An Unexpected Mentor for the New Year
Everything possible to be believ’d
is an image of the truth
William Blake
In the post-Christmas hush my wife and I took a late night walk with some dear friends visiting from Amsterdam. Our wandering took us through Edwardes Square, my favourite Georgian square in all of London.
Wide-eyed like children we had beamed at the Christmas trees in windows draped in their twinkling constellations. And with slightly less innocent pleasure, we had peered into the golden glow of exquisitely tasteful living rooms, conjuring stories of what kind of cosseted or decadent lives were being led behind those doors.
Then we turned a corner. The glow and the twinkling was gone. The pitch black darkness of the square’s garden was to our right, and a long and slightly wonky brick wall to our left hid the dark rears of the houses beyond. A procession of street lamps led the way.
From a distance it seemed like a tabby cat sitting on top of a shed roof. But on getting closer it was far too big and that long nose was so unmistakeable and stop, shhhh, everyone stop talking, stay still FOX.
It was the most ancient of encounters.
From just a few feet away and confident in the advantage and safety of height, the fox looks down at us. And we humans look back.
The arrow of time freezes.
Still they stood
A great wave from it going over them,
As if the earth in one unlooked-for favour
Had made them certain earth returned their love.
Robert Frost knew what that moment felt like.
For the ancient Celts, the human domain and the spirit realm were separated by just a gossamer thin veil. Through this boundary the fox danced, moving effortlessly between the two, blurring boundaries and banishing conventions. A bridge between worlds.
In the depths of twilight forests, where paths dissolved into mystery, the fox emerged as sage and guardian. Its amber eyes held secrets of hidden ways, guiding travellers through territories where mapmakers' hands had never ventured.
Not by fang or claw did this creature triumph. A natural born survivor, the fox relied on creative cunning rather than brute force to outwit and outmatch bigger, stronger adversaries and threats.
Most magnificent of all was its power to shed one form for another. Imbued with the power of metamorphosis, the fox could assume human form at will. The quintessential shape-shifter. A symbol of transformation. A denial of permanence and rigidity.
The fox stands, stretches briefly, and then lopes off down the long wall. With a final gift of lifted leg and a stream of piss he turns to disappear into the darkness of a neighbouring garden.
The moment’s perfection hangs in the air.
Superstition? Omen? Reminder? Useful metaphor? I really don’t care which. But inspiration it certainly is for the new and different work I will do in 2025.
Of which more later.