A hosepipe ban flashed up on my phone last week.
My neighbour’s long, bright green expandable hose used to pass from garden to garden until the ban came into force. Now I make the journey from kitchen sink to vegetable patch carrying a full green watering can. Cold water splashes against my bare legs. Courgettes, tomatoes, lavender, fennel. A small liturgy of keeping things alive.
The earth is drying out. Soil to dust. The earth seems to contract beneath the intensity of the heat. I can feel the constriction in my body as I take my evening walk across fields. Muscles contract, sinews tighten, tissue dehydrates. I hear the pounding of my feet as if each step beats a message on the earth’s skin. Cracked and hollow.
It is impossible not to think of Helios driving his chariot across the sky, looking down at this tiny figure crossing the dry landscape. Helios’ story is intertwined with that of his son, Phaethon. A father bound by an oath who could not refuse the request of his mortal son to drive the god’s chariot, just for a day. But Phaethon failed to contain the wild power of his father’s horses. The chariot scorched the Earth nearly destroying it, forcing Zeus to strike Phaethon down with a thunderbolt of lightning.
Myths linger, reverberate. Power without restraint. As I walk, I wonder about that conversation between Helios and Zeus in those moments before Phaethon is struck down. In Homer’s Odyssey, Helios first enters the story through his sacred cattle, which Odysseus’ men are warned not to eat. When they ignore the warning, Helios demands justice from Zeus, who destroys their ship, once again with a thunderbolt, killing everyone except for Odysseus.
Maybe we’ve been honouring the wrong gods.
At the same time, another conversation has been unfolding. A much older colleague has been putting her affairs in order. Difficult conversations about wills, archives, artworks and what remains after someone dies. They are necessary but they have left me unexpectedly weary. I trained as a psychotherapist within a Buddhist tradition, wanting to learn how to accompany people through loss and impermanence. Yet death continues to resist understanding. Every encounter asks something different. But perhaps death should never become an ordinary conversation.
I notice how quiet it is as I walk. The birds have disappeared. The occasional crow crosses my pathway. Cows continue to forage and munch. Yesterday I walked into the middle of the herd, felt the heat from their huge bodies, my heartbeat sped up as they encircled me. As if aware one reached out with her long grey tongue and licked my outstretched hand, and the ground seemed to stabilise beneath my feet.
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