RESONANCE i

Liberty with a Cap

It's been 6 weeks since I left Berlin to be at home in Suffolk in the UK. I read this morning, ‘Home is not where you were born; home is where all your attempts to escape cease’, so home isn’t quite right here as I’m always trying to escape Suffolk. My choice to return was rather an attempt to realise some boundaries within my heart.

Then I started dating an old friend from Iceland. She invited me to Iceland after the last module; I bought a ticket then cancelled it:

‘I’m not in the right mindset at the moment, and I want to enjoy autumn’s magic’, (which wasn’t possible in Iceland, winter having arrived). 

I have a thing for autumn: the land feels fluid, awash with colour; I enjoy feeling the raw winter days hidden behind summer’s glaze; and most of all I love my Liberty Cap treasure hunts. So I committed myself to some time alone in the UK, oriented to searching out my beloved mushroom medicine.

I have a good track record of sniffing out these buff, nippled songs of the earth, and enjoyably it necessitates a fair amount of trespassing in wild forgotten fields. But the first few caps I found this year were in a cattle field my parents own. Being drier than the rest of the UK, Suffolk’s not usually a good place to find them, and this field has never revealed them to me before. But there I was one afternoon, feeling drawn to a particular corner of the field, and soon enough I’d picked 10-15 caps. I went home surprised without being overwhelmed—a ‘good’ pick results in a harvest of hundreds!

In early November the atmosphere hung silent overhead for days, creating grey listless skies. The light didn’t change at all apart from when it was arriving and departing. Wet ground in the morning but no rain, just an overcast drabness. It made me feel a little suffocated. For god’s sake, something, preferably me, please MOVE. FUCK. 

But it did mean conditions were favourable for mushroom growth. One afternoon, days after my first little find, I cycled back to the same field, and this time came away with +100. I sang my way through the field remembering Loek’s classes. Mushroom song-lines infused with gratitude and appreciation of Suffolk’s heavy-clay, historical landscapes.

I can’t cycle with a harvest; I don’t have anything to carry them in. Delicate little dancers they are. Fortuitously, as I walk out of the field, I see my Mum preparing to drive the same way I need to go to get home. I shout out I’ve been collecting mushrooms; she responds, ‘what sort, the magic ones?’. How does she know they’re the magic ones?!—Yes, ma, the magic ones. ‘What do they look like?’, she asks somewhat bashfully, excitedly. This is new territory for us, me revealing my taboo qualities openly, generously. You’re about to find out, I chuckle while approaching her. ‘Are you sure they’re the right ones?’. Yes, Ma, I’m good at this! You should try them sometime—I can see my Mum’s happy at being included in my discovery, that I chose not to hide it from her. It feels good to include people. She drives them to my flat as I cycle.

Sometimes home is a person. I sense that’s my truth; it’s why I invest so much energy in trying to devote myself to love’s path. But, recently, I’ve found myself learning what it means to be polyamorous. Some part of me feels unmet in polyamorous configurations; I wish it wasn’t the case, but it is. I end up asking a Sangoma-diviner from South Africa about the lover archetype, about what I might be overlooking, to help explain the multiplicities I seem to create ‘in-love’, while concurrently noticing a longing for something deeper, rooted and consistent.

He mentions the lover archetype operates fluently without boundaries, but that it also contains the warrior for whom boundaries are very important. The result is these two entities are often at war with each other inside one soul. It’s implied the lover needs to offer a lot of consistency.

His words stay with me.

My Icelandic lover arrives carrying gifts from the north—scents of raven beak and ocean spray.  We decide to head West to surf the UK’s sunny autumnal coastline—Cornwall, where I used to go to University. It’s glorious. We play in turquoise waters until the sea falls out our noses, eyes turn red, and ears crystallise with salt. We spend time with my friends and their children, and I remember how the sea makes you feel young. 

On my last day down there, I stop by a local shaper and buy a surfboard. Next door is a farm offering a green burial service for peoples’ pet dogs, cats and even horses. I take a wander round and while perusing the dead I spot a flush of Liberty Cap mushrooms on the other side of the fence.

I jump the boundary, and spend the next two hours picking handfuls of beautiful mushroom medicine. In one of the fields I’m trespassing through, I discover two ancient standing stones. Some previous picker has left a mushroom offering on them; I add my own while ritually walking through their gateway, asking that I might align with the earth’s wisdom and beauty in ways that bring me and others peace and joy. 

Walking from the field, mulling devotion and consistency, I reflect that Liberty Cap is an apt name for a psychedelic mushroom: all liberties come with a cap, nothing is experienced free of its context. Boundaries are an important part of freedom.

RESONANCE ii

Dreaming

Love yourself—a concise summary of IMPP?
Also perhaps the most powerful way to feel at home in this world and thereby find creative connection within it.
And, yet, what does it look like? What does it feel like? How to practice it?

Over the past few months, I’ve been trying various practices: meditation, breathing, boundary setting, consistent time in the sea, helping others, eating well, saying yes, saying no, less screen time etc.
For sure they help, but it was a dream I had in January that inverted my understanding of self-love….

The Dream:

I’m outside, the air is warm and sweet, a black dusty sand folds between my toes.
A circle of women surround me. My head is at the height of their bellies. They come in close, arranging themselves belly-to-belly, pressing their warm skin against my head.
They then start to rub their bellies in a circular motion.
Perhaps some are pregnant, their skin is warm and glowing, and it imparts a gorgeous energy into my mind and body.

Waking up, my mind feels bathed in love, held in pink blankets of cloud, warmed by the depths of the earth.
I am aglow, my mind has no ringing tinnitus (something I’m used to waking up with).
I feel entirely at peace, without fear or worry.
I am love.

The phrase wombic love arrives to mind upon waking—it’s an energy all our bodies know, by virtue of being held in the womb for nine months.
To discover it is within reach again, through a process of my own dreaming surprises and reassures me no end.
It is an energy our world is crying out for.
I bow to all those with a womb.
Thank you.

In May this year, I plan to sleep on various UK beaches, recording my dreams as I go, in an effort to listen to the earth’s dreaming. This will be as part of the Beach of Dreams walking arts festival.

RESONANCE iii

Fjordland

I’m sunk into the north, it in me.
This video poem collaboration emerged between the aforementioned friend, her video production company and my trails/publishing project located in the Westfjords of Iceland.
We shot the footage last summer, and stitched it together with some words in January this year.

I have a year left on my Icelandic working visa—until the end of 2025, so am keen to run some trips in 2025.
Follow @wayfinding.guide for updates; it’d be lovely to see you there.

RESONANCE iv

Shibari Discs

I’ve been weaving my own strings and ropes for the past couple of years.
I collect fibres from wild plants then spend hours weaving. It’s been a kind of meditation.
Below you can see one I made while in Berlin for the last module.
When I got home, I signed up for some private Shibari tuition (Japanese Rope Bondage); I like the idea of making my own ropes for this.

While in Portugal this winter, I slipped a disc in my lower back.
This was the second time in 2 years. Apart from being fucking painful, it slows me right down.
I used walking to recover, going a little further each day.
During one of my walks, I found a backbone of some small creature, bleached white and lying on some sand dunes, and with some of the vertebrate discs still visible.

Back in the UK, I find myself wanting to turn the found backbone into a necklace.
Rather than tie a simple knot at the top, I decide to decorate it with some shibari-style decoration using the string I wove in Berlin.
As I tie/weave the string, I realise I am securing, fastening, supporting the backbone—holding it together.
The circle completes itself, and I have a lovely new necklace to remind me to take care of my back.

I am wondering whether this could be my shibari practice: using the skeletons from the roadkill bodies I’ve been burying over the last two years to create hanging mobiles or decorative pieces combining woven plant materials with the bones of our wild cousins. It could be a kind of celebration of their form, and a dance between life and death.

RESONANCE v

Charcoal

A video showcasing the various stages involved in making drawing charcoal.
I have some to give each of you <3

Video edited by Jay Simpson