Author: Kate Wilson

Wildness

~ Kate Wilson ~ 6 Comments

Life here is not all sunshine and beaches.
Like many women I sometimes find myself spending too much time

Here

and doing This

or going to buy This

so I can make This

It’s all too easy to be lulled into a snare of my own making.
The temptation then is to turn to

This

or even This

When I want to be one of These

I read these words and felt them kindle some inner fire

“A healthy woman is much like a wolf: robust, strong life-force, life-giving, territorially aware, inventive, loyal, roving. Yet separation from the wildish nature causes a woman’s personality to become meagre, thin, ghostly, spectral. We are not meant to be puny with frail hair and inability to leap up, inability to chase, to birth, to create a life. When women’s lives are in stasis, in ennui, it is always time for the wildish woman to emerge, it is time for the creating function of the psyche to flood the delta”                       Clarissa Pinkola Estés

Puny with frail hair, thin, spectral and ghostly. Yes, that’s how I’ve been feeling here lately.
And irritable!
This book has been on my shelf for more than ten years – only now am I ready to read it

So….it’s time to seek out a high place and howl at the moon!

PS As I wrote those words the Resident Adolescent yet again put on the music system with throbbing bass at top volume. My wolf leapt up, loped downstairs and snarled!

Sunday

~ Kate Wilson ~ 4 Comments

Today……..I didn’t sew the curtains, I didn’t go to Barcelona for the Indignats demonstration, I didn’t study Catalan for my exam on tuesday, I didn’t succeed in sending a blog post from my ‘smarter than me’ phone.  I also didn’t manage to speak to my sister or any of the friends I tried to ring, I didn’t eat lunch and I didn’t run or do yoga or the 20 sit-ups that I imagine doing every day.

I also didn’t smoke – it’s been more than a month now!
Today………I went for a walk with Duna through the quiet streets in the centre of town and ended up having two coffees and a chocolate pastry while reading my book in the sunshine. I watched hundreds of people stream out of the church and wondered what they had been doing. I also spoke to my brother, cooked lentils for supper, washed the floor, started reading yet another book (now 5 at the same time) Women Who Run With Wolves, watched the news in Catalan and hardly understood a word. And I wrote this post here, hopefully with a drawing, which I will do now!
And that, said John, is that.

I Capture The Castle

~ Kate Wilson ~ 7 Comments

I don’t know if you have ever read the book I Capture the Castle?  I expect you have heard of 101 Dalmations though?  It is by the same author, Dodie Smith, and is one of my long time favourite comfort reads.
Last weekend we went up past Girona to near Figueres, to catch some fresh air and sea breezes. My idea was actually to go camping – it is June after all. But the weather had other ideas so we ended up staying with a friend in a mobile home where he is living as temporary custodian of an abandonned house. We arrived late at night. Duna leapt out of the car and disappeared for several hours happily forraging in the woods and undergrowth, occasionally appearing at the door with eyes as big as dinner plates and feet as black as…..well, something horrible and smelly and better not to think about.
In the morning I got up early to the sound of birds and went outside to sample the undergrowth myself. I find the close confines of a small mobile home a bit too intimate for toilet comfort!
There, a few hundred yards away was the castle I had read about so often

Of course it isn’t really but it was exactly as I imagined it.
And the gardens, overgrown with wisteria and sweet roses were filled with bird song

The house/castle was now their home as broken windows and open doors gave them free access to paradise. The garden was also coming inside….


  Here’s the photos. No more commentary needed except to say that the inscription on one of the walls was written in the 1930’s by soldiers fighting for the Republic in the Civil War. At the bottom it says Viva Los Trabajadores Honrados. Long Live the Honest Workers!
Let’s go to the top tower and back down again – imagine swallows flying around your head as you go!


 The water in the numerous ponds came from an underground source in a dark cave which we visited at night and it was one of the most magic places I have ever been. Pictures in the next post…..!