This month, the Spring energy of May has brought so much change: warm river water, almost comfortable to swim in; flowers blossoming in every available space; long evenings filled with soft light. So much change, also, in my own life, and so I’ve been thinking about change, loss, and receptivity to the world around us in relation to starting the fieldwork for my PhD later this year.

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I’ve always felt – instinctively – that in order to do fieldwork well I have to be less attached to my life. There’s something about being unmoored, about dropping some of my connections, routines, and attachments which makes me feel like the membrane separating me from the wider world is thinner, allowing me to be more receptive, more open. And yet what if I lose myself, in trying to be as open as possible to the world? Is it actually possible to learn, and receive information, in that state?

I happened across Jemma Borg’s poetry collection Wilder when pushing some of these ideas around inside my mind in that kind of fortuitous way that sometimes happens when you browse bookshops. Soma, one of the poems in the collection, resonated with some of those questions I’ve been asking myself (during this time of intense change) about what – if anything – is constant.

You are this breathing architecture
You are the grinding surface of your body’s work,
a commitment to the threshold 
and you are also broken — or breaking —
raising the drunken gift of your life
What you are is a trick of cohesion, 
a circling of the sun
and like a foaming star, the substance of you
is slowly dying and though it may
shatter like any construction —
for the illness is nowhere, yet 
always relentless — what you are 
also blooms   Remember this 
while you remain recognisably yourself, 
your perishable self —
it’s not possible to lie 
when you speak out of the body’s mine

Soma, by Jemma Borg

Thanks for reading!