Earth/Grounded

Element – Earth
Direction – North
Theme – Grounded
Season – Autumn
Life Stage – Old Age
Time of day – Midnight
Location – Home
Energy – Low
Impact – Positive
Aristotle, 4 sources of happiness – Propraitairi (acquiring assets)
Hippocrates 4 humours – Black Bile
Galen’s 4 temperaments – Phelgmatic
Paracelsus’ 4 totem spirits – Industrious gnomes
Adike’s 4 world views – Traditional
Aristotle causes – Material
Adlers 4 personality types – Avoiding
Sprangers 4 value attitudes – Economic
Kretchmer’s four character styles – Depressive
Fromm’s 4 orientations – Hoarding
Myers-Briggs Type Indicator – SJ Sensing Judging
Keirsay’s 4 temperaments – Guardian
Tarot Suits – Pentancles
Archangels – Uriel

As I walk on to market
Each day I can hear them cry
“Sweet apples, sweet oranges
Sweet apples, sweet oranges”

“Fresh, freshly sent
For you out today
Come and buy them
Sweet apples, sweet oranges”

All alone I walk with no one
Beside me, would sooner buy
Sweet apples, sweet oranges
Sweet apples, sweet oranges
Walking through the stalls
I am amazed by them all
“Come and buy them
Sweet apples, sweet oranges”

Like a child my mind was a-wander
Far from here across thе sea
In the sweet apples, sweet orangеs
Sweet apples, sweet oranges

“The Market Song”, Pentangle, 1968

Grounded

I was brought up by my grandmother, who grew into adulthood during the second world war. She remembered rationing, she could make do and mend. She also married a man who was both generous and tight and she forged receipts to get money from him. I remember arguments about the cost of everything.
Her cupboards were never bare, we never went hungry, nor were we poor although she scrimped and saved as if we were. We lived through special offers and jumble sales.

Safety in shopping

Well stocked food cupboards make me feel secure. I have shelves of basic ingredients that I use on rotation and I feel very nervous if those stocks get low. I am also frugal and I base shopping trips on whatever is in the reduced sections. This means that my route around the supermarket is not straightforward.
I check the reduced meat and fish sections first, then the reduced dairy. I vaguely plan meals around protein sources and the rest of my shopping trip will be food to go with the protein. I check the reduced sections again before I go to the till and in Lidl, where I do most of my shopping, there are often cheap veg boxes after the tills, so I have to go through the checkout and back in again.
The resulting trace of my route through Lidl is the data for “Grounded”.

A woven route

Woven Grounded is made with materials I had hoarded, found and foraged. Willow soaked and softened in my pond twisted and turned to create the shape that is my route through the supermarket.
The weaving sat in my garden for weeks underneath a cherry tree. Birds landed on it, leaves drifted to meet it. Left alone, the bindweed started to weave it’s own pattern through it, creating a collaboration between human and plants.