21: The Big Wheel Keeps On Turning

I used to be an atheist, but the raw, dull thought of a world without magic was just too depressing to bother with.

I'm a semi-practising pagan. A wavering wiccan. I used to make up spells when I was little, mixing bright red poison berries with dark, sludgy mud and puddle slime in the hollow of a tree stump in my grandad's back garden. I saw a fat, greyish frog underneath that stump once, and I was convinced a labyrinth of magical kingdoms lived underneath it like a reversed Faraway Tree. A more interesting Faraway Tree. Fewer fairies, more goblins.I went through a Christian phase during my teens, and insisted on going to Church once a year, at midnight on Christmas. I wanted to recognise why we celebrated, and underline with ritual what I felt was important to my life at the time.Then I was atheist, staunch and stubborn, laughing in the face of faith. It didn't last long. Soon the creeping sensation set in that even if there wasn't more to life than atoms, I wanted to believe there was. Years later, a wise woman called Jean (who changed my life forever in lots of different ways) taught me about The Wheel and about Imbolc -- the beginning of spring. A time of energy and delicate, cautious excitement for a fresh new spring. It grasped me and that was it. The world made a fraction more sense. My new ritual. A comforting glow just for me.Today (and tomorrow, if you like) is Samhain, the end of harvest and the start of our darker months. What I love about pagans is that they find a reason to celebrate even in the darkest times. There's a always a new beginning just around the corner. The Wheel continues to turn. This faith began as a coping mechanism, but it's become much more than that. Other Stuff:

• When I have writer's block, I read Nick Cave's books. When I feel low, I listen to Nick Cave's music. When I want to know what love is, I read what Nick Cave writes about Susie Cave.

• This might be my favourite thing I've read all year. Henry Dawson went to university and missed the caring, compassionate feeling of his home kitchen. He wanted to reach out to his new friends, but he didn't know how. So he learned how to bake for them. Don't, I'm welling up again.

• To be a witch is to disrupt capitalism, according to Silvia Federici. I particularly like Niki Seth-Smith's idea that the reason so many people are lunging for otherworldly crutches in these dark times -- myself included -- is because the universe is compelling them to.

• Gorgeous writing by a gorgeous person. No lie, I do love Lily Waite. Almost as much as she loves Kernel's Table Beer, which she sent a love letter to via Pellicle this week.

• On Twitter this week, I called this piece by Katherine Miller for Buzzfeed "essay as art", or something like that. I'm standing by that. It's a long, long, longread on how our concept of time has been knocked out of sync, potentially forever, by Instagram, American politics and the slow crunch of gears as life continues as normal despite it all. It's made even better (I think) by the disorientating gifs dotted around the page. See. Art.

• Stop a minute and have a drink with Tony Hawk.

• I may have sent this link already earlier in the year, but it doesn't matter. It's worth re-reading. I thought to myself "what was that great little doc I watched about passing through the disjointed, vast landscapes of America on the train?" last week. Turns out I was just remembering the sights I imagined while reading this article. 

• In Barcelona, the council is trying to protect the city's bodegas against gentrification, to a combination of applause and cynical shrugs. Read this for fascinating details of bodega owners and their regulars, what they reckon about the new safeguards and how vital bodegas are to local culture.

• Natural wine is now huge in Barcelona. Paula Mourenza talks to the owners and founders of L'Anima del Vi, Bar Brutal and Vella Terra about why natural wine is important to them.

• From the vaults: Matt Curtis shared a piece he wrote about beer culture in Manchester almost exactly three years ago, and it's amazing to see how much has changed in such a relatively short length of time -- and how much has stayed the same. I also love his photography in this piece. It shows the real, sometimes grotty, sometimes beautiful Manchester I know.

• Amelia Tait, Amelia Tait, I think you're great, Amelia Tait. It's her ideas that get me. Who thinks of writing articles about this stuff? I'm jealous. This week she wrote about the rise, and rise, and rise of foil balloons shaped like the alphabet this week. The main thing I want you to read by Amelia though, is this piece on the people who develop lost photo films of total strangers from July this year. I came back to it this week. There's something eerie but so comforting at the same time about it. Lost moments in time, captured, forgotten, and then remembered by somebody else -- who didn't experience the moment in the first place. Oooh I just love it.

My Stuff

• I wrote about how I started getting interested in wine, and how other beer drinkers can chip away at the secret world of grapes too.

• 12630 words of the book done now. Bit tired.

• Not much else to report. See above.

Photo (anon) taken from "Why do some people develop the lostcamera films of total strangers?" by Amelia Tait