“On the alters of the world”

This post is part experiment, part curiosity, part scratch.

You see, I have long neglected my website. It was a pain to set up, and frankly was probably not needed so early in my freelance, self-employed journey. There are big changes I would like to make but I have neither the energy nor desire to sink more money into doing anything about it.

Plus, with linktree (https://linktr.ee/thewilljohnsonjourney), I wonder to what extent a website is needed for me nowadays.

The site still speaks to much of what I stand for, even if I haven’t yet figured out if, or how I want to support fellow accountants on their journey. So it’s long on accountants and finance professionals, and short on coaching mid-life men, myth, poetry. One day I will find the time to update this.

In the meantime, one thing I loved about the website is the blog, and I think some of my better (I choose that word rather than “best”) were created here, rather than elsewhere. So there is still some value popping up here from time to time.

Yesterday I went for a walk down the edge of my favourite field. Before I left home I gathered up some poppy heads, and hollyhocks, and placed them on the little spot where I usually sit.

It’s about 400 hundred yards as the raven flies from my most favoured perch, underneath my tree, affectionately known as “Wounded Tree” in my world. An outer representation of the ‘Wounded Healer’ archetype I think.

The actual concrete structure is, I think, the abutment of what would have been an old bridge, probably a temporary structure, which may be used to get materials from one side of the ditch to the other when constructing the permanent bridge about 50 yards down the track. I might be wildly off-track with that, but that’s my hunch.

So after pouring a large circle of single malt around the concrete seat, I sat, placed the seed heads, and briefly read from Don McKay’s book, Field Marks.

And “for twenty minutes, more or less, it seemed so great my happiness”.

If I remember how to do it, this post might pop up on LinkedIn and Facebook. It won’t appear on Threads or Instagram because my tech-savviness won’t stretch that far yet. And it’s likely to have typos because my ever-reliant Grammarly doesn’t seem to be working either!

Gloriously clunky.

So anyway, back to the title of this post.

It’s Don Domanski from his poem A Thin Place if you’ve ever been out to the Fens, you’ll know what I mean.

“on the alters of the world we have placed our libations

and fetishes     we have lit our candles and incense

from time zone to time zone we have carried our prayers

on our backs”

—

If you got this far, dearest thanks to you, dear reader.

Will

 

PS – if you’re interested in reading more, I’ll be endeavouring to publish a newsletter on Substack on Thursday. I’ve not missed an edition (the last Thursday of every month at noon UK Time since it launched 2 and a half years ago) but for various reasons this month I’m up against it, so it might be a little on the light side but the archived posts are there.

https://open.substack.com/pub/fenlandmusings?r=22ev0d&utm_medium=ios

Secondly, in November I am hosting two Courage & Renewal Circles of Trust, one exclusively for men, or folks identifying as men, and the other for a mixed group. Details are below and please so get in touch if you are interested in joining either.

November 8th – 10th, Men Myth & Meaning, Suffolk UK.

November 15th – 17th, Attending to True Self in Turbulent Times – Woodbrooke