Eclipse Time Out
[Following on from chasing after Velu the cow who'd escaped and learning a bit about 'cow time' (infinite)... TSM = The Sheep Man, Hurricane = a beloved chestnut horse I cared for.]
This is our quick ‘time out’. I’m writing this on 12th August 2026, an important astrological date since it’s not only a New Moon but there’s a partial solar eclipse.
All eclipses bring a disquieting silence. It’s strange when a cloudless sky turns dark before sunset. It turns the busiest of lives reflective. I’m sitting on my backstep looking out over the Unruly Garden, field and hill beyond, allowing my thoughts to wander.
And – no doubt influenced by my writing of the day and lesson from Velu – I recall how I once discovered Hurricane was missing from his field, only to find he’d jumped his fence and joined a small herd of cows which TSM kept until they became uneconomic.
Although TSM was Not Best Pleased, Hurricane seemed completely at home, standing among his adopted bovine family. I’ve just learned that ‘standing among’ is the root meaning of the word ‘understand’. It prompts editing the subtitling of this book to Legs from the Dregs: Standing Among my Milk Family.
So often we thrash about trying to mentally understand something, someone, our selves. Perhaps it is as easy and enough - as I discovered with Velu – to simply and fully ‘stand among’? Then life makes itself FELT.
I imagine the moon’s horned crescent silently eating up the sun, the rare moment when they both appear to live together. Yin and yang, cow and bull, sun and moon necessarily distinguished, necessarily dancing mostly apart, yet mysteriously part of a whole. I look up and stand among the stars as the night sky approaches.
My tea is drunk, my thirst still unquenched. It is as hot here as it was back then in France. Heading inside I put the kettle on. And we return to La Combe for our last rehearsals and performance of the Interspecies Production of Black Beauty!
#eclipse #understanding #writing #oneness