Fool's Spring (again)
reminding myself about false starts and making room for the unexpected.
Perhaps we each are leafmould, nasturtium sprout, raspberry and wilted rose all at once?
Hello dear reader,
This was not the start to the year that I expected.
I write this to you from the strange realms between well and unwell. For the past three, nearly four, weeks I have spent the vast proportion of my time, in bed or languishing on our sofa. Exhausted and wheezy.
Maybe I’ve had Covid, I don’t know. I tested repeatedly and every attempt came back negative, but can you trust a lateral flow test anymore?
I think I’m improving, but during this time frame I’ve also had multiple false starts. Days where I’ve convinced myself I’m well again, gone for a short walk or done a bit of food shopping and then spent the next day paying for this exertion back in bed. On Friday I was absolutely convinced I was better, so I went out and got a haircut and said yes to a funeral inquiry. And now, here I am, back in bed again.
Over these past few weeks I have made several attempts to write. Even in my exhaustion, the thoughts won’t stop churning1 and I have to get them down somewhere. I have at least three pieces that I’ve started, but all of them have trailed off into nothingness as the brain fog billows in heavily once again.
I had high hopes for this winter being a time for writing; for finally getting things down that I’ve wanted to say for ages, but it looks like I might have to wait a little longer for that to come good.
Of course, three/four weeks is nothing! I know this. I’ve got dear ones who have been wading through the terrains of long Covid and other health related uncertainties for months and years now. But it’s amazing how deeply ingrained the combination of my internalised capitalism and healthism is, that even after three weeks I catch myself anxiously dwelling over not doing ‘enough’ combined with blaming myself for not getting well fast enough. I almost feel silly admitting this but, given that I imagine you’re probably following me here because you too are trying to resist the pressures for progress, linearity and growth-at-all-costs that are continually peddled to us by late stage capitalism, I hope you’ll understand.
But right now, I’m riding a short wave of rising energy, so I wanted to reach out; to say ‘I’m still here’. I’m re-sharing with you a short piece that I wrote last March after I’d got over excited about the prospect of Spring, which feels highly appropriate to the state that I find myself in right now.
Fool’s Spring
We were cycling late last Saturday night and I’d left the house ill-prepared. My hands stung sharply with the cold; the wind whipping my knuckles as we trundled up the hill. ‘Why the fuck didn’t I bring my gloves?’ I shouted, shaking my raw hands to bring some life back to them, as the rest of our group whizzed past me.
‘Fool’s Spring tricked you, mate. It’s still winter; in case you didn’t realise.’
And they were right. I’d been lulled into the false sense of security by a short chain of warmer, brighter days; letting myself feel the promise of the sweet relief of warmer months ahead. No gloves needed.
I find myself wanting Spring so badly this year; yearning for the light in a way that is quite unlike me, slow paced snail-being that I usually am. And, of course, as soon as I had allowed myself this feeling then the weather has now promptly returned to the biting cold of a few weeks before.
Fool’s Spring. I know this phenomenon intimately when it comes to my inner seasons. It’s the short lived promise of energy reemerging that happens just after I bleed. I get this tiny, green glimmer of something, like the tenderest seedling just breaking the surface of the soil and I want to follow that impulse to its obvious conclusion; springing back into action again after the slower pace of the days before. But if I follow this instinct too enthusiastically, I’m often left disappointed when I realise that it’s too soon to start being fully springy again. The energy drops. My seedling stretches towards the sky before collapsing into a leggy slump.
It takes a certain kind of inner trust to not be totally wooed by Fool’s Spring; to let myself be slower, more cautious, as I turn the corner out of my inner winter; to let the seedling-self gather steady force before shooting for the stars.
However, there’s nothing inherently wrong with this giddy energy. In fact, there can be something deliciously renegade about pursuing this state and then letting it ebb away – or crash – of its own accord. I’m a human, not entirely seedling after all. Let me blunder and stumble if I want to. Let me be a fool sometimes; throwing caution to the wind whilst also forgetting my gloves and my hat and my coat.
Where the tension lies is when we expect Fool’s Spring to keep going, to push past the tender inklings into full blown action before we are really ready to. I have made that mistake far too many times before and know all too well the frustration of crashing nary a week later when I’d hope to truly be in full bloom.
I think of how this same dynamic shows up in other ways in our lives. How when we are unwell, we will often grasp onto the first signs of improvement as proof that we are ‘better’; rushing back to work before we’re really ready to.
We actually encourage this. I’ve seen people applauded for getting back to it when it’s evident to everyone that they needed a few more days in bed. I’ve seen it when someone is chronically ill and folks herald small signs of renewed health as evidence that this person is definitely heading back towards full wellness, instead of the strong possibility that these hope-filled signals will be short-lived pleasant blips on a non-linear, crooked path of wellness and unwellness tangled together. I’ve witnessed how delighted people have seemed when I’ve emerged from grief or depression momentarily, only to disappoint them when I plunge back into the depths before they’ve even had proper a chance to see me on my ‘good days’. I remember all the false beginnings of ideas and projects; started with enthusiasm and then thwarted by my own makings or steered off course by events beyond my control.
We love progress. Measurable, tangible progress. Growth for better or worse. It is is the clarion call of our overculture. Keep going, keep growing. But can we learn that sometimes a false start or a foolish leap might actually have its own merits and qualities we could marvel at? Can we accept when things do not take the common way, but diverge into new, perhaps lesser valued, multitudinous paths?
Our expectations for the cycle of the seasons is that they flow neatly from one to the other in a predictable stream; spring becomes summer becomes autumn becomes winter. An A to a B to a C, then a familiar D. What we see increasingly more of now in the Northern hemisphere are micro seasons, oftentimes swinging one way and then the other. Far less predictable and often quite strange. The length of each day’s light may guide us consistently through the seasons, but the weather can vary wildly.2
In these times of climate emergency things are not as straight-forward as we long for them to be. (I know I feel the same way so often about my own cycle. I ponder deeply and regularly how these two phenomenon may be intrinsically linked – a story for another day).
Even when my menstrual cycle is following its expected rhythm, another aspect of my cyclical nature will fall out of whack. I might be in my ovulatory inner summer phase, but my sleep has been disturbed through tending to a poorly child or that all too familiar anxious head-churn, so symptomatic of modern life, has kept me up all week.
Instead of continuing to expect my cycle to be a consistent rhythm of growth then decay and back round again, I think of myself and those around me as each having a polyphony of strange cycles all thrumming within us and around us simultaneously.
Cycles within cycles within cycles. Some sync and resonate neatly; some clash crudely with one another. Some ebb and flow with great ease. Others stutter and stop, stagnate and then reanimate again.
Perhaps we each are leafmould, nasturtium sprout, raspberry and wilted rose all at once?
So I find myself asking, what if we’re not just simple one-note, uni-cycles, but complex constellations of spinning galaxies, all entangled with one another?
And as this world keeps erupting with challenge upon challenge, how can we keep making room for the unexpected, the unpredictable, the Fool’s Springs in our cycles and lives today?
Reading this back today, I’m struck by how it feels like a teaser for so many other things that have been stewing in my cauldron over this last year. (I’m also struck by how abruptly it finishes, but that’s the peril of writing on Instagram, where this post originally existed, and the limitations of fitting everything you want to say into a ten slide carousel!)
But, for now dear reader, I think I’ve run out of steam.
This was most probably another Fool’s Spring, a momentary blip of energy that is almost certainly about to crash. I’m going to resist the seduction of telling you I’ll be back soon…because quite honestly I’m not sure if I will!
Thanks for your patience.
Wishing you and yours good health this season and beyond.
Ever-so-warmly,
Lottie x
P.S. If any of this resonates, I’d love to hear from you. My comments are always open, even if I might be slow to respond. x
This article in Al Jazeera detailing how women in Palestine were buying up stocks of noresthisterone to stop their periods has has me reflecting deeply on what it means to be someone who practices menstrual cycle awareness in a world where there are an increasing number of places where it is too unsafe to bleed.
For an excellent perspective on this and how it relates to the way we engage with the pagan Wheel of the Year, this article by Keli Tomlin is lovely.
I love this Lottie and can so relate in many ways.