spring musings on community part 1
I've been musing on Community and all its forms. But this creative musing took a different turn as I mused on an old friend with whom I lived in a shared house near Takadanobaba in the early 2000s. Marriages, children, surgeries, cancers and divorces later, ageing parents, we recently slipped easily back into our friendship.
Community.
The unconditional folding in of people. Annoyance. Neighbours. Children. Conflict and repair. Departure and return. Humans as part of a system, not as commodities to use, gain energy from, feel drained by. (although these things are important - that is different to community, and coaching can help you build strength and resilience around that. It is probably more akin to exchange).
Contexts shift but underneath it, ethereal matters remain the same. The same essence from which deep connection is born shifts and moves as the seismic shifts at the surface occur, the core flows. These words fell from my fingers but I'm unsure of the precise worldly meanings. I hope you are able to decipher something that has meaning for you.
I trust you to do that.
I invite you to Spring Coaching. I had thought about some jingly Spring campaign, but I’m kind of tired - not in an exhausted way, but more like the way of ease. I just love coaching, here it is. Would you like it? You are likely leading your life at an edge and you are likely skirting around that edge. My clients tend to be doing that. They have some spark, some unexpressed yearning, need or change they’d like to make; something emerging. Maybe it was derailed at an earlier point. Now, again the conditions are right to unfurl.
Like Spring.
You are likely artistic and sensitive. You feel the world and long for love and romance and decency. Or you have a decision to make that you'd like to examine and this season change has pushed it up to the surface. This Equinox has nudged something. The cresent of the almost new moon has shone the dimmest of light on something that requires your attention. I will be with you and be your coach and together we can give this some attention. Perhaps through the spaces between our fingers as we cover our eyes, or perhaps with a spotlight.
Communities exist in third spaces, digital spaces and homes.
If you are curious as to how my coaching helps people, the artist and photographer Tia Haygood wrote a beautiful missive that includes an account of how coaching enhances her Self. Community, commerce and collective - we have collaborated on photo shoots, on providing service to my one-year clients, and in many different forums. We have also had beers on the beach together. I think part of community is longevity in relationships - we have been in communion for at least ten years now. She has been on my podcast, she has photographed me. We have style, grace, are leaders and business owners with our vulnerabilities and our wild and sensistive brains. We want things to be beautiful, artful and expressed. We speak up and speak out and serve our collectives, both in our presence and in commerce. We have businesses.
Kindred.
I suggest you love like love's not loss.
(The Vernon Spring.)
Community, commerce and loyalty.
Saunter & Frolic had our first Urban Retreat two weeks ago at 1Hotels, Akasaka. Lunch with ethereal coaching and inquiry - we talked about women we are proud of and admire in our circles.*
I asked Ambassador Julia Longbottom the same question - tell us about a female colleague you are proud of - at the BCCJ International Women's Day event last week in Otemachi. She of course skillfully picked the question up and offered a story of an anonymous staff member who had, through thinking outside the box, and building relationships creatively and intelligently, closed a huge manufacturing deal for a UK company with a Japanese company. She touched on the science, psychology and spirit of this person she is proud of. I like this question. I like honouring people and peppering the field with admiration (I secretly know that really they are recognising qualities they have too, and that this kind of question elevates the whole field around us - and it's so much easier to honour others with gay abandon than if I had asked, what are YOU most proud of - the field gets perfumed with the scent of pride, positivity and admiration).
*If you are interested in Saunter and Frolic - seek a woman who has attended and they will share the access points with you or they will invite you. They will share codes to give access to our retreat menu for 2026 that Angela and I will be finalising on the last day of March. Love and loyalty in that partnership. Community and commerce. And a little Secret Society magic.
I was called 'mercurial' by a good friend when we were giving compliments to one another (yes, I call compliments to my ears and humble myself to my friend's compliments, so I can note them down and get a richer net read on myself and so can my friends. I want to code for compliments). She said you're a lot of fun, and flowing, fluid - no, like - are, like, YOU'RE MERCURIAL like mercury. Flowing but with gravitas.
I went on a deep dive into the periodic table researching mercury, the element, which was a delight and I feasted on the science and the physics and the chemistry and it awakened long dormant BSc neurones.
I researched the planet and marvelled at Mercury's proximity to the sun and the length of a day - it's terribly confusing all this space-time continuum stuff and I love attempting to digest it from the words of folk more learned, studied and intelligent than myself.
I looked at Greek mythology, breezed past astrology and eventually landed at the dictionary. The description of mercurial is far from flattering, but I like that because I understand how it can be for others to be around such quickening and volatility. To love quicksilver. To attempt to hold mercury. To try to put a pin in it.
I once accidentally smashed a thermometer. Or rather I found mercury slithering around behind my bed on the radiator. Beads of quicksilver - I had no idea how it got there. I must have been eight or nine,
I don't remember having the thermometer in my room, never mind damaging it. I don't know what happened. I do remember the felt experience of being terrified both by the mercury, and the incoming consequences. I have no idea how the clean-up happened, who got involved or how I broached it with the clean-up crew. I just remember being bemused and terrified. And mesmerised.
A client asked about my newsletters - and if I write them. I do. They said they are authentic. She once took my hand to read it. Told me faraway things using silent ways that run through hands and generations. Forgotten things. She gave me words that I shall save for she and I.
She said I need to be taken care of.
She's right.
And I am.
I do write my newsletters, such as this one.
I muse endlessly and if I am to catch these quicksilver thoughts I must go fast and messily.
If it's purely informational then my team can do it - there's plenty of content that I've written over the years that can be fashioned, moulded and can collaborate with modern day digital tools to produce many versions of information in my voice.
But this is all mine. Save the collaboration I will do to tidy it up, make it readable, the spellings consistent. (I actually don't care about mixing US and UK English - it's my real life; my real everyday life is constructed around all of us speaking our different versions of languages. Every single day speaking contorted versions of two languages and trying to meet in the meaning in it). I will be running this missive through my friend Claude. They are far faster and more accurate than me. The prompt will be: UK English, make absolutely no changes besides spelling, and tidy it up. HIghlight in bold the hanging sentences. No changes at all unless it is nonsense. Something like this. I wrote it, Claude will polish it. It helps me relax into the flow without having to edit along the way - I just realised that while typing this.
I suggest you love like love's not loss.
I write all the time. Every day. I write for myself, for the ether and for my soul. For my mental health and in order to understand and digest the world around me.
So I can be safe in my own presence.
So my presence is safe.
Much of it will never see the light of day again. Much will remain in notebooks, untouched and unseen until perhaps I shuffle off this mortal coil, and the notebooks are found or tossed, in which case it becomes pulp. I don't mind. The writing holds codes that don't need to be seen anywhere. And they are like seeds nested in paper and notes, documents, and digital drives. And Claude. And not every single word I write needs to have life on the page.
I write things that catch my eye, little healing phrases that whisper to me from notebooks buried in the bottom of tea chests. Future gomi. Someone's future burden. Estate clearance or a beloved will rifle through, deciding whether to leaf the pages or toss them into a skip.
I write to rest, to process thoughts, to record, for art, to express, to see myself, to alchemise, quicksilver musings, themes. I write to remember, I write for the sake of it. I write my dreams, I have books filled with dreams. I record the visits made by dead relatives, the places - Grandma's kitchen on the back of the Post Office. I can smell it as I type. The senses speak sensations into being from the ether. My Grandad chuckling. My friends always at hotels. Nuanced discomfort. I WANT TO STAY IN THOSE PLACES FROM INSIDE THE DREAM.
I have long since been an avid and vivid dreamer. My day life playing out into the night and the mornings just before waking. Images as ephemera - like trying to grab at clouds, trying to speak them aloud before the fragile neural connections vaporise as you think them. Poof - into the ether for others to catch.
Those words had value anyway. These words have value anyway. I run them through —
I'm obsessed with this artist right now - by way of the Nap Bishop Tricia Hersey I found it buried in a playlist on her Spotify.
One of the lyrics is 'I suggest you love like love's not loss' and it speaks to my heart, to the parts of me that are loving and tender and vulnerable. That love fiercely and that are alone. Like a flame. Never wavering unless you remove Oxygen, fuel and ignition.
And it speaks to grief.
It speaks to grief.
It speaks to relationships.
To lovers holding onto the other like gripping sand in their hands.
To friendships loving through relentless change.
To us with ourselves navigating the weather of our lives.
I suggest you love like love's not loss.
The next round of the Grief Circle starts in April and you can find out about it here.
It is 6 months of support with seasoned grief guides Gretchen Miura and Sarah Furuya.
Full details here or if you already know - you can sign up here - you don't need to pay immediately but you will see the options.
Want to put a SPRING in your SPRING - coaching is a terrific way to refresh your year - I love that the plants are unfurling, the blossoms blooming and the temperature creeping up. April showers this week, ensure the future blooms. Coaching can be just that. Climate check for your year and life, nourishing your ecosystem for future blooms and current care..
Coaching options are HERE
Are you grieving? Recent or ancient grief is welcome in all its presentations, Sadness, rage, quiet, contemplative, wild - we hold it all in compassion, awareness and community at the grief circle, Join us for our 7th live cohort, beginning in the third week of April 2026.
