Bedtime Stories

Since November, before sleepy time, I’ve made a habit of leaving my phone somewhere far from reach. During this time, I read my inner child a bedtime story, only a page or two, as my hand falls to the side, book open, lights still on. 

“There is no harm in putting off a piece of work until another day,” I read from Antoine De Saint-Exupery’s The Little Prince. 
“But when it comes to baobabs, that means catastrophe. I knew a planet that was inhabited by a lazy man. He neglected three little bushes..” The following page depicts a man holding an ineffectual little shovel surrounded by trees that have overgrown and cracked his planet.

“Raggylug continued to live in the swamp,” comes from a book about a rabbit of that name by Ernest Thompson Seton. 
“Old Olifant died that winter, and the unthrifty sons ceased to clean the swamp or mend the wire fences. Within a single year it was wilder than ever; fresh trees and brambles grew, and falling wires made many cottontail castles and last retreats that dogs and foxes dared not storm.”

The dreamy children’s book lessons drift into my subconscious and become fodder to chew on the following day. 

The messages from The Little Prince are well known to be a disguised allegory motivating the French Resistance during World War II during the German occupation. The baobabs symbolize fascism. The tedious daily chore of uprooting them becomes the quiet, essential resistance. The planet’s implosion beneath their roots reflects the occupation.

“Children! Watch out for baobabs!”

And then we have the message of Raggylug, the rabbit who is able to thrive in land abandoned by domestication. But aren’t briars like baobabs? Making spaces uninhabitable by humans, foxes - only a place for rabbits? 

“Predators,” I remind myself. 
 
What are the baobabs and what are the briars? 
Are we rabbits or men?
What is ‘the work’ and what is ‘the wilding’?

Some days the work feels urgent. Other days, the most important thing is to let the world grow as it will. Listening before judging. 
I’ll never feel fully confident about differentiating. And I think it’s about noticing. 
About staying in relationship with the land, even when we’re too tired to tend to it. 
Staying in relation to one another as complexities emerge.

“On ne voit bien qu’avec le couer. L’essentiel est invisible pour le yeux.”
What is essential is invisible. One can only see truly with the heart.

Some days we grab the shovel, and other days the brambles tangle - not out of neglect, but trust. 

There's abundance in rest, and wisdom in attention.

When I wake to turn off the lights, I’m the adult tucking in my child. 
I want to do my best by her. Have her grow up in a fair and kind world. Not fall for the myths of scarcity. Not cower under fascism. 

Tomorrow will be the work: the tough conversations, the community building, the grim news on the radio, the planning, the noticing. 

For now, drifting back to sleep, I let my little rabbit dreams get lost in the thicket.  

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