Jules P Richards

Nowt specific to focus on, but lots of eddies and currents going on.  After the advent-urous Christmas excitements, January sees a wake of settling sediments.

I caught these two magpies this morning on the early morning walk with the dog. It’s usually Em that takes Bracken out, but occasionally, usually a Sunday, I’ll get up and out early leaving Em to lay in – realistically Em’s Sunday lay in will typically turn into and early morning fest with the kids.

One for sorrow, two for joy… yadda yadda… goes the ritual rhyme, there are various versions but we stop at two (as we did with the kids, a sighting of 3 or 4 magpies is not really entertained). We tell the kids that one for sorrow usually means that the one magpie has lost his friend but that it’s probably around somewhere you just have to look harder for it.

My mid-life turbulence is accompanied by a sort of ‘return to nature’ thing going on with the old personal world-view.  I sense this might be reinforced by the infotainment media’s magnificent nature/science output, part of the bread and circus we are fed.  We are served imagery and coverage that is just fantastic and ‘out of this world’!  It’s easy to take for granted the stuff we see on our TV/PC screens but the common place close-ups and slow-mo we see would not have been dreamt of when we were young!

It’s a beautiful but also raw and cruel natural world; stuff blossoms, blooms, decays, dies, transforms. Stuff kills, feeds, struggles, in circles and rhythms – nature is a wondrous thing.

I have and for now will refrain from writing about my relationship to our dog. Save to say it’s significant. Bracken is/was Em’s project but I have taken to him full on. Yes he’s a dog and we try to maintain animal / human sensibilities, but one can’t help noticing the warmth of a living creature when he sleeps on your lap. When he looks for attention. When he shows ‘signs’ of affection. When he identifies with you as his ‘master’?  It’s nature.  An ongoing discovery.

The morning walks, as with the daily commutes, bring you closer to the elements and the seasons – again you feel closer to nature, more alive.

Where these ‘out of this world’ experiences link up with a supreme being, a creator, a trinitarian god, I cannot comprehend. Nature is not the biblical God, nature is a living breathing growing moving feast that shapes us and makes us what we are. Just look at the recent storms, that form and reform our environment. Just look at the fragile chemical soups that form our brains and characters. We constantly battle to forge our place in the natural world. We constantly battle to settle our physiology and psychology with drugs and medicine as well as habit and ritual. There’s a bigger thing than us indeed, but perhaps focusing on it becomes harder as life goes on.

OK, I’m also currently distracted by a few books and stuff that I received last month which will no doubt cause effect in due-course but generally there’s…

Nowt specific to focus on… ? except the world WE live in?