Swedish Spirit camp 3.

The inaugural meeting lasts several days. After welcoming everyone and his brother there’s a safety talk; fifteen minutes of what a teenager might or might not consider in the time it takes to buy a ticket to a festival. Also a dreadful American woman who became overcome with emotion appropriately. It wasn’t that she wasn’t genuinely emotional it was, well you work it out. I sensed a wildly late Osmonds concert coupled with a school prize giving. As the Am Wom mentioned ‘love and freewill’ I got out of there, my free will being sorely tested by ‘the collective.’ The collective idea was tested in the 60’s and most lasted less than a year, collapsing due to factional bullying. Human nature is not arranged that way. Hell is not other people, it’s being co-dependant on other people in the bloody ‘collective.’ Perhaps I should explain my reasons for writing all this. I’ve found writing my anger, awkwardness and upset into a glorious imaginative cartoon is an enjoyable way to dispel them. Yes I mean it but as I write I mean it less. So I begin my work as a Dog Soldier. We DS’s run the infrastructure to support the ceremony. I am a member of a team of around ten led by two lovely guys, Markusmouse and Evanmouse, and Beatemouse. Beatemouse tells me how, what, where and when because she has lists. The rest range from 16 to 68, male to female. Three of us learn the ways of throwing bags of poo from buckets. I notice the many possible ways of counting to three. 1,2,3, throw; 1,2 and throw; 1,2,3 and then throw, 1 and throw. Am Wom then gives us talk on awareness. A snippet. “And if we want to know what the clouds are doing where do we look?” After a short awkward silence Beatemouse helpfully suggest, “Up?” “Exactly, we look up. Well done. We look up to see what the clouds are doing”……”and when we put our fibres into the road what do we feel?” Beatemouse again, “We look for cars?” “Exactly, well done, we look for cars on the road. What else might we be aware of?” By this time my patience with Am Wom is running out so I helpfully suggest, “The surface.” “Good, well done, the surface.” She hesitates, I suspect in well-concealed confusion, “And could you tell us about the surface?” “Well it’s gravel which is slippy and cars stopping distance is longer on gravel.” “Yes, well done. You see, there are many things we must be aware of.” We move on to being with trees. I like being with trees, except for one that was really depressed, so joined one in conversation. Thus engrossed I was late for the group reconvening to tell what we found. “So what did you find?” Well sometimes maybe honesty isn’t the best policy. When it came to my turn I said, “It felt like a Swedish tree.” Being in the middle of a forest in Sweden, which as far as I can see is all forest, this could, in retrospect, have been seen as sarcasm but it honestly wasn’t. It felt very confident and at home amongst its many brothers and sisters, quite different from our often solitary, under threat English trees. After this Am Wom blanked me for the duration.