Island Blog

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Island Blog – Nothing So Finite

The birches glow purple across the sea-loch as dawn hefts night over her shoulder and away. No, not purple, not just one colour descriptor. There is wine in there, the deepest darkest Rioja, some indigo (how come that rich word does not demand a capital letter?), amber, chestnut, a little, ebony and ivory. Not just purple, never ‘just’ anything. However, all that aside, the flow and blend of faraway birches in winter colour, arrests me. I watch them for a bite, even though they’re not going anywhere, rooted as they are to the whatever of whatever. The sky is blue-grey like our young heifers on the Tapselteerie hills, and, like them, refusing to be contained. Every time I look up, the dynamic changes. Flat and apparently peaceful, they erupt into crescendos and subside again, fooling us all. Feeding those female heifers took all my courage, the blue-greys I mean. Like rebellious teens with a strong sense of self and a kick-ass attitude to any authority, they would bound like puppies. However puppies are usually afoot whereas these wenches powered over me, canting and taunting with way too many kickerly hooves. One sent me flying once, the little madam. I got too close to her girly bits and she lashed out. I caught it on my knee and, in slow motion, flew miles, or it felt like it, before crashing to the unwelcoming ground in a most ungainly heap. Needless to say, as I slowly came back to myself, the whole playground had come for a looksee. 20 noses puffed sweet silage breath into my face and all I could see were legs, legs with hooves attached, far too many of them to make sense of the nose count. I touched one, wet and soft and like rubber. I looked into enquiring eyes. A child’s eyes.

Walking today, the wind is coldsome and from the east. It thinks me. What countries lie east of me? Ah, yes, the cold lands, the Swedish, Danish, Norwegian lands. Oh the stories I can hear as the wind brings them in. Tales of hardship and cold, of desolate winters in unbroken places that could break a person in the end. Tales of survival against odds I will never experience, the harsh honing of a human body, the dark, the endless winter dark, the pervasive cold, the snow children moaning at loose window panes, the biting teeth of a wind that will not abate until the very last minute. Of frozen lakes, no fish, of impassable tracks, no food supplies, of harpies and wood sprites and other complex variables that can, and will, derange an isolated mind, break a body, fracture a family. Of course, any environment can do that but my imagination likes to fly and the very thought of only 3 hours of light in a whole long winter shivers me. I have read the stories, the memoirs and the fiction and I can see how easy it might be to capitulate and to sink. We only have laden clouds to winter us through and very different stories to tell. Today, I might say, inside a story, I took my wellies off for 5 whole minutes, dancing in the freedom of toe escape. I scrubbed the mould off my legs and clothes and basked in the lick of flames from the fire we all fight over because A, it is pathetic due to the wet wood that would so love to dry given half a chance, and, B, there are way too many of us doing this basking thing. Plus, the smell of wet sock, unwashed feet etcetera is only for the desperate to endure. Some of us slink back to the cold. I have done this, lived this and, with hindsight, loved that I did.

The track is coppered now with beech leaves, a warm colour, a lie but I love that lie. Is it a holding on to the last warmth of summer past? Is it a transition, yes it is definitely that. Standing here, watching not the birches, purple or not purple, but the skerry, pumped like a lunatic with rising salt and spume and flying birds and danger, it thinks me. Do I like transition? Hmmmm. Nope. Who the hell does? Only those who think too much before they answer that question and I smile when I hear that think translating into Politely Positive Response. Way too much blah coming. The sky is darkening and is putting on a spectacular blue-grey show. There’s a moon landing ahead. I watched the moon this early morning. She’s a crescent just now, clouded in puffs of those lower in the ranks, those fluff balls loaded up until their bellies birth, and all over thee and me.

How extraordinary life is. How transitional. How small we are. Purple? No. Nothing so finite.

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Island Blog – Roots

The first time I set foot on this island and I knew I was home, not because of his story but because of my story, yet to reveal itself to me. How very far we can wander in this life, our roots keeping faithful track. We will not let you go, they say from deep deep down in the ancestral core. I had no reason to know any of this, not at first footfall. It was simply that something seemed to rise from the rocks and the muir through my feet, into my legs and on up into my heart, my soul, as if the roots had been waiting for me a very long time, longer by far than my own time. Although it took a while for me to find my place, although life was sometimes just too hard, nothing changed my knowing. I was home. I am home, among my own people, their stories, their lives, even as I knew nothing at all about any of it. The cold, the wet, the slap and fret, the endless winter, mould growth, frozen pipes, chilblains on chilblains, hot tears, wild fears, none of these made me doubt, made me hanker for somewhere else. Guests are coming, must be Spring despite the snow still falling. But I cannot. Fall.

No hardship born, imagined or played out could change my mind. I am home. Breathe it in, suck it up, breathe, wait inside the wildness, the raw bloody wildness, fickle weather, my damaged plans, my lunatic fantasies of escape that turned to dust as quickly as they formed, all melted away by a merry lick of fire, a babble of feral children, a few of them I don’t recognise as my own. In this place my heart beats along to the rhythm of the stones, the shush of the sea, the scream of the storms, the sight of swans overhead, a whisper of wings in the sky. I dance to it, sing along to its melody, an integral part of something old, something new, something ancient. I catch the stories of lives long done, the bones buried deep in the island’s heart, never to be forgotten, held safe. Where grows the heather old feet have walked. There is old laughter in the sky and old tears rushing the burns into spate. On it goes and on and I am proud to find my forbears lived and walked the islands, knew what I know now, made the wraparound Atlantic their protector, provider and sometimes their cradle unto death.

Even as I never knew way back then, I know something now. I didn’t find this place, this home. It found me.

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Island Blog – Candles, Perception and Stories

I love candles. In the dark times, and it is here, the dark. On this beautiful island, once you know the heartbeat of the rocks of it all, the shush and crash of Atlantic flow, the sog and bog and drench and feist of wild weather, you buy boots that will allow you in and over and through. You do, trust me. Not many folk will tolerate so much rain, such trixy winds, gales even, that rise just when you reckon peace will reign for another day, and we, who do, have watched them barrel in, tearing down trees, flattening grasses and relocating washing left on a line. And just as suddenly, they move on. I wonder, these days, where they might go. The perfect weather is a gift I would buy, but that gift is just a gift and not a given. There are weeks of rain and no rain for the odd day, pretty much.

Here, there is a load of dark and that has a lot to do with the rain. If I look at the weather for the next 4 weeks, it says Rain, Rain, Rain, all day long. Of course it never is. If you have a fox intuition, you just watch the clouds and grab your moment for a scoot oot, as I do. Funny that……I notice and hear from those I notice, that they don’t get how spontaneous they need to be up here. Some visitors leave. I watch them go, all angry and with faces set in judgement as if we islanders deliberately brought in the rain in a witchy sort of way, the sideways in-your-face blattering soak that challenges their choice of walking boot and melts their mascara as they wheech a puddle into a tsunami. Do they think I/we have control? We don’t, I assure you. It thinks me. Sunshine all of the time, I tell myself, would just be so ordinary and island life is anything but. Folk who live here and last here become as flexible as dancers in both mind and body. We learn, living in the wettest place on earth, to make something out of everything, even to smile at the rain. We call ourselves pluviophiles and proudly. We laugh at the days to come and let our words be snatched away in the gales. We light candles in the dark and say we are lucky, so lucky, to be living in a beautiful and safe place. Privately we roll our eyes at the whole thing, sigh and cuss but that is only done, as I said, privately.

Dynamic living is not something that comes naturally for us all. It is more of an inner choice, a decision to celebrate whatever life sends our way and in the very place we make our home. Sadness comes, of course it does, but that is the same for every single human soul, the wishing for something different is universal, no matter the weather, location, a person’s material wealth or lack of it. I learn these things daily, remind myself to be thankful for whatever I have and to ignore the doubts and fears, all imagined anyway. The most wonderful people I have ever met are those who have endured and survived situations, people and events that I cannot even imagine surviving and it is all due to a strong spirit, that invisible power that refuses to give up or give in. I aspire to such strength as my life has been tame by comparison. That doesn’t negate the impact of inner darkness, inner rain or an inner punching gale inside my own head and heart, but it does help to know that ‘this, too, shall pass’ as it always does and the key is perception. How I see something, anything, decides my response to it.

I walk among the sodden trees, the crushed coppery bracken, negotiating the fat puddles, the lift and squelch of rain soaked mud and I know, again, that I am free to just let life be, the dark, the rain, the wind and then that sudden bright day, the sky open, the burns gurgling in spate as sunshine sparkles the bubbles. Clean, clear mountain water rushing down, carving yet deeper into the rocks releasing stories long buried. I hear them flutter around me like birds, lifting into the sky, higher and higher until they turn back into rain, falling once more so that we who still live will not forget how life goes on, and on and on. We are here but fleetingly. Let us leave our own story behind when we go, the story of a life lived to the full no matter the weather, the darkness, the burning sunshine, the rain, because there will be a future someone who will need to hear it, someone who needs our light for their dark. How do I live with what I live with? There’s a story there, just waiting to be told.

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Island Blog – We had it all

I write what is real, for me, and at the time of that reality, although I did hesitate before writing this one. Why is that? Because, when I consider who might be reading, it is only I in charge of continuity and yesterday’s blog was all about other people, other’s pain, otherness. So, it matters to me, still, what people think and that, I decide is a good thing, in balance. It takes a lifetime to find that balance. I know it. But this day has turned into many many hours of thoughts a-tumble, birthing many words, many thoughts and, if I am to ‘be real’ I must needs spew all that out when the edges of myself turn on me.

I woke early, about 4 am, thanks to a squeaking dog that wanted out. Pitch, out there, no street lights, no neon flash, nothing, like being inside a huge forest without a torch. A stumble ground. I knew it as soon as my eyes opened, as soon as I turned on the light and groaned at the unwelcome 4 am thing. I rose and smiled. I keep smiles all around the house, as many keep spectacles, pulled on my dressing gown and headed downstairs. I flicked on the kettle, made strong coffee, let out the dog. The wind was warm, bizarrely so for this time of year, pummelling up from the South, blustery, irritable, pushy. I breathed it in, caught bits of Southern stories, let the fist punches of wind ruffle my scalp, play curveball around my bare legs. I looked to the sky. Nothing. No moon, no stars, no light at all. Another day of this, I muttered, rain, punchwind and the sky locked down with clouds. Then I found another smile. They are, as I have already said, everywhere in my home, on tables, my desk, beside the door, inside pots, pans, dishes and drawers. They are my friends, and yours too, should you ever visit. I will never succumb to the blues, or not for more than a few minutes, occasionally a day.

The day drags on. I consider this, now dressed and ready for the dawn which is still hours away. I think of others still asleep this weekend, a Saturday lie-in, a different routine, time to play a bit, to family-up, maybe to wash the car or other exciting adventures that never get a chance Monday to Friday. To laze the morning, share late breakfast, read the papers at leisure, do everything at leisure. Shared stuff. I remember it. I also remember taking it all for granted, no question, no doubt. At times it drove me crazy, made me mad and stompy and sort of lost. I wanted to be on my own, longed for it and often. Now I have it and it isn’t as I hoped it would be. I am now CEO of my own company and the only person in this ‘company’ is me. There are no more opportunities for sharing, for the fight for independence within marriage, the spar and jar and tar throwing from one side of a shared road to the other. There is nobody there, nobody. Shall we play Scrabble? I ask the air. Or take a picnic to the Alpha Beta pier? Would you like tea? Oh, I think I’ll make jam tarts. Et Cetera.

Oh, it isn’t that I don’t have wonderful friends, children, family, neighbours and opportunities but at the weekend, they will coorie in to each other, inhabit their own homes and families, just as we did once. I can feel, at weekends, like the end of a joint of meat abandoned for the resident dog, the tough bit, the bit that is important in order to keep the whole juicy and moist, but useless at the meal. I stare out of my windows to a view that most would give anything to enjoy on a daily basis. I wave at the local weekend walkers, always in pairs or as family groups. I watch them laugh, move on. And here I sit, already 10 hours upright and find myself longing for the night to come. I have walked – slowly, slowly, s l o w e l y to fill in time. I have listened to the stories of the pine trees, the hazels as they sigh relief at a break from the punching gales. I see the beech leaves, sodden and mulched into the track and still copper sunlight beautiful. I stand awhile…….I stand awhile…. at the point where I can see the inlet and out to the skerry. I hear my children laughing, watch them cavort across the old stone pier, hear their shrieks of delight as they catch green-back crabs with bacon, a safety pin and a pole. I tend their scratches and bloodied knees, smell the seaweed, the salt, as the Atlantic swell pulls and punches ad infinitum, the spray cobwebbing our faces, gasping our breaths, making us laugh. I see the old boat, old Nina, the first, bobbing on her mooring. I remember.

Home now and the day is pulling t’wards night and I am glad of it. It is said that memories are everything. I incline my nod to that and then I challenge. Not everything, I say. We may get used to the not everything of things over time but we are never the same as we were when we ran in the sun, fought like cats, argued about silly things, took everything for granted and deluded ourselves into thinking that we wanted more than we had. We had it all, had we but known it.

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Island Blog – Rememberus

This day is Remembrance Day. I know it is customary to remember on Sunday but I hook my line to the actual day. Today. I reel in those who were dead before their time, all of them. Although it is never an ok time to die, not if you are loved and still want to live just a bit more, this sharp snap of the line came anyway. So much I wanted to say, to ask, to laugh with you about, even, as in many cases, just the time to get to know you better. You could be my mother, my father, my sister, my brother, my best friend, my child. The rippling out of such grief is like a whole new wasteland beneath your feet. You wonder why the whole world hasn’t stopped, well, dead. You idle through the days feeling pointless. You were something, somebody to someone, a one you took for granted would always be there for you, a someone who made you feel that your little life really meant something, was important, powerfully influential. It’s as if that sudden death wiped out a whole carefully built beauty of experiences and secrets shared, moments that lit flames you never knew could be lit at all.

Although I write this, I have no experience of such a sudden loss. I feel the pain vicariously. To have received that telegram, that policeman at the door, that phone call, shudders me. It could have happened to me, but it didn’t. I have spoken with those who know, firsthand, this shattering agony and then watched them sink and diminish, lose their strength, their spirit, falter at what we on the outside of the inside of this awful shit might consider nothing much. Going out to buy milk: taking the dog for a walk: answering the phone: washing, eating, changing the bed, little things that overnight turn into impossible mountains stuck smack in a once familiar path. Their shoes are wrong for this terrain. They don’t recognise the face in the mirror. There is no forward.

And then, overtime, they rise, these brave, lost, scared and angry people. I’ve watched them do it. They walk now, as those women did during wartime and long after when brain shattered men and women returned damaged, in need of help and receiving none, or little. They force themselves up and out. They remind themselves that all those infuriating platitudes are meant well. Bit by bit they re-engage with small talk, very small talk, peacetime talk. The weather, local gossip, criticisms based on absolutely no information. Their eyes glaze but, politely, their shoes remain affixed to the pavement. What they know, what they have been through, is beyond our ken and forever thus.

To the ones who are destined to remain. I salute you. A lost child, a friend, a family member, a partner. You are The Brave, just because of your strong spirit, your determination to survive even when you really didn’t want to.

To the ones who were snatched away, who kept going through all the fear, who loved life enough to leap into the flames, who were caught in an accident, an incident, a tragedy, a twist of fate. You are The Brave.

Rememberus?

I do.

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Island Blog – Be Present

Ooooeeee another gale, barreling in from the silence of the peaceful hours before, like a trumpet invading a gentle string quartet, or the raise of an angry voice at a child’s birthday party. A woman like me might be caught out at sea in a canoe of trust if I believed the sky. I don’t. Not any more. I have learned that what appears (or whom appears) peaceful and easy, warming and seductive, is, or can be, a big fat lie. It doesn’t make me bitter, oh no, it makes me smile, lends me awareness and I can feel my feet flex for change. Good thing too. This is our new world. I walk, listen to the trees as they angst and sing, moan and bend. Hallo my friends. I admit to a gasp beneath the ancient beeches, their limbs stretched way across my path, too way across. I A study of them, the birth mother (trunk) and the young she has sent out in search of the limited light, tells me she overstretched. A creak, and I gasp and stand stock still, just for a moment. I know what I know about trees falling. They warn you. First, they crack, then they groan. If you aren’t hot-wired to earpods, or just immersed in the shout of your inner thoughts, you will hear the warning. I am vigilant. Although I heard the tree chatter today, I knew nothing would fall. I walk under ancient trees, miles long lines of them, old ladies and old men with stories, birds, insects and tree house opportunities held in their limbs, even in outreach. And the gale blows on, as it will, at 60mph for at least 3 more days. So be it.

I watch the jasmine and wisteria creeper break and flap, fall and flounder. The dance of death is beautiful, I see it now, a silhouette of movement no human could replicate. The rain falls inside and out. I watch my very small bit of ceiling break and flap, fall and founder and I have my buckets at the ready. This celebrated break, fall, flap, lala of ceiling will have to come down. It is very small. When someone has lived with entire ceilings falling down, a small one feels like nothing very much. And that thinks me. Experience, experiential life is the best teacher of all. If there is the strength in a person, if that person is not too broken by whatever life has thrown his or her way, he, or she, will find it and he or she will rise into a new land. I cannot explain it, not at all, but I do know the truth of it. From panic, arm flapping and a dash to the loo, to decision and a new perspective that only ever comes from living through the shit and deciding not to stay there or even just not wanting what is – even not knowing what to do next #nomatter, even feeling lost and confused and hopeless and controlled and tiddleypom. I know tiddelypom.

So what am I saying, no, shouting, against the sergeant major voice of the battering gale, the unpredictability of whims, the slam dunk of massive blasts, the weakening fight of my last blooms of colour? I say this. Bend, like the ancient trees. Listen to what nature says. Be present whenever you are out among what grows and has grown and will grow again. Be present.

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Island Blog – Tumbleweeds

You know those times when you venture into something new, something that has your belly all of a quibble in the morning, the doubts like angry Koi (carp) banging against the confines of a plastic pond about 100 miles and even more decisions short of freedom? I know you do, as do I. Off I go into the nowhere of something with my clothes on, my pencil and pad, my car fuelled up, my timing considered, my small dog sorted. Breakfast at five am, just in case I am late for the 10 am clock in. Good flipping lord to that! Nonetheless I wake and rise, bleary and wondering if I am completely bonkers to be doing this, this whatever, stepping without the right boots (what are the right boots?) into a new environ. When I write environ, it happies me, a French word, kind of distancing me from the right here island soaking wet long drive thingy. And, in French, it means ‘About’ and I am so about, wishing the sun would flipping rise so at least my dog will get this early breakfast tiddleypom.

So off I pop, eventually, having secured all things dangerous that never were such before this leaving. I spend a while reassuring the dog that I am gone for the day, alarming her in the process because I keep telling her I’ll be back soon, which I won’t and she kind of gets that with all this overdose of repetition. I check my car for oil, fuel, windscreen fluid, the tyres. I’m going 23 miles for goodness sake, still on the island, and for only 6 hours. My friend is walking said, and now thoroughly bothered, small dog mid-day. What is WRONG with me?

Answer……Nothing at all. Rising from Covid – all of us. Long Term Caring and Bereavement – some of us. Difficult childhood trouble – many of us, rackshattles a soul, diminishes a person, confounds, contracts and confuses her or him. All known parameters swing out and dissolve like sherbert. The boundaries fly off into space, known and trusted familial or friendlial supports bend and some break. The tide of time, this time, arrives not as a sudden tsunami, no. It is like smoke under the door, or a whisper on social media, a moment in the school playground, a cruel word that peers hear, a comment as you leave the shop in some sort of shame, card declined, child in meltdown, a sudden need to get out, get out, get out. Been there each time, this legacy of ripples creating a wave that finds you on the other side of your life as a drowning. I know it.

And then a new thing comes in. The invitation to step into the desert of what if. It comes, trust me, it comes. It infuriates, I resist, I say no and yet the yes in me rises like a koi to the lights, even in the trap of a plastic pond. I think I want the freedom to demand a lake, a mountain tarn, a river, but no, not yet. For now, as I learn to rise again, what I need is a plastic pond with lights. I learn new things, I engage with splendid women, we laugh about how to make a good sandwich, what all this learning affects us, we hug and offer a lift home. We are not Koi in a plastic pond under lights to amuse. We are tumbleweeds in a new desert but with the wind in our favour. We are brave. So are you.

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Island Blog – The Quisling

There is an event coming, let’s say, and we are excited, a big birthday, a birthing, a leaving from longtime in hospital when nobody was sure that leaving thing would ever happen: perhaps an outing to meet an old friend, a weekend away, so many anticipatory delights, I could list for the whole side of a page of A4 and still keep going. And then what? The anticipation is history, the event momentary and, I ask again, Now What? We go back……no, wait, nobody ever goes ‘back’ because everything and everyone changes everything. Not suddenly, as we might wish, but with a slight tilt, a wind shift, a disorientation, a curiosity. We looked forward, oh for so very long to the This thing and when it sped past our eyes like a mosquito on drugs we are still here, stunned and suddenly we notice the cold. We pull our coat around our body, realise that our feet in those ridiculous heels are sore as hell and will suffer us for many days yet to come. We irritate at things or people whom we adored, till this moment of passing. The taxi is late, the rain rains heavier than a cloudfull of Oxford Dictionaries and we see our cold kitchen, the ordinary flat/house/bungalow which looked pretty fab last week as what……..less than it was, that’s what. Even telling ourselves that all people feel this way doubts us. We might know this truth at a logic level but what we feel shouts like a banshee (whatever that is).

Home again, divested of soaked outerwear and inside our ordinariness, the quisling has the stage, the traitor, the mind game player, the voice within. I have one of them (might be two, used to be many more) and I actually believed it, them. I am sure you never did and good for you and all that jazz. This quisling is not necessarily a legacy of critical parents. Not always, but it can be birthed there in those soft and vulnerable years. It might come from school, from teachers, peers, even from an adult with authority who said you wouldn’t amount to much, not with that attitude, that shape, that running nose, or just from life experience. People are not always kind after all. Nonetheless the quisling is born and once born it is like a cuckoo, determined and vicious. I would say Don’t Believe a Word, but I know that’s not so easy as it sounds. I believed because its voice is loud, its roots sunk deep, strong and spreading through my heart as if the ground was mulched and ready for the victor and the quisling is never stronger that after an anticipated happy event because that is when we are most at risk for a fall. It tells us that this is how it should be ALL the time and, because we don’t like where we live or with whom we live, we choose to believe the lie. Choose.

In a wonderfully long life, I know a thing or two. Not three. I’m no guru. But (never start a sentence with a ‘but’!) I know that the quisling lives long. It is up to each one of us to decide if it prospers. I laugh at it now because I have seen it raw and naked, spindly and without a home. Shoo! I say. My home, partner, bungalow, flat, whatever is ok for now. The event was wonderful but it does not define my expectations. I do not go ‘back’. I go forward and should I decide to change anything in my life, be assured I will not be asking for your advice.

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Island Blog – A Swan’s Dilemma

I walk down a track of orange, gold, yellow and blood red. The leaves left to rest beneath the trees to left of me and right remain un-crunched by dogged boots. They lift a little in the breeze as if to acknowledge my passing, landing back down again without a single sound, not even a whisper. On the track I recognise, through the mud and squelch and slidden bootprints, oak, ash, sycamore, beech, chestnut, lime, alder and hornbeam, but only just. The weight of all these walkers have pushed the embrowned leaf fall down, down, down towards the earth’s core or chewed them up as I might chew spinach leaves into a pulp. Standwater is everywhere. I see the still standing grasses and woodland plants I cannot name showing only their heads as they fight to rise above the massive rainfalls of late. This, I tell them, is how it will be from now on, so next year, grow taller. They waggle at me as a light puff of what was a full blown gale yesterday ripples the water. Peering down I see the almost astonishment of what lies at the bottom, rocks, stones, grass still green, for now, waving, and drowning.

Long tail tits piccolo around me although I can rarely see them, so tiny are they, but I know their voices so still whisper a greeting. A robin follows me, or does it lead me? I ask this because at the point when I might well take the short route, it bobs on a branch or two beyond the cut-down and eyes me, black, pitch, a challenge. Ok, I say, I know, I say, I should, I say, and I will. Sunlight dapples the track lifting colour to my eyes, a shine on the rocks like a rainbow, as on the surface of stand water, oily and still as something that isn’t alive at all. Any stillness here is a surprise and a thrill because the weather is a………a what? A bully? Sometimes. A mover and shaker? For sure it is aye that. A music maker? Yes, that’s it. The sound of island weather, the way it alters colour faster than I ever could on a canvas, melding, blending, fracturing, defining, the sound of a lead violin in a wild space, the orchestra in full battle mode. You need a conductor I shout above the storm, yanking open the door and holding tight so I don’t head off, like Dorothy, to Oz. Not that I would mind that much. It sounds like an awfully big adventure.

At the funny bone of the elbow shaped track I no longer have to duck in order to see the skerry. White water, even on a calm day, lifts like white curls around the rock, the surface of which is almost invisible to boats but don’t be fooled as one fishing boat was all those years ago, for it is wide as a mountain and just as high, or is it low? Grounded at the earth’s core, or so I imagine, solid, silent, no flag-flying attention-seeking Halloooo! No. Only the white baby curls and a good navigation system will avoid you disaster and just offshore. So why no ducking? Because the flipping hooligan we ‘enjoyed’ recently, that discordant orchestral mayhem that sucked in and blew out windows, split ancient pines and stripped my roses, also turned even the most determined leaves into tiny flying saucers. Wrenched from the mother ship and without independent flight control, they probably lie now beneath my slidey boots, muddied and rendered mulch well before they were ready. And that is life up here, out here, here on the sticking out end of a big rock combination, granite and basalt, unlikely mates, a marriage of opposites, apposite, no escape and for centuries. The thought rolls my eyes and huffs my breath. Well Done, I mutter. Rather you than me on that one.

A pair of hooper swans are still here. When around 80 of them floated in with a gentle piping honk (or 80 gentle piping honks) a while ago and then left I had thought them gone. I wished them well on. their way, congratulated them on their journey from Iceland and yet this pair remain yet. Weather, again. Where we once knew the bite of a cornet, dis-cornet, at this time of year, encouraging all of those with any sense, those untethered to this land such as cows, horses, sheep and humans, to elevate in search of warmer climes, we have introduced confusion. It is mild here, wet, yes, windy, yes, but mild.

I understand a swan’s dilemma.

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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.