By Phil Brachi
The U.S. Customs officer was plucking petals from the small bunch of roses I’d cradled across the Atlantic, when I spotted my French-American girlfriend waving from the gallery. “They’re for her!” I shouted as I pointed, and he relented. My student charter flight had touched down at JFK on the summer solstice of ’67 for a three-month trip. It was my twentieth birthday, and as I lay back in the yellow cab looking up through the rear window at vertical Manhattan, I felt infinitely blessed.
Virgo. Painting by Carlos Cedillo.
The 1930s-built Fifth Avenue penthouse where I spent that first delicious intoxication is still Michèle’s home, while my own life has taken something of the opposite tack. More than four decades later – through bizarre choice and serendipity – I have no property or savings, no job, maybe $200 a month, my health and a loving partner. I feel infinitely blessed.
Materialism is a hard act to follow, but my own life as a ’47-vintage Gemini (Scorpio rising, Leo moon) has been graced with countless non-material delights, including many usually rated as impossible. During forty years living deep in the Welsh hills very close to nature, I have gradually evolved a life in which small miracles happen pretty frequently, yielding great pleasure and satisfaction, and discombobulating entirely one’s culturally sanctioned sense of what might be on offer aboard Terra. Priceless and free, these are some of life’s richer possibilities, but not like the grown-ups told us, culminating for now in repeated and often playful encounters with the faerie realm.
* * *
Napoleon said, “Show me what the world is thinking when a man is twenty and I’ll map you the rest of his life.” That works well for me. Around then we were vouchsafed the first pictures of the whole Earth from space; nobody had imagined weather systems planet-sized, and the image was everywhere at Montreal’s Expo ’67 World’s Fair where I spent half that university vacation. Pressured to study economics by my Taurus dad, I knew then that WesCiv’s game was up: endless growth on a finite blue planet in black velvet space, plus increasing population – it was nonsense. As Gaia claimed my brain, I lost interest in the mainstream and began researching alternatives.
The first crack in the cosmic egg appeared in ‘73 when our eco-commune’s well ran dry and we called in the local dowser. I followed him up the field knocking in pegs where his Y-shaped hazel twig flicked upwards for underground water. Did I want a go? Yes. But nothing happened. Then taking my right hand in his left, we each held one arm of the Y and together re-crossed the invisible stream. My giggling delight remains unforgettable as expensive years of private education fell away; linear physics, maths and chemistry transcended by this twisting twig in my fist, impossible to force or fake. You could have hung a pound of butter from that priapic wood. I was permanently changed.
Our commune lasted four years and I’ve lived in Mid Wales ever since. Fun, intense and of its time; that project gifted me a closeness to nature that has trumped pretty much every priority in my life. There’s a power and sustenance here in the hills that’s hard to convey. They say you can’t live on a view, but in three renovated houses over the decades, I’ve come closer to that than most.
* * *
Through the eighties I made a good life hosting Earthwalk’s week-long walking and camping tours, and occasionally we’d share moments of magic: the four-leaf clover picked without breaking stride…an exhausted swift plummeting at the feet of a newly arrived guest, as she showed us her cotton wool-lined shoebox brought in case she found an injured bird.
But nothing prepared me for the experience of a Sunday in June ’85 with my dozen walkers. We had a youngster of fifteen along, and if Chris had a bad week, everybody’s holiday would be ruined; so at the first evening meal I elicited his passion: trees. Secretly I reworked the next day’s walk to include Gregynog Hall, an outpost of the University of Wales; I’d never been there but knew there was an arboretum.
In warm and sunny weather, we walked from hill pasture into beech and oak woodland, giving way to parkland, then to yew-hedged formal gardens backed by wellingtonias and giant redwoods. Approaching the great country house we heard music; a string quartet was playing on the lawn: no audience, just for fun. Agreeing to meet in an hour, the group explored, with Chris in seventh heaven.
I wandered the gardens barefoot, and from the open French windows came a familiar choral piece, Monteverdi’s Beatus Vir, and I melted. I literally fell to my knees, not in worship or reverence – I’m not a churchgoer – but I couldn’t stand up, and tears washed behind and round my eyes. Looking up, I could see rainbow streaks of light from dew on leaves two hundred yards away, when normally my eyesight isn’t brilliant. And for my ears, the same thing: the birdsong, usually a pleasant background babble, was electric with call and response, meaning and joie de vivre. With this, came a feeling of heartfelt encouragement, an antidote to Thatcher and Reagan’s warmongering. (Bless you, Nancy, for steering him by astrology!). I wasn’t on anything, not even a drop of alcohol. Unsought and unexpected, this epiphany underpins all I’ve experienced since. For a few hours and ebbing over an afternoon, I was absolutely in touch with the whole place, resonating with meaning, purpose and direction, and [the knowing that] ‘It’s all okay.’
I couldn’t convey what lay behind my smile as we lunched by Gregynog’s woodland pond. Later my teacher said it was plain: I’d done something loving for Chris and the Universe had responded.
* * *
Amelia Beatrice, ‘bringer of blessings’, incarnated in July ’82. Lifting her head on arrival, she looked intelligently around the room, checking co-ordinates for a few seconds, sighed, and only then became nought-year-old Amy. I watched it happen. Later I married Polly, an Aries, Dylan freak and supernaturally gifted nurse; eight years before the birth, she’d seen Amy on my shoulders as we danced. Midwives she said, wise women, often tell of such old souls coming. A week later she was throwing up mum’s milk and the nurse suggested Carbo Veg, an immediate homeopathic cure that angered scientist friends who insist there’s not an active molecule in it. I love that!
In summer ‘84 we holidayed in West Wales, with the Preseli Hills-sourced Stonehenge two hundred miles away. Three sunless days went by, and set to continue, I walked to Pentre Ifan, a deserted sacred site, with its sixteen-ton triangular capstone improbably poised eight feet up on three slender triangle supports. My half hour’s yoga on the grass felt the best ever, and relaxing afterwards in shavasana, I saw a tiny crack in the cloud straight ahead and felt a warm connection between it and my heart. As I looked, it widened, how interesting! And with that thought it narrowed. Stop the mind, meditate, accept…it opened wider. Analyse or consider…and it closed again. For a couple of minutes we played this game, the hand-sized patch of blue sky opening as fitfully as my heart. Finally, I burst out laughing – and the whole sky cracked to a tortoiseshell pattern, each cloud fragment wisping clear in seconds. Against all forecasts there was perfect weather for the rest of our stay.
Overly intellectual and fearful of losing the knack, I’ve never studied these zones of strangeness – it is a left-brain/right-brain thing perhaps. (As a youngster, Amy named my brain Brian, “a bit mixed up in the middle!”). I wouldn’t cloud-bust for money or with sceptics around, but clearing skies was fun. With a new relationship and a third ancient house to fix, I learned slate roofing and spent eight seasons where you can see the incoming weather. Living high up and west of the village, breaking up clouds over our place let eight-minute-old afternoon sunlight beam down to the local festivities. Two years running, I gave them a quiet hand, but I never expected a witness.
That came one overcast summer’s evening, riding the little bus back after work at the local Wholefood store: try cloud-busting, why not? And a lone shaft of sun tracked us a dozen miles, even followed me walking up the lane. Nobody on the bus noticed; they never do. Days later, my engineer neighbour Tony told me ‘an odd thing’ though; said he’d been walking on the hill that evening and watched a sun-beamed bus all along the A470.
* * *
Aged 68 with mild stroke and Alzheimer’s, my father was nursed at home with six of us taking turns at his bedside. At lunchtime on day ten, I had his hand in mine with some half-remembered chant: “Nothing to hold on to, nothing to fear…” His eyes were shut, they had barely opened in days, brow furrowed, not a man of faith; he seemed fearful and each out-breath felt like his last. “Nothing to hold on to, nothing to fear.” His eyes opened a moment to check for me, his out-breaths held longer still, and again…again…until one didn’t return, but rattles out its ending (how brave!). His eyes opened sparkling clear and with a beatific smile, his face shed twenty years in a moment, with an unmistakeable expression of ‘Oh, I get it!’ And he’d gone, his hand cold.
Death, birth and bits in between; gifted me over the years, moments accumulate meaning, demand communication. Mired in our cul-de-sac culture we need to share these things, some plain useful, others perhaps a new edge of consciousness.
Rainfall at dusk, and Amy’s grandpa had lost a contact lens on fifty square yards of gravel drive; summoned outside, I walked straight to it without thinking. I’ve never managed an encore though, and instead have a terrible reputation for losing things – is non-attachment within my grasp?
I’ve not read or heard of this, but I reckon ‘seeing the light’ isn’t just a metaphor. Lying awake with eyes closed, or in quiet daytime moments, I now often see a small white disc of light for a second, covering maybe a fifth of the low edge of vision at the very moment a heartfelt truth is acknowledged. I think I’ve accessed a deeper mode of confirming intuition. Extraordinary!
* * *
The upper Cledan Valley has many inhabitants and few people. The life-web here: the insect’s flypast, a red kite calling, the hare, the breeze, a dewdrop shard of rainbow light – this non-stop theatre through which we move becomes our meditation’s focus. Uniquely, it offers instant feedback, rewarding us with sparkling affirmation every time we still the monkey mind and open our heart to what is all about us. Soon it becomes plain: the whole show is interactive and a wondrous teacher. Together in small numbers it’s not so hard to reach this state.
From micro-landscapes of lichen, moss, creatures, wildflowers, rock and fern, to the dark star depths of night – a sense of scale confers awe and belonging. And if we are quiet and respectful and can suspend our disbelief, yet another layer may grace us – the realm of nature spirits. As all times and cultures have attested, it is here co-existing and awaits our stillness. This beautiful attunement arrives quite naturally, and it is easier to enter this state than to describe it. As ever, the poets got here first. It’s a wonderful world.
For thirteen years now, Jo and I have tended and treasured the wildest place yet, with its huge waterfall, the stone cottage two hundred years old and needing some attention, and not another house in sight: Ffrwd Wen, ‘the white torrent’ (place names here are so descriptive). Clear air, peace and quiet, solitude and stillness. The wildlife trusts us, the poly-tunnel offers daily organic veg. We have night skies where the Milky Way isn’t just another junk food, and our own deep-source water. A natural abode for a self-taught nature mystic.
* * *
As dusk fell, I walked barefoot below the waterfall to the place I have always felt to be the most magical. If I were a tiny being, delighting in nature and able to move in three dimensions, this is where I’d hang out – where moss meets water, meets rock, meets lichen and fern. Two feet above the stream and overgrown with mosses, a beach-ball rock is cleaved beneath at an angle, hollowed like a shoebox-draped green, its long side facing me. I’ve crouched here many times and now there seemed a sparkly mist in the space. But there was no spray from the stream, and no sunlight.
I softened my gaze and just accepted. There they were. Think light-formed midges but smaller, several hundred; each dot not moving far in a vibrating cloud a few inches off the floor of what I now saw was a faerie theatre. Beneath that airborne upper circle were no seats, but six or eight rows with a couple of hundred bigger light creatures maybe two millimetres, none moving. And out in front, a lone taller figure of about six millimetres, stooped and swaying rhythmically, conducting music. What music? Listening carefully, it was perfectly timed with the sounds of the tumbling stream – all this in a minute or so.
* * *
Dawn and dusk are best for fairy encounters; and I think they love sunlight. Choose somewhere small-scale and intricate, naturally beautiful or co-created; a few square yards will do. Tread gently or go barefoot as a traveller might enter someone’s home in a faraway land. Respect and openness are needed along with that soft gaze, looking but not seeking. Play ‘just suppose…’
Soon the air may acquire a little sparkle, tiny dots of light like elderflower champagne. Welcoming this tuned human visitor, a fairy might whir past your ear from behind and fly into the scene, drawing you in to their perfect miniature realm. (Who was it that said ‘God is in the detail’? There is so much to see!) Attention, attention, always straight ahead, no searching needed. You’ll know fairies from insects because they appear and disappear in mid-air, in full view, visible and animated so long as we suspend disbelief. Laughter helps, and it comes easily if we’re the butt of a practical joke: my favourite hat was stolen in the sunrise and returned to me a quarter mile away! One time at the foot of the waterfall, my crystal pendant fell from my neck with a quiet ‘ping’; its chain unbroken and clasp closed, two solid links had parted but remained intact.
* * *
Each new encounter feels like my first experience of faerie: brimming joy, amazement, even tears of relief that it’s real and I can still get there. Between visits though, through weeks or months of country busyness, these wonders are beyond the pale even for the open minded, and something of a conversation killer. Good friends smile and say little. It can be a lonely trip.
Faerie perception requires the innocence of a young child at play, and my own childhood was largely fucked. Deep down, I guess we have to feel worthy of such a miracle in order to experience it, and witnessing what may be our Universe’s purest expression of delight is psychologically and spiritually very healing. It can heal physically too; I had my samba-induced deafness cured for an evening by a small fairy.
* * *
In a period of cultural implosion and searching, this is a useful subversion and a catalyst to post-materialism. ‘Don’t knock it till you’ve tried it’, we used to say. But trying it can feel scary. Compared to the Sixties, our present world is incredibly straight, so best explore alone or with a trusted friend, keeping it private while confidence builds.
Cynicism is designer despair. We might simply ask who is happier, those clinging to materialism or the re-emerging counterculture? The role of the revolutionary artist is to render the revolution irresistible.
Occupy Reality, anyone?
