A wail in the wilderness

A wail in the wilderness

Humans have barely left a skerrick of space for the wild world to flourish. And yet you get angry at the possums in your roof, the mice and the cockroaches in your cupboards. Our high rise buildings and concrete car parks, suffocate the land. Ever advancing, driven by our suicidal lust for absolute control, absolute convenience. Every footpath and manicured lawn, a monocultural wasteland, containing and constraining the life that wants burst forth.

The possum, the possum, the possum. 
The dear, sweet thing, tragic victim of modernity. 
I stopped to help it just as it was crushed. 
Speeding tires left it to rot in the middle of the road. 

All I could do was carry it gently to the nature strip,
Let it breathe its last into soft grass, 
Let its decay return its atoms to the cycles of life.

I returned to my car and wept and wailed my way home. 

You motherfuckers!! 

You would fine me for the wildness of my unruly garden but the Earth herself bears witness to your crime. Your malevolent gaze belies your ignorance, diminishing us all with your pettiness. 

From Earth’s view, the things I’ve been taught to care about matter so little and the things I’ve been taught to ignore matter so much. 

Aieeee, aieeee, aieeee, who will mourn the loss of so many we never even came to know?
When will we take the global minute of silence? 
When will we ring the bells and wear the clothes of mourning? 
When will the keeners come to loose my tears with their sacred wail? 
When will we allow the sacred magic of grief to bring us together and spur us to transform?

What would it take to let go? To allow the wild tide to regain its grip, to flow and grow and be. I groan against the bars of my own inhibitions waiting for my chance to be wild and thumb my nose at your ridiculous rules.

I’ve had enough of participating in the human death cult. I’ve had enough of human self obsession. I want to make space for the larger whole to speak, flourish and thrive. I want to dance with life, cocreating spaces of mutual flourishing.

Picture of Common Ringtail Possum By John Gardner - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=120401211

Photo by John Gardner – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=120401211

Grief :: Leaf

Dear Melbourne,

I love you and I know it’s really hard right now. It’s hard for me too, so I made us a thing to ease our tender hearts. Grief :: Leaf (download pdf here) is a self-guided ritual for ordinary sadness. Rituals are powerful. I hope this one brings you a moment of peace.

Love,

Kiri

P.S. you can now access a little zine version of this ritual on my Itch store (pay as you feel)

Ancestral adventure: Mountain ash

I am home.

I am home and the land feels so vibrant and so close, like a warm breeze plucking at my heart strings.

I am home and I feel fragile, vulnerable and exposed.

There is a sense of a new self, a new way of being that has emerged over the last month and I am terrified of it. Continue reading

Ancestral adventure: Rathlin

We are on the ferry to Rathlin in Northern Ireland. The locals say it quickly and enunciate the ‘L’ so it sounds like rattlin’. Mum is telling me a story of my ancestors – Catherine McCaig was born on the island in 1821, she married Harry Begley and moved to Port Stuart, they had a daughter, Annie (my Grandma Bear’s grandmother) and several other children.

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Ancestral adventure: dark satanic mills

Driving towards Manchester Mum commented that we would be going around the ‘dark satanic mills’ and I immediately started singing Jerusalem (Blake’s poem set to music by Sir Hubert Parry). I learned it at school and have always been fond of it for no reason I can say. As I came to the final line a wave of grief rose up and I found myself in tears.

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Ancestral adventure: Letting go

We have moved from the flat, flint and clay lands of East Anglia to the hilly stone lands of the Peak District. It is lovely to see the difference in the buildings as they respond to what’s abundant in the land. Today we are in Castleton, there are no ancestors to hunt down and visit here (as far as I know) and it is something of a relief. No expectation, no stories, just me and the land.

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Ancestral adventure: Longing

We are at Wells-next-the-sea and I am all at sea. We left London two days ago, headed to Thaxted – birthplace of my father’s mother’s great grandfather, Thomas Suckling. Already things were improved, people greeted us on the street, chatted to us at the local cafe, it was suddenly easier to pierce our little tourist bubble.

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Ancestral pilgrimage: Beginning

I am a fifth generation Australian settler and I am in the UK, in the lands of my ancestors, on a quest of healing.

It is a quest in the sense that the outcome is unknown to me. I do not know what, if anything, I will discover while I am here.

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Spring Vision Quest (Victoria)

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“You know after any truly initiating experience that you are part of a much bigger whole. Life is not about you henceforward, but you are about life.”

― Richard Rohr

Vision quest is a powerful way to surrender to the greater whole. An opportunity to step into the wilderness, letting go of the expectations and roles that hold us in place Continue reading