There’s nothing shameful in life being a double edged sword, we can write and if it touches someone, or it helps them to feel less alone then what a gift we’ve found in amongst the chaos.
A Wee Rant About Synchronicities
Kira & Jared are a couple who come from Louisiana and Oregon, who met and now live in Alaska. They found The Elopement Society and we designed their elopement around The Secret Cabin near North Berwick, and what a great day it was.
How’s everyone doing? My boy and I had covid a few weeks ago. I got the fever for a bit and spent a lot of the time just lying on the cool tiles on our bathroom floor. I think I slept pretty much for a week straight. My wee guy had the time of his life, a short fever then a whole week of laughing his ass off at horrific gamers on youtube.
Anyways, I’m back and I’m going to rant about synchronicities I think cos I had a dream about this tree last night and it’s a wee tale to share with you instead of retyping the blog post I started and accidentally deleted twice.
So this wee story starts with a big congratulations and thank you to Kira & Jared. They are a couple who come from Louisiana and Oregon, who met and now live in Alaska. They found The Elopement Society and we put together an elopement package at Secret Cabin near North Berwick, with a bunch of local suppliers including Andrea, the Soulful Celebrant from Agnostic Scotland.
Kira & Jared are very lovely humans with a big respect and love for nature. They wanted to marry by water and loved that the woods we adventured in are protected from development. We took a long muddy walk through the woods to a spring where Andrea created a ceremony space with this huge big dogwood circle she made. She also laid down a bunch of herbs that she’d grown so that the smell will remind them of their ceremony.
As part of the ceremony they chose this poem:
“When the first darkness creeps upon the floor
Your comfort filters green into my nostrils,
There is no need to ask for something more.
Let midnight prowl and fiends of malice roar,
Sickness and age may terrorise the neighbours,
You are a rowan tree beside my door
I sail my pen along its leafing shore
And poems thrill my hand like burning berries.
There is no need to ask for something more.
And all the winds that tattered me before
Become a song of stillness in your branches.
You are a rowan tree beside my door
My waking seasons used to number four
Until I smelled you green from May to April.
My wants are dumb, I ask for nothing more.
My goal was light, my wings were spread to soar
But there’s no need to ask for something more.
You are a rowan tree beside my door.”
In Scottish folklore the rowan tree is a symbol of courage, wisdom and protection. That’s why you find lots of them planted close to the front door of lots of homes. My grandparents had one in their front garden and last night I dreamt the berries and leaves of one were tapping against my bedroom window.
But that’s not my wee story.
My wee story is that I’ve been obsessed lately with the Jean Luc Godard film, Alphaville. It’s a banger, a black and white 60s dystopian film noir. The plot follows a detective, Lemmy Caution, travelling to Alphaville to rescue the citizens from a dictatorship run by an evil scientist using his fancy puritanical computer.
“Do you know what illuminates the night? Poetry”
In Alphaville words are regularly removed from use so the citizens forget their meaning. You’ll get the death penalty for showing love, tenderness, grief or desire… Lemmy (not the Motorhead guy) is passed a book of Paul Eluard poems by a contact from the underground, which he passes on to the daughter of our evil scientist fella. She doesn’t recognise some of the words but the poetry starts to release her emotions and that’s enough of a plot spoiler to say that all of this made me think of the news that words like war and invasion have been outlawed in Russian media, there’s also chat that they banned swearing from books and arts performances and all the Orwellian patter happening around minimising rights all over the place.
And that was my wee train of thought as Andrea read this beaut of a poem in the woods for our new Alaskan pals as they promised to look out for each other. Reckon maybe it’s time to read more poems, buy some banned books and create some things.
I’m rambling but I hope the words of that poem bring you some kind thoughts and doesn’t it feel really significant considering the absolute state of it out there? So I did a wee yelp-cry thing but I don’t think anyone heard as I was creeping about in the bushes at the time…
Courage, wisdom and protection to you and your favourite trees
x
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