‘Quantum entanglement’

There is an episode of The Magic Roundabout that I cannot stop thinking about recently.

Dougal’s Glasses

In it, Zebedee gives Dougal a pair of glasses, and suddenly he begins seeing double. The world shifts. Perspective fractures. Reality becomes unfamiliar, layered, strange.

It is whimsical on the surface, childlike even, but beneath it sits something deeply philosophical.

Because perception changes everything.

Two people can stand within the same world and experience entirely different realities depending on how they see. And for some of us, perception has always carried a certain liminality to it, the ability to exist between spaces, between identities, between emotional worlds, between ways of understanding.

I think that is why this particular episode feels so important to me now.

Because after almost seven years of The Poetic Nursing Heart, I have finally met someone who sees liminality in the same way that I do…..

And that person is India Butler.

The truth is, this is incredibly difficult to explain linguistically because the experience itself exists beyond ordinary language. The Hobo Poet has always struggled with that tension. The deepest things are often not spoken clearly. They are sensed. Recognised. Encountered.

This is why I have always returned to the image of the hermit.

Not the hermit as isolation alone, but the hermit as someone who wanders through worlds observing things others do not always see. Someone who experiences life symbolically, emotionally, philosophically. Someone who feels the hidden architecture underneath ordinary existence.

For years I have moved through nursing, academia, creativity, poetry, philosophy, and research carrying this strange awareness of in-between spaces. The liminal. The threshold. The emotional atmospheres that exist underneath conversation and systems and performance.

And if I am honest, that way of seeing can sometimes feel lonely. The unfolding I call it…

Because the world often rewards certainty, simplicity, categorisation, and speed. Yet there are some people who naturally move differently through reality. People who notice contradictions. Emotional textures. Silences. Symbolism. Beauty and pain existing simultaneously.

Those people are often perceived as “too much” or “too sensitive” or “too intense.”

But perhaps they are simply seeing differently.

That is what felt so extraordinary when India and I finally connected properly after years of orbiting around similar spaces and ideas.

There was an immediate recognition.

Not performance.
Not forced similarity.
Recognition.

The kind that quietly says:
“You see it too.”

Together we found ourselves speaking about Kahlil Gibran and the emotional ache within The Prophet. About Jungian philosophy. About fire and ice. Yin and yang. Anima and animus. About the tension between softness and survival within systems that can become deeply oppressive toward sensitivity and difference.

We spoke too about trauma. About creativity. About the strange burden carried by those who feel deeply within professions centred around care, emotional labour, and humanity.

And slowly I realised something profound:

I was no longer explaining myself into existence.

India simply understood.

There is something incredibly healing about that.

Because when you spend years occupying liminal spaces, you often begin to feel as though you are translating yourself constantly for the comfort of others. Reducing complexity. Softening intensity. Making your inner world smaller and more digestible.

But every now and then, someone arrives who speaks the same symbolic language.

And suddenly the world feels less lonely.

Perhaps this is why I keep returning to the image of Kintsug, the Japanese art of repairing broken pottery with gold. Not hiding the fractures, but honouring them. Understanding that the break itself becomes part of the object’s beauty and history.

Both India and I understand fracture.

Not romantically.
Not aesthetically.
But existentially.

https://www.thinglink.com/view/scene/1554811949991067651

We understand what it means to move through systems that do not always know how to hold sensitivity safely. We understand the emotional consequences of witnessing suffering repeatedly within healthcare spaces. We understand what it means to feel different in environments that reward emotional containment over emotional truth.

And perhaps this is why The Poetic Nursing Heart has mattered for so long.

Because it was never truly about poetry alone.

It was about building a sanctuary where philosophy, creativity, nursing, emotional labour, trauma-informed understanding, and human tenderness could coexist without shame.

A place where people could arrive as whole human beings.

Now, for the first time in its seven-year history, that sanctuary no longer feels solitary.

India is joining The Poetic Nursing Heart as co-director and co-editor, and I genuinely cannot explain the emotional significance of that adequately.

Not because of the role itself.
But because after years of wandering through intellectual and emotional landscapes, I have finally encountered someone who understands the same liminal terrain.

Someone who sees double too.

Like Dougal wearing Zebedee’s glasses, the world suddenly becomes layered differently. Not broken. Not distorted. Expanded.

Perhaps that is what true connection actually is.

Not finding someone identical to you.
But finding someone who recognises the hidden dimensions you have been carrying quietly all along.

Together we will also begin carefully exploring future work surrounding The Table of Consciousness, particularly around mental health nursing, theatre, reflective practice, trauma-informed creativity, and ethical engagement with service users and students.

Mindful always of vulnerability.
Mindful always of emotional safety.
Mindful always that trauma is not metaphor alone, but lived human experience deserving of gentleness and care.

There is a line from Gibran that feels impossibly close to this moment:

“And God said, Love your enemy… and I obeyed Him and loved myself.”

Perhaps that is part of the journey too.

To stop becoming enemies to ourselves for seeing differently.
For feeling differently.
For existing liminally within a world desperate for fixed categories.

And perhaps, if we are fortunate, life occasionally offers us another wandering soul who reminds us that we were never strange for carrying those perceptions in the first place.

The Hobo Poet has finally found a friend….

A real friend.

In a famous 2023 physics experiment, researchers used a technique called biphoton digital holography to visualize entangled photons in real time. The resulting image of their wave function strongly resembled the classic black-and-white yin-yang symbol

---

INDIA says…..

Serendipity: (ser·​en·​dip·​i·​ty) The ability to find valuable or agreeable things not sought for (Mirriam Webster) – it is not quite fate, and it is not quite luck, rather a ‘happy accident’ – my Granjohn, who has dementia, randomly came out with this word this week, during a surprise visit. As those with dementia tend to, he knew, he just could not get it into words anymore, but his eyes, his hands and his soul said more than enough; and after some time, he finally managed to come out with “Serendipity” (cue tears).

I find it funny how the universe, Mother Gaia, God, The Divine, whatever you wish to call her – has a way of saying “not yet”. I had been first introduced to the ‘idea’ of Tom 7 years ago, and for one reason or another (because it was not time yet), we had orbited one another, without crossing paths at the same time, until now.

I have always wondered, what it is that makes me so comfortable with changing my perspectives, with challenging what I thought I knew, and with generally speaking of the ‘uncomfortable’ Why did I let that darkness take me under, when others around me clung so tightly to reality? How can one hold multiple, conflicting, contradicting truths? I was never able to put this into words very easily.

I grew up on a B road, connecting East Worthing council estate, with Broadwater Village, and I paradoxically existed in both demographics somewhat, but never fully either; that juxtaposition describes the tightrope act I have been playing my whole life – in between.

“It’s not that deep”… so we cut the corners, dial down the intensity, soften the edges, and make the choice, do we abandon ourselves or the possibility of connection? Regardless, we exist alone, between worlds. A traveller of space and time, of place and person. As a result, we learn to transform, mutate, shapeshift, and fit through lots of different doors – not always the wrong doors either, it is not as simple as that – but the room always felt too small; not enough for all of me. It makes sense that I am “too much” for some, but it does not make it any less lonely.

Interestingly enough, it now feels as though that is explained by The Liminal Space I had always inhabited; I knew no different, but I never had a name for it.

In recent years, I have found myself oscillating between the affirmations “loosen your grip” and “just hold on” – again dancing on the tightrope of contradiction. This is not to say that others don’t observe the contradictions, I know some do, but seeing double, being the contradiction, has always been something that appeared to scare others, or at least make them uncomfortable. Again, I understand why, I sought to seek out that.. at least, and still, it never made that any more digestible.

When Tom started leaving me a trail of breadcrumbs, I found myself following the trail, and with increasing speed, it was almost as though the innocent child like spirit in my soul was calling out to me, like a child shouting to come and play. The very same joyful light I offered to others throughout my nursing career (and life, thank you for that reminder Nan!) but this time, the call was coming from within.

~

I Bring her Flowers on my Return

In this familiar             

Liminal Space

That is starting to feel like

Home.  (me)

               ~

As a kid, I loved to read and write, I am quite sure I was the only child I have ever come across that was put on a book making ban in my after school club, because apparently I was supposed to finish one book before starting another… obviously that adult had never met a writer! I made imaginary worlds based of a book I read called My Secret Unicorn, and to this day I can still return to that sacred place in my mind, when I remember it is there – good old hyperphantasia (Keogh, Pearson and Veman, 2021). I almost forgot for a while that I am creative (we can talk about how trauma does that another time), which feels absurd to write now, because I am not creative, I am a creative, a creator, an artist. Every now and again that door gets blocked up, with clutter in the halls of my mind, and someone or something comes along with a key. The Poetic Nursing Heart (and Tom) is that key.

Similarly to Tom, I have not been able to get a poem from The Prophet (Kahlil Gibran) out of my head, and a randomly placed bookmark, that had been placed before our meeting, led me to open the book on exactly this page, when I returned home that day:

“The soul walks not upon a line, neither does it grow like a reed.

The soul unfolds itself, like a lotus of countless petals.”

In his poem about self-knowledge, was the first time I had encountered another soul describe the indescribable nature of self-knowledge, of the truth we all hold within us, of the divine we all embody. You know that feeling when you find out something and it was like you already knew it, or when you really drop the ego and are able to access your third thoughts, the ones that watch the world for what it is, not what you want it to be, or don’t (Hat Full of Sky, Terry Pratchett), it’s that; The ancient wisdom, the hermetic knowledge, gnosis. Then there was Tom, and that beautiful moment of “you see it too!” Not only have I met the soul walking upon my path, but I feel like I got to meet the soul walking upon Tom’s path too.

It truly is a wonderful thing to be seen, like really seen. And in true form, it was like a key, opening pandoras box, and I did not have to explain it away: both beautiful and painful, but incredibly healing.

There is an interesting hypothesis developed by Rachel Cullen called the Autistic Language Hypothesis, it describes how autistic people have to learn to speak neurotypical, but neurotypicals do not learn to speak autistic. Those who think in 5D, must translate that through a linear form of communication, this is both a blessing and curse. I think this is why I had a love / hate relationship with research for a long time. While not an easy task, to translate the non-linear, circumstantial mind map of thought, into words is incredibly satisfying; to translate complexity with clarity. And when all else fails, poetry, art and movement speak the words one cannot.

I remember a quote I read that said, “Stop breaking yourself down into bite-sized pieces. Stay whole and let them choke.” (Florence Given, Women Don’t Owe You Pretty). While I appreciate the sentiment, the sensitive in me struggled with the brutality of that statement. Personally, I feel it is a much nicer experience for everyone, when you haven’t cut yourself into pieces AND the other person hasn’t choked… so thank you Tom, for truly seeing all of me, even those hidden dimensions.

Inhabiting The Liminal Space, has, without a shadow of a doubt, enhanced my impact as a mental health nurse – there’s a lot of paradoxes (the happiness paradox, connection vs. purpose paradox for instance), coupled with my lifetime of learning how to translate the impossible, people resonated with that, they thanked me for the authenticity they had not encountered by a nurse before.. that sensitivity and vulnerability is not always held safely in these environments, which appears terribly counterintuitive to me.. again, I understand it, but I can’t stomach it.

I nearly threw in the towel completely last year – red tape, incongruent and psychologically unsafe working environments that asked me to abandon myself again to conform.. I could not.

As is the way with these things, the moment I ‘gave in’ and relinquished control of the outcome, the stars aligned and the Once in a Blue Moon door reopened, quietly.. this time asking, are you ready yet? Have you listened to what the winds have been telling you? Did you seek the wisdom from the trees and the river spirits like we told you to? Timely, we had the first Blue Moon this May (~ 31^st depending on your geographical location) since August 2023 (Wood, 2026), and I cannot ignore the significance of this universal sign of a second chance at something… 

It is an uncomfortable reality, that places designed for healing, appear to favour containment, modesty and professionalism over truth, expression, authenticity and humanity in its truest form. Regulation has been modernised and adapted by our society to promote ‘calm’ as the holy grail, but true regulation is not always calm, our bodies, our nervous systems know what is right or wrong, what is safe and what isn’t, and it has irked me that these systems and our society all seemed to have the same underlying message – there is something to fix, something to change, emotions to contain and package up in a neat, palatable bow.. shame for being a wild creature.

When I have been able to access, curate or provide spaces for people to exist creatively, messily, humanly, it has always had a profound impact on the lives touched, explicably more than traditional ‘mainstream’ therapeutic interventions, in my professional experience. I have had an itch, a calling I cannot ignore, to do this again, to establish (and fiercely protect) spaces that allow people to be fully messy, fully human, creative.

The fracture.. A cracking open, one that is not easily conveyed in words. 

I visited ‘The Quiet View’ again, after Tom took me there the first time, and I spoke with Lizzie; her wisdom was gratuitously received. I explained that recently it felt like I had been cracked open, and all this dark sticky tar was coming out, but among the darkness, there was pure gold pouring out too. I explained that I didn’t even quite understand this myself yet, but I could visualise it in my mind. Lizzie gave me a book of poems and low and behold, in the first chapter, there it was, the same description of cracking open, of raw base materials pouring out, but from a different perspective. These are the raw, un-alchemised materials – pain, anger, knowledge, innocence, beauty and everything in between that is worthy of love, in the same way the base metals are worthy of the same admiration that the shiny finished product receives – all there, ready to be transmuted, channelled into the cracks of my soul, to piece it back together, even more whole, even more known, seen and understood, even more me.

Serendipity is as close as I can get to describing this communion of souls on a shared path, so have some esoteric abstract art..

– 2 Souls / light and dark (me)

I will leave you with this excerpt from a beautiful poem, that has forever lodged itself into my heart. I stumbled across this scribbled in an old notebook, in an effort to remind myself there is no right way to exist.

“… Squirrels plant thousands of trees every year,

just from forgetting where they left their acorns …”

(Andrea Gibson – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4M-0QFtVauk)

---

References

Kahlil Gibran (1991) The Prophet. London: Heinemann.
(Original work published 1923).

Carl Jung (1968) Man and His Symbols. London: Picador.

Carl Jung (1953) Two Essays on Analytical Psychology. London: Routledge.

Wilhelm, R. (trans.) (1967) The I Ching or Book of Changes. 3rd edn. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
de Botton, A. and Armstrong, J. (2013) Art as Therapy. London: Phaidon Press.

The Magic Roundabout (1965–1977) Created by Serge Danot. BBC/ORTF.

Victor Turner (1969) The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure. Chicago: Aldine Publishing.

Donald Winnicott (1971) Playing and Reality. London: Tavistock Publications.

---