The Biscuit Blog

Listening to the Other

Yes, we mostly try. More often we think we’re listening in conversation as we cultivate a response to what we partially hear. Do we silence our internal chatter? Can we feel the true impressions of another person much less that of an animal? Many of us share the perspective that animals are our family and tribe – teachers if we are willing to learn and listen. We may not always know what they’re trying to communicate but a willingness to pay attention opens avenues of understanding that the busyness of our mind blocks. True Animal Communication depends on our willingness.

The distraction of devices, endless productivity (to what end? and for who) and the addiction to activity, spins us counter to the core of our being – splinters our perception, leaving us with fragmented awareness. It’s at the place of silence and receptivity where we experience deeper truths – raw and wild truth not shaped by dogmatic principal .

The animals have a lot to say – to convey, and it isn’t always pretty. There is much heartache in the natural world, and there can be much mistrust of humans. Are you surprised? Not likely. If we are to thrive on this planet, our notions of survival have to give way to actual thriving – that entails true communion and collaborative living with the natural world. It is no longer an option to just survive. And dominion over – a relationship built on dominating, has no place among the thriving.

“Animals give us the experience of relationships defined by unconditional love and loyalty.” ~ Rain Hummingbird

Somewhere in our lives we must experience unity with our surroundings and those who inhabit our shared landscape. It begins simply – simple moments of silence in your garden, a park, with an animal.

Offering our respectful attention to the animals in our lives and in the wild, is a spiritual practice in itself if we extend from our hearts to the heart of an animal. And it is here where we are witness to the brilliance, humor and absolute magic of the beast.

I didn’t know that Voles ate onions. I stepped out the garage door each morning to see the brilliant green tops to my onions shrink from 12, to 10, 8,7, 5 inches. Or had I just been intoxicated with the thought of spring’s growth and imagined their height? No. They were shrinking – being sucked through the gently tended soil from beneath – the roots and green wickedly … hahaa, o.k. not wickedly, but hungrily, snatched from maturity where they would have then ended up in my cast iron dutch oven, with olive oil, sea salt, and likely, jalapenos. Fajitas more or less.

I love the critters. I donated an entire garden to them this year. Except for the two small planters on the deck containing 3 tomato plants, basil, a pepper plant, and edible flowers, the green beans, corn, lettuce and delicate greens (oh the rabbits were especially grateful – so much so they birthed additional babies to enjoy the buffet) all went the way of feeding the wildlife. I know how to attend to a garden but this year’s bounty was up for grabs. I planted with full knowledge I wouldn’t be as available to find solutions to whatever challenge might arise in this season’s garden. I needed to set up Anima Arts studio.

Actually, this year I benefit from the bounty of friends’ gardens – the endless and welcome bags of tomatoes and jalapenos from Shorty’s garden, sweet Patty Pan squash with Banana peppers from Paul, green beans, corn and asparagus – I’m as fortunate a vegetable recipient as my garden critters. So this leaves me with more time to pull papers from the Gelli plate.

In my studio of gathering, rather than gather people during this season of the virus, I gather papers to be used for collage. It’s just about the sweetest balm – this collaboration with chance in paint and paper. The explorations in mark making also to be used in collage, is my near second favorite time spent with paint, ink, pens…

There are other gifts in this unexpected season of closed doors. No matter our challenge, we each have blessings – something or someone in our lives we can adore and appreciate. We can allow this quality of loving appreciation to nourish us and the world around us. Of equal importance is the offering of appreciation for that which no longer exists – the world we knew or thought we knew. Our solitude provides us with the opportunity to connect with deeper aspects of ourselves – trustworthy internal knowing after clearing some weeds. We now have a choice to embrace a change we don’t fully understand – to then open the door. If we nourish the essence of what’s precious and of true worth, the new beginnings will be worth the opening.

Westward Ho!

Good Lord. From the sometimes carnival yet arcane streets of Glastonbury and always sacred heart of Avalon, I take my leave and return to my homeland – specifically to the sacred heart of the ancient Appalachian mountains – Asheville North Carolina. Homecoming. There was mention it would be glorious. But leaving? So soon?

Well soon is arbitrary when you live in a timeless portal such as Glastonbury, where lifetimes can be lived in what would otherwise be measured as a short span of time, and where others might float, and feel lost in an endless state of limbo somewhere between life and death. There are many layers to being, and living in Glastonbury. I wouldn’t change my experience. Well, at least not the part of being there. The outer expression of my constant challenge with governmental visa and local governmental regulations and contradictions as an American, belies the personal and collective confrontation with – and potential transmutation of, an ancient archetype of control and oppression. Other archetypes – generous, welcoming, and wise are also present. I figured on being a local Avalonian at least 5 years given my natural rhythm of movement but I should not take measure!

Once an Avalonian, always an Avalonian. The outer world gives us the message of do more, want more and more of it more quickly – the stress of trying to keep up within our measurement of time is anti-life. We’ve no way to keep up with time – it too is changing and the stillpoint in our center remains the only constant – this timeless position allows our experience to be full and complete – outside of time, or in mythic time. We touch on this place when we splash paint on a canvas, sing an aria badly or in tune, throw clay, bake bread, meditate, gaze into someone’s eyes, feel the soul of an animal …

In Asheville North Carolina, people talk about the boomerang effect – once you’ve lived there, you often return. I understand there’s a similar effect in Glastonbury – once having lived there, you usually return. As I’m able to maintain a home in Glastonbury, but now on my way back to Asheville, it seems I may travel between the two for a while! SoulBiscuit’s primary home will be in Asheville, and beginning spring of 2020 the house there will open for events and gatherings.

A few weeks ago I saw the brilliant Manhattan skyline come into veiw from a ship’s deck at 5 a.m. – like shimmering diamonds on the horizon – it was a welcome rush of glorious homecoming – my voyage back to the states.

I also had multiple pieces of luggage with me – so many musical instruments came along – though one guitar didn’t show up in my cabin at the start of the trip. Throughout that week on the ship I practiced the letting go of my beloved guitar – while, simultaneously intending its return back to the fold! – there was much sadness at its potential loss, and surrender. When gathering my luggage that was spread across the warehouse on disembarkment however, I saw the missing guitar case in the thousands of pieces of lugggage – how it ended up in a fellow passengers compartment for the week is another story, but this return – a blessed welcome home gift.

I’m in New York a few more weeks in its frenetic and endlessly exciting environment – in my stillpoint of transition. I’ll miss Glastonbury, but I feel ushered to the Americas. And I’m happy to be here.

It’s not what I expected to be saying in Glastonbury but we have 5 inches of snow and it’s predicted to continue another 4-6; any accumulation here is rare.  I have soya cream, sugar and vanilla, which I’ll add to a bowl of snow and mash it up to sweet delight. ‘Snow cream’. It’s homespun tasty and I have the log burner at ‘warm glow’ with a dog beside me waiting for his bone.  It’s almost Rockwellian (Norman Rockwell, an American painter of the quaint and homely ideal) only I’m in the UK and where are the biscuits!?

There are a number of recipes I’ve experimented with recently. I was buying a property to launch a creative and spiritual arts salon and accommodation house called Soul Biscuit, so I wanted my pantry to be complete with the best of biscuits. There’s a gluten-free-vegan-sweet-potato-biscuit I’m refining to obscene goodness; that’s my first choice. Now, as we exit the eclipse season of early 2018, I’ve said ‘no’ to the purchase of the house but remain at a solid ‘yes’ to biscuits. Astrologically, eclipses are recognized as times of bringing vital change and often endings in some arena of our lives. With indications along the way that there might be trouble in paradise it wasn’t a monumental shock that delivered me from the building purchase.  But,…we were already developing the website for Soul Biscuit B&B! What is a Soul Biscuit anyway?

I came to the UK by following my tried and true method of navigation.
“I woke up one morning and it was like….Glastonbury!”

Well, pretty much.  After a trip back to California in June, the potential of moving back to Northern California turned into the realization that ‘now is not the time’. The question of “alright then, what is it time for?” fresh in my mind – I just didn’t know the answer.  I went back to my beloved cabin in Phoenicia NY end of June 2016.

Early July, “I woke up one morning and it was like….Glastonbury!”  Really?

So began the adventure.  I first visited Glastonbury in 1991 and felt at that time I would live there ‘later in life’.  Later in life apparently now upon me, I came. My tendency to gather and synthesize disparate elements has always been expressed through the music and words I write, the food I cook, the animals I bring into my home. Then there are the meditations I practice which help to resolve the disparate bits into welcome acceptance and new expressions.  Soul Biscuit is this process. A physical location that offers accommodation, space to gather and a rotating menu of creative and spiritual exchange, this is Soul Biscuit in it’s manifest form.

As I ‘tend my spark’ and welcome the muse into my new home, I know more than ever how radical and necessary simple moments of creation are and how the shape of our lives reflects our engagement with life, or lack thereof.   I was further inspired to find this article by Caitlin Johnstone Seize The Means Of Creating Culture.

So where am I at now?

Currently Soul Biscuit is online musing, mostly music, astrology, and life as an American in Glastonbury.  I’ve set up my Astrology services and will offer music salons in my home this summer, but I’ve released the idea of a building purchase in the immediate future.  With UK electricity now safely powering my US studio equipment, I can once again, for the first time since late summer 2016, focus on music. That to me, even more than snow cream and a sweet potato biscuit, is what feeds the soul.

There’s a pub in Glastonbury called The King Arthur.  What else. I’m no longer in Asheville or upstate New York, though both locations are rich with their own history, no claims are laid regarding Kings, thrones, and magical elixirs.  They have a new Thursday night offering which I just attended in their ‘Grow’ room–a live streaming room for music, maybe comedy I’m not sure, but will no doubt be home for many creative happenings.  I walked from my house at the top end of the High Street down to the pub for what I thought was an 8pm show, a Welsh singer songwriter with his guitar, voice and lyrics. I arrive, far from show time as it starts at 9 so I walk up to the bar—something I’ve rarely done in the last 20 years.  I order a drink. Adventurer that I am, I order something that mixes whiskey and local ginger wine for a sweet fire foot stomping brew. I’m soon joined by a tall young man of slight build with massive amounts of curly hair all flowing about his face and shoulders. He’s had multiple rounds of local cider and begins to count off to me just how many that would be.  Still counting after several minutes I don’t walk away because it seems like he’s a really nice chap underneath the brew. I ask him where it is he’s working the next day as he’s mentioned once, that he needs to get up early. He’s the main cook at a café in town. “Soup. I made SOUP today! “ I ask what kind. “MUSHRRRRrrrrrOOOOm!” “Is it a cream base?” I ask because I’m vegetarian and I want to know these things.   “NO! VEGan.” So a delightful conversation almost ensued but his words kept trailing off and I called Vicki who I thought might join me at some point in the evening and now seemed a good time to find out. “Yeah, sure, we’ll come down.” I go into the grow room, have a seat next to the pulpit because what else would be in the live music section of a pub in Glastonbury but a pulpit. With a soundman in it. Apparently pulpits make great soundboards so I was well situated for the evening’s sonic events.  A young woman sat down next to me as I was at a large table, and she was alone. She’s been travelling in her van for over a year now, loves Glastonbury and has been here several weeks volunteering at a local low impact living house, but is now looking for work. I see Vicki walk past, then John her partner stops beside me and calls for Vicki to come back; Vicki well on her way through the main section of the room, tosses her enormously thick hair over her shoulder and smiles. There are two people here now with enough hair to donate that I eye with envy as mine appears to be falling out.  I digress. Vicki sits next to me. We chat a bit about nothing in particular– how nice the room looks and “…isn’t that a pulpit?” “Paul! Are you preaching the sermon tonight?” “I could, but I got none with me. Did you bring one?” Vicki writes Normal For Glastonbury, a popular, informative and entertaining blog about the town, its quirks, visitors, natives, and Vicki seems to be a bit of a town chronicler for Glastonbury. Closer to performance time now, I’m ready for music and Bob Gallie brings it on with his Welsh-but-I-thought-it-was-Scottish accent, dreads, and red Martin (I think) guitar.

(You can watch the performance on this Facebook Live archived video.)

Several songs in, it’s apparent Bob Gallie knows how to craft his song; simple in structure and melody and very strong on lyric as storytelling.  Vicki and I lean over occasionally sharing observations about the music, the room, the wild haired young man still drinking too much, who turns out to be an old housemate of Vicki’s.  “He used to love wearing dresses.” she says. “He’s not gay, he just likes dresses. And he’d change outfits 5 times in a night if there were people visiting. He also knows how to use every utensil in the kitchen just to prepare one meal.” Time passes, we’re almost through the second set, I’m looking at the door feeling like my time has come to move on.  Vicki leans over and says “So did Elvis stop by your house for tea or what?” I spit the remaining whiskey I’d just taken my last sip of out across the table and into the air. It being a pub, I don’t think anyone noticed. The last song almost over, I tell her I’m about to walk home. Another minute or two passes “You just don’t want to answer my question do you.”  I stay seated until the song’s end and stand up to make my way back up the High Street to my Bove Town Road garden-terrace home that faces the south and has a wonderful location for growing vegetables this summer. Elvis never stopped by my house when I was young, but I did name one of my dogs after him, and he recorded one of my father’s songs. My father once told me “There’s only one person in this world I’d never follow on stage and that’s Elvis–I did once in the 50’s, and there’s a reason they call him the king”.

Kudos to a couple of kings from a queen on the Isle of the Dead.  May they both be a song in the galaxy tonight.

Whoa!  We made it!  Max was ‘such’ the trooper, he completely leapt into the adventure–I was ecstatic he did so well. Shockingly, he was probably the most calm of the 16 dogs and 4 cats 🙂 in the kennel. Me? … well I’m here and slept last night like I haven’t in a year.

With almost zero functioning technology, and that includes the cell phone, I captured only a few photos/video clips with the phone, and only a few more with the Holga (film-to develop later).

The time on the ship was pretty much spent between the buffet (2 desserts a day?  really?) and the 4 visits to the kennels each day. We lost an hour at noon 5 of the 7 days as we advanced into GMT time zone, so it mostly worked out to about 2 hours between visits. I explored and walked the ship, chatted and met wonderful people, but I think I may remain a happy landlubber; the ground beneath me still seems to move and I’ve been off the ship almost 48 hours. The Atlantic? She is a mighty force.

The unending details and stress of the last year was immense but the landing was sweet and gentle.  There wasn’t even customs to go  through or Defra (Governmental oversight regarding animal entry) on this end–it was all in the months preparation prior to boarding the ship, embarking the ship and then again on the ship, but the disembarkment was ‘sweet’ and easy.

So for now, I’m staying with Angela in her B&B named the Dragonfly, in a neighborhood where the ice cream truck plays Greensleeves, and I am resting deeply.

With Love,
Janet and Max