exceptions, watches in silence...
(World War II) was all futile, because it's still happening. We haven't learned anything at all." (courtesy of BBC https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c1kzwwk30wro)
Indeed. What have we really learned in the intervening 80 years? Precious little it seems, as people of all ages and faiths are killed in ongoing war in Eastern Europe and the Middle East.
Which is why the idea of a protective circle drawn by my hand around my family and friends holds much weight just now. It’s a benign thing and is probably merely a figment of my imagination but it gives its own form of comfort. It could just as easily be a circle of daisies in the lawn, a fairy circle of toadstools in the orchard beneath the pear and almond trees, a circle of beach-rocks or one drawn in the sand when the world appears to be unable to draw its own line in the sand.
I’m at a loss to try and explain the rise of fascism, of autocracy and dictatorship to those younger than me. I should possess wisdom but I possess none. When I’m at a weak point, I’m riddled with a level of cynicism toward the world that I never thought possible. It’s why I disappear so often to my gardens, why I read gentle works of prose and poetry, why I stay away from the city and masses of people, and surround myself with nature and vast skies. It’s a form of amelioration.
More circles, more sanctuary:
We danced circles this week at ballet. It was lovely apart from sacro-iliac pain which is frustrating me. Next week I have a radioactive injection so that my hot spots (who knew?) can be mapped. (TBH, I think I can point to the hotspots without any radioactivity but what do I know?) My friend and Substack writer Elizabeth Beggins sent me a glorious Youtube link to the music to which the girls and I are dancing just now. How tantalising are the grazes of touch, the smouldering looks, the silks rustling and the shush of feet on the parquet and marble.
I close my eyes, the music takes me by the hand and we waltz, the music and I, and I can almost feel some of the pain diminishing.
As it does when I swim and float vertically, arms outstretched. The tide is low, the water clear enough to see leafy seadragons, there is a faint darker blue line that indicates wind incoming, so timing is everything. Weightless, spine elongated and cocooned by chill water, I think of nothing. Heaven…
Full circle too, when I hear that Philip Pullman is to release the final in The Book of Dust series in October. Pullman’s books are thick, enticing, filled with extraordinary world-building and incomparable adventures interwound with soul-deep philosophy.
I remember my journey with Lyra through Oxford in His Dark Materials and it reminded me of my own journey at the age of 19 through the dusky golden buildings of both Oxford and Cambridge. In Oxford, I passed through the most perfect medieval stone archway of Merton College onto the edge of a green quadrangle, turning a slow circle, whilst looking at the buildings around me, the pigeons fluttering above. I imagined students and lecturers rushing here and there with armloads of papers (this was pre-technology), black gowns billowing behind. But this was the summer holiday and the place was empty of everything but ghosts – alumni like Tolkein, Wilde and Eliot.
Lyra may only have been a thought in Pullman’s mind in the 1960’s and so I just turned slowly and thought how on graduating from my Arts degree at the end of that year, I wanted to come to either Oxford or Cambridge for a year. I was reminded of that thought the other evening as I watched My Oxford Year. Of course I didn’t pursue post-graduate study at either of those ancient universities. Instead, I bought a car, a dressage horse and settled to post-graduate study in my home town.
I drew a circle in the sand whilst walking the Thug after my swim, just for fun, and he, dear little pup, helped greatly. Unfortunately, his circles go downward rather than round. Perhaps in a time of war, a downward circle is the most welcome kind. I think of the Common Law where protection is given by the Church to those who cry ‘Sanctuary!’ Does it work today, do you think? My cynical side doubts it.
Nevertheless, I close my eyes and imagine…
Music for this week? When I wrote the words ‘I close my eyes’, there was only one piece of music I could use.
I was pulled back to my daughter’s time in Grade 6 of Beaumaris Primary School in Melbourne, thirty five years ago, when all the school performed a stellar show of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat. I remember this song being performed by ‘Joseph’ and the school choir and I remember the goosebumps once again trickling down my spine…
I have an artist friend here who does a lot of therapy and counseling work. She's well-trained and very experienced, but I always marvel that she does not have a formal therapy degree. Some of her students (or clients, as it were) come from unimaginably difficult circumstances. My friend's practice is to circle her arms above her head and down to her toes, breathe, and chant herself into a protective space, one that can receive what she must receive to do her work but that is also resilient and not paralyzed by the grief of it all. She's not always successful, but she finds that when she forgets the practice she can't carry on for long.
I meet with two women's circles (she's in one of them).
We make circles as we dance.
You made circles at the entrance to Merton College as birds circled overhead.
There is such power in circling!
Lovely read today, Prue. I hope your familiar practices continue to reconnect you to your sources of strength.
The way you describe Merton College/Oxford makes me so envious - you re-create that feeling so perfectly, the youthful certainty that life is spread out before you like a carpet. Anything is possible. You chose well Prue as it happens! Lots to think about afterwards here, in a circular way. But your posts are always thought provoking xo