Endings and Beginnings | Winter 2025
Our copywriter reflects on six years at Mungo, as she heads to Ireland to pursue her Masters in Creative Writing.
Words by Georgina Selander
Endings and beginnings.
Beginnings and endings.
Going back – to where it all began – six years to the day.
It’s easy to recall.
First, there was the shop: 78 Hout Street on a mid-morning in May. Walking up the steps of a high-ceilinged heritage building, to row upon row of beautiful cloth. Then, upstairs, for an interview. The faces, the nerves, the quiet greeting. A pregnant belly. And a big black dog.
“The dog is a good omen,” you thought.
Six months go by quickly – and then comes the first visit to the Mungo Mill. A beatific sight; a boat docked ashore. A slatted skein growing golden in the afternoon. Stepping inside to a feeling like no other – so vivid, so visceral, the memory of it still sits on the tip of your tongue, like a taste. You stand, looking back to the doorway of an old trading store, where the jasmine bursts forth into little white stars. And then, slowly, you cross the bridge over the mill pond. Through the open glass doors. Up the steps, to a view from on high. And the sound. The sound! So intense, it was like a seventh sense. That sound made the world come awake. It changed the quality of the air, and the texture of the light – yellowed and thick, like honey. And everything else fell away, to reveal something so sacred, so elemental. Of loam. Of loom. And your chest, like a drum, pounding.
These days, what’s real is rare. It feels harder and harder to carve out spaces that are hearty and unfeigned. For everything digital feels is diluted. Everything behind a screen, mistrustful. How can you tell who is talking – a human, or a robot?
So, you do what you must.
You stand in a damp forest and smell the earth.
Still your heart at the foot of a tall mountain.
Stand by the sea, barefoot, feeling the nip of cold blue on your toes.
Wanting. Wanting to feel something.
You go back – to that place. To that sound. To the crashing of cymbals inside the mill. A sound that sings out to you – calling you to a place that only your heart knows. It’s the song of the wild. The rushing world that speeds past. And there you are, at its axis, standing still. With your ribs open, and your heart expanding. And everything that is real, and raw, and true becomes clear.
The sound helps you remember.
Remember who you are.
Remember where you came from.
Remember remember remember.
And you can’t help thinking, how romantic. How beautiful. That first crack of light that catches the fly. The timbre of the shimmery droppers. The shadow of the arching beams.
Romance may be for the dreamers and the idealists. For those who believe in the power of passion. But those who do, know that it is a quality – a way of being. A way of seeing. And so this is what you see:
People driven by feeling.
By good heart. And good intentions.
People with a courageous call to rethink and reimagine –
In a world with little impetus to do so.
There is not much more I can say.
For a writer must show, and not tell.
So I say to you, as the last words dry on the page:
Come.
See it for yourself.
For the doors are always open.
Here, the light will greet you. And so will the threads – those of meaning, and of memory.
Come see what it means to make – with artistry, and intention
In the way that our elders knew so well.
And when you are done, stand.
Stand beneath the quiet Coral tree – sacred, and all-seeing.
Cast a last blessing to the winter wind
That this, and this, and this –
Long may it live.
Long may it all help us to remember
The song of dreams
That beats on, and on, and on.
