Month: May 2023

by

Island Blog – The Upbeat

I hesitate to write a blog when I am not feeling upbeat at all. The upbeat, in musical terms, is the lift after the down beat, the one you might clap along to, the easy beat. To clap to the upbeat means you’re the only one clapping, but for musicians it is a chance for play. It is like an in-breath. However, a down beat sounds down. I am beat down, that sort of down. When I hesitate, after many thinks on the matter, I realise that nobody wants to hear moans. We want to run away from a moaner. But my writing is not written in search of sympathy nor fixing. I write from the place of many, if not all of us, at times. Some people’s ‘times’ stretch out like a ribbon throughout their entire lives. Some others meet a break in the page and founder on the wordless rocks. What happens next? they may say. I thought I knew, but now I have fallen off the page and it is up there, beyond my reading, flying in the upbeat, where once I stood strong, like a surfer on my board, mistress or master of the waves. All I am now is soggy. Everything that bounded along in my life, and for endless years like a merry puppy has turned on me with teeth and claws. And we, all of us who know this break in our storyline, have no idea what to do next.

Could be the Lonely, could be the Nothing; could be some loss or a change we are sure will sink us in the end. But, in any case, we are onboard a ship sinking, and so close to land that we can see what was, and clearly, but we cannot reach it because we are going down. I know this place of old. I also know that it passes, eventually. For me it is the Lonely. My life from the very start was filled with others, their noise, their demands. Mostly I dealt with it all, mostly I held back my infuriation at a gazillion things, mostly. And, completely, I took it all for granted. Although the musical phrasing changed, from many siblings to many children, I learned my place eventually, although I fought the barricades and restrictions often and a lot and mostly. But we all yearn for peace and thus, we compromise ourselves and it’s a good thing to a degree. All relationships are ships, and sailing together means shared info resulting in safer passage for all. I watch young families now and feel very thankful I am not in that place any more. However, and there’s a thing, when all have fledged or died, and I am old, those chaotic times I am thankful for, the not-ness of them in my life, there is a nothing. I am encouraged to embrace the nothing. Seriously? Well, that is the sarcastic me and she is not a healthy companion. I must think differently about a situation which only exists in my soul, in my heart and mind. Until, that is, I write it out.

There is much talk about mental health right now. It kind of irks me, the label, but it is way way better than the labels tossed over coffee tables by ‘goodly’ folk in my day, when the very word ‘mental’ put the hat of shame firmly on someone’s head, much like the word ‘gay’. It was the culture back then, the learned way of thinking, but deep down it was always only a way to be smug, to be the one who wasn’t tainted by anything weird, different or dodgy, as any alternative way to live. So dangerous and so very damaging. I knew it even as a teenager and could not believe what I heard nor saw. Now, it seems, a freedom is coming, although it may take a while to fly free. For those of us who know we are foundering on rocks or sinking, I can say that if we believe that everything passes, moments, events, even lifetimes, we can keep on keeping on. I thought I would adore a singular life. I love the concept, but the daily trudge of it is not as I expected. I fill in the hours, yes. I am so very thankful for the wonderful place in which I live, the tidal views, the island weather, the community, my friends and helpers. But, it isn’t enough.

The sun may be shining. It might be a bank holiday, family may be incoming friendly. But unless we, who feel we are sinking, believe in a possiblest time to come, we are doomed. So, un-doom. I am awfy busy with the undooming thing. There is light, maybe light we cannot see, but it is there, nonetheless. Just keep with the small things, the ordinary stuff, the washing, the watering, the waving, keep with those and be at peace, my many friends. Bin the shame, bin the inner judge and sit peaceful in nature and know, of all things, that you have a gazillion others out there, somewhere, who know how you feel right now. The upbeat is coming…..

by

Island Blog – A Doorway and a Sister

For three wonderful nights, I have slept well, nightmare free. I have no flipping idea why they come, the nightmares, although I do know that they only come in tough times, when my equilibrium decides to unequilibriate itself, tipping me into a sort of confusion, as if I had forgot who I am and which way is up. To be honest, I don’t spend much time a-wondering about this because ‘this’ just comes like that visitor you really hope never appears at your door, and we all have at least one of those. I just know it will pass like everything does, as long as my antenna are vigilant, strengthened, aware for what I may have missed heretofore because there will have been warning signs. For starters, it is no way possible that a mammoth can travel silently, even on tiptoe. Although I wasn’t around in those days when mammoths pounded over the earth, I am guessing that everyone heard them coming, even just the one. Must have been earth shaking. All that bulk and belly and weight could never just slip into a situation. Even an ‘it’ might have been heard a whole country away, thus giving plenty of warning. Oh, hear that? There’s a mammoth in Cumbria and heading our way so take cover! Simple.

So, I must listen for those big earth-gouging hooves, the pounding of them indicating both body density and danger. Ok, I’ve got that now. But once the damn thing is in the doorway, there is another thing for me to learn. First off, it can’t come through. Why not, You might ask. Because the doorway is human sized and a mammoth, weighing about 10 tons and 11 foot to shoulder height, never mind the body width and bulk plus hair and stuff picked up on the way all entangled and thoroughly woven in, is never getting through. It’s legs are four square and there’s a gap between the drop of its belly and my lino. An easy crawl if I can get past those tusks, which I can, easily, because there is no opportunity for a free swing of those great pointy things, not least because the door frame prevents any such free pointy swingery. I can see where I want to go, if I crouch down, the light coming in the picture window beyond the arse of this rufous beast, well, the swinging tail really, as the arse is massive. I just have to crawl beyond the tail of it, the tail of the nightmare-inducing eejit. How hard can that be? As long, and this is important, I do not clock eyes with the threat, pay no attention, nor give any level of import, to the growling (or whatever mammoths say when being their best at threatening) of the face, the teeth, the horns, I can find myself. I am more than a match for a stuck mammoth. It is only my mind playing tricks, that mind, well, bless it and all that, that only works on what it has already experienced. It has no way of thinking for itself. It might tell me I am no match for such a threat, that this threat is real, that I may as well submit, and I have done so many times over the years, hearing pre-recorded voices telling me I will never succeed, that I am not good enough, that I Told You So is all you’re going to hear today. But, the minute I employ my own intelligence and trust it, trust it, I see the stuck-ness of the mammoth. I see the light beyond its rufous arse, no, tail, I see who has the power here for I am in my right time, my right era, the Holocene era, not the Pleistocene epoch, and it’s Spring (apparently) and the mammoth is not. Perhaps that’s how it got stuck in my doorway. I push under and out and up, moving into the light of right now, of right Me.

When anyone mentions anything at all about anything mental, such as demon wrestling, nightmares, times when life appears as a mammoth in all doorways, folk don’t know what to say. There’s a stigma around anything of the mind. It is all in your mind, I’ve heard ever since I was 13. Well, yes, you’re right, although the way you say it sounds like a judgement instead of what it is, something to be cherished and nurtured and recognised, for it is real and the more you pretend to yourself that we, who do swingle t’ween your reality and the vast empires of our minds, are somehow in need of fixing, the more minds will become lost forever.

There are mammoths in a gazillion doorways but who will stop this rush of humanity towards gain and power, to even stop and notice we with supposed mental health issues? Perhaps just one (and one is more than enough) like my sister, a tiny bird of a woman with a huge personality, ditto heart and with the tenacity and courage of a terrier. She said ” I’ll shoo off the mammoth.” and, I believe she did.

by

Island Blog – A Mammoth and a Rant

Today was sludge. Some days just are, and not just for me, even as my own day takes on an immense importance. T’is disproportionate, I know, I bloody know. Nonetheless, it is so. I wake too early, about 5am which, I tell myself, roundly, is fine in the months of early light. My other self reminds me that winter is so very loooooooooong up here and those 5 ams are quite ghastly. An oxymoron, just for your information. Something is either ghastly or it isn’t. There is no ‘quite’ about it. Just saying. I trudge on through coffee, sweeping a floor, putting away drained dishes from my solitary supper the night before. I light the fire. In May,? Myself catches me by the arm. I want to swear at her. It is cold, I annunciate each word, my lips exaggerating ridiculously, just in case, overnight, she has suffered a demise of the brain or a loss of hearing. I eat breakfast, of sorts, and it is done and swallowed by 6. Now what? I wander through the rooms, looking for an answer. The carpet needs hoovering but it will do and, to be honest, I cannot find the energy to connect with my hoover. I shower, dress, come downstairs. 6.15. My mind heads off into loony land. What, I speak this out loud, is the point of my existence, hmmmm? My husband is dead, my children, and theirs, are all miles away and I am tired of everything. I can write, oh hell yes, I can write. I can sew, walk, watch nature, tidy, cook for one, clean out the fridge, even hoover the damn carpet/s. How exciting can a life become?

But, when will I pull on my fancy boots and be whisked away to dinner, one I don’t pay for? When will I look forward, in anticipation to a shared evening, a game of scrabble, the intercourse involved in the tricky process of preparing mango chutney from mangoes, or plum brandy for Christmas, the fun of discussing an evening with friends, the shall we do this-ness of real life, because being alone after so long is not real life. It is not. It. is survival. Who will dip the oil tank? Just me. Who will repair the faulty back door lock? Just me. Who will watch a fantabulous sunset and marvel? Just me. Eish , not enough, not by a long chalk, whatever that means. The rip asunder of a shared life, no matter the palaver of it all, is like a chasm and there are days I fall in, spending half of the next week climbing out, and for what?

A rant, on first looking, is like meeting a mammoth in a doorway. It is huge, inappropriate and tusked up. It is also, by its being there, blocking forward motion and also a massive startlement. It has to be named and addressed. There’s a mammoth in the doorway, you might say and those around and benigh you would immediately tell you there is no such mammoth. But there is. No, they say, kindly, a hand staying your pointing arm, there is just a clear and empty doorway, a way through, a clear passage. It is infuriating to be thus denied and fixed. When I am facing a mammoth, what I need is someone to believe me, whether they see said mammoth or no because if that did happen, and someone stood beside me, listened, heard and never said anything, I would disappear the beast all by myself. I would feel seen, heard and honoured, and the mammoth would, I just know it, look puzzled and confused. Oh, oops, wrong doorway, wrong timeline and way too warm. He/she would turn around and lumber off, soon distant, a natural departure. Instead, when I hear a trillium of flowery wonderments, covered as I am in slime and mud, cut and grazed from yet another climb out of the chasm, I feel unseen, unheard, dishonoured.

I know it is a natural desire to fix a ‘problem’ but if someone just needs to name the mammoth and you are privileged enough to be that much of a friend, just be there and say nothing. It is the quickest way to send the mammoths away.

by

Island Blog – I Don’t Speak Indesit

I walk in the afternoons now, when the frosty biting wind slinkers around, gentling into warmth, as if it has lost its back teeth and feels a bit vulnerable; when the sharp blast of power-controlling a morning (this one hailed with an ice crash that deafened me, Radio Two and my audio book for a whole breakfast) softens into ‘pointless’, as bullying does when faced with a lack of submission. The spring green against a blue sky has me walking reckless, my head up, my feet trusting the track. This majesty of trees, of oaks, beeches, elms and alders, all shouting life and hope, enthral me. The hazels mutter like old wifies unnoticed, and knowing it. I lower my eyes and salute them. You wind-breakers are a team, I reassure, I know this. Many a man, woman or child on this tricky track would have fallen and gone without your crow-backed protection. They snort. I hear it and chuckle. Tinsel leaves burst daily from tight holding buds, holding against the toothy north bite that claims each morning, delicate, soft and green with hope and falter. They have paused for a long time. Spring, albeit late up here in the wilds of the Western Isles, comes cautious, this year more so. Hail for breakfast is not what they want nor need, but the lift for life, for that single chance to procreate is fierce and the afternoons offer balm and warmth to honour that lift. Hence, me and the wee dog, lift too and into the afternoon.

This morning, at approximately 07.30 I put on an Eco Wash. In my understanding of Eco Washness the process will be both short and cool, enough and adequate. I am thinking, as with my old machine, 20 minutes at 30 degrees. But it seems no. All morning, although I could not really hear the machine machining through the din of hail, it chomped and plumped and schlocked and tossed my trapped clothing right and left and over and back again in a repeat motion as if it didn’t quite know what to do next. What have I done? My always first thought. I am a big fan of pilot error, having plenty of experience in such. In my excitement at a new piece of equipment, I ignored the instruction label. But, in my defence, most instructions are unintelligible, in a foreign language and inadequately explained, sentences barely sentences, and ending just when you think they are actually going to make sense. However, in discovering, after my head-in-the-skies wander this afternoon, communing with nature and all that tiddleypom, my machine still chomped and slushed at 3pm. I must have, no, did on first acquainting myself with this Indesit, this bright white eco machine, push all the buttons just to see wotwot. I have obviously set in motion a whole load of wotwot, none of which I can, intelligently un-wotwot. Perhaps I pushed the 3 hour delay button, or the 6 hour or even the 12 hour and what the heck is that all about?

I finally rest, as does the machine. My clothes are exhausted and I apologise to them as I hang them up. 8 hours of chomping and sluice and my obvious foolery around time delay and cycles, has submitted these bright spring colours to a virtual drowning. But, I tell them as reassuringly as I can, You are clean and fresh-colour bright, your shape your own, and you have survived. Many have not. They say nothing. In a sulk, I’m guessing. In the judgement of this, sensing pilot error, I don’t know where to throw my voice. The trees seem to answer, the woods too, and the plucking waves of the endless ocean, but the washing machine is deaf to me. I obviously do not speak Indesit.

by

Island Blog – The Soul of my Foot

Stung, I was. I didn’t feel nor register the sting but awoke the following morning to a sore arch. Still I registered not. I just thought, Sore arch, Get moving, Ignore it, as I do when encountering any sort of bodily pain. It wasn’t real pain, more a question. Will I walk wobbly-like in order to favour this whatever-it-is or will I stand tall, walk proud and straight as I choose to walk inside the days of my life. A no-brainer for me. All the day long I favoured not, paced out, never checked to see what was going on down there. I have no idea why I didn’t, but my deeper belief is that, in the face of serious agony, this was a mild case of absolutely nothing at all. This thinking is my choice. I will not catastrophize unless my intelligence tells me this is one, a catastrophe. Much later in the day, as the slight soreness began a sort of rhythmic throb, I did look and there it was, a definite sting hole in my arch. An arch. A doorway from one place to another, from one state of being to another. In other words, an opportunity for inner change. I love that. And I love doorways because they laugh me. I used to say, and it was the truth, that Himself’s mind was wiped every time he passed through one, the other room holding back the unpleasant interchange and that smile on his face as if what just happened never did.

I studied the sting. Well, study is a bit of an exaggeration as I can’t really see the close up details, but I can feel it with my fingers, the perfect circle of red, the pin prick centre stage. It’s rather beautiful, from back here behind big spectacles and wonky chops visionary skills. I experience a slight botherment when I consider how my eyebrows, my face, my close up details must look to a youngster with 20/20 vision, and bat the botherment away. The arch thinks me. You know that. The sting thinks me too and off I go in backtrack wonderment. I do walk barefoot through my grass which is calf-high now, allowing for three things. One is that I want the wildflowers to welcome the pollinators, the second is that the guy who cuts my grass hasn’t appeared for ages and the third is that I could step on a stinging thing. I look out over a considerable festoon of dandelions, the flowers of growth, hope and healing, the bluebells which have escaped (I suspect, deliberately) the confines of a flower bed, the violets, wood anemones, sorrel and something I love the colour of but cannot name. I must have gone through a doorway. I also have considerable trouble locating the small dog poo of a morning, even with my spectacles on, but smile at the tiny tracks she has carved into what must feel like a jungle to her, a jungle of green, with many a place to hide.

So, swimming down into my soul, I have a sting in the soul of my foot. This is clear and obvious, even without spectacles. It throbs a bit, itches more, and is in my arch, a doorway of change. In any life, the gift of the ordinary, if noticed and considered, can flow and weave into any area of that life. A ‘something’ that happens on the outside of us can proffer a doorway in. How is my life, your life? What slight wounding on the outside can illuminate a deeper wounding within? For me, change is afoot. See what I did there? It is no random happening, not for those of us who recognise an outside event as an inner message. We may not, probably do not, understand what is being sent to us, but if we just acknowledge and wait, the voice of the. higher self will communicate. We all have sudden ‘stops’ in our lives when the love in the sky wants us to take notice. Could be sickness, could be a car bump, could be a sting, could be anything that stops us. We are mistaken if we bat it away as nothing. If I could tell anyone anything profound, I would say, Listen and Wait. Those two angels have served me well over many decades. Our souls are strong critters, way wiser than we are with our skin keeping us in. And my soul appears to be lodged in the arch of my foot, for now.

by

Island Blog – Courage and Change

I remember turning 50. It was the first year of my freedom. I had, the previous year, hit a brick wall, in a manner of speaking. The road well travelled, the wife and mother, the business partner, the following, always following, stopped me one sudden day in my tracks. I looked around to see nothing new although the horizon lay wide and open and, in my case, uninvestigated. I turned and saw the mud and trudge marks, my own, winding back, back and into the far distance. How orderly, how obedient, how thoughtless. Thoughts rampaged through my brain as if released from prison, all tumbling and somersaulting with glee at their new found freedom. They chattered about new beginnings, about hope and choice and other constellations beyond the one I had, heretofore, considered the only one out there, the only one a-sparkle in the heavens above me. It scared me to death. It lifted my spirits. I had no idea what to do next.

What do you want to do next? The question came loud through the chattering, tumbling, somersaulting chatter. I caught my breath and looked around for what? An angel? Suddenly I felt the cold and numbing wind that blew across these acres of plough and winter and shivered. I was alone with this, with the stop, the wall, the track and the crazy rebel I had suddenly become. I’m not saying I hadn’t rebelled before, never kicked against the pricks, all of them, but I had done my rebelling cautiously and often in secret. Never had the thought of such a walk away from what was expected of me landed in my head, my heart, with such a determined thump. All the way back to the dismal rented cottage squatting uncomfortably within these acres of plough and winter, I talked myself back to sense and sensibility. Behave. You said you would. You’d be letting him down. People will tut and judge. You will tut and judge. All the rest of that day I was battered by opposing factors, big strong factors, and equally matched in this ring of indecision. And then he came home. I saw his smile, his welcome and felt like a creep, the worst kind of creep. I had, a few days before, contacted a local college about joining an art course full time. I had an interview on Monday next. As I sat him down and told him my plan, he didn’t understand. More creep. I told him of the interview. Next year, he asked, smiling his approval. No, I said. Now. Even more creep.

But he came with me for the interview. You’ll start on Wednesday, said the head of art. The course has already begun. I accepted and he said nothing against my decision. I had no car. Small inconvenience he said. Small? We’ll find one. And, within 24 hours, Miss Daisy came into my life. Although he didn’t like me baling the business, abandoning him just on a ‘whim’, he only showed his disapproval through silence, sighing and a bit of head shaking now and then. The following year is history now, the subsequent sales of hundreds of paintings, the move back to the island, the way freedom spoke to me that day and turned my whole life from tinned peaches to crepe suzette. Had I continued the obligatory trudge, I would never have learned to really live.

Now I. have a son about to turn 50. It hardly seems possible. I hope freedom speaks to him too. Freedom is a decision and it lies in the grey of life. The ‘either’ and ‘or’, the black and the white, are just dilemma horns. In between lies the opportunity for colour, a blank canvas, the chance to create a whole new story, not necessarily requiring an abandonment of commitment. Relationships can survive, even thrive on change, however uncomfortable that change may be for a while. But many, no, hundreds of thousands, stay on track, unhappy, unfulfilled, un pretty much everything. We are not here on this earth, in this life, to be humdrum nor trapped. We are here to create magic. And, it takes courage to turn around, I know, courage we all have.

So……what do you want to do next?