Morning friends - I promised you something longer and here it is. I’m doing a lot of writing about earlier times in my life, simply because I’m starting to forget. You likely know the feeling. * I am born quite poor. Just poor enough to know it. No phone in the house, no car, no television. This isn’t an attempt at an alternative lifestyle, we are just broke. Till I am sixteen I will carry a large yellow ticket in my pocket to school to get free meals. My face flushes the first few hundred times I produce it.
The father that swims through the sea of you is such a blessing bringer, Martin. I wonder about the line of gifting that gave him that treasure in his hold, and if we are being honest, grieve a bit about the the shape of my own fluke in the seas of my children. I brought them to story and agic maybe but more in the rip tide of my own anguish, as you say, through animal transmission that should have been kept from such small hearts. The results are a terrible beauty between us but not enough of the pure joy that filled your boots for the tough miles later.
That claiming. We are feeding a Raven fledgling this morning that has lost his people. We are poor flightless stand-ins for him. What lies beneath such a bird? Not cave but lower skies maybe. We will set aside the romance of a raven friend that sits on our shoulder and lives in our kitchen and take him to an aviary rehab center today. You have eased the loss of the boyhood black raven familiar and given me another romance to put in its place. This aviary is his best chance of a reintroduction to the winged people who might claim him, late but certain. Born in a bleak home for unwed mothers and finding her again only now at 50 I might know a bit about being unclaimed. I will be a good thing to see this wonderous bird to a place designed to send him to the skies he belongs in and your story took the deepest sting out of giving him up. Thanks for that.
May 15, 2022·edited May 15, 2022Liked by Martin Shaw
Good Morning Martin. Thank you for the Sunday Bread.
I too went some time ago to visit my House of Origin only to discover that it had been demolished.
This did something strange in my brain as the memories and images are so vivid.
I am currently in preparation to leave my present home in just over a week. A desire to live more rurally is leading me. I’m ready and grieving.
This, my homestead by the well, has taught me so much. I have grown spiritually here and and have reconnected with my own nature and those others that dwell here.
As I stepped outside this morning, bare feet in sweet grass, the nestling of the gentle rain, the chattering of the winged ones and the soft pink of dawn warmed and tugged my heart.
I appreciate your sharings very much. They somehow enable me.
Thank you for the swoon of beauty, the morning-has-broken kind of morning and a glimpse into the cave. 🌸
This essay hit me hard. Many memories of clutching the ticket in line and waiting to be fed. Thank you Martin. This was profound and painful and wondrous. Exactly what I needed this morning.
This and the full moon has me weeping. Thank you, Martin. Claimed at birth I was not, but that did keep one of my ears open to sounds few can hear. It's as if part of me never quite left the spirit world. Which made for a brief childhood and an insufferable adolescence. Then with adulthood came agency, and a determination to deafen this bat ear of mine. Luckily all the attempts proved unsuccessful, so unsuccessful I am now on speed dial with this 'thing'. It's a voice, a sound, it doesn't really want to be named. Whatever Keats heard I hear it too. I'll be 33 in 3 weeks and when the moon swells like today I still feel the pangs of my oddness, of being both here and there nor here nor there, with this one furry bat ear sticking out of my hair. But then it wanes, and I know I wouldn't have it any other way. I lucked out, I truly lucked out.
Thank you for this. In your words I recognize myself at six: my own totemic walk holding my dad’s hand through azaleas blooming white and pink and deep red and peach, huge to my tiny self, filling my eyes and all my perceptions. We are enveloped by the hum of huge bees busy in the flowers and the deeper hum of the golden light of the morning. The flowers, the bees, the trees above us, the light, all my senses at one with beauty, my father’s hand holding mine, all our aliveness celebrating the same thing.
As always Martin - thank you. Like others have shared, you have opened up some of my own childhood experiences that bridge to today. One particularly I fix deep inside as 'The Boy and the Brown Bear'. I spent a lot of my young life outdoors even though we lived in a suburb, Headingley, in those days a village in north west Leeds, Yorkshire. We lived in a low block of flamingo pink flats which had been built on land that had been a botanical garden in Victorian times. By the time my family arrived at 12 Regency Court the gardens had long gone; the final eccentric entrepreneurial owner, Tommy Clapham, declared bankrupt despite his best efforts to create fairs, galas and other exciting opportunities. Whilst the gardens had disappeared, their impact on the landscape was still visible in the wide variety of trees in the area, the sunken area in the garden of one of the houses next door to us which was the remains of the large fountain and water feature, and best of all for us kids, the remains of a Bear Pit in the rough woodland next door. In Victorian times this actually housed a Brown Bear. Overgrown and unkempt, the pit itself was walled inside with stone and flanked by two castellated turrets rising up out of the overgrown vegetation like the kind of castle the wandering hero or heroine discovers in the dark woods of fairytales. This patch of wilderness in the middle of suburbia became my second home, shared with sundry friends, blackbirds, magpies and the odd crow. I often imagined the brown bear whose home it was just over a hundred years before it became mine. In those days I’d never seen a bear, wild or otherwise though I’d seen pictures of them and there was something about them in my children’s encyclopaedia. We had a relationship, me and the bear, even separated by a century. He was with me when I played alone amongst the trees and stones, part of the wild I created in my imagination from the unkempt, neglected botanical garden. I still remember him today and writing this is me reaching across the 100 plus years to shake his paw and thank him for being there. I hope he remembers.
My English is much too poor to be able to say what I would like to say. But I cannot say nothing otherwise my heart would weep. Martin, thank you for such a wide gift and HOW you have written it! In such a beautiful poetic touching way that everything you describe it appears in my inner sight! The land, the beings, the soul in everything....so deep and full of hope and wholeness...thank you.
A true pleasure to meet you, Martin, Who is five.😁
I am Sarah, who is eight and off in the woods, dreaming of horses, riding imaginary ones and reading every horse book in the school library at least once. Would you like to join me? I’m hoeing the outline of a stable layout (found in above mentioned books) in the grass of my front yard. 😆
I’m also Sarah who is 42 (days away from 43!) that sat, in a lawn chair, in my backyard, pajamed, cardiganed and slippered, to watch the lunar eclipse tonight.
May we all remember our own magic and help the ones who have forgotten.✨
As always Martin, thank you so much for sharing.❤️ So glad to hear that you are on the mend.
thank you Martin for sharing about your early life influences. Your telling brings to mind this New York City born n bred woman’s very own totemic walk holding my dad’s hand. I was about 13 when my Dad took me one day to hike a part of the Appalachian trail in upstate New York.
I recall the deep peace of the forest and my first encounter with a non human being which was a magically scented native SPICE BUSH. I was totally captivated by the wonder. Thus began my lifelong love of the green world. That experience influence the path of my life. When I came of age, I moved to Northern California and spent years academically studying plants and their ecology and eventually working in a related profession. now retired, I care give for my home wildlife garden. I continue to be awed and nurtured by the green world. blessings on you
Wow. Still trying to swallow this post. I was the first of four brothers, both parents being teachers in a private catholic school which granted scholarships to their employees. I don't know how is in other shores but here you barely survive as a teacher, even less with four kids. It didn't take long to figure we were poor: no Disney vacations, no actual He-Man collection but local made rip-offs, 2nd hand clothing from thrift stores before thrift stores were cool... but a house filled with History books which I ate at full speed, ranging from Medieval history, Ancient classical history, Mythology... I would go to Mass with my wooden sword hanging on my belt, ready to shout a battlecry in the Church porch. I could be a Templar Knight, I could be fighting with Lancelot, or swearing by Odin. Great memories. I never had the totemic experience you had with your dad. Mine, or what's left from him after he switched souls with Fenrir, still lives in the House of Origin, a place so painful to see that I avoid it at all costs. Now that my 2nd son is turning 1 year old, your history about the totemic experience nailed something I couldn't put in words. Thank you for this.
Beautifully drawn and expressed - imagination is an immaterial wealth and an inner resource that can’t be taken away - boundless, colourful, and vital - it is a lifeblood.
My wealthy, but over emotional, turbulent childhood sent me into the oasis and safe haven of my imagination frequently.
Thank you for leading us down the path of your five year old childhood.
May 15, 2022·edited May 15, 2022Liked by Martin Shaw
That's lovely, sir. I've come to this just after reading Fionn's Migrations this morning! And have spent a while of late writing down memories of childhood wonder, as, approaching 55, memory teases me more than it did. So this came as a hand of recognition on my shoulder, thanks for that. Oh and I really enjoyed the Christian wonder tales talk, I thought hope had died, but maybe not.
One day, in the future, would you conside coming to Australia, to read to us, to tell us stories, to play your drum. We have a hankering for the mythical and mystical you tell so well, and we have ancient caves with beautiful art, some, the oldest in the world.
Interesting my comment keeps disappearing as I read the thread… a chance for third draft. I have been on the Isle of Lewis planting an Earth Treasure Vase in the deep wet yin of the western edge… literally—with a group I brought to the Standing Stones. So I am thoroughly in the thrall of my latest Celtic meander. My five year old imagined the bluebells and streams and dappled forests of Devon and. Cornwall in my rather bleak palm tree infested childhood in San Jose California… but there was the alley in back of the apartment leading to my grandma’s where there was a stump and green life and vines hanging over back fences that still lives. Thank you Martin as always.
May 15, 2022·edited May 15, 2022Liked by Martin Shaw
These wonderful Sunday sessions form a call and response for me.
Today's response to these childhood memories….
I'm creeping through the woods at the back of my grandmother's house. The woods which are now the Devon Express Way, with cars hurtling past Plymouth on their way down to Cornwall, cutting adrift Crown Hill in sea of concrete roundabouts.
The Golden Hind pub that still anchors to its corner at the top of the hill, always greeted me with sails unfurled as my mother turned into my grandparents' street, their pebble dashed house and garden opposite the Green filled with stories, snails and the fresh smell of pasties baking in the oven.
The road to Crown Hill was the road to the Moor, the road to rock and rambling adventures. Once atop the granite, I'd be hard pressed to descend. This was the realm of the Piskie King, and if I clamped my ears to the fissures in the Tor, I could hear the distant creaks and groans of the Tommy Knockers running underneath the Tavy, all the way from Kernow.
Back in the woods, my seven year old self is holding her staff. Always a large staff in hand even at that age.
This is my shield against whatever might be lurking amongst the thick undergrowth. It is my sword, it is my wand, it is my horse.
I had to pass through the woods to get to the meadow with its dug out den and line of trees rising out of a raised bank, where I'd nest, talking to the birds and unseen creatures that I could see as plain as day.
My grandmother's garden was the place where I was once crowned a gypsy queen, and danced in my red frilled skirt, on top of the coal bunker, wearing a ribbon of snails on my arms. One day I decided to shimmy up the wooden washing line pole, to the crows nest at the top. Instead of looking out across foreign lands, spy glass in hand, looking for my father set sail from the Barbican on a long race, looking for the Mayflower that my cousins had once boarded for a new Iife in far away lands, other peoples lands, looking for Drake's Drum sounding off the Hoe, I slipped and was left dangling by my pants, pierced by the line ties, with blood dripping down my legs.
A big wound for a small child.
A big scream from a small lung
A big dream from the red earth
My staff grew into a trunk, filled with the treasures of summers forged with the love of my maternal line, as large as my grandmother's whalebone stays flapping in the wind.
The father that swims through the sea of you is such a blessing bringer, Martin. I wonder about the line of gifting that gave him that treasure in his hold, and if we are being honest, grieve a bit about the the shape of my own fluke in the seas of my children. I brought them to story and agic maybe but more in the rip tide of my own anguish, as you say, through animal transmission that should have been kept from such small hearts. The results are a terrible beauty between us but not enough of the pure joy that filled your boots for the tough miles later.
That claiming. We are feeding a Raven fledgling this morning that has lost his people. We are poor flightless stand-ins for him. What lies beneath such a bird? Not cave but lower skies maybe. We will set aside the romance of a raven friend that sits on our shoulder and lives in our kitchen and take him to an aviary rehab center today. You have eased the loss of the boyhood black raven familiar and given me another romance to put in its place. This aviary is his best chance of a reintroduction to the winged people who might claim him, late but certain. Born in a bleak home for unwed mothers and finding her again only now at 50 I might know a bit about being unclaimed. I will be a good thing to see this wonderous bird to a place designed to send him to the skies he belongs in and your story took the deepest sting out of giving him up. Thanks for that.
Good Morning Martin. Thank you for the Sunday Bread.
I too went some time ago to visit my House of Origin only to discover that it had been demolished.
This did something strange in my brain as the memories and images are so vivid.
I am currently in preparation to leave my present home in just over a week. A desire to live more rurally is leading me. I’m ready and grieving.
This, my homestead by the well, has taught me so much. I have grown spiritually here and and have reconnected with my own nature and those others that dwell here.
As I stepped outside this morning, bare feet in sweet grass, the nestling of the gentle rain, the chattering of the winged ones and the soft pink of dawn warmed and tugged my heart.
I appreciate your sharings very much. They somehow enable me.
Thank you for the swoon of beauty, the morning-has-broken kind of morning and a glimpse into the cave. 🌸
This essay hit me hard. Many memories of clutching the ticket in line and waiting to be fed. Thank you Martin. This was profound and painful and wondrous. Exactly what I needed this morning.
This and the full moon has me weeping. Thank you, Martin. Claimed at birth I was not, but that did keep one of my ears open to sounds few can hear. It's as if part of me never quite left the spirit world. Which made for a brief childhood and an insufferable adolescence. Then with adulthood came agency, and a determination to deafen this bat ear of mine. Luckily all the attempts proved unsuccessful, so unsuccessful I am now on speed dial with this 'thing'. It's a voice, a sound, it doesn't really want to be named. Whatever Keats heard I hear it too. I'll be 33 in 3 weeks and when the moon swells like today I still feel the pangs of my oddness, of being both here and there nor here nor there, with this one furry bat ear sticking out of my hair. But then it wanes, and I know I wouldn't have it any other way. I lucked out, I truly lucked out.
Thank you for this. In your words I recognize myself at six: my own totemic walk holding my dad’s hand through azaleas blooming white and pink and deep red and peach, huge to my tiny self, filling my eyes and all my perceptions. We are enveloped by the hum of huge bees busy in the flowers and the deeper hum of the golden light of the morning. The flowers, the bees, the trees above us, the light, all my senses at one with beauty, my father’s hand holding mine, all our aliveness celebrating the same thing.
As always Martin - thank you. Like others have shared, you have opened up some of my own childhood experiences that bridge to today. One particularly I fix deep inside as 'The Boy and the Brown Bear'. I spent a lot of my young life outdoors even though we lived in a suburb, Headingley, in those days a village in north west Leeds, Yorkshire. We lived in a low block of flamingo pink flats which had been built on land that had been a botanical garden in Victorian times. By the time my family arrived at 12 Regency Court the gardens had long gone; the final eccentric entrepreneurial owner, Tommy Clapham, declared bankrupt despite his best efforts to create fairs, galas and other exciting opportunities. Whilst the gardens had disappeared, their impact on the landscape was still visible in the wide variety of trees in the area, the sunken area in the garden of one of the houses next door to us which was the remains of the large fountain and water feature, and best of all for us kids, the remains of a Bear Pit in the rough woodland next door. In Victorian times this actually housed a Brown Bear. Overgrown and unkempt, the pit itself was walled inside with stone and flanked by two castellated turrets rising up out of the overgrown vegetation like the kind of castle the wandering hero or heroine discovers in the dark woods of fairytales. This patch of wilderness in the middle of suburbia became my second home, shared with sundry friends, blackbirds, magpies and the odd crow. I often imagined the brown bear whose home it was just over a hundred years before it became mine. In those days I’d never seen a bear, wild or otherwise though I’d seen pictures of them and there was something about them in my children’s encyclopaedia. We had a relationship, me and the bear, even separated by a century. He was with me when I played alone amongst the trees and stones, part of the wild I created in my imagination from the unkempt, neglected botanical garden. I still remember him today and writing this is me reaching across the 100 plus years to shake his paw and thank him for being there. I hope he remembers.
My English is much too poor to be able to say what I would like to say. But I cannot say nothing otherwise my heart would weep. Martin, thank you for such a wide gift and HOW you have written it! In such a beautiful poetic touching way that everything you describe it appears in my inner sight! The land, the beings, the soul in everything....so deep and full of hope and wholeness...thank you.
A true pleasure to meet you, Martin, Who is five.😁
I am Sarah, who is eight and off in the woods, dreaming of horses, riding imaginary ones and reading every horse book in the school library at least once. Would you like to join me? I’m hoeing the outline of a stable layout (found in above mentioned books) in the grass of my front yard. 😆
I’m also Sarah who is 42 (days away from 43!) that sat, in a lawn chair, in my backyard, pajamed, cardiganed and slippered, to watch the lunar eclipse tonight.
May we all remember our own magic and help the ones who have forgotten.✨
As always Martin, thank you so much for sharing.❤️ So glad to hear that you are on the mend.
Best wishes for a beautiful week everyone!
thank you Martin for sharing about your early life influences. Your telling brings to mind this New York City born n bred woman’s very own totemic walk holding my dad’s hand. I was about 13 when my Dad took me one day to hike a part of the Appalachian trail in upstate New York.
I recall the deep peace of the forest and my first encounter with a non human being which was a magically scented native SPICE BUSH. I was totally captivated by the wonder. Thus began my lifelong love of the green world. That experience influence the path of my life. When I came of age, I moved to Northern California and spent years academically studying plants and their ecology and eventually working in a related profession. now retired, I care give for my home wildlife garden. I continue to be awed and nurtured by the green world. blessings on you
Wow. Still trying to swallow this post. I was the first of four brothers, both parents being teachers in a private catholic school which granted scholarships to their employees. I don't know how is in other shores but here you barely survive as a teacher, even less with four kids. It didn't take long to figure we were poor: no Disney vacations, no actual He-Man collection but local made rip-offs, 2nd hand clothing from thrift stores before thrift stores were cool... but a house filled with History books which I ate at full speed, ranging from Medieval history, Ancient classical history, Mythology... I would go to Mass with my wooden sword hanging on my belt, ready to shout a battlecry in the Church porch. I could be a Templar Knight, I could be fighting with Lancelot, or swearing by Odin. Great memories. I never had the totemic experience you had with your dad. Mine, or what's left from him after he switched souls with Fenrir, still lives in the House of Origin, a place so painful to see that I avoid it at all costs. Now that my 2nd son is turning 1 year old, your history about the totemic experience nailed something I couldn't put in words. Thank you for this.
Beautifully drawn and expressed - imagination is an immaterial wealth and an inner resource that can’t be taken away - boundless, colourful, and vital - it is a lifeblood.
My wealthy, but over emotional, turbulent childhood sent me into the oasis and safe haven of my imagination frequently.
Thank you for leading us down the path of your five year old childhood.
That's lovely, sir. I've come to this just after reading Fionn's Migrations this morning! And have spent a while of late writing down memories of childhood wonder, as, approaching 55, memory teases me more than it did. So this came as a hand of recognition on my shoulder, thanks for that. Oh and I really enjoyed the Christian wonder tales talk, I thought hope had died, but maybe not.
May the wind always be at your back xx
One day, in the future, would you conside coming to Australia, to read to us, to tell us stories, to play your drum. We have a hankering for the mythical and mystical you tell so well, and we have ancient caves with beautiful art, some, the oldest in the world.
Gorgeous Martin. I am always awed by your capacity to breathe so much sensual detail into the specific and the mythic. Thank you.
Interesting my comment keeps disappearing as I read the thread… a chance for third draft. I have been on the Isle of Lewis planting an Earth Treasure Vase in the deep wet yin of the western edge… literally—with a group I brought to the Standing Stones. So I am thoroughly in the thrall of my latest Celtic meander. My five year old imagined the bluebells and streams and dappled forests of Devon and. Cornwall in my rather bleak palm tree infested childhood in San Jose California… but there was the alley in back of the apartment leading to my grandma’s where there was a stump and green life and vines hanging over back fences that still lives. Thank you Martin as always.
These wonderful Sunday sessions form a call and response for me.
Today's response to these childhood memories….
I'm creeping through the woods at the back of my grandmother's house. The woods which are now the Devon Express Way, with cars hurtling past Plymouth on their way down to Cornwall, cutting adrift Crown Hill in sea of concrete roundabouts.
The Golden Hind pub that still anchors to its corner at the top of the hill, always greeted me with sails unfurled as my mother turned into my grandparents' street, their pebble dashed house and garden opposite the Green filled with stories, snails and the fresh smell of pasties baking in the oven.
The road to Crown Hill was the road to the Moor, the road to rock and rambling adventures. Once atop the granite, I'd be hard pressed to descend. This was the realm of the Piskie King, and if I clamped my ears to the fissures in the Tor, I could hear the distant creaks and groans of the Tommy Knockers running underneath the Tavy, all the way from Kernow.
Back in the woods, my seven year old self is holding her staff. Always a large staff in hand even at that age.
This is my shield against whatever might be lurking amongst the thick undergrowth. It is my sword, it is my wand, it is my horse.
I had to pass through the woods to get to the meadow with its dug out den and line of trees rising out of a raised bank, where I'd nest, talking to the birds and unseen creatures that I could see as plain as day.
My grandmother's garden was the place where I was once crowned a gypsy queen, and danced in my red frilled skirt, on top of the coal bunker, wearing a ribbon of snails on my arms. One day I decided to shimmy up the wooden washing line pole, to the crows nest at the top. Instead of looking out across foreign lands, spy glass in hand, looking for my father set sail from the Barbican on a long race, looking for the Mayflower that my cousins had once boarded for a new Iife in far away lands, other peoples lands, looking for Drake's Drum sounding off the Hoe, I slipped and was left dangling by my pants, pierced by the line ties, with blood dripping down my legs.
A big wound for a small child.
A big scream from a small lung
A big dream from the red earth
My staff grew into a trunk, filled with the treasures of summers forged with the love of my maternal line, as large as my grandmother's whalebone stays flapping in the wind.