Why the Sky is Far Away - A Re-imagined Folktale

A Nigerian folktale. 
This a re-imagined, retold version. 

It was once that people did not farm the land or till the soil
It was once that people did not steal gold from bees or eggs from hens
It was once that people did not catch creatures from the sea in nets, did not take the fruits of the salty depths, did not cut the throats of pigs and sheep and cattle.

It was once that people were fed by the sky.

In a time before, the sky was much closer to the earth than it is now. It was so close, in fact, that people could reach up and break off pieces with their hands. Flaming orange sunsets, wild winter stormclouds, pale blues of morning and deep blues of evening, all were in reach and all could be held and all could be eaten.

Sky tasted wonderful!

It came in all flavours from sun-ripened apple to bone-roasted venison, from spiced cinnamon and ginger cake to creamy, buttery mashed potato.

No need for packaging, baking, chopping, preparing or calorie counting.
No need to till the soil or butcher the animals.
No need to starve or stress.

Imagine that world, just for a moment. A world where you never needed to cook, or shop, or grow, or water, whine or worry about the meal prepared. It was just there, a reach and a crack and you held in your hands a cool refreshing glass of sky or a warm handful of steaming cloud.

So people were free to watch and think, muse and wonder. What worlds must they have seen in the curling of the vine, the green of the grass, the ripening of the golden corn, the gambolling gait of the little lambs.

And from the reverie of crafty hands came beautiful buildings.
And from the rapture of warm hearts came dances of friendship and family.
And from the dreaming of poets and tellers came song and story.

Life was easy. Food was plentiful. Work was minimal.

But an easy life can make us careless.
We began to forget the songs and stories.
We began to forget the quiet dreaming.
We began to want more.

Gleaming cities arose. Great machines were built. Waterways, highways, byways, track ways, airways carved a new path of progress. The world was there for the taking and piece by piece it was conquered.

But as the wheel of the seasons moved on and through and on and through, people began to feel the space of time and distance between where they stood and where they had first come from. They wanted to dream again, but they had forgotten how.

And so, to fill that empty place, we began to fill ourselves in the only way we knew.

People began to gorge themselves. People began to gorge themselves on sky until they were bursting with a sense of fullness and when they found it was not enough they took more and more. But the empty hunger was larger than the capacity to consume - people found they took more sky than they could eat. They threw the left over hunks and chunks of sky into great piles, but still the emptiness gnawed so still they took sky and still they threw away.

The waste became so widespread that the leaders of the world met to discuss what was to be done.

Bins were brought in - great metal bins full of surplus, severed slices of sky, black and decaying. The bins were shipped away, far away to other lands where the rot was piled high and children with bare feet and ragged clothes would climb upon the stacks of sky and imagine that they were standing on an emerald cliff overlooking a sapphire sea as the foulness filled their fields.

One day it became too much. Father Sky looked down upon the world and saw what man had done with the gift of sky. He burned and boiled. In the form of a man, Sky Spirit entered the houses of law of all the great nations of the world.

"If your people continue to waste my sky, I will take it far away from your fat fingers," he spat. "If one more scrap of sky, one more crumb of cloud or bit of blue is wasted or thrown away, I will leave you."

He may have stood before them in a man's form, but his eyes flashed like lightening over midnight's desert and the whole world became dark and silent as he spoke.

And we remembered.
And we didn't feel empty any more.

For once in the history of man and earth, we all listened and acted as one. We heard our Father's cries as one and from that moment not a scrap, crumb or bit of the life-sustaining sky was thrown away. The piles of decay began to rot and turn to earth and, for a time, the bare-footed children felt the warm, brown soil between their toes.

* * *

It was the Great Celebration of the Season and Unah pounded a path through the streets. Her friends would describe her as larger-than-life, but Unah was more than that - she was enormous. Around her neck hung great slabs of cobalt and coral and her ear lobes dripped with waterfalls of gold and globules of silver and bronze. Hummocks and hills stared with envy at the curves and undulations of her great backside which moved with a rhythm all of its own, and the heavy swell of the ocean could do nothing to rival the heaving swell of her bosom. She had three husbands and countless lovers, none of whom could keep up with her insatiable sexual zest. Unah had her fifteen children playing and laughing and pulling at the the vibrant swirl of her volumnious dress. She laughed a laugh that echoed around the land and as she joined the great gathering of people dancing, drinking, singing, eating, their bodies vibrated with the feel of her mirth and movement.

Everyone ate and drank and danced until they could eat and drink and dance no more.
Unah was the last to leave the party, the last to dance through the door, the last to go to bed.

In the satisfied silence of the quiet moment between late night and early morning, Unah sat at her table and thought, 'Just one more bite, a little snack before bed' and she reached up and broke off a bit of sky.

It was juicy and fresh and tasted lovely.

BUT

Unah broke off too much. She was so full from the party that even her great gullet could gobble down no more. She tried to cram some more into her mouth, but it was no use - she woke up her husbands and children to help her finish off the final pieces and they tried their best but soon they were full and groaning. She went to her lovers, but all were full and all went back to bed.

It wasn't their problem - it was Unah's.

In a matter of moments, the great joyful woman found herself alone in the dark holding a piece of sky she couldn't eat.

'It's only a tiny bit,' thought Unah. She casually dropped the spare sky into a bin and went to bed.

When the sun rose the next morning, a great silence fell over the world. People stood like scattered stones on the streets, in the roads, the highways, byways, waterways and holloways, all staring up

up,
up,
up,
up,
at the sky.

It was very, very far away- no hungry hands could reach it now - hanging way above the world of man like a great dome of dreams.

From that day man and woman knew hunger and work.
From that day Father sky was far away.

But, from that day on woman and man came to have a deeper relationship with their Earth mother.

As the people of the world sweated and toiled and farmed, for their sweat and sacrifice the land offered up its gifts of food and water.

And a new kind of dreaming began.

People sang to the crops and cattle. They danced and decorated the trees and shrubs, the hedgerows and herbs. They praised the earth they lived upon. They listened to the old stories and sang the old songs to make sure they remembered to not take too much from the seas or the soil; they knew why the sky was so far away; they remembered Father Sky and in his memory they worshipped Mother Earth.

The bare-footed children learned to farm and to coax green shoots from brown earth and for a while the Earth and her children breathed in and out together.

But much is forgotten.

COPYRIGHT Abigail Palache - December 2013

A Folktale Frontier* - New Year's Eve 2013

I first heard this story in it's original form told by my friend and colleague Roi Gal-Or**. I heard it deeply, but I didn't tell it myself. 

Knowing this story actively changed my behaviour. There are many stories that weave together to form the tapestry of an individual, but this one was more direct - challenging my actions in the clear light of day, not in the dreaming world of the fairytale or the fire lit trance of a Norse myth - this tale slapped me firmly and sharply in the face. 

But I still didn't tell it. Even though every time I didn't finish a meal  a little voice whispered into my ear "That's why the sky is far away" I didn't tell this tale myself. Even though I saw great piles of rubbish in the streets, I didn't tell this tale UNTIL I heard a student on the 3 month storytelling course tell it. In his telling he conjured up the great metal bins. Suddenly, the story catapulted itself into my life in a real way - it was not in a land I had never been to, a long, long time ago - it was now.   

So why change the setting, the detail? Why 're-imagine' it and move it away from Nigeria and into a different state?  The answer is hard to explain. 

We can tell stories from other countries to preserve the culture itself (especially if it is a dying native culture) and that is a good thing - a sort of anthropological myth-keeper. But we can also tell stories from other countries and cultures to preserve the story itself beyond a specific cultural incarnation of that tale. It is my belief (and one day I will do enough academic research to write in more depth about this!) that stories grow from the land itself, but that there is something deeper that conceived the story in the first place - there is some universal, fertile web of whisperings that mean remarkably similar stories grow in starkly separate landscapes. This deeper layer is sustained (in part) by oral culture, by the passing of stories along great chains of settlements and as the story is passed from the heat of the desert to the chill wind of the mountains, the images change and new layers of the story being are exposed, whilst others (in the new incarnation) are lost and the story being splits itself. 

Problem is that contemporary culture in the UK, particularly in my area of the South East, has wiped out its own myths, legends and folktales but maintains a peculiar superiority-come-sadness-come-guilt over tribes such as the Edo (who lost much in the 1700s because of the British amongst others) which makes part of us kindly 'preserve' stories in the vinegar of the time and place it was written down and recorded in. As I said, there's nothing wrong with myth-keeping for any culture whether it is your 'own' or one that your soul feels connected to BUT...

The risk of preserving a story in this way is that, like a butterfly pinned down on a biologist's board, we will know that the story once existed, where it existed and how many spots it had but it will be dead. The listeners will listen in interest to a story from Nigeria, where most of them will not have been to, but what will the jungle warmth of the Oba's land mean to them? Will they absorb the message of the story as one being relevant to them or will the far-away, other-culture part of them hear it as a museum piece - an interesting artefact to help them understand the 'other' better? 

To keep the story alive, the story needs to keep adapting to it's environment. When the storyteller spoke of the great metal bins, the story-butterfly leapt to life in my being and began fluttering at my lips and tickling my fingers, desperate to be told in this new form. 

I don't want to tell this story because of any particularly active interest in Nigerian folktales - I do not feel a personal connection to them (although I enjoy listening to them) - I want to tell this story because this isn't a 'Nigerian story' - it is a Nigerian, Ethiopian, Japanese, American, Scottish, English story. It grew in Nigeria and through the changing migratory pattern of mythology we are seeing in this information explosion, the story found its way to me and through me it found its way into this new form. Once upon a time, these stories would have found their way from Africa to Japan, to England, to Americas on the lips of travellers or along great chains of migration. Or maybe the story would have been heard by the 'furred ear'* or the feathered or in the howling of the wind back when people's ears where tuned to these deeper frequencies. In his blog, Martin Shaw comments that current migration patterns are changing in the animal world in response to the global climate changes and simultaneously, it seems, stories are also changing their migration. Maybe there is no longer time for the slow adaptation of story - the crisis the stories speak to (in this case waste) means the story being is compelled to leap out at us from the surviving source in a form that may seem far away. 

Folktale frontiers, places of exchange where stories journey across cultures and landscapes are no longer the inns or campfires of the long roads. The folktale frontier is online; it's brought by high-speed rail and long-haul flights. The folktale frontier is at the tip of the teller's tongue as it's revived from great dusty books full of geographical and cultural references.*

Through this understanding I'm starting to realise how much of the teller's work is to learn to listen to the land. So 2014 is going to be all about listening! 

** For those of you who haven't taken a look, please check out my workplace www.schoolofstorytelling.com  *This blog entry was inspired (particularly at places marked with a *) by Martin Shaw's blog entry stories/animals/frontiers. Please check his work out below. 

"What are the new stories that these migrations and desperations will engender to the animals? Who has the receptivity, the furred ear, to absorb and include those emerging myths in the wider frame of stories that humans carry like precious cargo? Without that coming together, then things will fragment with every greater speed.

What these chaotic times are inducing is rapid move back to frontier consciousness; the indigo bunting will pay no regard to passport control. But land it must. And negotiate new policies, bartering, and opportunity; familiarise itself to new stories. All these migratory animals are having a vast education in emerging mythologies; their own constants, their Olympians, are but drizzle over the vastness of the grey oceans they fly over. Tundra is becoming forest, all is new. Jungle is becoming prairie. 

It could be that stories are being forced to move from their old geographical habitations because they have something important to say about this wider crisis. As the crane settles in a new and unfamiliar German forest as snow falls, so a Seneca shaman story is told in the tentative surroundings of a Plymouth pub. I believe the two emerging migrations are connected. They are speaking over the frontier divides – crow to myth to waterfall to folktale. Both need tuned ears.

What they have to say will not arrive as statistical data, but images that tug on the heart of the listener, that are sufficiently weighty and straight-up-startling to share new light on many coming storms. And a light that is suffused with the eternal, that ‘time before time’, rather than just the strained, stressed-out strip light of the now."

http://theschoolofmyth.blogspot.co.uk/2013/12/storiesanimalsfrontiers-goodbye-to-2013.html

Book Reflection - Branch from the Lightening Tree by Martin Shaw

I don't have a great attention span, especially for reading. I have finished many a first chapter of many, many books but rarely reached far into the second before being distracted by one thing or another. I do, however, have an ever growing reading list identified as I continue on the rewilding journey... So I'm going to post a few book-reflections (not book reviews) to help me keep focussed!

Branch from the Lightening Tree by Martin Shaw

This poetic analysis of myth was a fascinating read. Through well-known and lesser-known traditional stories, from the wastes of Siberia to the mysterious world of the Red King, Martin presents them through the eyes of a wilderness-rites-of-passage guide, demonstrating how the initiation phases are reflected in the journey of the hero or heroine of the story through image, metaphor and characater. Using personal and professional anecdotes, we see a real-life rendering of these stages and a suggestion as to the dangers of starving our lives of true myth and the addiction to our 'toxic imitiations' of ancient laws.

Here are a few of the gifts I received from reading this book:

"The boundless choas of living speech"
Samuel Johnstone

Martin Shaw writes beautifully about how oral-tradition story is a sort of collective consciousness of the tongues that have told it, the listeners who have heard it and the place in which it is told or is born. In the live storytelling setting, it is not just my story told in my way - that would be a presentation or a performance where the audience passively receive my images - rather the oral story exists within and between the myriad of minds in the audience and the teller's imagination, intonation and diction all held in the imagination of the place that the story is shared.

As a storyteller (or storycarrier) who works in the oral tradition, Martin Shaw demonstrates in his authorship, there is also a joy in hearing or reading a carefully written and crafted story- a version of the tale unique to that teller or writer that can then be boiled down till only the bones remain and be reformed and refigured by a new teller in a new time and place with new listeners. The written word has kept many of these stories in a kind of stasis between a loss and a revival of oral telling. Martin's clear passion for the written and spoken word is a lovely permission to love with wild abandon the "boundless chaos of living speech" and value and find joy in the written word.

Myth is "the power of a place speaking" 
Sean Kane as quoted by Martin Shaw

Here is a book that moves lovingly through the individual psychological map that myth can present, through archetypal analyses and towards a greater reading that begins to encompass society and our relationship to the wild. In his exploration of story, Martin finds a communication between man and the world he inhabits in the strange symbols, actions and encounters in these tales. After reading this  book, I'm finding myself pondering on the messages murmured by the starlings across the Sussex skyline or the running of a deer pack across a road rather than just admiring their beauty and otherness. Martin seems to write with an underlying assumption that the wild-world wants to communicate with those willing to listen. Mary Oliver's Wild Geese kept coming to mind as the wild geese overhead 'over and over announc[e] your place in the family of things'. Maybe myth and story are a way we can learn once more to listen to the earth.

Quantum physics teaches us that we cannot observe without affecting the outcome. To take this out of the laboratory and into our day-to-day living, when we see something in nature - a kingfisher's dive, a swallow's swift flight through a highly hedged hollow, a fox's footprints - then it is not as a detached observer but as the implicated observer -  we have interacted. To take this one stage farther, why not understand the movement of an electron through a specific slot or the movement of a crow as a message, as speaking a language specifically to us, at that moment? And as each electron's path through one observed slot rather than another has a power  to change the outcome of an experiment, maybe we should allow that which we observe to affect our individual path through life - look beyond the literal and find meaning.

"The place they are returning to is far more deadly than four nights on the hill, and stories become a place to both reveal and protect something of their experience out there in the bush. Bush soul is what we need, and then enough real human beings around us to craft that into some kind of significance."
Martin Shaw

If you love myth, nature, wildness, stories or are interested in the development of human beings and their relationship to the world, I can highly recommend this book. If you aren't, I would still give Martin Shaw's soundcloud a listen or check out www.theschoolofmyth.blogspot.co.uk for a taster of his ideas and work.

Next on the reading list - Spell of the Sensuos by David Abram

Why be an injured fox, when you could be an eagle?

There was once a young man who felt an emptiness and then a desire and then a great pull. It was as if a great rope had been tied around his heart, dragging him from his home, from comfort and security and his Mother's warmth, to search the deep forests and high mountains.

At times he thought he was searching for truth and at others he thought he was searching for meaning. One day he thought he was chasing a happily ever after and the next that he was searching for the words that would heal a dying King. One bright morning, he glimpsed the burning tail of the firebird and one dark night he shared a cup of wine with the wandering moon.

And still the rope around his heart pulled and tugged and dragged him onwards.

He met a man with the universe in his pocket and danced with a woman who was the midwife of the fairies.
He heard of a girl with a spinning top that kept the world turning and a boy who hugged a selfish giant.

But still the rope around his heart pulled and tugged and dragged him onwards.

He walked through forest and fen, through brush and scrub and over great rocky mountains.
He walked through snow and rain, through sunlight and moonlight following the pull of his heart.

One day, in the quiet darkness of a pine wood, he gazed into a dark pool (where it was said the Princess of the dream kingdom had once lost her golden heart) and realised that old father time had begun to turn his hair grey.

He moved away and continued walking, but slower now - mortality weighing him own as he went. Gradually, the pull of the rope around his heart slackened and fell away.

As he came to a clearing, he spied an injured fox lying beneath an old oak tree. Her breathing was shallow and her leg was injured. At that very moment he heard the rush of wings and feathers - from up above a great, golden eagle flew down with fresh meat in its claws. It  landed by the fox and placed the meat carefully by the fox's muzzle. The fox ate it hungrily and the eagle flew away.

The man was awestruck. This was more than chance - this was the universe speaking to him.

"The universe will provide me with what I need. The search has led me nowhere. I must let the universe provide me with what I need."

Ceremoniously and with great care, the  man walked to a great cathedral of beech trees - their trunks twisting up from Mother Earth as their branches reached up to Father Sky - and sat cross legged in the centre.

"The universe will provide me with what I need."

He sat. He sat waiting for the universe to provide.
Days passed.
The sun burned his skin and the rain soaked his clothes, but still he sat.
Nights chilled him to the very core and winds whipped his greying hair around his face.

"The universe will provide me with what I need."

Gradually, his strength ebbed and his body began to buckle and weaken.

"The universe will provide me with what I need."

As he began to slip out of consciousness and into a deep, black sleep, he heard  voice:

"Why would you be an injured fox when  you could be an eagle?
Why did you become an injured fox when you could have been an eagle."

Copyright Abigail Palache 2013

The tension of A-B and B-A
There's an exercise we teach on some storytelling courses where we explore the idea of moving with purpose (A-B) - identifying a task, completing it, deciding a new task, completing it etc - compared to letting things come to you (B-A) - waiting to see what catches your attention, walking over, seeing what needs doing when you get there, seeing where that takes your attention next. 

B-A is something I really struggle with. I'm the doer, the driver, the director - if I am without a task for a moment, the immediate compulsion is to identify a new one and KEEP BUSY! And that serves me well in many ways - I get things done! It also suits the world we live in and the way we live in it - as a secondary school teacher I felt I had to keep on task, powering through to-do lists and not let myself take a softer view of the world, a 'wait and see what comes' attitude, unless everything was complete and of course it never was. This forceful A-B attitude left me listless, exhausted and ill. 

If we are to take this attitude out of the education system and into the larger world of business, media and industry, there is a greater danger than to the individual. When we are only stuck on completing the task we have set (or been set), we become focussed and blinkered - the rest of the world fades away and the bigger picture or narrative is ignored. We become cogs in a machine, unaware of the machines purpose, just moving in our fixed orbits on our particular task. So is it any wonder that thousands of species are wiped out, people are left starving despite us producing more food globally than ever before, that credit crunches? No-one is looking at the big picture because we are just so busy and focussed on B. 

When I first heard this story, I felt like it was an affirmation of action, of doing and of moving. And it is - the inaction of waiting for the universe to give you what you need is acting like an injured fox whilst the doing, the giving, the acting is being the eagle. We see a misreading of the universe and an irritation with the man for being given the great gift of this magical vision and then acting like the victim! So, I thought, I'm doing it right! I am being eagle-like and making change and keeping moving. 

In August this year I made a pledge to act on what I knew to be true. Since making that pledge, the acting has not being a problem, but I have struggled with knowing what is 'true' - what is the right thing to do? Then I saw this story from another angle - the Eagle's angle. The eagle was not focussed on her A-B task when she went to help the fox. She was flying over the forest with a soft gaze, waiting to see what needed to be done and in doing so she saves the fox. 

Animals are not gifted with the ability (for argument's sake) to make a choice over their actions - this is the eagle of the human spirit. We can choose to continue and focus on A-B with a kind of impossible, unstoppable determination. We can choose to leave A-B behind and sit and wait for the universe to give us everything we need. Or we can choose a middle path (the hardest path some may say) of having that soft gaze to see what needs to be done, to allow B to find us and then have the courage, determination and focus to act upon what we find there. 

What I want should not be mistaken for complete inaction
Life is what it is about,
I'll have no truck with death

If we were not so single-minded
about keeping our lives moving,and for once could do nothing,perhaps a huge silencemight interrupt this sadnessof never understanding ourselvesand of threatening ourselves with death.Perhaps the earth can teach usas when everything seems deadand later proves to be alive.

Excerpt from Pablo Neruda's Keeping Quiet

Mirror of Matsuyama

This story is from before.
Before beauty was standardised.

Before beautiful had a reference point in your head of what it is and it is not .

Before photographs and photoshop, before catwalk models and sample sizes. 

This story is from those far off days when what was beautiful was all in the eyes of the beholder.

***

There was once a young farmer who had a small farm in the rice fields of Japan. 

And being a young man, he fell in love with a young woman and they were married. 

When he looked into his wife's eyes, he only saw  beauty and when she was with him, the world was more beautiful than it had been before. 

One day he set off for the city of Kyoto and he returned with a gift for his wife -  a shiny, smooth reflective surface, a mirror, surrounded by a black, bamboo frame. She had never seen a mirror before. As she looked into it, she had never seen her face reflected so clearly. And what she saw made her smile, because what she saw was beautiful. Her eyes beheld beauty as she looked into the mirror.

***

Here I have to pause and acknowledge one of those gremlins that sits in the shadowy part of my head and spits insults at this woman and calls her vain and imagines her looking like all those pictures in all those magazines - she has no cellulite, no spots, no wrinkles, no bags under her eyes, no fat bits, no rough edges. How dare this woman look into the mirror and be satisfied with what she sees? 

This is a story from before - before we told ourselves that self-love was arrogance, before we convinced ourselves, or let something other convince us, that we aren't beautiful, that what is looking back at us in the mirror is anything other  than beautiful. 

***

She looked into the mirror and she smiled, because she beheld beauty and what she beheld was beautiful. 

The mirror became one of her most treasured possessions (and why should it not - why should anything that shows us beauty be anything other than a treasure). If she was feeling sad, if she was feeling low, she could look into that mirror and be reminded of beauty. 

The young man and young woman, the young husband and the young wife loved each other very much. One spring morning, the woman gave birth to a beautiful, bouncing, black haired baby who had the same eyes and mouth and smile as her mother. 

They were very happy, but happiness does not always last; one cold, sad winter, the young woman contracted an illness and found she had to leave her dear husband and daughter behind.

In grief and sorrow, the man put away the mirror for it no longer reflected beauty, but only the absence of his beloved. He put all his energy, soul and spirit into making the world as beautiful for his daughter as was possible. 

One day when she was almost a woman, but not quite done being a girl, he called his daughter to him and told her tales of her mother, including the mirror. When the father went to bed, the daughter was consumed with curiosity and she went to the room where all her mother's belongings were packed away into boxes  and she found the mirror, with its black bamboo band.

She stared into it. Tears formed in her eyes and her breath caught in her throat.

That is where her father found her the next morning, surrounded by unpacked memories and gazing into the mirror, a sweet, sad smile on her face. 

"Father, father, look - the mirror is showing me Mother's face."

It was her own face she saw, but her father didn't tell her. 

He couldn't. The words were caught in his throat and tears were rolling down his cheeks.

***

So let me explain why this is on my blog. In the process of 'rewilding' I have found a huge amount of my time is spent reconnecting with myself as a woman, unashamedly loving myself and believing myself to contain that same wild beauty that I see in the naked, winter trees. And so I have spent a lot of time exploring narratives and stories about being a woman and this is one of them. 

We so often associate the mirror with vanity - the smooth surfaced pool of Narcissus comes to mind and a plethora of voices criticise us for liking or loving ourselves or thinking we are beautiful. But here is  story about a woman who was pleased with what she saw staring back at her and maybe we are angry with her and maybe we are jealous of her for being capable of looking into the mirror and beholding her own beauty. We are never  told that she fits the socially constructed standard of beauty, we are never told what she looks like at all, just that she is beautiful and she can see that she is beautiful. 

It would be wonderful to re-member a time where beauty could be about  beholding, instead of buying. There are these moulds we can go out and fit ourselves into and then we feel beautiful... Or   so we like to believe.

It is no accident, however, that it is her husband (her partner) that gives her the mirror - if we take this story as a model of the psyche as a whole, then it is important to find that hard-working, home-building part of ourselves and give the softer, feminine side ourselves the mirror so we can see, reflected back, the love and beauty we feel for that part of ourselves. But maybe that is too restrictive - maybe the story contains another message and one that is harder to swallow. If the young woman had been given the mirror by her evil step-mother who did nothing but hate and criticise, would the young woman have beheld beauty or would she have only seen the story she had always been fed- unworthy, ugly, unloved. If the evil step-mother is just a media-fed part of our psyche, we can start to deal with her but if she is a living, breathing person who formed what we thought of ourselves when we were very small, then to believe that we are beautiful is much, much harder. It is often said that you can't receive love until you love yourself, but it is also much easier to love yourself when you have been loved by others. So loving others is an act of loving ourselves and loving ourselves is an act of loving others. 

Admit something: Everyone you see, you say to them "Love me"
Of course you do not do this outloud, or someone would call the cops.
Still though, think about it, this great pull in us to connecct.
Why not become the one
Who lives with a full moon in each eye
That is always saying,
With that sweet moon language,
What every other eye in this world
Is dying to Hear
- Hafiz

Other stories on the topic of beauty - Strongwind (Algonquin), Olga the Cockroach

Fenrir the Wolf

In the far north, a wolf howled and the Gods awoke from their slumber, hearts racing. They knew this was the end - the wild thing had broken free and Ragnarok was upon them.

***

 

Loki the trickster,

Loki the shape-shifting blood-brother of Odin,

Loki born of a lightening strike on a leafy island,

Loki the mischief maker, the trouble-maker, the bringer of strife.

 

Loki was not content to stay at home with his sweet wife Sigyn - he hungered for a deeper darkness that lay far beyond the walls of Asgard. Just like Loki, the witch Angroboda was fair to the eye, but just like Loki, there was a shadow in her heart and it was that shadow which drove her. Under a starless sky, the got three monstrous children together.

 

The first was Jormungandr, the world serpent. When Odin saw this huge snake with dripping, venomous teeth, he picked it up by the tail and flung it into the sea and there the beast remained - biting his own tail, for he was so long that he encircled the whole world.

 

The second of Loki's children was a daughter named Hel. She was quite a sight to behold. From the top of her head to her waist, she was flesh and blood like you or I, but from there down she was dead, rotting, green and black decay. When Odin saw her, he banished her to the realm of the dead, that Hel might rule over Hel and there she remained amongst the swirly, grey mists.

 

The last of Loki's children was a wolf-cub, Fenrir. He was small and furry and seemed sweet and so the Gods decided he could remain in Asgard as their pet. Fenrir ran and gambolled and played in the grass and the Gods laughed as they watched the puppy play.

 

But as time passed, they saw Fenrir grow and grow until soon he was eating a whole sheep for breakfast. Soon enough, only Tyr - the God of War - was brave enough to feed him and Odin, unsure of the consequences of keeping this child of Loki's, went to consult the Norns.

 

"You kept the wolf cub and now you are afraid," said Urd.

"Fenrir-Wolf is great and strong," said Verdani.

"He will swallow the sun, Odin Allfather," whispered Skuld, "he will swallow the sun and then he will destroy you."

 

A council was called and the Gods discussed what they could do with the wolf. No blood could be spilt on Asgard soil, so simply killing the wolf (with arrows, from a great distance of course!) was mentioned. There was no easy solution - the wolf wouldn't go of his own accord and he mustn't know how powerful he would become.

 

Eventually the Gods came up with a plan of trickery and cunning. They found a great chain called Laeding, with rings as thick as Thor's hammering-arm and they gathered around the wolf.

"Fenrir, wolf cub, child of Loki come and test your strength for us," cooed Odin, offering the wolf the chain.

 

Fenrir sniffed the metal and snarled, but he nodded and allowed himself to be bound from the tip of his nose to the tip of his tail.

 

Asgard held its breath as Fenrir yawned and stretched and crack, crack, crack, the rings of the chain burst apart.

"You'll have to do better than that to beat me," snarled the wolf and sauntered away into the trees.

 

A council was called and the Gods, a little worried, now decided to create an even bigger chain. Forged of the strongest metal, Dromi was sure to bind the wolf.

 

Once more, the Gods of Asgard gathered around where Fenrir lay bathing in the early-autumn sunshine.

 

"Fenrir, little wolf cub come and test your strength once more," said Odin softly, offering the wolf the chain.

 

Fenrir sniffed the metal and growled, but he nodded and allowed himself to be bound from the tip of his nose to the tip of his tail.

 

Asgard held its breath as Fenrir yawned and stretched and stretched and yawned and crack, crack, crack, the rings of the chain burst apart.

"You'll have to do better than that to beat me little Gods," snarled the wolf and sauntered away into the trees.

 

Panic began to rise in the heart of each and every God of Asgard and worried voices began to spread like wildfire through the gathered deities. Odin raised his hand.

 

"We must ask the dwarves. Skirnir, go to Svartelvelheim and offer them as much gold as they want."

 

Skirnir flew like an arrow over the rainbow bridge and down into the cavernous depths of the land of the dwarves, slipping through dark rock, into gloomy cavern until he found himself in the forge of the master-smiths. They listened with interest to his tale and a lot of gold was exchanged.

 

Days later, Skirnir returned to Odin carrying a chain, but this was no ordinary chain. Gleipnir was a smooth and thin as a strip of silk and it gleamed in the sunlight.

 

"What is that?" cried voices from the council. "How will that tether the wild wolf?"

 

But Odin saw the magic in it.

 

"The dwarves made it," said Skirnir, "and they made it from the sound of a cat's footfall, the beard of a woman, the breath of a fish, the roots of a mountain and the spit of a bird. They tell me this will bind the wolf, because this chain is made of impossible things - it should not exist."

 

The Gods walked with Fenrir to an island in the centre of a lake in the heart of Asgard and there they showed him Gleipnir.

 

"Come wolf-pup, one final test of strength."

 

Fenrir sniffed the chain and snorted, "There is no glory for me in this. Why should I test my strength against a piece of gossamer? Unless there is more here than meets the nose... you have forged it with cunning and deceit. I will not test myself against a God's trickery."

 

The Gods shifted uneasily and avoided meeting the gaze of the great wolf. Only Tyr stepped forward.  

 

"It will be so easy, why not try? If the you beat it then you have lost nothing and if you are beaten by it, we will untie you," Tyr said calmly.  

 

Fenrir sniffed the chain again and thought deeply.

 

"If one of you will put your hand inside my jaws, I will allow myself to be bound. As long as there is no falsehood in your words and you untie me, you will keep your hand."

 

Every God, even Odin, looked down, up, into the distance, anywhere but at the wolf. Only Tyr stepped forward.

 

"Ok then little wolf. You have nothing to fear."

 

And so Fenrir allowed himself to be bound with the rope called Gleipnir, from the tip of his nose to the tip of his tail.

 

Fenrir yawned, stretched, yawned, stretched and shhhkk, the chain tightened around his legs, shhhhk the chain tightened around his chest, the wolf struggled and scrabbled and the Gods laughed and the wolf roared and the chain tightened and Tyr lost his hand.

 

One of the Gods, maybe it was Odin, took a sword and has the wolf howled in pain and fear and anger, he thrust the point of the blade into the roof of the creature's mouth, the hilt in his jaw and so the beast's mouth was held open. Another God took the end of the rope and with a great stone he plunged it into the soft, brown flesh of the island and Fenrir was bound and tethered, tethered and tied to Asgard soil, unable to snap or bite or howl at the moon.

 

And there he remained. The great, wild wolf was bound, fettered, shackled and the Gods walked back to the mead halls of Gladsheim to celebrate their great victory.

 

Deep below, at the roots of Yggrdrasil, the world tree, the Norns were weaving the threads of fate.

 

"The wolf was tricked," said Urd.

"The wolf is bound," said Verdani.

"He will swallow the sun," whispered Skuld, "he will swallow the sun and then he will destroy you, Odin Allfather."

 

******

 

Reflection on the tale

 

This is one of my very favourite stories, although I didn't like it at first. It seemed so simple- the evil wolf is beaten by the great Gods - so I ignored it. But like all good stories, this tale did not let me relax or sleep and kept whispering in my ear as I slept. So one day I decided to learn it and then I told it again and again and again.

 

The first time I told it to a friend of mine, she cheered when I told her that Fenrir does break free. She said that she had felt sorry for the wolf and that she couldn't stand the Gods.

 

So what is going on in this story? It is worth noting, before I continue, that the Norns are not exactly the same as the fates of Greek mythology - the futures they see are not set in stone but are likely outcomes from circumstances as they are. The actions of the Gods failed to change the future - they went down the road of trickery and violence rather than trying a different approach. I always hold the question within me - what if the Gods acted with compassion instead of violent control? It's the same with Loki - they are told he is going to lead the forces of darkness against Asgard at Ragnorok, but still they sow up his lips, threaten him with violence and throw his children into the sea. Maybe this saga is there to show us that we should not try to be like Odin but try and find another way - domination, violence and a lack of empathy and compassion destroyed Asgard and all of the Gods. If they had treated Fenrir with compassion or love, would this story have had a different ending?

 

 

I see Fenrir as an embodiment of that wildness, not unlike the lion cubs we want to cuddle and keep as housecats, until we see them ripping a zebra apart. Despite being born from darkness, his attractiveness as a small pup overrides Odin's impulse to throw all of Loki's children out of Asgard and he decides that they can handle or control this wolf. As they begin to fear his size and strength, they are told that he is a threat and so they try to control him- literally tying up the wolf. The threat itself, to swallow the sun and to kill Odin, could be read as a destruction of the status quo - swallowing the old sun and the old king so a new dawn can rise. How many times have we done the same - found an instinctive element or thought within ourselves that threatens to throw off the status quo of our quiet existence and so we respond with fear and try to chain it up. The instinct to break out of a boring, monotonous job and search for something greater, the instinct to leave a fading relationship, the instinct to throw ourselves naked into the sun-kissed waters of the lake, all tethered and tied up by the reigning Allfather of our conscious - maybe he comes in the form of a dominant narrative (that's not how ladies should behave) or maybe he comes in the form of a negative thought or fear (no-one else will every love you). What would happen if we let the wolf out, destroyed our old ways of being and welcomed in a new dawn?

 

If we read this as an ecological tale, we see a story where man identifies the wildness of nature as being a threat and tries despearately to control it, but even when man thinks they've won, wildness is tethered, not destroyed. Nature is patient and will-out. Fenrir has to wait, tied up, laughed at and in pain, but he escapes in the end. It reminds me that grass and flowers grow even in concrete jungles and even though we invest thousands of pounds in weed control, weeds still grow. The Gods didn't beat Fenrir and we haven't beaten the wild, even though we have set ourselves up against it, pretending we are not part of it and have not got part of the darkness and determination of Fenrir in our hearts.

 

Which brings me to my last idea...

 

The final act of the Gods is to thrust a sword in Fenrir's mouth. This image makes my whole body tighten - it is an unnecessary domineering act of violence, a celebration of 'victory' over animal wildness. In my mind, I picture the God's faces having similar expressions to the joyous faces of those awful safari hunting parties that send snapshots to friends and family of when they killed a lion, a bear, a tiger. But is there another way to read it instead of a simple cruel, vile gesture of power?

 

The Gods show no violence towards the wolf until the wolf is tethered. When they realise that Gleipnir will hold Fenrir and the wild is shackled, it mutates and transforms and a toxic imitation (a phrase borrowed from Dr Martin Shaw) of the brutality of the wild is created in the act of torturing Fenrir's mouth open with a sharp sword. 

(C) Abigail Palache 6th October 2013



Everything is Connected

Ribbit.

Ribbit.

Ribbit.

A long time ago, in tiny village in the vast continent of Africa, there were some frogs. Well, to be truthful there were lots and lots of frogs. This was the jungle and in the jungle, frogs live in pools, ponds and even on the trees and as the sun set over the treetops and the green began to fade to a cool darkness, the frogs began to croak and ribbit and ribbit and croak.

"This sound is unbearable!!" cried the Chief of the Village. In the middle of the night, he leapt from his bed, enraged and sleepless, fixed his crown of feathers to his brow and threw a ceremonial robe around his shoulders and banged the war drums.

The villagers, suddenly startled from their slumber, ran out with sticks and stones ready to take on the invading army of sharp-toothed lions, tigers or snakes. They gathered in confused, excited fear around the Chief's hut.

"THE FROGS ARE TOO NOISY. THEY MUST DIE. KILL THEM ALL!!!"

Immediately, the villagers set to following their leader's commands (he was the chief after all) and skewered, stabbed and speared every bullfrog, treefrog, tadpole and spawn they could find.

All went to battle with the amphibian foe, except one old woman - one very old woman. She lived alone right on the edge of the village and she stood still and steady, staring the Chief defiantly in the eyes.

"No. I will not." she said.
"But I am your chief - you must."
"Everything is connected. You cannot change just one thing. There will be consequences to this act." And with that, the old woman turned and walked, slowly and gracefully, back to her hut.

The village ate roasted, toasted and stir-fried frog every night and every night the jungle was as quiet as the grave.

zszszszs
zszszszs
zszszszs

"OUCH!" The Chief woke up with a fright and a start. "OUCH!" he cried again.
It was as if he was being pricked all over with thorns. "OUCH!" Then again that high pitched ssszzzzszszszszszsz in his ear, around his head.

This time the chief didn't need to bang the drum. The village was awake; the village whole village was up and hopping and jumping and slapping and crying "OUCH!" and emitting high pitched squeals to match the high pitched buzz in the air.

Mosquitoes.
Mosquitoes in their hundreds and thousands.

The men, women and children of the village were hopping and jumping and squealing except one old women - a very old woman - who stood calmly and gracefully and stared the Chief squarely in the eyes.

"The frogs fed on the mosquitoes," she said, with a slight, sad smile, "Everything is connected."

Traditional African Folktale - Retold by Abbie Palache

Thoughts on "Everything is Connected"
Folktales can be read as lessons. This one is clear in its message or moral, but is no less satisfying for its barefaced clarity. It is so simple and short, but if we sit with it for a moment we find there are many layers of knowledge concealed within it.

Ecologically, this story has a clear and unashamedly blatant message, supported by example. Everything is connected and therefore everything is in balance. The scientific reality presented in age-old folklore gives me a sense of satisfaction. To stay with the story's message for more than a moment, however, brings a feeling of unease - this is one village and just a few dozen frogs that manifest into hundreds of mozzies. What is the impact of the imbalances we have wreaked upon the Earth? What are the consequences of our Chief's actions? What are our clouds of mosquitos in the global village we now inhabit?  

This story also reinforces the idea that we are not individuals, but part of a greater whole, and that it is when we act on the impulse of the individual that we can cause problems for the wider community - what annoys the Chief, does not prevent the other villagers from sleeping and yet he ranks his problem above, seeing fault in the frogs rather than in his own irritation. There is also a lesson to be learned by the villagers - they follow one man's instructions without question or hesitation. This could also be seen as a cautionary tale against a blindly-accepted hierarchy - the counsel, collective or government did not decide to kill the frogs, the 'Chief' did - a single leader of the village.

To explore this story from a psychological perspective is a bit challenging... but here's what I've got: we find ourselves reading a tale where to follow our conscious impulse, the will or want of our dominant (conscious?) self, without passing it through the deeper, stiller, steadier wisdom we have inside causes imbalance in the whole. Maybe the ribbit of frogs is the chatter of worries and anxiety as we try to sleep, the killing of those frogs is the alcohol we use too violently, excessively and suddenly numb the worry (the frogs aren't scared away, they are butchered) and the mosquitos the avalanche of problems that come as a consequence of using drink as a painkiller. There is a problem in this approach, in that the frogs are necessary and worrying isn't... or maybe it is a natural part of life - the background chatter of voices as we work to live in a community.

In this (slightly dodgy) psychological reading, the story leaves us with a challenge - how can we get the leader, and the villagers, to listen to the wisdom of the deeper self? It becomes a tale where to think before we act, to take time and pay attention to the stubborn stillness of that old woman, might just keep the balance.

If we read it ecologically as villagers, what can we do to ensure we do not blindly follow the chief's commands? As a Chief, what can we do to listen to the voice of reason, of knowledge and experience? As the Old Woman, how can we stand strong without breaking when standing in the sometimes frightening and often lonely position of being the only one to stand for what they believe in?


(C) Abigail Palache, 2013

Making Tracks

We follow tracks.

We search for signs that they are still with us
But all we are left with are pretty scratches in the dust.

Imitations and images
Evidence that something was there that now is not

Echoes and shadows
Shadows and echoes of something that left tracks in the dirt

And all we really know,
All we know for certain
Is that it isn't there
Anymore.