Month: October 2022

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Island Blog – Lilliput and Gulliver

I stand beneath an eagle. It hovers, canting on the high wind, still as anything can be up there in the blow. Wings spread 8, 9 foot wide, only its tail to adjust balance. It ticks, the tail, this way, that way, sensing the windshift, balancing. My mouth is open I realise as I watch the flick flick of white beneath its tail feathers. It sees me, I know it does, but I am of little interest being not prey to this predator. Its eyes scan miles whereas all I can see is what I can see from my pinprick of limiting ground. Up there, if I was up there, mountain high and just beneath the clouds (or so I imagine) what might I see, how wide might be my vision? People, roll the eagle eyes, ach People, those straight up and down groundlings, a mass of useless cells, no flight, no feathers, no ability for lift: rabbits, plentiful and foolish, grazing, earthlings: other creatures I could snatch if hungry enough, determined enough, desperate enough. But what might I think if I was up there? Not thoughts of prey. Then, of what? If I could look down on an eagle, a kestrel, merlin, goshawk, buzzard floating on thermals, its entire body line flattened like the pinned down body of a collectors butterfly on a board, would I feel something?

I would. Awe and reverence come to mind and more, the way things, creatures, situations look from the antithesistic viewpoint. When facing a situation, a set of old beliefs, a family tradition or condition from the ground, not much is changeable even if that is what I want and I very oftentimes do want. I must climb higher. The higher I climb the better. So what am I climbing from or to? I don’t know the answer but I do know that, in the process of climb from all the aforementioned limitations not only the view changes. I begin to see things differently as new ideas roll in on the backs of the clouds. Hope rises on the thermals and opportunities I never imagined from ground level lift into my mind. I grab at new breaths as the air thins, my lungs inflating like bellows, igniting new fire. I can feel it in my belly, the endorphins that think me of dolphins, play before me, delighting in the bow wave I create as I push on up and up and up and there it is! I am here, looking down on a flight bird, on groundlings, on chimneys blowing smoke, on skinny snaking roads, on dark valleys that, heretofore, rendered my circular thinking to nothing but a swirl of leaves on the forest floor, so easily twisted away underfoot.

It isn’t always possible to climb a hill. I get that, but an imagination can lift you anywhere, into the sky, onto a mountain top, even into flight. The best adventures of all are played out in a mind, everyone knows that. The point is not of physical but of mental prowess #courage in battle and most battles are played out in an internal theatre. How would you direct such a play, your play? My choice is to remove myself from centre stage, the super trooper blinding me as I stumble, forget my lines, fall of the limiting boards of my life and to step elegantly down and into the front row, and to observe. How different the whole looks once I remove my fretting, fretful and irritating self! Now I see and not through a glass darkly. No, I can see all the flaws, most of which I brought with me. Perspective is powerful and illuminating.

And so, and and so. So. What do I do on my descent? I am just finding my way down after all. I have looked down on an eagle, on life, taking in the Lilliputian life I had considered so very Gulliver. Truth is, I do nothing because my inner mind is way more powerful than I give her credit for and she never sleeps. If I banish (off you f**k!) my groundling interferer and just allow my experiential change to, well, change the whole of me, it will. All I have to do is trust and wait and, after all, I have looked down on an eagle.

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Island Blog – Relichenship Opportunity

Lichens. Those pretty white or yellow, green or orange growths on rocks, fences, tree trunks, that’s Lichen. A symbiotic combination of two very different life forms, one Algae, one Plant. Neither, in this environment, in this beauty, in this force of life can survive alone. They only ever make the One that they create by combining forces and turning that meld into a whole new thing. How extraordinary is that and yet it isn’t extraordinary at all. Think Man and Woman: think opposites, or apposites. Moving on.

I watch lichen daily, the flower of it, particularly now in the Autumn wetwetwet. For me it says Opportunity. But for what? Well, in the natural and Algae-Plant world, it means a new entity, a new persona. It can be, usually is, the same in the human world. After all, isn’t it true that when a couple are together, each member behaves as one instrument in a duet, each accommodating the other for mutual benefit? She might run around his needs and wants, allow his faults and failings (as she sees them) in order to keep things running smoothly, or it might be the other way around. I have witnessed both and those of us apart from this symbiosis will take our lead from them (or is it ‘it’?) with the same smooth running thingy as priority. It is also impossible to judge the inner workings of any human duet. Nobody else knows the real truth or can explain it any more than the most of us could explain the lichen dynamic.

However, where lichen lifts the eye into marvel, it isn’t always that way with a couple of humans. We can see what we see and shake our heads at the seeing, or we can shine up into a smile at what we imagine is the truth. Both times we are way wrong. It is better by far to observe, to only observe, without comparison and particularly without comparison to a romance novel, a Disney film or the soaps we might watch on a daily basis. I can find myself doing the judging thing, nonetheless. I can, also, feel the rise in me of the strong feminist but be careful, I warn myself, very careful. Men snicker about women and women snicker about men. I am great at snickering, but also very aware that what I allow to infect my thinking can grow long roots and become a very judgemental belief, a big tall tree that throws all the seedlings of hope, faith and love into a killing shade.

Relationships are driven, to a degree, from experience, from observing parents, from television or idealism. So, how do we refresh our thinking, my thinking, supposing that is that we want to? The way I work it is by noticing my thoughts, feelings and retorts that rise without my bidding, it seems. Triggers trigger reaction and the good news is that those reactions to something or someone observed can stay silently internal at first. The choice to opinionate without caution is my own. I may witness yet another downtrodden woman on the end of a short leash and feel a burn of fury rise from my boots, threatening conflagration, a forest fire, but I know the danger of speaking out and the pointlessness of doing so at all. Who am I, after all, to think I know all the details of this so called symbiosis? Nobody, that’s who, or is it whom? What I long to see is a tidal turn and this will only begin when we as mothers and fathers teach our girls and boys never to accept the leash, short or long, from anybody, man or woman, without aggression, with respect, with surety and confidence. Perhaps I dream. Maybe I do.

Lichen manages it and lichen is billions of years old. I live in hope that we humans will finally get it.

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Island Blog – Even Through the Ordinary.

A sudden quiet. The huge influx of rally drivers, their families and support teams, have outfluxed, leaving the island, well, suddenly quiet. Collected in great numbers on the ferry crossing, they will have driven off and away, covering many miles, alone now, on their journey back to homes all across the country. Big homes, small homes, happy homes, not so happy homes, welcoming neighbours, unwelcoming neighbours, to jobs they love and to jobs they hate; to the upturned smiles of children and to no smiles at all; to bright light and smells of cooking or to a dark apartment and a packaged korma for one. All guesses on my part, but it does think me. The atmosphere here over 3 days was upbeat, noisy, messy and full of laughter. Who can know what really goes on before and after such a party?

Life is like this. Whether it be a togetherment of rally enthusiasts or a hen party, or any chance to get together in celebration of a common interest or cause is our moment of happiness, laughter, comradeship. On each side of these events, ordinary life can seem like a grey washed sky on a Monday in the rain. What I have learned, and this is something I really believe, is to expect the greywash skies, to accept them as the norm and to think of them in a very different way. The sky may not be grey on a Monday but to come into what we left behind with such enthusiasm is not easy, not if we live in hope of a constant run of celebrations. To be honest, the strongest human would run out of juice if he or she had to live that way. We need the ordinary, the grey Mondayness of life. And there is more to this.

If we can accept that ordinary is what we need, even if it does feel like we become a number, a nothing-much, inside a life that isn’t wildly exciting every single minute, we can learn how to make this ordinary a beautiful thing. It isn’t that I particularly love the rally weekend, nor that I crave endless party moments but I do know the lift of a family visit, the sharing of laughter over lunch with a good friend, the fun of dancing the night away. I do. I also felt low after, say, a holiday, a long anticipated celebratory weekend, a few nights away from being a cook, a mother, a wife. So, I said to Myself (and she is always listening, the irritatingly wise other-me)What do we do with the leftovers? She knew what I was talking about. Your feet are ruined, she said, after dancing the night away. Your diet needs a checkup she said, after fast food treats over three days. Your face is unaligned and your skin is dry as parchment, she said, after nights of indulgence. I knew all of this, of course, but let her drone on because she needs to get all this out and I need her, unfortunately. So, I continued, what do we do with the leftovers? Well, she mused, we make them wonderful. Explain ‘wonderful’. Notice everything in your/our life. If it is too grey, too unhappy, too inconsistent with who you are in your life right now, then begin to change it, whilst really appreciating all those things you take for granted and consider boring, ordinary or grey.

She thinks me. What do I miss in my ordinary life? Everything? In longing for endless entertainment, am I inviting in the dreaded nothing? Oh dear, that sounds very mindless and I consider myself mind full. Ok, rejig. How do I do this? I ask her, even though she has wandered off to study a beech leaf fall, all copper, russet, sparkling with rain on the track. She says nothing, just stands there until I, too, look down. My eyes fill with the beauty and we stand there some minutes watching the rain carve fall-lines down over the stones and mud. A Thank you rises in my throat. Branches hang low after such torrential rain and I duck to avoid a face-wash, noticing the flexibility in my limbs. Another Thank you. Sunshine lights the sea into sparkle fire, distant wet rocks into beacons, spume into lift-streaks of dance. Cows graze, I see their backs bowed to the last of the grass and dead rushes move like dancers adorned with rainbow drops catching sunlight. Even the track gets it, the rainbow light thingy. I stop, move forward, back a step, as the drops glow crimson. Moss glows lemon at the base of trees well tired of endless rain. Hold, I tell them. Hold. And Thank you.

Back home, I light the woodburner, notice the way fire never stills, no element ever does. Always moving on, always. I am all element. So are you. Keep moving, mindfully, even through the ordinary.

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Island Blog – Amen to that

I walk out, barefoot, onto the morning grass, feel the cool bite of it, the ice chill thrill up my legs. It’s early morning and the birds already line the staves, making what sounds like the beginning of a piece of music. I’m coming, I tell them, armed as I am with seed, with hemispheres of nourishing fat. I watch the sun lift from his eastern bed, the clouds turning fringe-pink, the blue mountain defined as if by a black marker. I see late bats scoot through the dawn, a pair of early ravens cawk overhead, a five of Brent geese loop around to land with a scoosh of bright white spume into the sea-loch. An ordinary morning, for me at least.

As the sun lifts higher and the cumulus resolves into cotton wool, I see the beech trees yellow into gold. The sky is stratus with high wind, but down here we are calm. It isn’t often like this. Mornings like these just beg to engage with us, beg us not to waste a single moment at the controlling end of a hoover because the birds are waiting for an audience, the puddles slack and dull and just longing for a jumping foot to cause exciting chaos. Do we ever think of that? Do we understand our own importance in the jungle of nature, that a path wants to be walked along, a sky craves our attention, a bird wants to be heard and not just by another bird?

I hear the stags roar across the hillsides, not visible to me but their voices are, that fight for dominance, for life itself. I hear the rally cars out there, the roar of them, the lights, the speed as they take the island roads by storm. I hear voices in the village shop, the words flying up from somewhere in between fresh veg and chilled goods, the lilt of a conversation, the murmur of loneliness from a single shopper reading his list out loud. Are you lonely? Are you alone? Two very different questions. I wish a rally driver the very best of luck tonight and he smiles as wide as a whole country. Thank you! he says. What number is your car? I ask, having heard it roar past my door, all throaty as an old whisky drinking rock singer, a few times over the past few days. It’s bright blue and covered in stickers and he, the driver, is young and full of spiritful life. I know nothing of him but I do know his smile and his response and that what I suddenly said meant something to him. We all need to be heard.

Before each rain shower, and there are always those, I watch the fall streaks, the virga , and I marvel. As they dance across the sea-loch like ethereal ghost dancers, I wonder how many people missed seeing them; on the way to work, dealing with recalcitrant children, caught up in the gazillion immediates of an ordinary life. It thinks me. If any didactic had ‘encouraged’ me to take time out, as a young mum, to really see, no, to REALLY see, the wonders of the great Out There, I would have whacked them in the chops. I would have screamed ‘ Can’t you see how impossible my life is right now!’ And that scream never deserved a question mark.

So, there is something about being older, about having the time and the head space to connect with something greater than myself. Another thing about being older is this, and I quote from Oscar Wilde, even though he says it with more drama than I might :-

‘The tragedy of growing old is not that one is old, but that one is young.’

And I say Amen to that.

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Island Blog – The I and the We of it

I listen to how people talk, their use or misuse of grammar (thanks Dad) and how confusulating the whole thing is these years. I suspect the rebellion against the structure that began in my childhood, now a very distant memory, those days when syntax, sentence construction and punctuation moved like a rainbow over the settled earth of academia, causing a grandiose upset. It was needed, even if I am oftentimes huffing like Hogwarts train over the rickety bridges now connecting the old acceptable to the new ‘anything gose, or is it goes’? Mostly I love it, even though I find my old fingers snatching for words that nobody ever uses anymore. The rhythm and beat of new language is, if we choose to engage with such a ‘new’, both exciting and inevitable. At least, I tell myself in my huffing days, at least I knew the beauty of fine language, well placed commas and how to spell Chiaroscurist.

However it has always been the pronouns that bothered me. In my young recalcitrant days of frustrated rebellion, listening to the Beatles singing about the Sun and Here it Comes, I was reliably informed that to say, ‘I’, was arrogant, challenging, selfish. ‘We’ is how it’s done. It was perfectly fine to say They, We, Them, (although here I confuse pronouns) Us (ditto) and You. Don’t even go there with that one. It is often considered aggressive. There was, and still is, a warm hot milk thing about hiding behind backstage pronouns. Employing them allows our deodorant to remain effective. Moving on.

I hear couples use the We. A lot. We go here, we go there. I get that. But when I hear that We like this and don’t like that, my ears get indigestion. I can hear the gurgle of rebellion and the acid of warning. As long as the strong ‘I’ is lost in the ‘We’ a trumpet should sound in the soul, loud and acid, because one day the ‘I’ will struggle for breath.

Keep your ‘I’. No matter parental teaching, no matter the warm, honeyed, seduction of the ‘We’. I know it well, loved it, was warmed and honeyed by it and I am not saying it did me wrong. (sorry Dad) But, had I known, had I been taught, that the ‘I’ is powerful, beautiful, important, back in my youth, I believe the rebellion might have been better informed, better educated in a kindly and more gentle way. I hope our children learn how to see the one as a valuable person, no agenda no gender judge, just who they are. My prayer. Don’t wake thinking ‘we’. Think ‘I’ and then study and learn and listen.

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Island Blog – The Dance Ahead.

That’s the Lonely banished. It took a while. I had to wrestle this demon to the ground and, although my spirit is willing, my teeth and claws still in situ, my body is a bit wonky-chops at times. I managed it, nonetheless, holding down the limbs of it, all flailing whack and kick, its big mouth wide open and full of unhelpful words such as Fail, Stuck, The End, Best You Can Hope For, etcetera. Phooey, said I, blasting breath into its face, because I plan to have fun from now on, no matter my age or situation, circumstances be damned! The Lonely finally gave in, I felt it soften in defeat, lifting myself off its grabby little body to watch it slink, yes slink, out of the door, last seen heading towards the village. I did give it the bus fare to Faraway, however. I’m not a mean woman, after all.

Since its departure I have dived into a whole lot of exciting things, such as hoovering my floors in a dance of feet and nozzle, made hummus, walked miles and sat myself sitting on a stone bridge that affords me sight of the old days. This inlet of water led out to years of exciting sea-ventures in search of whales, puffins, shags, guillemots, kittiwakes, porpoise, dolphin and gannets, to name but a few. This inlet kept our boats safe from the mighty, and bullying, blast of Atlantic fury. I remember the boats bucking like broncos on their tethering, my hair, when I had any, flying in the wind, my ears ringing from the cold. I remember the trees bending in obrigation, root strong, the hazels as bow-backed old women, saving everything that grew inside their motherly protection from a spectacular crash-bang. No greater love……….

As I walk with my memories, the good ones finally rise to the surface, delighting me. I had forgot them, I confess, but I so wished for them to return. All I could see were the dementia years and the decline before that, for I know it is true that what began as wild love and unstoppable hope morphed from exciting plans such as ‘where shall we eat tonight?’ to ‘Did you put the bins out and if not WHY NOT?’ Or, ‘It’s YOUR turn to collect the kids, bath them, read the story, wash up, cook (arf), walk the dog, do the weekly shop.’ It comes to us all. Surviving such a disappointing change and remaining together is a sign of strength; learning how to dance it in a different way, to make it fun, to laugh together about the whole daft parabola of a shared life is genius. I like that word most of all when it applies to a shared and connected forward motion. It is a life changer for everyone involved, kids, outer-space family members, each other. Did we manage that, I wonder, just as a lone stag bursts from the trees. I was so caught up in my parabola/genius thingy that I gasped and stopped dead. We eyed each other, this young 6-pointer and I with no points at all. Those brown velvet eyes, the stand of its powerful fleet legs, the proud of its neck. It was only moments, but we shared those moments. Then it was gone, like the wind, becoming the wind.

Back home to hoovered and well-danced floors, I checked in all the rooms for the Lonely. No sign but a thought flitted about me like a butterfly, beautiful and fleeting. T’is this. What brings in the Lonely? It isn’t that I hate living alone, my life full of choices sans explanation, justification, apologies. I am loving all of that. And then it came to me, the answer. I am addicted to love and not in absentia, but in persona. In order for me to thrive and love life I need to love. Then a second thought breezed in. If there isn’t a person right beside me, that doesn’t mean I am deprived of the opportunity to find and to feel love. I just have to learn a new way to feel love. I can love the moments, noticing everything around me. I can love my children and their children actively through texts and calls. I can love a morning, a slow afternoon, the catch of light and the soft fall of the dark. I can love myself and that’s always the hardest thing. I can love the chance that I will encounter something wonderful just by believing that it is out there somewhere so that all I need to do is to build on that belief whilst keeping myself in trim for the dance ahead. And when the Lonely comes back, I will be ready.

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Island Blog – The Lonely and a Rose

It hits just like that. It doesn’t matter that I have enjoyed two wonderful holidays with my beloved children. Those times appear to count for nothing against the weight of Lonely, who comes unbidden, unsought and quite devoid of explanation. She, Lonely, requires no justification it seems. She just barrels in as I awaken into a lemony dawn. What is wrong with me, I ask? Yesterday’s dawn woke me warm and smiling, ready for another day irrespective of its ordinariness, its widow’s weeds, the ones I dig up each morning to see once again clear ground. I was in sync with it, my keep on keeping on thing strong in my mind and body. What is different this morning?

Everything. I feel like a rope has been cut and not by me, the hold that holds me to life, to hope. I fly out, flailing, fearful and with no idea where I may land, and, worse, no care of landing or landing at all. I dress, down the stairs, make coffee, everything as usual. The lemony light lifts into morning. I hear thunder, see lightning, watch birds fly backwards, catching their tiny claws on feeders, swinging like One, Two, Three and Off! Just like yesterday. I consider my tasks for the day, see the floors need sweeping, know the wood needs chopping. I make and eat breakfast, select an audio book to entertain, feed the dog, let her out, all the usual but today I am pushing against a huge weight. I turn to look at it, at her. Who are you? I shout, because I can shout now and whenever I feel like it. There is no answer. I continue. You are well over two years old, no, you are well over fifty years old. Why are you still here and where do you hide during the times I really believe I am moving beyond your control? Still, no answer.

I begin to whine. I can hear it in my voice and I do not do whining out of choice. But here I am whining. I tell her I am doing all I am taught to do. Connection. Making decisions. Making journeys alone. Reading endless books on How to Make Sense of Loneliness. I practice daily, no, hourly, gratitude. I notice every leaf, every change on my walks. I celebrate the life I have, the life I had and I work hard on understanding and releasing my past. And still you come. Why?

Wrong question. I know it before it ever leaves my mouth. I turn away from my questions, my whining and my fight against Lonely. I sit and watch the sky, the cloud shift, the travel of light. Although it doesn’t feel like enough, I decide it is enough. It isn’t, but it helps to just give in to it. If I logic my feelings, I will always be responding like a fool. Feelings are feelings and logic is logic. But I do realise something in my sitting-ness. I don’t ask for help at times like this. So, why don’t I? This ‘why’ question deserves an answer and I have one. Aside from the fact that I have dealt with loneliness, trauma, doubt, despair, loss, anger, resentment and blame for decades, I have always found when reaching out for help, a fixer and I don’t need fixing. I need a friend to smile kindly, to know they don’t know what I know and to stick beside me as I falter, fall, fail and flail; when I have nowhere to land and don’t care; when my day is as long as a year and when all my fears surround me like a gossip’s whispers, menacing, fleeting and invisible. I just need a hand held out, no agenda, no words from another’s mouth. Perhaps that is why I am so resistant to asking for help. I don’t want a book club, a retreat, a walking group or any suggestion of a moving forward that works for that person, the one who is not me, has not lived my chaotic life, who has not survived a deal of trouble.

Last night, a dream.

I watched his shadow in the garden of my mind. He picked a rose and held it out to me. I moved to take it, even though we both knew that Life cannot meet Death, even for a rose. In the morning light I found it on the grass, dappled with dew.