First— a candle for Israel, for Palestine, for the land beneath that knows no nation state, for all the innocent lives horrifically lost this past weekend in Israel, and all the innocent lives horrifically lost this week in Gaza, and all the innocent lives lost on both sides over the last seventy five years, for the children, for the earth beneath and the bones beneath and the blood shed for too long on that ground where Love came to find us, not hate of any kind. May peace like white petals fall down on all, on tanks and guns and shattered families and anguished soldiers and people full of rage and grief and retribution, on terrified civilians who can’t get out of Gaza, on leaders everywhere who can see only war or violence as a solution; may peace like white petals fall; may peace may peace may peace, and through peace liberation, and safety, and home.
Moon- new moon solar eclipse
Venus- higher and further south in the eastern morning sky, in the stars of the Lion before dawn, Regulus a little red spark near her
Horse chestnut leaves are falling, soft brown and filling up the drive
I talk to a friend about the burrowing habits of badgers. She shows me a hillside under old beech trees further up the moor that’s full of their sett entrances. Their interior networks must cover an area as big as the bronze age burial mounds.
Oak leaves are just starting to go yellow at the very edges
I dream of a vixen bounding into a thicket ahead of me. I know her by her smell. Red flash into a hollow, she is flamebright, comet of stillness princess of what is over; Was that a fox I say in the dream. Her scent fills the air behind her. It is strong but I love it, for by that smell I recognize her. Oh it was a fox, it was!
Suddenly, gorgeously—I forgot they were coming, I don’t have these things straight yet— the Pleiades are back in the ; exquisite sisters, snow-bright; autumn is really here.
1. The King's Ashes
I had it in mind to write to you this week about barefoot walks, about the memory of petals in the time of apples, about stags in rut and a cold clear pool under hazels in unseasonable heat. I even wanted to begin to write to you about Olwen, mysterious white-footed sun woman from that very early Arthurian tale, the medieval Welsh How Culhwch Won Olwen, a favorite of mine since I first read it when I was eighteen.
But the truth is, it has felt hard these last days to write anything clear or useful. I feel vague, unable to focus, buffeted by dread and horror and sadness and an existential exhaustion. I’ve been reading excerpts of the Iliad for a course I’m auditing; thinking about the moments before an invasion, the councils held where decisions are made on both sides that offer up innocent people as ammunition, as expendable resources in the name of retribution. Three thousand years later, we are still here. I wonder today if the west has been in one long blood feud from the Middle East to Ireland —no, clear across North and South America, clear down straight though Africa, I mean fuck —for exactly this long, violence compounding violence, vengeance upon vengeance, it spreads and it spreads, these grounds are soaked with it in every direction, north south east west, and still it goes on.