by

Island Blog – See That

That’s what we say in Scotland. Well, in some parts of this wonderful country. We say ‘See that’ and it doesn’t necessarily mean we see what remarkables us. We might smell it, or hear it, or feel it or notice it, but the verb is all about vision, as we know it. And even that ‘as we know it’ thingy can confound others who stick to the senses as separate and well defined over long years whilst the ‘See Thats’ trickle like water over the human boundaries of the sensory divide.

I remember meeting it in a bus shelter in Glasgow. I heard one woman to say to another ‘ See Him?’ I looked around but she did not and nor did her companion. Both knew he was nowhere near and I quickly learned it. She went on to list his weekend crimes, omissions, commissions, et la and la. I was captivated. The rain lifted all but the pavement from beneath our ill-clad feet, theirs in heels, mine in flats, and my eyes fell to those feet, the way they moved in perfect tune to the active movement of their bodies, arms, fingers faces, eyes, spines. It was as if I was watching trees in the wind, the bending, the swing this way and that, and the connection between these two. They caught branches, tipped back their heads, laughed, hugged, and I could see that. See that.

Since then I have felt at home with a ‘See That’ knowing as I do now that there may be no actual seeing. See that can, and often does become the prologue to a story that only one in the mix has actually experienced. It can come out other ways. See Him? See Her? See This? See That? See Who? See What? And there the story begins and it can lift and rise, pull up colour, crash into grey or black, but it begins every time with vision. Vision experienced, vision proffered, vision received, a communique, a connection, vital.

See that smell? See that sound? See that touch? All visionary in its presentation. I love it because it thinks me. Our eyes are so very precious, our looking, our seeing, our vision and the way we can see means everything. I don’t know what it is to be blind nor losing sight but I do know that a deal of my adventures, understandings, my sorting out of self angst and fear has grown through my inner eye. We all have that sight.

When we eventually caught that bus, the friends still chattering, me silent and alone, I watched them. They were two women leaving their home lives for a day at work, no doubt demanding and exhausting. My stop was before theirs and as I wobbled down the bus (driver didn’t slow) I paused and turned to them. It was a risk. English, or so they thought (so very wrong) and proper spoken. but they had the grace to look up. You taught me something today. Thank you.

They probably still think of me as that weird ya-di-ya woman. See her………..?!!!!!

by

Island Blog – Question the Surface

Life is lived on so many levels, or it can be. Mostly we stay on the surface, paddling madly to keep up, put down, move beyond, our horizon in sight. Above us is forever, below is fathom on fathom of a world most of us know little about. Many of us never dive down, and, apart from plane travel, the above is also an endless mystery. How high? How deep? What changes as we fly, as we dive? No, don’t go there. Let’s keep our eyes on who is putting something in our wheelie bin, who drives past, who walks the safety of the pavement or who parks in our space.

On the surface we see only what is. Above and below we cannot see nor understand, so we enjoy the thought of it but that is quite enough thank you. I don’t have the kit, the understanding, the courage to even let my mind go there, never mind my body. I’m too fat, too weird, too unloved, too plain, too beautiful, too something or other. And yet, within the restraints of this constraint we fail to really live. I know this because I remember my surface thinking. Safe, under my control, behind my locked door if I choose to lock it. Enter the Lonely. Oh hell, she or he is just waiting for such a time, such an opening. In ‘they’ come like a giant in a small room, smothering.

Been there. However, not now. And Why? Ah, Why is not a question. Why is an impertinence. Never ask anyone ‘why’. If you asked me differently I would tell you that I know and knew there is depth and width to this life, neither of which, or is it whom, I can either comprehend or explain. I just know. Somethings (plural) will happen if I just decide to acknowledge that fact. There is more than me in this living palaver and thank the holy grail for that! There is nothing lonely about a palaver because a palaver takes at least 5 influences. You cannot create a palaver alone. It just doesn’t work.

This morning, this ordinary morning, I had a plan. I would wake early, make coffee, eat something, sew something and then go to the shop at 9. All sorted. However I had a feeling there was a palaver in the brewing, not of my doing, but a palaver nonetheless. As I was talking to one of my boys on the phone a car pulled in. Rats, I thought. Go Away, I thought. You are NOT in my plan. Turning to see who it was, I recognised a friend. Ah, ok, all change, I thought. He might need coffee and a hug and a chat. I beckoned him in. Come, friend, and welcome. My ordinary plan had just dived deep or lifted into the sky. I smiled.

We spent the day together, walking, talking, noticing everything. We shared laughter and tears, wisdoms and tomfoolery, we just were. No agenda. I saw things through his eyes and, I think, he did through mine. We lifted up and we dived to the depths. The sun was warm, the wind soft and gentle, the larch emerald, the birds singing out Spring, the sea almost table flat. I would have seen none of this had I stayed on the surface, my agenda in my hands. Out of my hands I saw more than I could imagine. The connectivity of human friendship, however unexpected or initially inconvenient can make us question our surface.

by

Island Blog – Showing Up

Today I feel small, not insignificant, but small. It thinks me. Feeling small is good considering the smallness of me, of any of us, in the hugeness of the world. Okay, that’s the number of people. However, in a wider way, I am small. So, by the way, are you. It can humble us, this feeling small thingy, but it doesn’t mean we don’t matter, I don’t matter. I can think I don’t matter and I meet other septugenarians who also can think that way on days when effort is required just to show up, when a life-long-lived turns into a solo act with nobody in the stalls, no tickets sold; when children with all their noisy demands and angsts and troubles and growing pains are now living their own lives, to which I am an add-on. Loved, yes, cherished, yes, but an add-on nonetheless. How did that happen? Not so long ago I was so very big. Now I am small. I live on the edges of other lives, cheer their joys, comfort their sorrows and after that I am small again. Just me. Alone.

I look at life as an opportunity to learn and to adapt. On days when I feel small, I round on it, question it, investigate it, challenge it. Not as some others would, not saying, as in a pantomime, Oh No You’re Not! No, not that, because denying a feeling or pushing it into the shadows just creates a bigger shadow and it always returns, bigger, darker, stronger. That way danger lies and I have seen it, seen folk lose their foothold on what life has to offer, watched them give up, grow unkempt, uncaring for themselves, trudging. To hellikins with that. But, and I am very aware of this, t’is so easy to fold in, to shut off, to let the ‘small’ feeling define a man, a woman. In this state a person can start apologising for their voice, their choices, their very existence. It is a sad observation indeed.

But that is not me, and it needn’t be anyone else who questions and wonders and whose spirit, once effortlessly strong and which now needs CPR, is resurrected consciously. Rise you sleepy twit! Well, that’s what I say and loudly. It is definitely harder in the older and lonelier years, I agree, to make something of what’s next. It can be cranky-sore to show up. It can be a massive push through pain and loss. But (love that word) I have met such ‘small’ people over the years, those who still appeared for lunch in a colourful turban or a swishing skirt and emerald leather boots, men included. Those whose spirit refused to stop the party, who danced as best they could, who sparkled in the queue for the Sunday papers. I have seen them, I know. And, do you know what? The younger generation LOVE to see such a love for life because it tells them that growing older, feeling smaller, does not mean a miserable decline, not at all. And what better legacy can we leave those beautiful young people?

So there I was feeling small. It lasted an hour or so, the lonely, the emptiness, the wondering if this is it. Then I whacked up the music, wrote a prayer, went to church, read it, laughed and joshed with others, drove home, walked the wee dog among the wild primroses, violets, new larch green, the nesting birds, geese flying overhead, a sea-eagle half way to heaven. I’m still small in the bigness of things, but I am not insignificant, not at all. If I can show any young person how an old person can still dance, even if only in his or her mind, then I will show up, again and again and again.

by

Island Blog – Nature Talk

Snow. I know. Riddickerluss, but snow is here turning the Ben into a light, red at sunrise and bridal just now. That white is a white we can never replicate on material, nor in paint. I remember art school, madly trying to find a pure white, the one Nature produces without a single dither. Ach!. it’s an ‘almost’ at best. Clouds for we painters were always the ultimate challenge. I digress. This Ben is millions of years old, thrust up in the ice age or some such thrusting era, when lands split and digressed and pushed up from oceans and upset a whole load of sailing boats, dinosaurs, marauders and those who set out to ‘discover’ lands which, just fyi, had been lands for a very long time pre ‘discovery’, those who lived there already being just fine with their living thing. Looking at the Ben thinks me of such. When I see and watch a creation way older than me, holding stories and histories within its stones, its edges, its falls and its brave organic life clinging to ledges and finding sunspots, adapting and allowing and still thriving, I marvel. We eejits can learn a thing or two from such a claim to life, instead of whinging about the lack of ryvita (me) or wood (me) on the island.

If nature, sorry Nature, can find ways to adapt to change, big ass change, then so can we. But there’s a difference. Nature has always challenged her followers, her children, her ground, her stones, her seas. We, on the other hand, grow comfortable too easily. A fine street, good housing, adequate pavements, parking, drainage, etcetera has turned us into lumps. I remember in my middle class youth, hearing that this generation, mine, needed to know hardship. I turned away from such nonsense, laughing, well fed, safe, in good housing, secure. Now I see the truth in what they said. We have no idea how to deal with hardship, never taught, not through the years of expectation and abundance. But now we do need to pare our tools, to sharpen our wits because it is coming. We need to teach our children that nothing is a given, to learn them inner strength to deal with what is out there now, how to meet life physically and mentally strong. I wish my own parents had taught me how life can be in the ‘out there’ but they never thought it would change, the ‘out there’. I was completely unprepared, me in my white socks and with church on Sundays and everything warm and safe. I learned the hard way. My kids too, the next generation. And they have kids.

It isn’t the end of the world, no, not at all, but I know that those who learn how to accept the beginnings of climate change and its effects now, will be the kids who can find their way whilst others fanny about wishing it wasn’t happening at all. They, the former, will be the ones who notice everything good such as snow on the Ben in April, hear the sound of life in lambs, watch the green of grass and refuse to cut it, allowing wildflowers to rise for insect food and pollination, who will share their wood when there is a lack, who will learn to bake bread, grow herbs and veg, who will be wise in the ways of that which Nature has been telling us for years.

by

Island Blog – This Day

People talk about, sing about, These Days, Those Days, and as I listen, I hear anew. These and Those indicate a collective, a while of days. But it isn’t the truth, not around Days. It can be, around children, or mountains but not around days. Days are themselves and particularly in troubled times, when they behave like picks in the road we knew as level, aggressing the flat ground, upsetting the flow of progress. They pucker up, cause us to founder and flounder, to twist off piste. Well Dammit. Damn those days.

I am learning to laugh at a lot of things these days. No, this day. No promises for tomorrow. I meet those puckers, and not because I have done anything different on this Tuesday, that Thursday, no, not at all. It is all the same now here in this alone state. I might have written ‘widowhood’ there, but I won’t and because there are many states of aloneness. Some chosen, some welcomed, most accepted and accommodated, albeit unwillingly. We need each other but the each and other of whoever we know or encounter can send us running for the dunes. It is confusing.

So, for this day (no tomorrow promises) I rise thankful and smiling. I walk, cook, listen to music, create some sewing nonsense, talk to family, laugh, visit a local library and connect with friends. As I sit now as the rain comes in (a given up here) I won’t say, These Days any more. Because I know, as I never did when I said those words without thinking, that there are not These Days. There is only This Day.

by

Island Blog – There you go

Spring is here. Let me feel it one my skin, beneath my bare feet. Let me hear it, the birdsong, the rustling inside the branches, the dart and dash of new life. Let me watch the creatures return, the gathering of nesting softness, and let me know the fear and the joy of finding a home, one in which to birth and protect the next generation. Let me take it all in, no dash and hurry, no missing any of it. I wander a track squelched by winter cold and rain, the mud ridges trying so hard to firm up and sinking me nonetheless. Last years leaves mulch beneath my boots, pushed ever down into the ground and it smiles me. We are born, we live, we die, but in that inevitable cycle we leave something of ourselves behind, something that can become the ground for a new beginning, one we will not experience. There is a song in that, harmonious, melodious, lilting-sad but a powerful legacy indeed. Our own song may be sung out, but we can bring a new baseline for another generation to stand on in their own times, times of feeling lost, times perhaps of fear or confusion, saying I am here, beneath your feet and you can do this because I did it too, feeling just like you feel now.

The sea-loch is quiet this morning, a late frost ghosting the grasses that run down to where land meets tide. The ancient rocks shine in morning sunshine and the old trees along the shoreline, still winter brown, will soon rise into green. Migrant birds return to sparkle my garden with their impossible colours, goldfinch, siskin, whilst those who stayed home line the fence awaiting breakfast. Birdmusic fills the air, lifting melodies into a soft blue sky, melodies no composer ever really captured. On days like these, hope comes calling. Everything is possible. On days like these, a morning like this, I remember waking to work with a smile, a gasp at the sudden beauty, one in which I played no part. And, yet, my part begins now, not just as witness to a morning like this, but in an active role. Guests at Tapselteerie need breakfast, children need winding out of bed sheets and into school clothing. Packed lunches need to be prepared, wrapped and delivered. A whale-watching trip lies ahead, the boat impatient and bobbing. Get me fired up, get me out there among the sea-birds, the dolphins, porpoise, otters, seals, whales, the wild wide ocean calls, can’t you hear her? Yes, we can hear and we are on our way, human time. There is, I tell the ocean, a process to a morning for our part. We need the right clothing, the breakfast in our bellies, a packed lunch in our knapsack, binoculars, waterproofs, boots for the island landing, our bird books, cetacean books, our cameras, water bottles, an extra jersey, hats, gloves………Good Lord what a ridiculous list, sighs the ocean, lapping faster against the stone jetty. She needs none of those add-ons after all.

It may be a boat trip, it may be a walk or drive to work. It may be a day in school, or there may be no plan at all. It matters not. What does matter is how we do whatever we need to do in a day, our attitude. Are we thankful for this day, this hour, this moment and do we say so? Do we notice every detail with humility and gratitude and say so? I know, having learned how life can be snuffed out in a single breath un-breathed, how important it is to be present in every living moment, to appreciate it and to say so. And, more, how that outspoken presence leaves a legacy for a new young life, as yet un-lived. We come, we go. What we do in between, who we are and how we do what we do is remembered, either as encouragement, nourishment, an example to follow, or not. None of us can change all our circumstances but we can, with grace and our eyes on each moment, each encounter, leave not just our own story, but a lot of invisible threads that conjoin with others, leave kisses on a stranger’s heart. And, the legacy of that is endless.

This day, we walked onto a wide white sandy beach to send ashes back to the sea. This place she loved, he loved, this curve of powdered shells over many many years, where the sea comes in and goes out twice a day and every day; where the sky goes on forever and where we stand looking out to sea, to the great beyond, thoughts lifting, memories, moments, pictures of a lifetime well and truly lived. Through heartache, troubles, joys and laughter, through birthdays, anniversaries, holidays and ordinary days, these two held the line. I hear their laughter as I watch the wavelets lap at the shore, claiming ground. I watch those times they flew above their troubles in the cant and tilt of a seagull, a raven. They walked here once, no, more than once. I see them still, on this beach, distant but there. As I walk back up to my car with my little dog, sand in my boots and shells in my pocket, I know I will not forget this sunshine day, the words spoken, the sight of ashes floating away, the flute melody, the poem, the song, the prayers, the being a part of it all.

Back among ice cream eaters and picnickers I look up. An eagle flies. I wave. There you are my lovelies. There you go.

by

Island Blog – Joining the Dots

When I first arrived in Africa, after the first flurry of excitement, I noticed how I felt unsure as to my part in the play. This happens each time I stay anywhere, to be honest, moving as I am into someone else’s life, home, timeline, routine. It’s as if the very air resists my forward motion, not that it is always forward, my restlessness and indecision tilting me left, then right, forward then back. My brain, so active, seems to collapse in on itself, a splay of wires and worms and it is then that the invaders invade, the ditherers, the undecided, the falterers, the wobbly arm-flailing, foot shufflers and my body obeys all of them. And, as if this wasn’t enough to confound the most confident of people, my fears rush up behind them like a second wave of soldiers, all with bayonets on rifles and determination on faces. These fears in Africa might be that the kettle roars and at 6 am will awaken my kids and make them furious so I’d better just have water. It might be that if I open the sliding door into the garden all five feral and definitely indoors cats will charge as one to disappear over the wall and into the mouth of danger, so I’d better stay inside. I can’t run the hot tap to wash up last night’s dishes because the water makes enough of a racket to waken the dead, trumpeting, snorting and coughing like an old man with lung disease. I shouldn’t go for a walk because that would let the dog out, the dog that always waits for permission and is fast asleep anyway. It is all, I know this, ridiculous, but I go through this every single time, me, confident, assured me. It’s as if my body arrived here but my spirit stayed home or is, hopefully, en route to join me up again like a dot picture.

After a few days I reassemble. I don’t feel it happening, like all my personal lego bits are now clicked into place, it just happens. I fire up the kettle at six, wash the dishes to a trumpet voluntary, open the sliding door and shimmy through the skinny gap watching the cats who watch me back, languidly, yawning, curled up, with no intention of going where they have never gone and do not miss. I go for a walk and the big dog watches me from between his paws. He may be hopeful but he knows the drill and besides, his beloved master has yet to rise from sleep. I can even put on a wash, now that my spirit has arrived from the UK, late but not damaged in any way, as the machine purrs softly once I have worked out how to programme it. The days mellow into routine with serendipitous opportunities presenting, for both kids work from home and are busy most of each day. I have ‘suddenly’ prepped and ready to go. In between meetings we can hop to the shop, go out for lunch, take the dog for a walk and it is always ‘suddenly.’ I rather enjoy that I enjoy ‘suddenly.’ I decide I am a ‘suddenly’ sort of woman, remembering the Tapselteerie days when every damn thing was ‘suddenly’. I had obviously learned the ropes and it gladdens me. When the flurry is done and they are back to work and I am back to whatever I fancy next, I smile. I ask for a list of jobs and write them down. Now I can varnish window frames at 05.30 if I so choose or oil the deck furniture before the temperature hits 33 degrees at 0900 and all the fears, ditherers, foot-shuffling undeciders have melted away in the heat. Even the fears have mummified. I look down at them and they look a bit sorry for themselves in that state. It’s because I no longer feed them of course, now that I know my way around this life.

And then I come home, from 38 degrees pre flying to 6 degrees in Glasgow and I just know the whole palaver will begin again. Even in my own home, things feel not of my making. I don’t have the fears but I have certainly walked miles inside the house getting mostly nowhere and this will continue, I know it, until my spirit, who did not want to leave Africa at all, returns to me. She may detour via other continents, of course, she’s a bit naughty like that. But I will wait for her, and when we are back together, all our ducks will be in line, our dots joined and our feet in sync, ready for all the new adventures we have yet to share.

by

Island Blog – Homecoming

Oh I did not want to come home! The heat, the sunshine (dodging it a lot) at upwards of 30 degrees from sun up, the red sand, the bush, the Africa of Africa, the music, rhythm, even the mosquitos, all of it had become my familiar. After two months, that is understandable if you’re loving every minute. Washing dried in minutes, the dog was too hot to walk after 9 am, and my bare feet on the wooden stoep burned like there was a fire beneath them as I oiled, sanded, varnished and painted. I wanted to help. Don’t tell me to sit down. I can do ‘sit down’ for a while, and longer than a while indoors with the aircon blasting, but I will always choose to be involved and that whole involved thingy thinks me. I knew I was coming back to just me.

The life out there, three long long flights away, plus a train and a ferry, is a whole different life. It has its disadvantages, for sure, the usual irritations, the added falafel of dodgy drivers, slow responses, (a lot of shoulder shrugging at any confrontation, plus a wide toothy smile), the heat day after day, the impossibility of finding parts for your car, the lack of Helmans Mayonnaise. I was a visitor. Visitors have no say at all in a place of lives being lived. They, we, I, have no clue as to the reality of the it of it. Just saying. I know, for example, how visitors here on the island for a sunshine week #rare, wax lyrical on the benefits I enjoy living here. I have no right to complain. My eyeballs roll every time. And it thinks me. On the way we perceive what we see, the snapshot of it, the processing, the decision made. Fumph. T’is thus. No. T’isn’t.

Anyroad, I take three flights, the first most pleasant, a slight rise in a half empty plane with comfortable seats, an old girl for sure but sassy and just for an hour. I am still in slight clothing. Then I get lost in Jo’burg airport. Possibly not easy to do but I manage it, finding myself in Baggage Collection when I should be (and soon) in Connections. I right myself, and speed up. It is only a short about turn and march and then another 3 miles to the gate. Which gate? The signs are now and then and mostly then so I, not worried at all, ask someone. He, an official with a badge, is super kind and walks with me to the appropriate corridor. he smiles, all black and wonderful and really cares. My strength of spirit returns. I arrive at Gate 10. I sit. Gradually, a lot more passengers arrive, all muslim robed. Because it is now 5 pm, they lay out their mats and bow to Mecca. I watch them praying, their devotion. It warms me. Not my thing but I still admire anyone with deep faith. More arrive, and more and suddenly I am unsure about my choice of gate. I rise and ask a sharpshooting black woman, official. She tells me, smiling, this is Emirates Gate. Oops.

I set off again. Good heavens this airport is huge, but I am not stupid. These muslims are heading the same way as I am, to London, so I must be in the right zone. I totter, yes, I am weary now, to Gate 14 and I find my people, I can hear the Glasgow accent, the banter, the tired voices, the helping of each other. I sit once more. We are called and because I am seat 20, I am almost first on. But as we queue and queue and queue on the ramp, I realise we are not the first. No, First is first, then Business Class, then us, lower case.

We walk by Business, seeing the beds, knowing they can stretch out for the 11 hours in the air, will have the taster menu, champagne et lala. And we take our seats. I am at the emergency exit. I ask the little lady near the window if she knows how to work it. She says she hasn’t a clue. Nor do I. And then he arrives, built like a cathedral, a professional golfer with tree trunks for legs and muscles that might challenge his flankers. She at the window sleeps the whole night. He, fitfully but so polite with his body. Me, not a minute. However, we didn’t have to employ his strength as we arrived safely in Heathrow. An unsteady walk to the next gate for Glasgow and into oh my goodness, the cold. From over 30 degrees to 6? However, there was a warm daughter to hug me warm again, a hot bath and a warm sleep. Home now on the island and so very thankful for the whole shebang. All of it. I learned so much, and I am thankful and curious and, do you know what, if you do nothing else to shape up a change in your life, just be curious. She, Curiosity, is a wonderful leader.

by

Island Blog – It Is Enough

I am awake, early, before the sun is fully up, and I have slept enough. This day is my last in Africa and there is much to do. First off, I must needs park the panics, those fussy itchy thoughts as spikey as porcupines, the ones that demand an active hands-on riffle through and a smart shove into perspective. Will my hold luggage weigh too much? Should I find a tote bag for my hand luggage? How many underlayers should I have ready and about me for my arrival into a 30 degree temperature drop? What about liquids and such, which do I pack and which do I have ready for inspection in a clear plastic bag? And there are many more such flapdoodles to un-flap about, all easily sorted. I clear my mind of the swirling chaos, remind myself to inhabit the present moment and make coffee. I sit outside on the stoep and watch the sky, the rising of the sun, a warm pink backlight for a silhouette of trees. Birds call out, sounds I will not hear back on the island, African birds, coloured up like rainbows and speaking a language I don’t understand. A flash of electric blue, a wide span of ruby tail feathers, a butter yellow head, they cut the sky in two, these glorious creatures, an imprint on my memory.

I will love the change of things as I will remember the colours of Africa. Returning home to the island with its skinny roads and warm people almost happens without me. I step on a plane, three in fact, although not all at the same time, take my seat and up I go to cut other skies in two, many skies and one sky, crossing over continents and oceans, countries, deserts, mountains and rivers. A magical thought indeed. Someone might look up to watch the metal bird, heavy laden with precious cargo and, hopefully, my un-heavy hold luggage, as sunlight flashes off its belly, a pink contrail weaving a cloudline. As I doze or eat or read way up in the sky, life continues way down there, families together and apart, discussions on what to do or where to go. Dogs bark away the night or bark it back in again. Meals are prepared, lists are made, fights are fought, losses are grieved and new life is welcomed in. So much life everywhere, so much living to be lived.

For now, for today, I will take in every moment. I will pack, unpack and repack. This is irritating but a part of the procedure, a sort of resistance to change, to leaving what has become the familiar. However, I know of old that we people can quickly establish a new familiar in a surprisingly short time, so capable are we, so adaptable, despite all those hours of flapdoodle. Imagining the worst always first. Lord knows why we do this but I decide it is a perfectly natural amygdala thing, a sorting service provided by our big brains, processing fearful stimuli, a nudge to encourage intelligent preparation before entering a state of change. From there we decide whether or not the fear is real, such as a truck or a leopard coming at us fast. Needless to say, my fear is a bundle of nonsense – do I have the right clothes, yes, adequate sustenance, yes, the right footwear, mindset, passport etc. The way we can muddle ourselves with fear is daft but we all do it at times. I chuckle at myself. All is well you flappy old woman. Just prepare, calmly, and then set your sights on the moment ahead because you are playing a vital and important part in that moment, and the next, and the next and the next. All you have to do is show up. And I will do just that but not today. Today will be itself and I will be entirely and wholly present as the gift of living lights me up like sunshine. And it is enough.

by

Island Blog – Fanacadoo

Do you ever arrive of a morning having travelled into weird worlds all night long? Or so it seems. All impossible things, unlikely people, extraordinary happenings happen inside the hours of sleep, none of which would survive five minutes in earthly mode. Beyond the borders of ‘possible’ lie these worlds, a convolution of stories read, tales told across a table, films seen, random encounters, daydreams, worries, fears, doubts and delusions of grandeur. I can fly. Sure you can. I can save the world, blow it up, murder (in a good way) stand watching a happening without moving into action, put out a forest fire all alone, win a house in Malibou, all possible in the depths of night, when my mind, which was programmed to sleep, chooses her own adventure series and plays it out all the way through.

Of course, I barely remember a sequence of plausible, believable events, oh no, but just patchy catches of the whole fanacadoo. As I lift from bed and move into the day, the images scatter, fractal, smokey, spiralling into the bedroom only to skinny through the gaps, as if they never were at all. Could this nocturnal experience be a helpful clearing of a cluttered mind, I ask myself? Or, was that unpleasant image, still inside my head despite my attempts to turn it scattered, fractal, smokey and spiralling off to skinny through the gaps, some sort of prophesy or warning? Over the years, I have learned to decide for myself the answer to those two questions. I say that I am not at the mercy of either of them, horns as they are of a dilemma, a waste of daylight to finger through such confusion with no chance of an Aha moment. I decide that my subconscious mind is a superior being and not in my control as I might like. If it can produce unbelievable scenarios in such brilliant technicolour, structured on nothing I have encountered, nor ever will, then it is at work on my behalf. Although I know that, at times, my own piddling worries and concerns can leak into my dreams, the costumes and scenarios fantastical, I trust there is a point to it all and not one my tug-boot daylight person is ever supposed to understand.

How freeing it is to address the night larks thus! I can dress and prepare for my day, knowing that a deal of fanacadoo has been addressed and processed. None of it is my business. It’s as if an inner counsellor has beavered away as I fitfully slept, lost in the story of the night. She has tidied up my mental loft. It is done. My remit is only to allow, accept and move on into the ordinary. But, with different eyes. This is important. If I can fly, save the world, turn into a mermaid, murder (in a good way) or even stand rooted and impotent in the face of something horrible, then I am delighted all this gets sorted in the safety of my bedroom. What I will never do again, having done it for many years, is to believe I am a bad person at heart, that, by dreaming this way I am showing my true colours. I refuse to accept this. I know who I am and how I will be around all other people, so that, even if it might be fun to turn into a mermaid, or to save the world single-handed, I do not relate to the backside of those (im)possibilities. My subconscious was simply filtering out, clearing away, processing and settling the who of me, the how and the what of this small human woman. I have a very vivid imagination, that’s all, and it is the work of the night counsellor to level my balance once again so that I can rise from it all with a chuckle, forget it all by elevenses and, most of all, know for certain that all is well, I am safe, my mental attic is swept and clear. This doesn’t deny the night stories, oh no, but it does put them in perspective, and one more thing………instead of moving into the day saying I didn’t sleep well, I say, instead, and mostly to the dog, What larks Pip, what adventures I had last night! She may look at me blankly, having curled into a slumbering danish, fast sleeping till a yawn at dawn, but I know how it was and I was there, I saw them all, even as those midnight images slip away like the steam from my coffee..