Island Blog

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Island Blog – Like Wild Birds

This is how I see it. Tidelines create as I watch, an incoming huge force meeting resistance, another super force. Sailors call it wind over tide, which sounds like a tablecloth lifting teacups, a shatter of inconvenience and mess in a street cafe, like an ‘oops’. The incoming Atlantic is striped as a deckchair, the recalcitrant wind fighting a pointless battle. The tide will in. But the wind is no less of a player. And she is no fool. Any voice against a mighty force can make a difference. She may concede defeat, for now, but she will blow on.

In my ordinary life, I did a lot of blowing against an interminable tide. Life was as it was, and my timeline was my timeline. Many will know this for themselves. I gave my all, as so many did, and still do. And I regret not one minute, well, maybe a few. As those I knew and loved die, it thinks me, and remembers me, of the times I knew they were riding right with me as a wind over tide, and the laughs we had, the way we turned back into our lives, the way we just damn well got on with it. Of the way that connection kept us all going on, no matter what, and with joy and laughter and mistakes and a fierce attitude.

Like wild birds.

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Island Blog – Equinoctial

When you find yourself, suddenly, as an author, as if you’ve suddenly elevated to some level above everyone else, with the looking down puff up that comes with so called fame, albeit momentary, it is not what you originally thought it might be. Told, as I was, that I need to blog to engage with Facebook, to put myself out there, no matter how much I might hate being the focus, how much I still hate my body, how little confidence I have when everyone is looking at me and waiting for something. For what? Oh I got that bit. People, my people, my could be friends are looking up at me and I don’t like it. I was down there with you, but yesterday, playing on the streets, hooling the hoop, laughing in the lunch queue, swapping stories of how frickin awful the weather was on wash day, and how much we hate Mondays. I remember, deciding, I had to move back home. Now, let me be clear. I did not, and never will, elevate myself because of what I have achieved. What I have achieved, what any other person has achieved, tells me absolutely nothing about who they are, who I am. Are we good to our partner, kids, family? Are we kind, always, understanding, always? Are we able to forget self in moments of stricture and irritation. Are we? That is how we are, in truth.

I felt the cold today, the nudge of Autumn. I have a few jerseys (jumpers in American) and I required a more substantial one today. And that, jumper, jersey thing brings me to a point. As I write, a blog, or read other stories, or listen to them, I hear a word I thought I knew well being ‘wrongly’ presented. I check it out. The Brits have one way of spelling this word and omg the Americans have moved a whole consonant. My musical mind, the heretofore understood mathematics of language rising up in me like Mozart in a mood, fights this. It was spelled this way, for ever! But not now. Now we flex, those of us who will. We become equinoctial even when being that close to any change is, at best, a right pain in the mental arse, at worst, a tsunami.

I felt the chill today. Actually, that is pants. I felt it a wee while ago, but did the whole pretend thing, and amn’t I great at that! It isn’t that I don’t want the equinoctial change, I love it, but there is a difference when we get older. I think of all those who are terrified of the long winter months without support, without food. I have never been there, but I see it and, as I write from a place of stone-build, a fire burning and food in my fridge, choices even, my humble stumbles. If writing could change anything, I would write it. Even as I say that, I know that brave journalists, brave writers have done exactly that. I bow to them.

We allow ourselves to become so caught up in our own stuff. I do it myself. But, but, and but again, when I notice I am all caught up in the sludge of ME, and it sickens me enough to march up the stairs, to dress myself, to pull on my boots and to step out even though that judge inside my head is urging Rest, Don’t Bother, Stay Home, Do Nothing, I push through and it is a push. Once outside the door, I breathe in the cold, hear the Robin, see the rain, feel it, watch the bowing of roses in the wind. I get in my car and I go. I’m not sure where, but the where of where I was is not the where I want. I want to embrace a change, not as a watcher, but as an integral part. I want to be equinoctial.

I have no idea how to do this, have no plans, but I reckon, am sure, that there are gazillions of people who will be right there, clueless, like me, wanting change, scared stiff, stuck, fed up, lonely.

Hallo You.

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Island Blog – Accidie and Work it Out

Well, I’m having none of that. Mental Sloth? No, no, not me. Or so I say. But the truth is, we all know it from time to time, that stimied stultifying collops, sorry, collapse into the I’m not going anywhere, even though I should, ought, should, ought, to. And, even if we do have to go to that Anywhere, we fight it every step of the way. And then comes a morning when we feel like Peter Pan, or I do, and nothing, not nothing will stop me flying out there. The trudge sludge days are the way life is. I do wonder what it is in that clear and researched knowledge that makes us think we are wrong to feel that way, when everyone does, over and over. What I have learned is to unjudge myself, and to celebrate the days of crash/ lift and shift. However, I do know that accidie may well be lurking. I don’t look for it, she, him, but they just might be awaiting the chance to pounce and for no reason at all. I dig down for the roots of accidie and I find them, tendrils that go back, if my fingers can trace them, to childhood, through teenage, through marriage, through motherhood. It seems to me we love/hate guilt.

Today, this morning, I awoke to sunshine, or the beginnings of it. I smelled it coming through my wide open window and we met in togetherness, once I had worked out my eyeballs and a dissociation from a completely bonkers dream. We humans take a while to get there. I heard a robin sing out like Pavarotti, as they do this time of year. No other bird sings and that makes sense. They no longer seek a mate. So what on earth the robin is doing, making dawn melody is both a wonderfulness and a wonderment. So not a chooser of accidie.

I drove to the harbour town, swinging around the bends, the single track gloriously free of tourists, not that I mind tourists, we need them, but their driving skills are so insouciant and it minds me of something. Lack of research. We have tippy roads, cows everywhere, sheep, deer. We have ridonculous corners, big drops, loads of reversing opportunities and more, locals in a hurry, going to sort something and needing to get there, doctors, vets, and more. I’ve been here 46 years and I am still hoping for a touristic change!

Home and a walk into the wild, hearing a young man sorting a fallen beech, talking to him about regeneration, about the danger to touristy kids on fallen limbs, because he knows about woodland, and also about the complete cluelessness of visitors who, it seems to me, expect fallen trees in a wild woodland to be health and safety safe. I am glad that my kids lived in a time when we said, Work it out, Keep vigilant, Check where you are, and then, Go for it.

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Island Blog – See You There

We do what we do, what we can. We step out there every single day, sometimes with the underworld sludging our forward movement, all those doubts and obsolete plans and the damn chatter monkeys that always fill the spaces. But we keep going and that is a very big thing. Being human, we have a strong hold on the life force, even when we might consider letting go. Finding a reason to be cheerful can be a daily frantic search through the dusty dark corners of our capacious minds, but we keep looking anyway, because the alternative is a steady sink into a pit with no footholds, and in the middle of the biggest of Nowheres. Even those around who make out they never feel low, sad, unhappy, depressed, disconnected, doubting, hopeless or desperate, do, believe me. They, perhaps, just see any such admission as a sign of weakness, and, perhaps again, they have managed to build multiple layerings of protection atop any rise of darkness, until even they believe it doesn’t exist.

Although it is over four years since Himself took off to join his mummy and the angels, I have never really mourned for him, at least not in any messy breakdown sort of way, nor into uncontrollable tears that might have rendered my nose blocked, my head pounding and my face a strew map of a continent randomly divided. I don’t want him back, not as he became, anyway. If I miss him, I miss the way he could lift my spirits, comfort, encourage and support; the way, I think, that he showed his love, not being a romancer at heart; the impulsive Shall we go out tonight invitations. Walking just now in the sunshine (how wonderful to even write that word!) I feel a powerful rise of emotion, the roaring in my ears which once would have heralded tears, tears I haven’t been able to shed for many decades. As I bring his face onto centre stage, he is young again and grinning wide, his eyes bright. Do I miss you? I ask him, knowing that I don’t. What I miss is Love, pure and simple and yet not simple at all. I can feel love all around me, from my kids, my sibs, my friends, my fellow islanders, but that love is not the same as one between two people for whom the other is the only other; the only one you don’t mind being stuck with in any situation, like a tailback, a broken down lift, outside a ‘sorry, no tickets left’ venue, anywhere, everywhere. There is always another option because the most important element in any situation is being with that other person, not the stuff around it. What a rare and beautiful thing, and one I realised, saw super clear just now, on a walk I didn’t complete.

So, I am open and honest about feeling deeply sad for myself, for my loneliness, full of self-doubts and confusion in my go-for-it navigation of a world I never wanted to inhabit. As I bounce out there like Tigger every single damn day, grinning, thankful, uplifting others, making friends, cracking jokes, it is my truth because this attitude is a daily choice, not a lucky-for-her gift from birth. Most days, really most of them, I believe in this attitude, and then comes a day when I want to cry me an ocean, never mind a river; when I just want to hide away, to not be seen by anyone, to disappear completely. I know, for sure, that everyone has such days, but that is not my point. To be honest about it, particularly to oneself, is to fully embrace the holistic human state instead of pretending everything is tickety boo all of the time. We all are the drivers in our own lives, and nobody wants to slop around in a cloak of gloom and misery, but it is exhausting to stiff-upper-lip (whatever that means) all of the time. And, it isn’t reality, and I honestly believe that good people who are doing their very best to live life to the full might stop judging themselves so harshly. Accepting down days, admitting loneliness, self-doubt and so on, isn’t comfortable, but it is real and honest and normal and understandable.

Social media is uplifting twaddle a lot of the time, although I have uplifting quotes stuck to the walls of my kitchen, and they do help. The hourly news are about as ghastly as can be. Some days feel just as ghastly. Our culture is all based on couples. Two steaks, two tickets, two, two, two. One to hold the front end, the other, the back; one to check this, the other to check that; one to joke, the other to laugh; come for supper invitations are usually for two, adventures are shared and somehow a tad pointless alone. Going out is always uncomfortable at first as an unwilling single. Do I look ok, is this the right wine, should I mention this, how can we (we) avoid that, or him or her? Somewhere in between, we live on my lonely friends, doing our best, falling, rising, laughing, crying and then doing it all again, over and over again until the wind changes and our candle gutters to the wick, once and for all.

See you there. It’s guaranteed I’ll make you laugh.

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Island Blog – Wording

Words are my thing. I am no worder, powerful within the pages of research books, no academic Brilliantine. But words are my thing. They fly about my head like birds, assault me, trip me up, wake me in the night, confound me in the day when I’m scrubbing the loo. I am a word vessel. So, when words bugger off, their absence is like I’m naked, which I am so not. I can walk deep into my Mother Nature, feeling my way, searching in the brush, the fallen, the ancient, the rising, and find no words at all beyond Wow, or Thankyou, or Shit I just soaked my Boots. Not enough, not good at all. And, yet, resting in the ‘how it is right now’, I consider. Perhaps i need a rest. Perhaps the wordness of words need one too. Everyone is always actively searching for a word, the right word, as if words tumble away into the vast void of everything lost, for now. Right words must be exhausted.

In my younger days, I freaked out if I couldn’t find a word, when, inside my head I had this clear and beautifully perfect one somewhere just behind the bins, behind the confusion and questioning of my life, one which refused to grace my lips. I would leave an encounter, furious at my lack. It thinks me, with a wonder. Maybe it was not for me at that moment, infuriating as that felt at the time. We humans seem to think we are in the upper echelons of pretty much everything, thus, in control. Maybe words don’t want to be controlled. I certainly don’t want to be, so, maybe I get it. Perhaps I am being taught a life lesson, because this is not the first time, and I will be wise to notice.

So, I can flounder, for now, abject myself to a considerably higher power, and wait for the words to fly back in, as the Redwings will soon, the Mistle Thrush, the Autumn visitors. There is no loss, as long as I don’t buy into loss. I know who I am, and there is no weakness in bowing down, in letting go of ego. In fact, I believe it is a strength.

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Island Blog – A Third Chance

Been absent from my desk a while. I chuckle at that, remembering my young days when that absent thing would have heralded a whole bucketload of shit, when the Rulers ruled and the whole western world was caught up in a Hyancinth Bucket capitulation to Appearances. Omg I am so damn thankful for the leaving of this, even if it just a beginning. The more young folk rebel, the happier I am. So many of the rules are ridiculous, as so many others are wonderful. It seems to me that Someone decided to take ‘ruling’ a stick or two beyond acceptable, and we cowed. Not now. Not now. Or so I hope.

However, this not now thing can bring in an overload of rejection. It has always been that way, over manifold times, when the initial reject becomes a loudy and damaging rebellion. I see it happen, and know, having lived this long, that, hopefully, the damage to those who don’t need it, don’t want it, flowers into a new and peaceful growth. I’m no fool. Just aware of this troubled world, the changes within her protective shell, and hopeful, always that.

I didn’t want to write all that, not at my outfirst. I. wanted to write about the week. past, the funeral of a young woman, too young. It thinks me, has thought me for a few days. It is said, and often, through the young pert lips of my young friends, and laughingly, that they never want to grow old. I suspect this young dead woman might have liked the idea, her daughter, ditto. But I get it. I said the same, and often, as I watched my oldings go through all the tests and shit that seems to come with olding. They, my folks, accepted, fought, smiled and left the planet, and it is sort of ok when the person you see heading off has no teeth and forgets to wash for days. But, but and but, before any of that stilling whacks the bejabers out of what everyone thought was ok, let me tell you a thing or two, now that I am in the Oldie Zone. Listen up.

I will dance you off the floor. I know I had cancer and might again. I know that every single day i have to crank myself upright (laughingly), that I can find friends to laugh with, that I adore tunes, and have a great playlist, that I so so want young folk to see that being ‘old’ is not what it once was, or sometimes is. Being old is a third chance at dance. Some never get there. Lucky me.

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Island Blog – Dammit, Sea Dog

It has been four years to the day since he died, right here in his home. I don’t remember feeling like this last year, but this year I do. So, what is the this I am feeling? Perhaps it is loneliness, yes, for sure; perhaps regret at all the things we didn’t talk through, yes, that too. As I talk with my kids, his kids, on the subject of parenthood, a difficult role for everyone, no matter the books you read, I realise how little guidance any of us are given. Nowadays, thankfully, the culture has changed for the better. Access to supportive help from enlightened writers and therapists is widely available. Conversations never countenanced when we were young parents are spoken openly and accepted. Parents admit to learning instead of holding fast to what doesn’t work, never did and never will, afraid to lose control of a situation. In my own experience when I visit as Granny, I can see how communication has a flow to it, between a troubled child and a learning parent, and it smiles me. I do remember reading once, when I knew I had been responsible for completely messing up an already volatile situation, that to. say Sorry, Please Forgive Me, without any reference to how the child might have been equally to ‘blame’, and being astonished. Had either of my parents ever said sorry to me, or taken responsibility for their obvious blunder in that volatile situation? Definitely not. In fact, that is quite possibly whyI beat myself up so wonderfully, even now.

Once I had absorbed the fabulous power of saying Sorry, Please Forgive Me to a small person, somewhere down there below me, I had to find the courage to risk rejection. Ah! Now we have it. The biggest fear of all, capped only by finding myself alone in the dusk of an African bush as Hyenas head out on the hunt. I don’t remember if it worked or when, but I never forgot the lesson. Being humble is not for the faint-hearted, to be sure.

Back to this day. He died, and left us. We’ve done ok, most of us. But when the Big Friken Man goes, julst like that, it a definite off pissing. Oh, we knew he was going but that is so not the point. When the gone does it’s gone thing, everyone is stalled. And, even after four years, that influence is a halt in a day, in the day when he took one breath and that was that. A body stilled forever is a something to sit beside, and I am glad I did, although ‘glad’ is not how I felt, nor do even now. What a ridiculous word. Just saying.

I think of him a lot today, the way he made things happen, sudden parties (many), whale encounters, way out there when no other boat had seen anything much, the way he drove me mad over many years, the way he loved our children, awkward and unsure about communicating the deep love he felt. The way he bought me flowers, the way he suddenly looked my way, and I knew I was safe. The bastard in him, the lover, protector, the influence, the everything in my life, dammit.

dammit, Seadog. I am a little drunk.

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Island Blog – And, I am thankful

I hear the flapsnatch of white bed linen on the washing line and the sough of this welcome warm wind through the green fingers of the ancient scots pines. They flank my island home, soldiers, a battalion of protectors. I tilt my eyes up to the blue, the glorious blue, as the meep of Goldcrests I cannot see, feed in the woods. I laugh as one sheet escapes my hands to coat a small willow tree, turning her into a bride, or a choir girl and my laughter skitters away, up and away into the swirl of words and songs, stories and longings. I see the sunlight touch cloud edges, wilding them into spun gold, just for a moment, and I was there to catch that moment.

I see the Rose Bay Willowherb sway like a chorus of dancers, almost to a beat. I see sunshine glow through maple leaves, lift the silvered backs of leaves turbulenced in the breeze, as if they are showing their knickers. Rose bushes swagger, the sea-loch bobs softly, catching diamonds. Honey bees fly past, travelling many hundreds of miles there and back from a source of nectar, watch one on the lowly ragwort, the so-called weed, the only plant the beautiful Cinnebar moth will lay her eggs upon, the one plant so cruelly discarded and burned by those who don’t know what they are doing. I watch families walk by, talking, laughing, looking in wonder at the landscape of which I am a strong part. We chat sometimes, I ask them How is your Holiday, and they smile and look around as if they have arrived in a place made of dreams of songs, of stories and longings, with gentle natural peace as an all surround sound. I hear the odd car, but it is only someone else who lives here going about their day.

I have seen few bees this strange summer, but I have seen them. I have gone to visit the space the hives used to sit in holding thousands of stingers who never want to sting, busy with the production of honey, the only food on the planet that will never go bad, no matter how many years, even generations, it is left untouched; the food which, if applied to a wound, will generate faster healing than any medication, which will ease any illness from a sore throat to depression, just a big spoonful a day. In the empty space, up in the soughing pine woods, there is a sadness, yes, a sense of what it meant for the beekeeper to let them go, to move them on, what it meant to him. But those wonderful creatures live on, I know that, with new bee lovers who love them, care for them, listen to them. And that smiles me. I still wish i had seen more bees this summer. Without honey bees we are in big trouble, as you may already know.

The clouds are curving now, conjoining into a rather fetching grey. Over there, loaded, planning a sneeze, methinks, or maybe not. This motherly wind is warm as soup and she just might ping them away. Either way, I am watching it, smelling each change, loving that I am alive and wild and part of this extraordinary gift.

And I am thankful, for all of it.

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Island Blog – One Young Woman RIP

A few days, nothing much, just days, either legging it or dragging. Rain falls, wind blows, stories exchange somewhere near the vegetable aisle in the supermarket. Routines are kept or challenged, food is consumed, gardens tweaked, walks walked, admin attended to. A well known and familiar huddle of days, divided by weekends, as weekends always do. Routines dither, mealtimes shift, demands lessen, perhaps, whilst others march in like soldiers with bayonets at the ready. Clothes need washing for skool on Monday, hockey, horses, football, choir, athletics, etc. Freedom beckons for some and it is heady. Folk gather, celebrate community, a shared meal. Fun is out there.

But not for one young woman, for her daughter, her family. Her weekend was her last on this earth. Cancer is ferocious, or can be. She wasn’t even 40. When I think of that time in my life, I was strong, bonkers and never thought about dying, not at all. Death did not stalk me. Oh, I was aware of the Ferryman, for sure, but only for an old granny, or others who topped me by at least the same again. It is still almost impossible, no, impossible, to accept such a young life just stopped. Just. Like. That. But it happened and the village is quiet. There is little chat near the vegetable aisle today. We are in stasis. It isn’t about any of us, no matter if we knew her well or not, but there is a big Something about a well known someone leaving the earth, us, for ever. It makes no sense. None.

There are plenty funerals here. Small community, everyone knows everyone. But not a young life, not a young mum, not her. We will gather and mourn, but, eventually, we will all get on with our own lives, our own stuff. Not her daughter, though, not her mum and dad, her brother, her grandparents, no. They will live with the death of this young woman for, probably, ever.

I am glad I knew her, a bit. I loved her strong lively spirit, even in the early stages of this all-consuming killer. She was always upbeat. I have no idea what went on in her mind in the scary hours, but she presented a typical island woman strength when ‘out there’. I aspire to that.

RIP Sweet Girl.

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Island Blog – Fiddling Sticks

My favourite music, the fiddle. The word alone lifts my feet into dance. Fiddle, rhymes with diddle, piddle, widdle, skiddle, and I could add a few more. All of them traverse me into lift, laughter my aide de buoyant. That might be French, might not. I’m not for caring much right now about semantical language shifts, nor their accuracy. Actually, fiddling is rarely an accurate science. I know because I had stood standing (a rare thing for me) at a ceilidh, just to watch the wild crazy sawing of that bow across four strings, the bow and bend as the fiddle and the player become one with the dance. I hear more beats to the bar, more sudden shifts into minor, into major, I hear it and it wilds me too. Even if others don’t get the musical seasonal shift, I can sense their excitement as it happens. Needless to say, there is often chaos in the field, a lot of crashing into each other, laughter lifting like spice and sugar into the over-breathed air above our heads, and we forgive, as our toes sting like hell. We just dance, we just move, we just collide and apologise and move on. We have to or we might end up as part of the single track road.

Sticks. After all the winds we have buffeted against this summer season, we find sticks every which where, spun off from big limbs, like they are no longer useful. And, on the picking up of them, I get it. It’s a bit like clearing out a wardrobe (such an ancient name) and shucking away those dodgy frocks and blouses (another ancient word) for the moving along. That’s a season in a word. Move it along. It seems to me that nature is much better at this than we are, we daft humans who hang on to what was fine in the past, and is no longer. Nature just spits out. Maybe there’s a lesson there. However, and notwithstanding, (sorry, indulgence there) it is not easy, because we have this propensity to hold on to our past. I was young, looked good in this, once, thing. It wonders me, even as I know the feeling. And not just in bodily coverings, but in mindal (my word) acceptance. If we could, can, spit out the dead sticks in our lives, just like that, how might we free ourselves? From past pain, from regrets, from the feeling of pointlessness (way too many esses in that), how might we be able to enjoy the seasonal changes in our own lives? And our lives are seasonal, not as an accurate science, no way, but as a random crazy unknown thingy. Which it is.

In our turbulent times, as we try to navigate the yet unknown, who the frick are we? We have seen Sea take Land which seemed solid. We have been there when the light died and the black came in and held. We have danced with the reckless and longed to stay in that moment. We have loved, we have lost, we have done bloody well by the way. So what now? Who is caring, who is in charge, and what is it about that which tells us we need a leader anyways, beyond our own ability to flick and flex with a new dynamic dance? I say we need only ourselves, and that might need inner work, but that is where our power lies, not over anyone else, no way, no, no no, but over our own selves.

It’s a fiddlesticks sort of desert, seasons shifting like waves in a menace, sudden, unexpected, wild and infuriating, much as life is now. Meet you there.