By Barbara Rosen

Hydraulic fracturing or “fracking” is a process used to extract natural gas far below (1 mile or more) the surface of the earth. The Catskills and southern tier of New York State, part of the Marcellus Shale Formation, are believed to hold huge reservoirs of natural gas. The fracking process involves drilling a mile or deeper into the earth and injecting, under extremely high pressure, a minimum of 3-5 million gallons of water from surrounding streams, rivers, ponds and lakes. Also injected into these wells are over 1,000 different chemicals that include benzene, toluene, xylene, ethylbenzene, naphthalene, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, hydrochloric acid, asbestos powder, ammonium, chloride, bisulfite, butanol and heavy metals in the return fracking fluid. These chemicals are hazardous if inhaled, ingested or contacted by the skin. They are endocrine disruptors and have been linked to infertility, ADHD, autism, diabetes, thyroid disorders, and childhood and adult cancers.

Pisces. Painting by Carlso Cedillo.

Because shale is inherently radioactive, the fracking waste – more than half of which comes to the surface, while half stays in the ground to be pumped into holding ponds and transported to wastewater facilities – is also radioactive. The DEC has allowed this radioactive fracking waste to be spread on roads in NYS during the icy winter months.

In 2005, the Bush/Cheney Energy Bill (the Halliburton Loophole) exempted natural gas drilling companies from the provisions of the Safe Drinking Water Act and the Superfund Act. Thus, oil and gas industries are not going to be held accountable for any accidents resulting from fracking. Responsibility for accidents, and there have been many already, will fall on small towns, governments and taxpayers. Unfortunately, the DEC has become a shadow of its former self due to excessive funding cuts and the resulting staff reduction.

Many government officials and state representatives are aware that fracking contaminates water supplies, as well as food supplies and wildlife. That’s why NYS comptroller Thomas DiNapoli is trying to create an industry-supported fund to deal with fracking contamination and accidents. Also, by giving NYC and Syracuse Watersheds special protection, the DEC is acknowledging that fracking is unsafe. What is never stated is that underground water is connected everywhere. We simply cannot see it. Imagine having a nuclear reactor put up in your backyard. Would you protest, as New Yorkers are now doing with Indian Point?

Upstate or downstate, pollution doesn’t stay contained by distance or state borders. It is carried by food, air and water. One day I was reminded about King Midas, who loved gold so much and one day got his wish granted. Everything he touched turned to gold, the food he put into his mouth and his own precious daughter. He gained all the gold his heart desired but lost everything that was most precious to him.

You can contact Governor Cuomo’s office by phone (518) 474 8390 or by mail:
The Honorable Andrew M. Cuomo

Governor of New York State
NYS State Capitol Building
Albany, NY 12224

By Astrodem

Parallels in Time

Hi, and thanks for indulging me. If you’ve been reading Planet Waves and you’re reading this essay, you’re probably already familiar with Eric’s observations about the long Uranus-Pluto square. Over the last few years, Eric has made the case that the 2010s are probably going to look and feel a lot like the tumultuous 1960s and 1970s. Eric has offered me the chance to introduce you to another period that resonates strongly with the 2010s: namely, the late 1840s.

Capricorn. Painting by Carlos Cedillo.

Let me be clear about one thing right from the start. I am not an historian and I’m not an expert on this era. I point this out because I hope that if you are an historian or an expert on that era and I’ve somehow gotten it all horribly wrong, you will let me know. I first recognized the resonances between our present era and the 1840s while researching the historical transits of Neptune through the signs. It turns out that Neptune crossed back and forth over the border of Aquarius and Pisces in the late 1840s, just like it’s doing today. I got interested in this because the Ascendant in my natal chart occupies this degree.

Examining the astrology of this era more closely, I soon realized that the late 1840s shared another major outer planet aspect with us: Uranus and Pluto were making a hard aspect as well. Today, we’re dealing with a square reaching from Aries to Capricorn across the outer limits of the zodiac. Back then, it was a conjunction in Aries. In astrology, similarities like this are no coincidence and call for deeper examination. So I decided to do a little research on this era to find out more. To give credit where a great deal of credit is due, Mike Rapport’s phenomenal work on this era, 1848: Year of Revolution (2008), served as the source for this essay. And as the title of that book would suggest, 1848 saw the onset of a major – but largely forgotten – revolution across the European continent. I hope this short essay will give you, the reader, a taste of what it was all about.

Setting the Stage

To sketch a very brief picture of what European politics looked like in the 1840s, the five great powers – Austria (then known as the Hapsburg Empire), Prussia, Russia, France and Britain – were all imperial monarchies. Only France and Britain had parliaments, but these parliaments were dominated by landed aristocrats. To compare this landscape to something we might be familiar with today, Europe looked a lot like the nations of the Middle East and North Africa just prior to the Arab Spring, characterized by a lack of popular representation, vast economic and social inequities, and varying degrees of repression, modernization and influence beyond their borders. This was a very complex and complicated landscape, which is why it’s so intriguing that revolution touched nearly all of Europe simultaneously despite the stark differences from place to place.

In the decades leading up to 1848, there had been an explosion of economic inequality throughout Europe, triggered by the early stages of industrialization. A population boom in rural areas had prompted mass migration into the cities where factory jobs were believed (debatably) to be more plentiful. But for these early migrants into the cities, the reality seldom lived up to expectations. Often they found themselves living in vast, squalid and overpopulated ghettos not unlike the ones you see today in cities throughout Asia and the Middle East. Recall the slums depicted in Slumdog Millionaire to get an idea of what I’m talking about. The Europeans living in these conditions in the 1840s grew increasingly angry and gradually began to organize themselves politically…or at least those who weren’t living in total desperation tried to. Meanwhile back in the countryside, there were still way too many farmers and not enough food and land to go around.

In 1845-6, a potato blight triggered a famine. Suddenly there was mass starvation across the European continent as well as mass agitation for political, economic and social reform. By the time 1848 arrived, the normally soft-spoken and mild-mannered Alexis de Tocqueville couldn’t help but note that Europe was “sleeping on a volcano” — though his friends accused him of being a bit of a drama queen for saying so. What actually started the rebellion was a dust-up in Milan over a tobacco boycott aimed at pinching the treasury of Italy’s Austrian imperial overlords. Another thing you should know about this incident is that it was inspired by none other than the Boston Tea Party. The details of what happened don’t really matter, although what happened next did. As soon as word about the violence got out, people throughout Europe in both city and countryside started rioting against the monarchies. It is said that the rioting spread faster than the fastest forms of communication and modes of travel. Pretty much overnight, a whole continent took to the barricades.

Factions

So what did the revolutionaries want? The answer is very, very complicated – just like everything else in this era. Reformers typically held one or more of the following three general goals: 1) national unity for politically fragmented peoples, 2) more political freedom and representation, and 3) more economic equality (at the time, this was referred to as “the social question”). These goals were not held in equal measure. In fact, the rebels were rife with division and disagreement – though this fact was not immediately apparent in early 1848. At the beginning of the revolution, everyone shared a common enemy: the imperial monarchies.

I hope you will forgive me for dwelling at length on the differences between the revolutionary factions – because understanding these differences is the key to understanding the outcome of the revolution. There were two major realms of division. The first was over political ideology and the second was over economic class. Let’s deal with the ideology first.

All those years the new city dwellers had spent organizing and laying the groundwork for their big moment had divided them into two opposing political camps. First there were the liberals – moderate reformers who strongly preferred to work within the system. In most European states, they were committed to a project of national unity (e.g. unification of the German states or the Italian principalities), which they believed would produce solutions to the most pressing political and economic problems down the road. They supported parliamentary systems, but didn’t necessarily believe all people should get to participate or vote.

Then there were the radicals. They wanted to overthrow the monarchies through revolution, violently if necessary. The radicals wanted to aggressively deploy the state to achieve popular political freedoms and greater economic equality. They saw national unity as a secondary aim at best, a distraction from the real social problems at worst.

It’s important to understand that these two factions, these two sets of goals, were operating in a much broader context of political discussion and debate. The middle of the 19th Century saw the emergence of the popular press in Europe. While literacy rates weren’t even close to what they are today, this was the era in Europe when ordinary people started paying attention to current events and forming coherent ideas of their own about how to solve problems. The word “ideology” was first used in 1796, but many of the things that we would recognize today as political ideologies got their start in 1848. For instance, both nationalism and liberalism took off that year. 1848 was also the year that Henry David Thoreau wrote his famous treatise, Civil Disobedience, which was published the following year. 1848 also planted the seeds of socialism and communism. Did you know that Karl Marx’s Communist Manifesto was published in 1848 after the first wave of rebellions? Well it was.

I’m bringing up this point about ideology because it illustrates the magnitude of the problems people faced in that era and the diversity of possible solutions. Pretty much anyone in this era who knew how to read and use their brain who wasn’t already part of Europe’s establishment power structure was trying to figure out what to do about their failing political, economic and social systems. And there was a staggering, breathtaking amount of disagreement over what to do. Popular ideological disagreement of this kind had never really happened before. In earlier revolutions (mainly the American and French ones), ideological debates had been left to the elite. The idea that the masses would form opinions about and take sides in an ideological/political disagreement was something entirely new at the time – and something that we are once again revisiting today.

The second major division amongst the rebels fell along the lines of economic class. At the start of the revolution in 1848, there were roughly five socioeconomic classes – and there was little or no class mobility. At the bottom of the totem pole there were the poor peasant farmers who lived in rural areas. Slightly above them were the urban factory workers, what Karl Marx described at the time as the proletariat, or what in modern times we call “the working class.” Then there was the middle class made up of professionals, craftsmen, bureaucrats, officials, businessmen, retailers and small landowners. Most of the organized political activists mentioned above came from middle-class backgrounds – though there were also quite a few urban factory workers involved as well. Next up there were the nobles, the landed aristocrats and other assorted wealthy elites. And finally at the top, there were the monarchies and their appendages. These appendages consisted of the ruling statesmen (dubbed “the old guard” in the historical literature) and the armies. The statesmen and the armies may have earned middle-class salaries, but it’s crucial to understand that they were paid directly by and therefore loyal to the monarchies. With minor variation, this class structure existed almost everywhere in 1840s Europe.

Snapshots from the Revolution

In the initial rebellion, it was pretty much everybody (including even a few of the nobles) versus the monarchies, the armies and the “old guard” statesmen. Clashes between the rebels – who sometimes numbered in the hundreds and sometimes in the tens of thousands – and the armies were at times brutally violent. Take for example this harrowing scene, which occurred on February 23, 1848 in the aftermath of the Paris massacre that killed about 50 people:

News of the slaughter pulsated around the city: for Parisians, the massacre seemed to signal the onset of a government effort to reassert its authority by crushing force. After midnight people huddling fearfully behind closed shutters were drawn out by a spectacle worthy of Dante’s Inferno: a horse and wagon, drawn by a muscular, bare-armed worker, bore five lifeless bodies, including the corpse of a young woman whose neck and chest were stained with a long stream of blood. The tableau was lit by the flickering, reddish reflections of a torch held aloft by a child of the people, with a pallid complexion, eyes burning and staring as one would depict in the spirit of vengeance. Behind the cart another shook his sparkling torch, passing his fierce gaze over the crowd, crying “Vengeance! Vengeance! They are slaughtering the people!” The insurgents, fired up again, prepared to fight once more and raced back to the barricades. At that moment, the corpse of a woman had more power than the bravest army in the world. (Rapport, 2008)

Scenes like this were common in 1848 and 1849. I don’t want to get too bogged down in the specifics of what happened, because the revolution played out a little differently in every country. It’s a bit like trying to tell the stories of recent events in Egypt, Tunisia, Libya, the anti-austerity riots in Europe, and the Occupy movement all at the same time. The specifics in each case are worth studying if you’re really interested, but not if you’re just trying to get a general sense of what it was all about – which is what I’m trying to do here. Check out the Wikipedia entries for a timeline of the historical events. Rather than try to retell the story of what happened, I want to make a few passing observations about the revolution that may bear some relevance to what we’re going through today.

First, the revolution was an international phenomenon. Revolutionary movements sprung up in France, Germany, Italy, Sicily, Austria, Denmark, Hungary, Switzerland, Poland, Romania, Belgium and Ireland – simultaneously. All of the revolutionaries were paying close attention to what their counterparts in other lands were doing, and found inspiration in the victories and triumphs of their counterparts anywhere and everywhere.

Second, the 1848 revolution gave millions of Europeans their first taste of popular politics and their first taste of political freedom during the brief period in 1848-1849 when the monarchies lost any ability to clamp down on those freedoms. Even the conservative counter-revolutionaries who defended the old guard were doing so consciously and through the exercise of their own free will. That was new.

Third, and perhaps most importantly, the lack of solidarity among the opponents of the monarchies proved determinative.

Divide and Conquer

After some initial blunders and military defeats, the monarchies, the old guard and the armies that served them responded to the revolution and to the challenges to their authority with brilliant military strategy and deviously Machiavellian cunning. In nearly every country, the “old guard” power brokers of the established monarchies did precisely what they had always done best: divide and conquer. First, they paid off the nobles who had been rebelling out of frustration with absolute rule. As has so often been the case with aristocratic elites throughout history, these dissatisfied nobles were more than happy to put aside their political grievances in exchange for a big, old bribe or two.

Next, the monarchies threw a few proverbial crumbs to the rural peasants – mainly by ending the last remaining legal vestiges of feudalism. Ending legal serfdom meant that peasants were no longer legally bound to the land they worked on and had to be paid. One way of thinking about this reform is to treat it as Europe’s version of ending slavery. If we want to think about it that way, the analogy may fit a little too well because – as in America – what followed was hardly an improvement. Ending serfdom came with a huge price tag: peasant wages were fixed by law at a level well below market prices and ownership of the animals and equipment they used was summarily transferred to the land-owning class. Beyond that, the dire conditions most peasants lived and worked in remained otherwise unchanged. By 1849 the peasants had all but abandoned the revolution, satisfied with meager reforms that really didn’t change much of anything.

That left the urban middle class and factory workers for the monarchies to deal with. So the old guard responded by deftly exploiting the disagreements and divisions between the rebelling liberals and radicals. Like I said earlier, it played out a little differently from place to place, but in each country the establishment manipulated the circumstances, so that the revolutionaries would be forced to choose between the project of national unity and the political and economic freedoms they sought. Instead of reaching for mutually agreed-upon goals, the liberals and the radicals both reached for power. In some instances, they turned to authoritarian means to achieve their aims, which gave counter-revolutionary and reactionary (read: conservative) forces the upper hand. In other cases, infighting between the classes or the various ideological factions tore the rebellion apart, and led to the collapse of the few liberal regimes that were established. The imperial armies retook the initiative and ultimately control of the lands they had lost. In the end, the revolutionaries achieved virtually none of their goals, and the monarchies retook power.

Again, the details of how this happened varied enormously from place to place – but in most nations the revolution followed the general trajectory outlined here. The democratic order that rebels might have established throughout Europe in the 1850s got postponed for another century in Western Europe, and another 140+ years for Eastern Europe. That is the great tragedy of 1848. We can trace a direct line from the failure of these revolutions to both the imperial excesses of the late 19th Century, and to the cataclysmic world wars during the first half of the 20th Century. Historians remember 1848 as a failed revolution: an historic turning point where history never turned.

We can’t let that happen again.

Lessons of 1848

So what can we learn from all this? Here are just a few of the lessons I’ve drawn.

First, we’re not the first. There is often a sense – conveyed by members of our media and our leading intellectuals – that when something out of the ordinary happens, it is “unprecedented.” You’re going to hear that word a lot over the next few years, but I would advise everyone to double check and see if it’s actually true. The political, economic and social upheavals we’re going through today are not new and the issues we’re dealing with – by and large – aren’t new either. It’s just that few people are old enough or informed enough about history to know about the similarities to other eras of history.

Case in point: we often hear about today’s young people being the first generation to think globally and act locally. But nothing could be further from the truth. Revolutionaries embraced this ethos in the 1840s. Actually, so did many of the reformers in the 1960s in the U.S. and elsewhere. The precise meaning and geographic scope of “global” and “local” have evolved over time, but the idea behind the principle is still the same. Very little under the sun is truly new. So go out and read some history – even if it’s just a Wikipedia page or two. You might learn something useful, and you might avoid making a mistake that someone else already made.

Second, might doesn’t make right, but neither does right make might. In the end, it doesn’t much matter which ideology is the correct one; what matters is which ideology’s adherents are the best organized. In 1848, the monarchies and their agents were the best organized and that’s a large part of why they prevailed. Consider what’s happening in Egypt right now for an illustration of this lesson in real time. The Egyptian people won an enormous victory when they got rid of the dictator Mubarak, but they’re currently being ruled by their country’s military – by far the most organized and powerful institution in Egyptian society. And the military council is badly mismanaging Egypt’s transition to democracy. Their quick resort to brutal violence against their own people is enough to make you wonder whether they actually intend to allow the transition to democracy to happen. Furthermore, the group most likely to win the upcoming elections (should they take place) is the Muslim Brotherhood. It’s no coincidence that they are the best-organized political movement in Egyptian society. Who is organized matters much, much more than who is right.

Third, solidarity matters. I can’t help but wonder how 1848 might have played out differently if the urban reformers had made more of an effort to incorporate the concerns and interests of the rural peasants into their political and economic program. Likewise, I can’t help but wonder how the Occupy movement might look different if they had made more of an effort to include racial and ethnic minorities. Their failure to do so was starkly illustrated after the first few days of police brutality in New York City. The Occupiers reacted to the violence with righteous indignity. The reaction of the African-American community was best summarized in this tweet from blogger Elon James White: “Oh? The NYPD are treating you badly? Violent for no reason? Weird. – Black People.” Seriously, folks, if you’re going to claim to stand for all of the people, you need to stand for ALL of the people. In this age of social pluralism and information abundance, there is simply no excuse for any forward-thinking movement to ignore the injuries and injustices borne by any community. We all need to hang together, or we will surely all hang separately.

Fourth, non-participation is the definition of failure. The withdrawal of the peasantry from the 1848 revolution proved decisive. Likewise, the retreat of the emergent Obama coalition in the 2010 mid-term elections also proved rather decisive. Change doesn’t come for those who stay home, for those who decide to “sit this one out,” and for those who express their disapproval by retreating from political life. If you want progress and change, you have to commit to being involved, staying involved and actually remaining involved – especially when it’s the last thing in the world you want to do. Change isn’t easy, but it NEVER comes for those who sit on the sidelines or will be satisfied with empty symbolism. Packing your bags and going home IS defeat – and whether or not you do that is entirely in your control.

I hope this essay has piqued your curiosity about another time and another place not unlike our world today. Alexis de Tocqueville once said, “History is a gallery of pictures in which there are few originals but many copies.” Indeed, we would all be wise to remember this advice. 1848 has much to teach us about the present moment, as do other eras of rebellion and revolution. Let us all hope that THIS period of upheaval and change brings progress on some of the longstanding issues that have challenged humanity from time to time and from one generation to the next.

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?