Ask the Priestess

Years ago, I was visiting with my sister. I was living far from her, since I was attending university at the time. We were chatting, and I have no recollection what I said but she sort of froze, looked at me and said, 'You've made a joke!' I looked at her pleasantly shocked face and replied, 'I often do.' Sometimes, we don't fully understand other people, even those closest to us. It had taken over twenty years for my jokes to translate beyond myself, for my sister to "get it". I write this because I want to remind us all that lack of communication is never one-sided. When there is a loss of meaning, it is more than a result of bad hearing, a limited vocabulary or an uncertain context. Words are often considered an unreliable medium, due to their plasticity. Why then do we become so frustrated when the idea does not get across? We forget the world is more outside our heads than within them. That our words, once they leave us, do no more reflect wha...

Last month I saw a seal. A real one, a wild one, not in a zoo, not doing tricks for fish and the enjoyment of tourists. I was crossing a bridge, and I looked down into the water of the docks. I like seeing the birds swimming around among all the buildings, despite the moored barges and the darkness of the quiet water that seeps in from the river. There are seagulls, ducks, a sort of black birds with greenish-yellowish legs and even swans. So when I first saw the black shape floating, I thought it was a dark bird preening (as there was no head). But nope, a second later I realised there were these shiny orbs looking straight at me, nostrils opening and closing and that what was bobbing slightly in the dark water was the slicked-back head of a seal! I was shocked, excited, and worried all at once. Shocked because there I was, in a dock in urban London looking at a wild seal in the water. Excited, because there I was, looking at this beautiful surprise and it was looking back at me. And...

We are social creatures: we belong to a family, a clan, a tribe, a town, a city, a nation, a race, a species. It is this belonging that provides us with identity, through similarity and difference. We become protective for and affectionate to those like us, while detached from and aggressive towards those unlike us. It seems a given, but I wonder. I was at a park the other day. I was early evening, sunny, with a gentle breeze blowing. The park is on the riverbank. Every so often, a tourist boat would go by, crowded, expectant. Whenever one such boat went by, a group of children (no more than 5 or 6 years old) would rush to the railings to call out, to wave, hoping for a response in kind. When the people on the ships returned the wave and the call, the kids were frantic in their joy, running along the path, waving and laughing. Sadly, this only happened in a couple of occasions. Mostly, the children's efforts were ignored, or not "indulged in". Why? I remember doing so...