Cover - Viva Lewes

Pepper’s Revolt
The leader is dead. Long live the leader
Eliot the rabbit, leader of the revolution,
was my muse, my chief advisor, my familiar
and friend. Last month’s column must
have been something of a premonition,
for following a bad cold and a heart attack
he is now dead.
As he passed through the veil he squealed
an otherworldly wail, the first time I’ve
ever heard him speak out loud. For the
first time he sounded like a rabbit. Specifically,
a dying rabbit.
I know that scream of admission to the
universe. I heard it at night when we lived
in the woods. It was the stoats claiming
one of the wild local lady bunnies Eliot
so enjoyed frolicking with, back in the
summer.
Following his death cry Eliot stretched
out as if taking flight… I thought I heard,
saw, felt… something… Then his body
went limp in my arms.
Before he fell ill we’d walked/hopped
together on one of our favourite hills.
We’d stopped by a tree to discuss the way
forward for the revolution. The answer
came: LEARN TO LOVE.
We sat down on a bench nearby built
with love by a friend for just such moments.
Eliot cuddled in my arms, me
feeling sensitive to the zeitgeist, the sun
setting over a familiar scene. We understood
what such love might feel like.
What love must feel like as we subjugate
ourselves to the will of our survival.
Governments have forsaken the people
who put them there. Global economic
meltdown, climate chaos, public disorder
and mass extinction dangle tantalizingly
as bait to our collective psychic sense of
impending fin d’everything. The fat lady’s
revving up for an aria. Only love can
save us now.
One of the last things Eliot said to me
that day as we weeded our nursery of hazel
trees at dusk was: “You’re not hearing
voices.” God bless that rabbit. His voice will continue to be heard.
I put myself at his service. In doing so I pledge my allegiance to
Spirit itself.
Spirit cannot be diminished by time, or pollution, or injustice,
or death. Spirit can be felt when we tear down the veil and take
flight beyond language, colour, thought, to the very essence of
our abstract existence: this feeling of common humanity may be
universally expressed as love.
Like his namesake, Eliot has chosen his epitaph from Four Quartets.
“The end is where we start from.”
As I plan the funeral I face an eco-spiritual dilemma. I’ve gone
vegan for a month to help save the planet. And yet the communication
of the dead tongued with fire beyond the language of the
living urges (in translation): “Eat me.” It’s a tough one.
Eliot, leader of the revolution 2006 – 2007. Long live the revolution.
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