casting an emerging spell
lost Welsh words, connection, courage + care
January is not a time for definites and surety and bigness, I am finding. It is more fluid and wordless. So much so that I do not have the words to describe it. I’m simply with the sense that all of the words that are coming out in writing practice are fine but nothing is quite consolidating itself. I don’t feel it is supposed to right now. And yet there is the push to keep on showing up for your people and audience and customers and… well, I would like to do that from this place. Of shrugging and softly nodding to these wordless things.
Words that I am enjoying at the moment are the Welsh for Badger, Mochyn Daerar, which translates as ‘earth pig’. Also, Jay in Welsh is Sgrech y Coed, which translates as ‘scream of the the woods’. I spent some time In St Davids here in Pembrokeshire in the early new year and visited the Geiriau Diflanedig//Lost Words exhibition showcasing the artwork and poetry of Jackie Morris and Rob McFarlane alongside the Welsh poems of Mererid Hopwood. Jackie Morris lives very close to the St Davids and in the inevitable way these things work in rural spots, a local friend is good friends with her daughter. It’s always good to see local folks doing local things and go along in support.
Saving words and languages matters. It matters because they are more than just sounds. They are windows that enable us to see and understand the world about us. A bluebell and a dandelion may both be flowers, but without being called by their own names, they become somehow less visible, less important, more prone to be ignored ... and eventually, more likely to vanish.
As is the case in other languages such as French or German, in Welsh we have two ways of expressing knowing, enabling us to ‘know’ facts on the one hand, and places and people on the other in different ways. In our language we recognise that to know facts is somehow a more superficial undertaking than to know places and people; the former an act of mind and memory, the latter more an act of the heart and soul.
In working on these spell-songs, I have been allowed to meet the twenty words they conjure up and get to know what they represent beyond the mind and memory. They have become more than facts. They have become friends that need to be known by the heart and soul.
I have been reflecting on how being off Instagram for January means not being plugged in so much to the ripe and roaring calls for freedom, peace, and justice in the world. How this disconnection can bring some distance which is on the one hand needed to tend the proverbial garden, and is also at odds with the connection to collaborative care in the world. Bouncing around in between my needs/your needs/our needs in a resource-stretched January where body and brain call for more attention in their peculiar languages.
In this time of more inward hunkering down I am bringing together plans and courses for the months ahead. I have big ideas and things are taking shape, with huge thanks to my assistant and collaborator Lotus, and I am at once holding boldness and uncertainty. I have written this INKLINGS a number of times with great gusto and fire-in-the-belly call to arms for the months ahead, and it tires me right out and I don’t hit send.
It’s all here. The stoked embers in the belly and the weariness.
As I write those words I remember that I, we, are not alone in the peaks and troughs of wholehearted living, in the unraveling and creating of new things. There are comrades everywhere.
We are at once needed to claim our space in the world and take it up, with as much courage as we can muster and are also part of the mycelial web. Let our systemic ingesting of painfully individualistic pursuits and concerns of status melt to form roots that spread and entwine with the beings around us.
My intention, wish, need, and call for this coming undulation of the seasons is to lean into this seeking of more time spent with comrades and more comrades encountered. As we sit alone and ingest the horrors unfolding in the world we can at once feel avoidant, despondent, defensive, overwhelmed, and terrified. Our nervous systems are not built to comprehend armageddon, as my sister said to me the other day, and yet we find ourselves grappling with it.
To speak plainly I am hungry for other people. I need other people. I need to read the words and work of others to be involved in conversations and actions. I also need to return to the sea and the trees and the silence.
Not all collaborators and comrades are human.
I cannot do this alone. I cannot give in to the ‘business as usual’ mode. I cannot give in to believing it will all just work itself out. I do not want to contract and build walls. The sorrow, grief, fear, joy and longing in my own body are the threads of connection to others. I will not deny this. This is my ticket to feeling the travesties and joys of the world. And fuck me do I need friendship, support, and care to do this.
I need to sweat. I need fresh air. I need to hear other people speak from the heart and to read their words. I need the artwork of others, their poems and films, and handmade things. I need their heartbreak when I cannot feel mine. I need permission granted from other lives lived and to choose care again and again and again. I need water and earth and the warmth of fire in the belly of the other I am hugging. I need the courage of others.
This is an emerging spell I cast for the months ahead, from this bright cold morning after a night of battering storm.
May the creations in your days be your spell for care in the world. In your own vast, mysterious human landscape, the communities you inhabit and the wider web. Where there is need and suffering may there arrive connection. May this begin in our own bones and be the fecund ground from which all grows in the times to come.
In cameraderie,
-KJ
🜃 g e n t l e a t t e n t i o n 🜃
🜃 It is ok to not be ok. If you are in the UK and could do with some extra support this January Better Help online therapy offers accessible, affordable and convenient support. Also the 24/7 support phone-line from Samaritans is open, free and available for times you need to talk to someone.
🜃 The research and writing of Fariha Roisin here on Substack in How To Cure a Ghost. Particuarly her writing on the Israel-Gaza genocide, white supremacy and the global politics of war.
Fariha Róisín is interested in the margins, liminality, otherness, and the mercurial nature of being. She is the author of How To Cure A Ghost, Like A Bird, Who Is Wellness For? and Survival Takes a Wild Imagination.
🜃 Mar Grace Not Looking Away: The Discomfort of the Inbetween and their writing on creative practice, mental health, addiction, attention and action.
🜃 From INKLINGS last January.
🜃 A dreamy album for January. Miguel Atwood Ferguson’s Library Selection. Miguel has directed, played on, produced and collaborared with hundreds of other musical greats over the years - Flying Lotus, Ray Charles, Chaka Khan, Hiatus Kaiyote, to name a very few. Inspired by Austin Kleon’s recent shout out to go learn more about the musicians we love to listen to, I have been spending some time on this recently. Also, album listening! As I find myself at the mercy of the Spotify playlist, honouring the whole of a crafted album is giving me joy.