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Island Blog – Lightening and Just Me, Just You

Same sound as Lightning, but with an E. It seems that just one E makes all the difference to the meaning of a word, spoken, that is. Written, all is clear. How confusing is that! When we write a text message, this can mean that, and ‘that’ can blow your pants off. We must be so careful with words. One message, meant to explain an inner drift, shift, split or maybe just inviting understanding, can send someone into a swirl of inner doubt, into childhood, when who I thought I was, wasn’t, pretty much. It thinks me.

I play with words, with wordage all the time, but I am canny, cautious, and still make mistakes. We all do, and, as we observe A. N Other living out their lives as best they bloody well can, who feel the ok enough to tell us about what they did with this, or him, or them, we might think before we text back, if we feel a judgement coming on. That damn judgement, that speaks in the voice of a long gone parent, grandparent, teacher. That is our own thing, and thus irrelevant. I always want to bring in an elephant here, I can see it, the mahout, turbaned and brown as a nut, and grinning through betel teeth, the elephant pondorous and on a steady trajectory, but that, also is irrelevant, for now.

How we did this or that, demands questioning. So many do not, question, and so the pattern continues patterning. Until someone stops it, just like that, in a lightning strike. Where does that intelligence come from, being as it is a newborn in their lives, in any life? It seems that, if we are open for change, asking for it because we are tired, so tired of living in a loop, meeting ourselves over and over and with no change in sight, and someone will just shout. SHOUT. And, as in a lightning strike, something falls.

Today I went to visit dear friends and we talked (or I did) for ages over tea and a beautiful dog and a view across forever, had the mist allowed. There was a lightening. I have known these two for a very long time, met them here and there, now and again, and yet, today, I was there with them, in their home and I felt so connected, so happy. We talked of dementia, of caring, of the village, of our beloved island, of bees, of woods, of trees, of the times we remembered dancing in the village hall. A lightening. I drove home in a different set of thinks.

Although I have always known my place is here, my people are here, over past times, I have felt isolated, of my own doing. I look for both lightning and lightening, but it was dark. I made it dark. And, in the dark, for all its shadows and demons, an essential part of the damn process of recovery is birthing from any number of wotwots. Not one single one of us would choose to go through it again, but we have learned to believe than light exists, and more, that we are needed in that light show. Just on our own, limping, awkward, with our own broken hearts, just us, just me, just you.

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Island Blog – Scrambledom and Showing up

There I was, bobbing along with life, knowing just which way was up and which down, gravity and flight both behaving appropriately. Breakfast was at the usual time, a usual accord t’ween avocado, poached egg and ryvita with Pond Water. Coffee, already strong and lining my stomach like an entire defence corps of marine snipers, buzzed me and the morning. I swear, as I jounced outside barefoot to squash the wildflowers and to administer nourishment to sparrows, blackbirds, robins, Siskins, greenfinch, goldfinch and collared doves, that my soles were just off the ground. Could be tricky at my age but what with my rowing machine and my endless dancing around the kitchen, I am yet confident in the uprightness of me, body at least.

Pond Water begs an explanation. One of my sisters who is a top chef and who eats so healthy I barely recognise what’s on her plate, guided me towards this daily green drink. I adopted the habit after cancer and now this green stuff is an integral part of my morning. These days it is added to, thanks to my gorgeous nutritionist who is monitoring my elevation. Celery, carrot, root ginger, spinach, broccoli and apple form the basic. Add to that, for those, like me, short on protein and other complicated things, bring in pea protein powder, Brazil nuts or other nuts and pumpkin/sunflower/chia seeds. Whizz it all up with water, sieve, and there you have it. Pond Water. At first, with my sister, I wanted to spit the whole mouthful out. Now, it is a pleasant drink, not least because there is so much goodness in it.

The ordinary, the familiar, are easy walking mates. I know them and they know me. And so, on we go through the days without pause or cause for much thought. Then something happens, coming in like a dart, a sideswipe and the legs go out from under me. This thing didn’t happen directly to me, but to one of my children, and then not even directly to them. They are all well, alive and in the same place. But, for one, the windows have blown out, and they are rocked. I feel their pain, their turmoil and, being the mum I am, I know where I must be. And I will be there. Just working out the massive palaver of travel from the island, what with the ferries being dipsy at best, for now, and the timings of a bus, a plane.

During the daylight hours of this day, I have considered my knees. They jerk. A lot. Always have done. I respond in the immediate when my beloveds are in pain. I go to, regardless of where we ought to be in ten minutes, or whom we might upset with this go to thing which is often messy and always thoroughly inconvenient. We were all going left, bobbing along, muttering and grumbling and then ‘boom!’ a sudden slews in like a sparrowhawk and grabs someone by the wotnots and everything changes, for me anyway. I know where I need to be and will be, and all this I learned as a mum, a mum who has oftentimes refused to comply with what appears sensible and logical. I like myself for that. I know scrambledom, and we have worked together before, many times. What our children remember is not the material gifts from a parent, but that one time when they were broken and mum or dad just showed up.

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Island Blog – Moons in her Mouth

I find that there are as many ways to respond to change as there are people. I recognise resistance, fear, exhilaration, denial and many more unspellable words describing the palaver of response. Trouble is, change is invariably frick all to do with us. Someone or something else initiates this change thing, muddying still waters and messing up picture perfect landscapes. It’s like the world without or within just shifted a whole 45 degrees whilst we, busy doing the same thing in the same way for ages, remain rooted to the spot and staring at nothing. Where did what I know and understand, go?

The answer is, Not Far, in my experience, but why life has to do this irritating shift is, well, irritating, at best upsetting/confusing and scary at worst. But wait……..if I can see that in my security I was just an automaton, performing tasks in the usual way and without questioning anything, and, thus, not really alive at all, then perhaps I should take a closer look at what change has on offer. We humans have been gifted elevation above all other living creatures, and, yet, any animal, bird, reptile or fish knows more about adaptation to change that most of us two legged bright sparks will ever know. And, yet, change is wild around us, moving in on a storm, in stories, in the turbulence of extreme weather, the warning loud and clear to all others, it seems, but us. I can see that we have depended too much on a material infrastructure, trusting in impermanence, thus gradually losing our natural abilities as intelligent and sentient human beings.

Even as a young woman, well, girl really, I knew I wanted the insecurity of the traveller. It scared me, the thought of the riptide, the undertow, the wild and desolate landscape, an unpredictable sky, but the call was strong. Thankfully, I found a man who had more experience, more knowledge on such travelling whooha and who reckoned I could be a good travel mate. I learned so much from him, thirsty for the knowing of how to react when encountering danger, for example, or of what physical and mental strengths I needed to develop in order to be, not unafraid, but canny and unpanicked. I did panic, a lot, in the process, but I also learned a gazillion lessons on survival, and I don’t mean living on Mars, but more just living with constant change.

And then I learned to love becoming a dynamic part of Life with all her shifts and shouts. Sometimes she whispers, and I turn my head to hear. I know that businesses fail, that shops go bust, that hackers grow like weeds, that war is a boundary away, but I also know that I am a survivor. This is not arrogance, safe behind a locked door of smugness and control, but just one woman, spinning in harmony with the world, vigilant, always learning and with moons in her mouth.

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Island Blog – Diversology, Variogram and Stick with me on this and I believe in You

I love wordish, the play on words, the flux I create as I challenge old meanings, long laid down and probably long dead, but still with blow, like bubbles when you slide below the surface and lift breath after someone has gifted you a bath experience. In your blow, you create a new map. It may not last for long, but, just for that moment, as you watch the dynamic shift and slip away, you see something new.

I find words, they come to me like darts, random, and, it seems they feel arrogant enough not to explain, so I have to Dictionary them. And, I am finding, having invented at least two words, once challenged by a magazine editor, and which are now confident within the restrictions of the Oxford or the Collins, that definitions limit. Language is an endless shift, and that, for me, is how it must be.

So, these words, Diversology – understanding diversity, inclusion and equity in the classroom. I, and my peers would have loved that light in our day. We are the survivors of none of that, back in the days of England ruling half the damn world, and not very kindly.

Variogram, another word that came to me. Broken down into my simple speke made me thinkalot. ‘In spatial statistics the theoretical variogram, denoted, is a function describing the degree of spatial dependence of a spatial random field or stochastic process.’ I am engaged, big time, with the word spatial, and it is mentioned twice, as if space from another actually has a name. We all need space and it is not a given, I have learned over decades. A singular soul has to demand it.

Stochastic. How weird am I! This is my favourite and you may see why because there is a freedom here, and the stand tall of every one of us, the broken, the lost, the abused, the confused, deserves recognition, however wild, according to the dictionnaires of our life.

‘Stochastic – having a random probability distribution or pattern that may be analysed statistically…..’ aka following old patterns, old controls. (read on)

‘……but may not be predicted precisely. ‘Hallelujah! We can all rise from the old, the old ways, the old words, the old meanings. We can. We just have to have that tiny bubble lift of courage, that one glimpse of our own map, to step up and out, a heart beating like a flutterby, feet unsure, fear like a huge overwave, and say No. Or Yes.

Even as I write this, I feel the sharps of this writing privilege. I know it isn’t easy, in fact it may feel impossible, at first, but I do know some of you, many, have recognised that your one life is not ok and who have said this No, Yes, thing.

So, I would say, on this lovely summer’s evening, in my long life, if I could take away the struggle for you, I would. But I cannot. Maybe all I can do is say, hey, hallo you. I believe in you, even if you don’t.

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Island Blog – Diving the Deeps

Today I worked at changeovers in the sunshine with a fablious team. I had to learn my way around the check list for each property, four tea towels here, two there, one for glass and one for otherness. The store cupboards, floor to ceiling, hold super king duvet kit, king, double and single. I did, momentarily wonder where the hell are the queens in all this! Well, I know where they are. They’re plotting in the dark spaces, along with the cobwebs, not that I found one of those. That is how it is, even now when we might all do well to acknowledge the fact that queens and women who never got the crown will not be kept in the dark for long.

I buzzed here and there, cleaning windows, scrubbing loos, working impossible duvets into the resistance of their covers, as if they had tasted freedom for just a few hours and were dead pissed off at the thought of, again, obliging into a well-ironed confine for yet another week. What might be the word for someone who gives life to things? I have no answer. Anyway, I am digressing, madly. I was somewhere else for about four hours with wonderful women in the team, with no mobile reception and the sky blue, the wind very Sahara, blowing leaflets and sticky information sheets off their blue tack restraints, and visitors who stopped by for coffee and stayed for ages. We watched, from the laundry, a line of classic cars thrum by, their bellies way to low for our island potholes, and then, later, big bikers on big bikes, turning in, all leathered up and grinny, for big ass sandwiches and the chance to swelter in the very focussed sunshine. the doors to the cafe stayed open, until a Sahara blast thwacked them shut. Folk came with dogs wearing shorts, the humans, not the dogs, and for a short while conversation lifted from the sort of sheltered outside bit and up into the sky, stories and laughter flying like birds. A conjumble of fablious. We don’t have many such days here and we know how to celebrate the fun of the moment, to grab it, but not to expect a hold, for it can so quickly be snatched away.

I knew I wanted physical work. I can still jinx and bend, not only with my body, but also with my thinking. I have dived deep throughout my life, seeking what I could never have, and finding that which I never sought, a sudden surprise, a something that stopped my flow and caught my breath, like a new understanding. And that, I now know, only comes over time lived, experiential time. We sort , (I say ‘We’ only because I have talked with others on this), our expectations and our disappointments into an acceptable line like a track we know we must walk. We know there are potholes and, jeez, there are some spectacular ones here. My mini could disappear completely in one, although, and here I go again, she has no intention of losing anything, never mind herself. We talk. I warn her, or she, if I am suddenly zooming, warns me. It works, this communication I have with things. Someone once said to me, they actually did, that I cannot talk to plants and I did give an eye roll at that. It isn’t such a stretch to ‘things’. Not for me. If I need something to work with me and I with that thing, my garden gate, for example, which refused to shut properly until we had a chat, then I need to initiate conversation. Had I been born in Westmoreland in an earlier era, I have no doubt I would have been burned at the stake.

Depth in life is asking to be dived. I know the surface is safe but it is also boring. I cannot see opportunity beyond what is under my control. I want to risk, to dive, to possibly struggle, but isn’t this living, isn’t this fun? I have no interest in control, although I am definitely me and the definitely me is still wild.

Who would choose less?

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Island Blog – It Happies Me

I watch young folk go by, caught up in their busy and demanding worlds. Time is a set of handcuffs on their flexible wrists. Every moment is not theirs, but a collective, the needs of children, bus times, school restrictions, business or work confines, needs of she or he, borders with walls and fences that limit and prevent, with teeth and claws. Young, for me, belong in the amidships, the ones beyond the original dream, and sunk (but always positive) in the porridge of get-on-with-it. Raising young is tough enough for Tits or Blackbirds who, by the way, fly off once their young has sort of got the out there thing, but for us, who have to trek the yet unsolved landscape of a completely new traverse, or not trek it at all and just let go, this parental ask is the biggest ever.

I wonder if the experience and it’s repercussions and guilt and fear and all the other wotwots solify us or wonder us into a long term confusion. Probably both. After all, not one single one of us had a clue about being mum or dad. Not one. Nor the pull apart, the sleepless endless, nor the arguments about how, who, what, and when, and for years. Confuselage. My word, I think. So I watch and wave to the few folk who live up beyond me, on Tapselteerie and who make it better, who develop what we never could, and who are going through just what we did waaaay back when. When freedom was a real word, when my feral children could invade the village at any age, from 6 years old and I knew they were safe. I thought that safety thinking had gone, but it hasn’t. The new kids on the block are safe too. They cycle down, walk, join friends. I meet them in the woods, these lovely young free things, gathering mushrooms, or just talking and laughing.

It happies me.

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Island Blog – Endless Positives

I have a think. In this culture of everything positive and uplifting (good so far) after Covid lockdown delivering awkward separation and restrictions we left way back in the when-when of school, familial confines, fears around ‘others’ who didn’t behave like Us, I think we might be losing the self of us. It is almost as if we shouldn’t feel sad, angry, lost, confused and unsure about what to wear, how to move in a sudden meet. It is as if we have become strangers, when, yes, we used to move past and beyond each other without even clocking a face. Now, there’s a thing.

I know I live in the back of beyond (all welcome by the way), with a view of a tidal loch, nothing much shouting but gulls on the hunt as the Atlantic slews in, but I still notice and note the change in media stuff. So many positive uplifts, and it wonders me. Who is left behind in this? I remember being so low I seriously believed pills and me gone was a good thing. Now, I recognise that woman, and love her and wish I could have been there for her. I just hope she sees me now, and I believe she does.

Nonetheless, I do find this, almost denial, awkward. How do we, who don’t want to fit beneath a label, find a voice? Yes, I fell, yes I fell, yes I fell, but somehow, and with strong and loving help, rose from my lost self, and found just one step, and then another, into a better life.

Perhaps the endless positive is a good thing. I still think there are loads of heads in sand out there.

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Island Blog – To Risk

This distraction thing…….well, this one is a wonderful one. No, I’m not telling, nor spelling it out, but it is far beyond cancer or insect bites, has nothing to do with hospitals nor scary journeys with too many questions in my mind, too many fears. This one is magical and hopeful and exciting and I feel wilder, free-er and it just looks as if the being of 71 is suddenly not the slow slide into an ending. Of course, there will always be that ending wotwot, we can’t avoid that, but if it’s possible to shout Wahooo on that slide, I am in. I didn’t think it was mine, however, just a short 3 weeks ago. No. I sat with coffee and my spectacular view and the birds dafting away around the feeders, watching other people living out their lives in a snapshot as they careened by (young) or wandered (older) and I reconciled, reluctantly to what seemed inevitable. In my experience, from what I can remember of those long ago days when my reddish chestnut hair was long enough to sit on and my body obeyed me and my eyes were light bright, twinkly and challenging, the next generation up seemed ancient. Perms and blue rinses (good god) and with shoes matching handbags, and the men, jowly and rotund, not that there is anything wrong with any of that, but I confess to thinking, oh very dear. Please not me. I said (I did) please take me around 60 when I still have control of my bladder and my footsteps. Obviously that fell on deaf ears! And now I am where I am, and, by the way, I still challenge anyone to stay longer than me on the dance floor, with breaks now and then, of course.

Do you remember a time when something, or someone happened, and that connection, so random, so unexpected, made a deep shift in everything, when thoughts, confused by this happenstance, swirled like a whole frickin twister as it just ran right through you? Sensibilities are unsensibled in a moment, and it takes some time to settle the unsettlers. But it seems to be a good thing, after decades of self-protection, fuelled by fear and doubt. We immediately doubt and question, after a lifetime of caution and routines that uphold, define and confine, until this normal is normal, even if we don’t like it one bit. We accept and perform as we are expected to, and, to a degree, that’s a good thing, until the roots go miles down like blades, cutting through the fragile connections to self.

And then something or someone walks into my vision, yours too. How wonderful is that! Even if it is just a snapshot, it came to me, came to you, a shift in a personal tectonic plate, the underground split into a new geology. That’s something, for sure. It proffers a chance, a wild step into the unknown. If we are to live with joy, fun, light and energy, it is up to each one of us to risk.

My favourite word.

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Island Blog – Bubbles and a Rare Bird

Sorry, been a bit distracted these past few days, and, to be honest, I never imagine anyone wondering if this frickin eejit has finally sqwarked her last, fallen off her perch, not to be discovered for days, and then feel an element of concern. I always thought that everyone is absorbed in their own lives. My blogs, and me, might be a pleasant diversion, when bored on the bus or in a tea break. I kid you not. So, when I get a nudge or two, it bubbles me. I suddenly feel seen, important, that sort of thing. And that feeling is affirming, because who feels seen, let alone heard? Not many, I think. Until we are, seen, noticed, and heard, really seen, noticed and heard, we think it only happens in stories. T’is

A rare bird.

I have a strong woman friend, and she, recently, has chosen a new path in her life, in order to be in the right place for the right people, even as it cut her heart. She has had many cuts prior to this one, and they have healed, or she has determinedly healed them. She doesn’t look broken at all, tall, beautiful, standing fast, and yet she has to adapt, once again, to new surroundings, new challenges, a. new location. I watched her leave the familiar, her eyes brimming rainbows in the capture of sudden sunlight, her focus forward to the what the hec now. She’s

A rare bird.

As for me this past week, I found bubbles everywhere, rainbow globes, in conversation, in the clouds, in the sudden and random. And I am lifted, changed, energised and a bit wild (surely not me…!) by these bubbles. I’m going to buy a bottle from the local shop tomorrow, let them fly free, watch them catch the sky, float cloudward and then disappear like rare birds, gone for ever.

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Island Blog -Jabbly Crossing and that Flower

A boat cruise, picture it if you can. It was sudden, as in I hadn’t forward planned it weeks, months before, so I had needs to adjust my seating and the hold on my phone when that offer landed in my ear (the good one). I alerted, as you might imagine, suddenly on the spot. Decision. Choice. Adventure. Oh, I get that one, the last. I love adventure, but I have found, in recent years, that my woohoo is somewhat deflated like an balloon at my feet, and requiring CPR or a foot pump at the very least. And yet, and this yet thing still can firework me, I found a sparkle, a dynamic in my heart that is still pumping. Go for it. And so, I said yes.

And then panicked, thought the whole thing down, told myself I couldn’t, whilst the ‘could’ in me swanked about like a town crier telling everyone I was off on a mini cruise, spontaneous and wotwot and let’s just go. Everyone being just me, of course.

So I went, I arrived and there I was on a mini cruise and immediately engaging with the other guests who had come from everywhere else and were just as bug eyed as was I, and then we boarded and the welcome was warm and wonderful and on we went in this warm and wonderful state over jabbly seas to the calm of the Cairns of Coll, scrunched our bare feet over shell sand and bird flight and not a human for bloody miles and the sky wide and inviting. And the time we had together, the strangers and I, we met, just a bump, but a meet nonetheless, and, because we have all experienced the wild , the truly wild, the uninhabited wild, we met there and we know it, and there is a beautiful flower we all saw, just then, just for a moment, out there.