Heroes Not Zombies

Last weekend we heard a tremendous noise. It was like thunder, or maybe an earthquake, but the storm hadn’t arrived yet, and we’d felt no earth tremors. When we went outside to look we saw this…..

(and for comparison, this is how the wall looked before it fell)

My first thought was thank goodness nobody was hurt. Quickly followed by remembering how many times in the last five years I’ve stood at the very top of a tall ladder trimming this vine. So, lucky it didn’t fall while I was doing that!

Practicalities aside, I’m quite surprised by the strength of the emotional impact of this collapse.

It feels like a huge loss. Over the seasons, I’ve watched the phases of this incredible vine, from leafy green, to reds and golds, to the phase where the leaves fall and the bright yellow stalks are left behind, to the purple berries on bright red stems becoming more obvious as the leaves and stalks fall. I’ve heard the sound like waterfall as the millions of seed pop out from their capsules and cascade down the wall in late summer. I’ve heard the really loud buzzing choir of thousands of bees gathering the pollen in peak summer. I’ve seen the blackbird pair make their nest and spend several minutes hopping around the grass trying to figure out where they’d put it. I’ve seen the handful of nests left behind in the winter. I’ve seen flocks of starlings descend on the purple berries. In short, the collapse of the wall, taking the vine with it, feels like the collapse of an ecosystem. And ecosystem which became part of my everyday experience. That feels like a tragedy. But, probably, the wall will be rebuilt, and, in time, the vine will recover. On the other hand, maybe the neighbours will decide not to build such a big wall after all. What then? We’ll see.

It also feels like an ending. Maybe because we are rushing towards the end of a decade, in the midst of environmental, social and political upheavals, but I happen to be reading an edition of a French journal which is featuring “collapsologie” – the phenomenon of “collapse” and the various experts and thinkers who are reflecting on it. So, probably my current reading heightens my sensitivity to this wall collapse feeling like an ending. But added to that, our landlord sold the neighbouring field earlier this year and now someone has started building a house just on the other side of the fence. So I can see heaps of stones and earth on two sides of the garden now. It feels like these last five years of open, tranquil living might be about to end. Of course, what comes with endings are beginnings…..so my mind turns now to “what next?”, “where next?” and “how to live?” (as it often does, to be honest). This mixture of endings and beginnings sure feels unsettling, as, I suppose does all change. There are the gradual changes which we only really notice in looking back, but there are the more substantial, sudden, or at least, relatively quick ones, where it all feels more acute, more powerful, more vivid.

So, I was a little surprised, a couple of days later, when I looked at the remains of the wall, and saw blue sky, and, somehow it seemed brand new. Somehow I knew I’d never quite seen that extent of blue sky in that direction before. It inspired me to take a photo –

Then later that day, after sunset, when I went out to close all the shutters (which has been part of my ritual of living since I moved here five years ago, shutting the old wooden shutters on all the windows at night, and opening them all to let the sun stream in, every morning). I looked up and the sky was absolutely clear. A deep, wide, all-encompassing black, studied with millions of sparkling stars. I’ve seen that many nights in my time here. We are right at the end of a village and there is very little light pollution, especially after midnight when the single street light goes out for the rest of the night. I looked up and reflexly spotted the small handful of constellations which I know so well, and have known even since I was a teenager. Then I looked at the sky where the wall had been and I saw a vertical line of bright stars. I immediately thought they must be part of a constellation but it wasn’t one I’d ever seen before. I know it won’t be a “new” constellation, just formed, but it was new to me. In fact, I think this might be the first time in my life I’ve spotted a constellation I didn’t know the shape of before I looked. Do you know what I mean? It’s one thing to see the shape of a constellation on a star chart then to seek it out in the night sky, but this was the first time I remember seeing a group of stars in the sky and thinking “that must be a constellation”. What a thrill!

It turns out the constellation is “Aquila” and I’m pretty sure I’ve never ever heard of it. It means “The Eagle”, the bird which carried the thunderbolts of Zeus. Usually, according to what I’ve now read, it’s visible fairly high in the sky in the summer, but at this time, in midwinter, you only get a glimpse of it just above the horizon before it disappears for the night.

Wow! What a mix of emotions indeed! This wall collapse has certainly got me thinking about the whole “constellation” of feelings of loss, sadness, disturbance, and uneasiness, combined with thoughts of the future, of potential, of possibility, of discoveries and experiences still to come, of the unpredictable, messy complexity of life here on Earth.