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When ego bursts
It makes space
For the other...
Alicja Pyszka-Franceschini, Autumn 2024
From the anthology On Immaturity (not yet published) by Alicja Pyszka-Franceschini
Photograph: Alicja Pyszka-Franceschini, Ambergate, The Birches, Derbyshire, UK
I suspect you’ve been extremely busy this week, getting yourself ready for Christmas and making plans for days to come, completing tasks that had to be done.
Life has been hectic for us too in the last few days and Tuesday disappeared under specialist appointments, quick drop-ins to friends, school matters and joint learning.
I have, therefore, only a humble gratitude point to share this week. I am thankful today for good moments that we spontaneously initiate.
The photo below was taken at a farm nearby. I will forever remember my son cheekily running after a pheasant that proudly strolled around the field and my frustration that I couldn’t stop him (my son, not the pheasant). Young, energetic, stubborn. As most of them are at that age, I think.
The photo above was taken during a solo walk around our local woodland, Stanhope Woods, near Trent and Mersey Canal, Stenson, Derbyshire. I thought that I’ll share this with you before winter replaces autumnal decor with its frosty brush strokes.
So today I am thankful for spontaneous ventures that turn into memories captured and revived in photographs.
What is on your gratitude list today?
How have you been lately? We are in the National Tree Week in the UK right now and it seems utterly wrong to me not to acknowledge it. In the simplest of terms possible, trees keep us going, don’t they? To them and because of them. Sometimes it is their depth that invites us, other times it’s their shadow. Kind enough to overlook our mischief, tender enough to sense our sadness, generous enough to handle our joys. We return energized after reconnecting with their and our essence. We become ourselves and I guess that British English informal saying ‘To be out of one’s tree’ (meaning to behave somewhat crazy) is to a large extent an indicator of our reliance on trees for long-lasting sanity. It is a shared feeling, isn’t it?
Well.. to give trees and our connection to them a just thought and an appreciative stance, I wrote a few verses for this week and read a few pages of The Power of Trees by Peter Wohlleben to get myself into the topic. It is one of my favourite texts on trees and a consistent inspiration for me as the novel that I am writing is primarily based in an ancient woodland. Alfred Wainwright, a British walker, illustrator and the author of A Pictorial Guide to the Lakeland Fells, gave himself 13 years, if I remember correctly, to finish his guides, I haven’t given myself that much time but my novel finds it hard to become a coherent piece. Nonetheless, I plan to finish it by the end of July 2026. It is a labour of love and I would like it to stay so. Are there any texts among your favourites that speak of trees and forests?
After I wrote the post about The Gita for Children by Roopa Pai, a few amazing things happened. One event led to me receiving the original Gita by post from someone. We were also invited to a lecture on the differences between Christ and Krishna (photos soon). I embraced it all because sometimes The Essence wants to come to us through multiple channels. I know that the Gita takes nature seriously and I am very curious of its approach to it. After all, our spiritual lives are one of our primary influences in shaping our ecopsychologies and our mindsets for scarcity or abundance, gratitude or non-recognition.
Hello you, Tree.
Make us See.
That without you,
The course of life
Forgets to breathe
And goes wrong ways.
Through the dungeons of politics
As dense as a carved slice of fog
Placed in a jar of uncast votes
That suffocate the future.
The tree, oh comfort and respite.
It stays potent and flexibly solid
With its roots extending to neighbouring hills
and branches simultaneously strong and tender
protected by years of genetic experience
against the utterly predictable
forces of chaos.
The tree sways
and it is its strength.
Chaos reigns
Itself out of recognition.
And it is its catastrophe.
The tree makes only one promise.
To grow
It gives you oxygen
In partial compensation
for space taken.
As if it had to…
Furniture, instruments, books, crayons, utensils
Firewood, bird-nests, frames and sledges
are the givens
within but in fact beyond expectations.
This is how the tree excels
Even after death.
If you like being inspired by woodland photography, see Nigel Danson’s Gallery for woodland and landscape photography. The gallery feels like a gentle massage for the mind and I can assure you it will be one of those moments of giving oneself some caring love to look through Nigel’s photos. They are great pieces of art. Enjoy them.
And let me know, how you are, will you?
The photos were taken in The Birches, Ambergate, Derbyshire as well as in our local park in Derby.
REMEMBRANCE DAY
***
May we live gracefully
That the world will calm down
That the remorse will show
For the beauty undone
For the lives lost
May we live gracefully
They have already borne the cost
When the soldiers did decide
That the fight was necessary
They didn’t predict their loses
They didn’t predict their merit
The trauma of the past needs its cooling time
Time to close the wounds
Time to heal
With the whispers of the soul
And the kisses sent to those who died
Thank you for making us survive
Thank you for the future reassured
For the coziness of my own room
You allowed me to be calm
You allowed me to be kind
Turn the war into a fight
For the rights of peace
For the rights to the calm
So that the nerves are soothed
And the will finds its new direction
This wouldn’t have happened without your sacrifice
Without your protection
May we now live gracefully
May we now live with calm
Let the soldiers sleep
Let them now have their time
Let us rock them
So that they feel embraced
They were dying on their own
Their bodies were not held
Let us rock their souls to sleep at least
So they can finally rest in peace.
Poem by Alicja Pyszka-Franceschini
If you’ve got a child aged 12 or around, you would most likely have enough data on their likes and interests and you would probably see that some subjects always prick their ears and they like discussing them. Among football, biology, history and Minecraft, religious studies are my son’s favourite. He is very keen on learning and discussing different religious wisdoms, beliefs, traditions, and customs. When I was sent The Gita for Children by Roopa Pai by IBBY (International Board of Books for Young People) two years ago, I was thrilled. I knew that we could have a good time together.
The Gita for Children written by Roopa Pai and it is an introduction to The Gita, the sacred scripture of the Hindus. The book has a very intriguing purple, golden and dark blue cover and beautifully drafted drawings inside by Sayan Mukherjee and the elements of script that I could not recognize or comprehend. The elements of script used in the book are shlokas, otherwise understood as stanzas of Bhaghavad Gita.
Two years ago the book however was a bit too dense and difficult for our son to delve into with my help and on his own, but as we know, children mature and their mind’s abstract conceptual maps grow with them and what was a bit early to access two years ago, may find fertile ground in a boy who has just started his secondary school and is mature enough to admit: ‘Mum, I need your guidance. I need a lot of it.’ Now, this is a terrifying request for most of us, adults, these days as we seem to be navigating without a compass through the obstacles and challenges of our era, unsure which ways lead to greater good and less internal turmoil. If you read the backside cover of The Gita for Children, you are already presented with some answers, as the publisher, Swift, chose the following extract from the book:
‘The truth is, Partha,’ Krishna said, ‘there is no “better” path. Both paths – the path of knowledge and the path of action – work just as well. It is up to you to pick the one that you are suited to.”
This permission to choose a path encourages you to read on and learn more about The Gita and delve into this introduction to the sacred scripture of the Hindus and to slow down a bit to learn and reflect on wisdoms that we are surrounded with but we do not access. I took Roopa Pai’s book for a walk in Derby around our local canal to breathe in its wisdom with fresh air and I thought I’ll share with you here some of my favourite quotes as they may speak to you too.
“… the soul goes to that which the mind has been thinking about in its last moments.” p. 118
“ God does not belong to the privileged. (…)
All He needs is love.”
“Think of me as infinite space, the space around and above me below you – the grand theatre of the suns and the stars and the might wind; which holds the seed of everything in the Universe” p.132
“I do not favour one being over another; they are all the same to me…”
“Go(o)d will find a way.” p.65
“From goodness is born knowledge, and the fruit of the action is joy; from passion arises greed, and the fruit of passionate action is pain; from dullness arises negligent and wrong action, and its fruit is ignorance.” p. 194
I hope you enjoyed the walk with The Gita.
P.S.1. As if by chance ‘gita’ in Italian means ‘a walk’ while the holy scripture ‘Gita’ means ‘a song’.
P.S.2. For all those who love to walk, this walk started at Stenson Marina in Derby, walk towards Willington Marina (to the right while facing the canal).
(in the next post I will share with you some photographs from the celebration of Diwali that took place in Derby. It does not happen too often when Diwali is celebrated on the same day as Halloween and a day before the Catholic celebration of All Saints (in Poland also knows as the Day of the Deceased when we place candles and wreathes on our ancestor’s graves and reminisce about them).
