The Buried Moon
A telling of 'The Buried Moon' & a meditation on Bog Time, amongst other things
(I’d recommend reading the essay before listening to the story of ‘The Buried Moon’)
I want to write about something joyful. Something that fills the heart and the belly with warmth & fullness. I’d like to tell you a story. And I will. But first, I’ve some other things to tend to.
Recently I am finding when I am most pained by the world, I do not want to write what I am called to write. There’s an internal script that lectures me on my responsibility to be positive; to spin a bright light thread for folks to gather amongst themselves. To not be the echo of bad news. Really, this wrestle is a wrestle for the balancing of truth. Perhaps it is a feeling of all too much and not now. It’s a wrestle of discerning how much I allow myself to stare into the glimmering black butter of darkness. Not enough, and I am lured into oblivion. Too much, and I am lured into terror. I am not the first to comment on this, nor am I the first to comment on the bleakness of the times we are in. The way the horror drip, drip, drips into the fabric of living. Body a vessel that carries the fabric. We carry the horror of these times collectively. We carry it whether we are aware of it or not.
Over the last fortnight I have spoken with many people, all of whom are friends, all of whom have shared that they are experiencing symptoms of depression. Fatigue. Sinking. A sensation of walking through sumptuous molasses. We are in a thick place, that we are. A boggy place. Feet sinking beneath the peat.
I like to think we are in Bog Time.
“Bog is both an archetypal & geological memory bank”, said Irish poet Seamus Heaney. “A dark casket where we have found many of the clues to our past & to our cultural identity”.
I wonder whether we are meeting with such a time now. A time where the spirit of the bog has decided to reveal the carcass of humanity, regurgitating the swallowed contents of centuries past. Perhaps we are out, collectively scouring and searching for that boggy carcass, perfectly preserved & suffocated, wading knee deep for the clues of how we must continue & how our ancestors lived. Perhaps we are looking for ourselves. The moon’s silver face a beacon through the long, lonesome nights.
Bog time is a liminal time. It is a place where the patterns of the Wood and the Sea are left sloshing & creaking in the canal of someone else’s ear. Bog time suspends decomposition & decay. Drinks the oxygen dry. Life beneath the bog in some ways, exists outside of time. Bodies undisturbed by Time’s agenda. Bog time exists in an otherworldly state; a world both familiar & unknown to those above it.
And yet, The Boglands, otherworldly & deceptive though they are dream to be known. They offer themselves up to us, piece by piece. Quietly gobbling at the consequences of our decadence. There are things we can learn from the bog, if we are so careful to pay attention.
Out in the fudgy heart of those lands, the ground glistens. Should you find yourself distracted, mind enchanted by the lights of the screen, wandering away from the bóithrín, you risk a knee deep meeting with the boglands. If you, like me live near the bogs or the moors, understanding the lay of the land is a necessity. Paying attention to the tones, colours & textures of the landscape, the muted cadmium ochres, heamotite reds, iodine browns & sepias, become a way to come into relationship with these places. They become a means of communicating with place. Paying attention becomes a way of discerning the nature of things. Without such attention, the moorlands & boglands become a vast sprawling landscape, without any key discernible features. They become a perfect recipe for losing oneself to the wilderness.
“To dance with the wild, we need discipline.” A friend once told me that, he goes by the name of Paul Kingsnorth. I think the bog would agree. If the bog could speak, I think she would say: Know thy kith, know thy kin. Intimately. Be disciplined in the this practice.
Since the age of 15, I have been preoccupied with community. Specifically communities that are poor and marginalised. I’ve volunteered & worked with women escaping violence, refugees, food banks, the homeless, addicts. I’ve lived in & worked in & helped found housing cooperatives, multistakeholder coops & workers coops. What I’ve learnt from 16 years working with community is that the places we share with one another are vital. They are precious. What I’ve witnessed in so many of the communities I’ve lived in & worked in is this: community can be the difference between a person choosing to live or choosing to die. Connection is what makes life more manageable. It’s as simple as that.
When I use the phrase ‘places we share’ here, I don’t mean the bricks & mortar of the homes or the cafe’s or the pubs you may meet in, they are important yes, but what I point towards, is the relational body of the interactions we hold between one another, the invisible, vibrating tendrils of relationships relationship-ing. The emotional, energetic places we create between ourselves are where the awe and reverence of being a living organism comes in. Smiling at the stranger on a Monday morning matters. Being disciplined enough to learn the posties name is important. Thanking the bus driver is a significant thing. The ripples of these actions make a difference, that makes a difference. You might not be able to see them, but relationally, they are there. The warmth cuts through the sterility of the Machine mind. It sinks into the belly of the person receiving the warmth & stokes the fires of their humanity, of a time before the times we are in. We can carry the smile, or the thanks or the feeling of someone having remembered our name, like a story. Like a jewel that sparkles behind the dull waters of our burdened eyes. You are seen. You matter we whisper.
I’m reminded of a story my friend & ballad mentor Linda Williamson tells me. We’d just been to see a storytelling performance together, the show had finished & I could see Linda wasn’t too happy with what she’d seen. Curious, I asked her. She shared in a huff that the travellers would never politicise a story in the way we’d just seen. She looked me straight in the eye and said, the worlds of myth & ‘reality’ should never be merged. It struck me initially, but I could feel the weight of her wisdom. I let it settle before I opened my mouth. She continued. Myth and Reality were distinct territories, they were like the bog & the boreen. The travellers, she told me would walk the bóithrín (boreen), straight & true without wandering. She said, the places story cultivates are sacred. I agree with her & nod so she can see my agreement. She tells me again with upmost seriousness, as a storyteller & ballad singer, it is my job to hold the story in it’s purest form; by that she clarifies, is to hold the story as it was told to you, to me. This is, she reminds me part of the tradition of traveller storytelling. There is discipline & rigour in the craft of tending to a story or a song. The discipline comes with reverence for the creature you are carrying.
What happens when we let go of the tending? What happens when we let go of the dreaming? When we wonder out into the depths of the bog?
I know in times like these, when the collective spirit flickers and wanes, when it sinks beneath the peat line, the travellers would gather round the fire for a story. As a child, my Grandma Barbra would gather me, my brother & sister, bundle us up in an old blanket & she would read to us. She would read Robin Hood, Bed knobs & Broomsticks, or The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. She would take us out and show us the stars. Heads bent back, eyes lost in the marvel of the cosmos. We’d look into the fake flames of the gas heater, listen to the click of the rods rotating inside it, we’d inhale the smell of charred dust. There would come a sense of ease then. Life was uncertain, but we had each other, we had this.
In the 16 years I’ve worked within community, I’ve come to know one thing that feels unchanging: people need people & people need stories.
The power we have lies in our relationship with another. Though times are hard, they need not be lonely. Solace from the chaos can be sought through connection. Search for connection in the same way your wild twin searches for you. Defiantly. Go steady. Be kind. Seek out the stories & the light.
Fear not the Bog.
The story I share here is called ‘The Buried Moon’. A story whose origins reside in the Lincolnshire Fens. This version is Dr Sharon Blackies from her book ‘If Women Rose Rooted’.
this was exceptional. Thank You. 🖤🌕