Written on retreat, on the last day, with love pouring out of me, for everyone.

some advice:
everyone is just like you, scared and frightened inside. everyone is as beautiful as you, even when their faces are twisted and snarling, they just want to be loved. just like you. some advice: whenever anyone hurts you, says a mean word or doesn't take you into account, remember, it comes from pain and hurt. they don't mean it, they're just scared. some advice: love everyone as if they were your sister or your brother, because that's all they want - love. some advice: in every situation you find yourself in, good or bad or inbetween, put yourself in their place, imagine their hopes and dreams, imagine all the ways in which they have been hurt, ignored, used and manipulated - their hurtful actions come from this. imagine what the best thing you could possibly do for them is, in this moment, and do it, whole heartedly, with all your attention, whether it's giving them a hug, making a cup of tea, giving them advice or just sitting with them, helping them to feel what is going on for them. some advice: get up every morning knowing that this will be the best day ever, force a smile, even if you feel like you're dying inside, and it will become real. some advice: tomorrow the world might end, you might get run over, how would you like to have lived your last day? with love and compassion in your heart, or with darkness creeping in? i know which one i would choose. some advice: open your heart, burn and destroy the walls you keep there, you don't need them. some advice: be open about how you feel, whatever you feel, but don't make the mistake of ever thinking you feel an emotion because of someone else's actions. you always, always, have a choice, and your emotions are your responsibility. some advice: write lists and lists of the good things in your life, everyday, if you don't you'll quickly forget how rich you really are. when you are sad, flick back through the pages, the golden yellow happiness contained there will revive you. some advice: love yourself with a passion that exceeds everything else, you are the most important thing to yourself. it's not selfish, it's logical. you are amazing and wonderful and fabulous and beautiful and terrific and utterly, completely, mind blowingly, irreplaceably, you. and that is the best thing you can be.

awakening

waking up, i feel like i have never been so alive in my life, each day brings such joy and such pain as i could never have imagined before. each day more of me is revealed to myself, and to the loving world around me. i am so held, unseen but i feel it, we walk in a cloud of love, a mist surrounding us. love is tangible, not just an emotion that we feel, you have to look down a layer to see it, it's hard, but i know it's there. each person walks in an aura of love, made up of all the love they are given by others, it's a rainbow.

connections

across miles of clouds, acres of oceans + seas, over time itself, we are still connected. silver cobweb strands of love connect us, connect you with everyone you love, dead + alive. there are strands spanning clouds and air, birds perch on them, strings of black dots above wide open sea. some reach down through earth, past roots of trees, past worms going about their business, linking you to those who have gone before us already. the world is held together by these strands, laced together over the surface of the land + sea, criss crossing a million times. when hate and misunderstanding threaten to blow our world apart, it is these slim grey silver lines that hold us together.

wish

i wish so much i could show you some of the joys of my life. it begins with waking up every morning in a field and poking my head out my tent door to check the weather before i get up. shuffling sleepily into the cafe to get tea from the already roaring urns, i am greeted by so many people with so much real concern. i love how gradually, we all congregate in a circle, some wandering in late, some having been brightly awake for hours, we sit and tell each other how we are, really, truly, deep inside. i hear them and they hear me and this is my beautiful, beautiful life.

every day i see things more and more clearly. every day i understand a little bit more about myself. everyday i am challenged in so many amazing, wonderful, beautiful ways, and everyday i rise to that challenge and grow with it. i have found another family, i have created another family, and i do not think that things could be any more beautiful or perfect than they are at this moment.

visiting friends

we stagger up the hill. what was a group, walking closely, laughing and talking at the bottom of the hill slowly lengthens into a line of people, burdened with bags and instruments, puffing our way up. the first ones to the top knock on the door and wait, turning to look back round across the town, pointing out the stillness of the sea and the constantly changing reflection of the sun on the water. there is a moment of silent appreciation before the next few arrive, and then the door opens to warmth and smiles, beckoning hands and a multitude of greetings. i follow them all in, shutting the door behind me, making sure there are no stragglers. i feel safe in this house, full of friends and light and laughter. the hall is empty, coats are hung haphazardly on the bannister, there are paper chains hanging from the ceiling, left over from a party weeks ago. i look up and smile, remembering how long it took us to make them. i walk past the front room and peek in, unusually it is empty, tv off, no smoky haze and people chatting. i carry on down the passage towards the kitchen until i hear a jumble of voices, and go out the back door to see a table around which is squeezed all the people i love. candles light the scene, the sun is slowly sinking behind the building and the sliver of sea i can see is brilliant pink and purple. down the end of the garden the hens have been locked in for the night and amy proudly points out to me the tyres full of flowers and the empty pots just waiting to be full. we sit and talk, drink tea and play cards, songs are started, sometimes finnished or drowned out with gales of laughter. the light goes slowly and we huddle together as it gets colder. people lend jumpers and scarves, borrow blankets and hats, until we are all wrapped up, wrapped together, feet all under one blanket under the table, blankets slipping and being pulled around warm shoulders pressed together to keep the world out. laughter is our language, it echoes between the high walls of the house, bouncing up into the clear air and spiraling up to join the clouds which shield the sun, turning the sky from light blue to dusky pink to purple right to the darkest black which is creeping in behind our heads.

summer

these days will always be seen through a golden haze of sunlight shining off hair and dappled brown skin, green leaves and twigs find their ways everywhere. i am forever pulling them out of my hair, my clothes where they seem to love to gather, prickling me insistently, i am here, remember this time when? remember where that forest where you found me? remember the sting of nettles as you waded through them? my feet are brown and dusty, dirt ingrained in each whorl of skin, under each toe nail, connecting me to the ground, the earth, i am part of it and it is part of me and we are all one under the sun.

being.

a grey light comes over the room, sliding over the faces and bare skin of those sleeping bodies. we few left sit, being used as pillows, using sleeping people as cushions, quiet, lost in the calm that comes when you reach that place of intoxication where everything becomes so clear, like glass, and you know exactly what you need to do and who you are. someone says 'lets go for a walk' and though no one replies, slowly people begin to move, gathering shoes and blankets, hats and coats. before i go out the door i look at the kitchen clock, and it reads 5.27. the light is so indeterminate and unsure and i have been awake and away for so long that i am not sure whether it is am or pm. gradually we congregate outside the back door, some of us looking relatively normal, in coats and scarves, with matching shoes, others are wrapped in blankets, hats perched on their heads and odd shoes on their feet. it is so quiet.
the house seems to have grown out of the mist, trails and strands move around the edges, snake over the roof, i can see it billowing across the scrubby grass outside the house, but i can't feel the wind that is blowing it. a few metres away and i can't see anything but the house, even though it is in the middle of the country; usually you can see other houses in the distance, hear the occasional car, but now everything is deathly silent. it feels like we are the only people in the entire world. even the few sounds we make seem to be swallowed up by the fog. we start to walk, i don't know who sets off first, but there we are, straggling along in ones and twos, pale faced and sleep deprived, some of us already feeling the promise of the come down, and others still to whom that is hours off. the house fades out of sight, but i can feel it behind us, like it has just had a thin muslin curtain drawn over it. shapes swirl in and out of the mist, on the edge of my vision, and then fully apparent and floating past. i look around to see if anyone else can see what i am seeing, but everyone seems lost in their own world.
we go on and on until we get to a fence, and something stops us from climbing over. i look around and i see nothing, the world has ceased to exist. it feels like time has stopped and i am just being. nothing can touch me, i am aware so intensely of the fact that i am alive and thinking that nothing seems as if it could ever be as important as always knowing this: that i am alive, that there is something inside this body that transcends physicality, that cannot be placed, defined, labelled, controlled - i am wild and i am untamed and i, i, i, what is i? i think i can hear the gush of blood in my veins, the crackle of electric pulses in my brain, the many millions of messages that course through this structure, this creation, to make me walk, to make me be here, standing in this field, just being, just being.
people start to go back to the house, but i linger, feeling as if i could stand there forever, feeling myself be alive.