Hello dearest reader,
Happy, happy Sunday, I hope this week’s newsletter finds you most well. It’s very nice to be back here with you.
Last weekend I took a break from anything in the digital realm, including this project. It was very healing to take some space and focus on being with loved ones for the long weekend. Spending several days away from the glow of screens and the hum of social media, messages and emails allowed me to switch off and gave me a much needed opportunity to unravel a lot of internal tension.
I, like many of us, am very sensitive to these online worlds, the ding-dinging devices, and the clamour and stimulation that they bring into my life. Even though they offer so many opportunities to connect, I do feel as though the more I limit time with them, the calmer and more spacious I am more able to feel. I guess experiencing the immediate life around me and trying to observe, process and situate myself within the physical, tactile web of the world often feels like more than enough to handle from time to time, and I do struggle to try and be present with this world whilst also clasping a strange portal to another two dimensional world in my hand. This is the difficult dance that I often experience, at least. It’s ongoing work.
I think we all have such nuanced and complex relationships with the digital sphere and technology, it’s interesting to reflect on how it’s different for everyone and that we all come to these things in our own unique way. This is all just to say, really, that if you feel like you need to take space and put the clanging and clinging of your devices on hold, you absolutely should - if you can and it is possible for you to do so - even if just for an hour or two. I believe very strongly in claiming that space for yourself if you need it, and challenging the narrative that we all need to be reachable, and plugged into everything all of the time.
All of those musings aside, I hope you have been finding some joy and lightness over the last couple of weeks and are taking pleasure in the Springtime. Life feels so much more colourful suddenly, and certainly a little less serious. The dominant mix of yellows, blues and whites that is so characteristic of the landscape of early Spring is one of my favourite colour palettes throughout the whole wheel of the year. We’re at the time now where I can hardly stand to be indoors when it’s light out, unless “indoors” is the greenhouse, at least, where there is an endless list of things to be done. It’s also an excellent place to write, as it happens, and drink coffee, making it a good all-rounder as far as places to hole up in go. We all need our hideaways.
For several weeks now, Daffodils have been brightening the experience of being alive on this strange and surreal planet, and come as a welcome gift after many months of Winter’s silence and decay, lighting us up from the inside out. Their nodding heads seem to inspire optimism and joy in even the most forlorn heart. We have an inordinate amount in our garden, with more varieties than I can count, and I love to see them carpeting open spaces and cropping up in their wild variety in woodland and meadow, too. Clumps bursting open and up and out every which way, like magnificently friendly looking Jack-in-the-Boxes, cheering all of the Earth folk along.
Alongside the magnificent Daffodils, there are the Dandelions, the clusters of Wild Primroses, and all of the heartbreakingly gorgeous Bluebells, Forget Me Nots, Daisies, Anemones…there are too many gifts to name. Plus lots of delicious edibles to forage. Bliss and bounty in the surreal landscape of Spring! It's all pretty far out right now, in the wild world. If you are looking to feel more connected to source, it can be as simple as stepping outside, looking - really looking - around, inhaling the smell of the air, and placing your hands on some Life. It is for all of us to embrace, for we are all of the Earth and no one can take this from us, or make us pay for the pleasure of this intrinsic connection.
Anyhow, Flower friends aside.
I have a short story to share with you today that I have written, themed around the magic place in the wheel of the year that we currently find ourselves within. This story is based around a Germanic folk tale connected to the festival of Easter and some of its associated traditions, telling the story of a Spring Goddess known as Ostara (or Ēostre) and her conjuring of a dying bird into a hare. I have taken the liberty of fleshing the tale out and weaving it from my own imagery, setting the story in a primordial land that has long awaited Springtime. This land is touched at the turn of time by the workings of a Goddess who represents Springs tidal wave of regeneration. I’ve thrown the Nightingale in, too, as there has been one of these little beauties singing outside of my bedroom for many weeks now, every morning and evening without fail. His sweet, mercurial, and transcendent song permeates the beginning and end of each day, and has threaded its way inside of the land and inside of my being. I am grateful for this little visitor, and so touched that he wishes to spend so much time in our garden. I will be sad when he moves on.
So, that's all. I hope you enjoy the story, and are very kind to yourself today. You deserve nice words and gentleness. We all deserve this.
With love until next time,
Anna Margarita
x
The Nightingale, the Goddess and the Hare
It was a deep, blue night. The air was cool and damp and heavy with the scent of virgin Life waiting to unfold.
Winter had long held the Earth in arms of quiet stillness, but the pulse of the cold, lingering darkness was weakening now. The long Night was lifting from the Earth and the land was beginning to know the Light that it had forgotten long ago.
A thousand quicksilver stars were cast like a net upon this eclipsed world of eternal Winter. There was also the belly of the Moon, hanging white-gold like a great egg in the black-blue expanse, alit as though from within. The sweeping, celestial sky served to lift the darkest corners of the Earth from secrecy and shade, illuminating each Leaf and each River with a supernal incandescence. This hushed radiance laid bare all to see, casting the land aglow for those that found themselves awake and watchful. For the creatures held to attention within the quiet palm of an hour that flowed ceaselessly. For this cold Night was one of Eternity; the clock of Man not yet known; the story of the seasons still unfolding. Each moment erased the last and was a new, unknown thing.
And what of those that watched? Whose twilight eyes fell upon Night’s uncovered breast, laid white and bare under a primordial sky? Of course, the Trees were full of Owls. Their spectral heads turning silently round and round. Small, feathered ears and cosmic, yellow orbs for eyes, following the thread of the Night through sights and sounds. The Bats, too, flitted noiselessly through the same great, reaching branches upon which the Owls huddled and perched. Now the Bats, well, wings of ultrasound carried them through this Dark expanse. Strange creatures foregoing sight for vibration. Such were the folk of the deep, endless Night, resting and feeding and watching and breathing and sensing abreast the guardian bodies of Trees. All turned their eyes and ears to the pooling half-light, as though they were one great organism. Many parts making the sum of the whole.
Beneath the jutting limbs of bare-for-not-much-longer branches, and lower still again, the astral glow found the long Grasses through which the Field Mice leapt. “Soon the Light will come”, the Mice spoke silently, as blood swept through tiny, fractal veins and bodies moved in fervour, perfectly alert to the changing atmosphere and the energetic shift. Elsewhere, Badgers pushed soft snouts into the dense and matted undergrowth beneath the shroud of Night, sifting through leafmould rank with a decay that would beget the nascency of Life. Somewhere, further in the distance, the moonlight found a Red Fox whose sanguine face lifted as the cloak of dark sky fell against its back. “Perhaps the Dark world is waning”, spoke the Fox silently, looking to the Moon that slowly turned; revolving at a pace almost imperceptible, save to those whose senses were well adjusted to the loitering pace of a world before time.
Soon the Light found the smooth body of a small, perfectly formed Stone that was resting in the clutch and tangle of Tree root, as though nestled in the very Church of the Earth. “Death is but a memory”, spoke the Stone silently. Others felt this too. Through every being coursed a perfect awareness of the approaching Light. The sensation was wordless and shared by all things. All creatures, all Earth-folk felt the changing tide. Their awareness merged with the night and was swallowed by the swell of fertile lands, stirring the soils.
This awakening was the vital work of the Goddess, who came through the glow of the Moon and tread upon the fine, darkened Earth, leaving the rumble of Springtime in Her wake. The Night watchers looked on as She stepped through the late hour. Her hair pockmarked with Wood Anemone flowed behind Her in the hushed Wind, drawing the veil between Dark and Light as She went. Life was being coaxed from the land, Death felt the verve of blood coursing. Soon the Night would open to the Light and Dark decay would be a long forgotten thing. And so the Goddess continued on Her path. She stirred the quiet seed of glowing rebirth within all that She turned Her eyes, hands and Breath upon. The Night watchers gazed on and knew that they too would soon pass into the new realm of Her portending. As Her feet touched the Earth, the Life below awakened. The vernal hum grew louder. The dark belly of Night waned. The Moon waned. The Stars began to falter. The Earth must know the golden Light and the warmth of it’s embrace. The thirsty rush of Life must come.
And so it came at Her behest, the swelling rush of Springtime.
One creature in particular had long-awaited the return of the Sun and the Earth’s quickened pulse; had sang the whole cold night through in hunger for the coming Spring; had never forgotten the Light. This creature was the Nightingale, and his lilting song had echoed throughout the land and anointed the treetops since time immemorial. He sang for the Springtime, and for the warmth his wings remembered. He sang for the food that the Earth would give forth when the Light returned. He sang for the creatures not yet born, who would grow in the belly of a Mother come Spring. However, perhaps no creature can sing eternally, and it would seem that our Nightingale had given all the song he had to give. His small heart began to give out on this lingering hour, began to falter and fade. The threadbare pockets of his delicate lungs were filled with the cold of the eternal Night, and of a Winter he could no longer endure. His mercurial song now began to dim, and just as the Goddess stepped over the writhing root of an old Oak, his body tumbled from the branch upon which he had been fastened resolutely for so long. A sad, small heap of cold, dun wings, tail and face landed at Her feet. She was horrified, had She lingered for too long at the edge of Winter’s frozen silence? If She had come sooner, would he who had waited so long to see Her have lived to know the warmth and Light once more?
The woeful Goddess knew of nothing She could do save cradle this tiny beast, who was now but a memory of a fervent, living thing. She knelt down and picked up his paltry, soft body in Her glowing hands. The heart had stopped, the vessel had begun to stiffen. She sat against the torso of the Oak and held the departed to Her breast, which was warm and full, lifting and falling with Breath. Tears tumbled from Her eyes and flowed over Her round, flushed cheeks; they moved like tiny estuaries, coursing across the undulating valleys of Her form as she listened to the silence that had descended in the songsters wake. Down her neck and over Her breast these tears trickled, until they found the stiffened chassis of the Nightingale. They fell as droplets upon his silent feathers, bringing a sudden swell of reawakened Life to the Soul that had been closed within his form like a Seed. This Flower was dead, but perhaps another could bloom in its place, anointed by the dew of tears that fell from the Goddess like a long-awaited rain. The heart of the Goddess flared in Her chest; all of Her energy flowed into the little life and urged it now to become anew.
Who could say how long She sat and held the Nightingale like this? For the moment was suspended, frozen in the chasm of time. It was perfect presence. It was Eternity. All seemed to pause, as though a Breath had been taken and held. When the air began to flow once more, when the exhale came gushing forth, the small body of the Nightingale began to quicken. The feathers were touched by a change; the vessel transforming now in the cupped hands of the Goddess, who began to feel beneath her fingers not feathers but fur. Not wings but rather two long, pendulous ears. Not the hard edge of a tiny beak but instead a velvety, button-like nose. The new creature flopped in her lap, and with each passing moment softer and warmer it grew. Her hands moved over downy, chestnut hair, cupped tiny paws and brushed against bristling whiskers. Hare. Hara. Swift-footed cottontail one. Soft thing.
The Goddess willed it to be so, this metamorphosis, for She was the giver of Life. So it was that the Nightingale became the Hare, and the faithful familiar of the season of Spring was born. As the eternal Night broke, the Hare stayed close by the feet of the Goddess, following in Her wake. The pair journeyed together across the whole of Earth, spinning the spool of Light and bringing the Trees to bud. They drank the milk of the Moon side by side and transformed the deadrot of Winter into a kaleidoscope of fleshy, hopeful colour. They kissed the ground and lifted Life from Death. And so it is that each year we enjoy Springtime and Her bounty anew.
The end.