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Island Blog – More than fixers

Yesterday I was smote down by some tummy bug. It made itself known mid-darkness and remained for the day. Although I am a welcomer of all things, including side-swipers knowing, as I do that life will bring them in whether I want them or not, I did find my welcome note was definitely off key. We were never going to sing our time in harmony. Okay, let’s find another way to deal with this. I accept you have invaded my body, my thoughts and my equilibrium, so I will go with you this day. Ultimately it will be you who leaves, not me. I am more than you, trust me on that.

I slept a lot in between chilly forays down the stairs to re-jig the logs into merry fire, sipped water and listened to an audio book. I watched the rain turn to soggy snow, whirling like smoke passed my big bedroom window. I saw gulls fighting for balance in the gusts of cold and wet and I felt my thankfulness muscle flex. I might be sick for a day, but out there are people who are really sick, really cold with little hope of any warmth and really alone in their lives. There are those doubting the point of their existence. Although I am fortunate enough to be loved, warmable and certain of a return to ebullient health, I am aware that my assertion of strength comes from the confidence of a woman who knows she is safe. Urging someone to see the bright side of a dire situation is not helpful. In fact, it can affirm their worst fears. What they need is understanding and empathy, a hand held out, a smile, soft words of genuine affection and care.

I know how it feels to be very depressed. I looked out at the world through blind eyes and anybody who shone a beam of light in my face would be swatted away. I wanted the world to stop spinning, so utterly pointless everything seemed. It was a long time ago, yes, but something so dark and huge makes an imprint on my heart, a big fat one. Eventually, over a long time, I found my way back, accepting help eventually, from guides who shone no beam at me. They just held out a warm hand, smiled and said Shall we walk together awhile? It took me through hestiational defences before I could trust that these guides were not out to fix me, to shape me back into the woman I was before when that woman very obviously felt she did not fit. I knew I was not prepared to oblige in such a way and what I needed was for someone to see beyond my act. We begin these acts in childhood. They are our way of coping, of fitting in, of receiving the love we crave. But, at some point, the spirit will out and shout and spill things and cause considerable harrumphing from those who think they know us. It is discombobulating for all concerned but not a condition, a scream from the inner wild, to be ignored because ignoring such blatancy leads to a long lonely walk into the abyss.

Perhaps this is why I treasure life in my older years. Perhaps, having been that lonely walker, finding empathetic guides to walk with me out of it, I have raised up my inner child, my true spirit, as my own. As I pondered all this from my sick bed, I felt a song of thankfulness ring in my ears. Now I can say I am more than this, more than this bug, more than those old conditions and rules, and how is that?

I have learned to love myself, the woman I am. I have learned, after fighting for her in all the wrong ways at all the wrong times, that she is a strong and beautiful soul and so very deserving of my full attention. Nobody else gave her that, but I can and I do. If you know what I am writing about here, or know of someone who would, please forward this on. Lonely is okay in bits, now and then but it can consume a person, swallow them up and disappear them for ever.

Let’s be guides, not fixers.

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Island Blog – Dawn and Wings

Sleep left the room at 4 am. It’s a bit rude to be honest and unfair that she gets to choose when to unwind herself from me and to rise into what is absolutely not dawn. It was the nightmare she didn’t like, I’m guessing, and nor did I, but that’s no excuse to abandon ship. Nonetheless, with her gone somewhere less scary, I knew I wasn’t going to sink back into slumber. Rats. I pull back the covers, fire up the bedside lamp and swing out of bed with reluctance and determination. This will not decide the quality of my day ahead, whatever it may bring. I have practised this art for many years now and have discovered that I am in control of my attitude, no matter what.

I wander downstairs to make coffee. I switch on Christmas and smile at the twinkly winkly lights on the tree that I am certain has shrunk since last year. It’s cute, though, sitting in the corner with an overload of fairy. She, unlike the tree, has grown inside the box in the dark of a cupboard and her frock flares like a cloud. Her wings are a bit wonky chops so I wonder if she might be preparing to fly off somewhere. We have a conversation about that. I notice that I pruned the big geraniums in my warm sunroom. The cut offs are in a pile on the ground. It did need doing and I did wait until all the blooms had gone crunchy before what looks like murder. It’s for your own good, I tell the skinny mother plants. I will add compost if this day ever decides to wake up and then water you. You need to sleep for a few months. So do I, but that is not my path, apparently.

I wheech out the ironing board. Yesterday I pulled off the cushion covers and bashed a year’s worth of dust and feathers out of the inserts, washing the covers until the colours brightened into smiles. Then I ironed each one and, when this day wakes up, I will fill their bellies once again. I search for some good tunes, discovering that Spotify has assembled my favourites for 2021. Well, how thoughtful! Each tune, each song is just perfect for an insomniac at the ironing board with at least four hours to go till morning rises in the east. I love that first glimpse of natural light, can feel the relief of it run through me. Now I can see.

I have forgotten the nightmare. I don’t often have them any more, thankfully. They used to stalk me every night and Madam Sleep was barely beside me for more than an hour or two at the most. I have tried to explain to her that she needs to brave up, to stick with me so that together we can banish the images, have a chat or a midnight feast and then return to slumber, but she is not a dependable friend. So, all on my own, I choose not to revisit the mare. Instead, I consciously turn to think on happy thoughts, like my children, my frocks, my day ahead. I wash in cold water because the warm is still asleep, dress, and put away the ironed clothes. I light my big candle in a jar and smile at its warm glow. I sit for a moment to consider others who find sleep a fickle friend. Hallo you all. I encourage you to learn how to change mares or sleeplessness into happy thoughts. We can all do it. The darkness can be a friend if we decide so. We can choose not to align ourselves to thoughts that tell us we are anything less than a wonderful, strong, powerful, beautiful human being, which we all are, every one of us.

And, there’s a day ahead, a new one, an adventure just waiting in the wings.

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Island Blog – Thing with a Point, Small Whispers

Have you ever said, or asked yourself – What’s the point in me doing this thing? I certainly have and still do, only now I understand that even the smallest step is always worth taking even when I can see no end result, no point that brings me the whole Something; that Something that would show me the point of my pointless steps and would surely confirm that I was actually prophetically brilliant without realising it.

Every single day proffers opportunities and we evaluate each one. What is the point in me sweeping the kitchen floor when nobody but me will see it today? What is the point in my adding a few more stitches to my latest fantasy landscape tapestry when I make no effort to market them? What is the point in applying loud makeup? For the sheep to ‘baa’ at or for the birds to tweet to their own Twitter mates? Why am I considering hoicking out that lithograph of an ancient stuffy old ancestor I never ever met, just to add ink and make a print? For whom? Whom cares?

Chances are, nobody. Not a who nor a whom; not at step one, nor two or even ten, but when a body remains committed to the small steptasks, something wonderful joins that bodymind on the long and winding road. As I make myself perform these, frankly ridiculously ridiculous, tasks that have popped into my intelligent head only to be sideswiped by my intelligent head, I feel a sense of achievement in my soul. Now, the soul is powerful and it has a voice. I turn to address the cynic in me and hold up my hand. Stop right there. I am doing this ‘pointless’ thing because something way bigger than you or me sent me a whisper. Through a word, a song, a looking, a noticing and I am tired of being so grounded in earthly limitations. I have wings and you, Mrs Cynic, do not. You are not spiritually wealthy. I can tell by the tight purse of your mouth.

So I do all the pointless things because every one of them has a point, in itself, its own point and who doesn’t want one of those? If I honour the whisper as the one who can make this thing a better thing then, what is not to like? In my long life, I have found that the end game is often imagined. The success story we read, the achiever, the award winner, the one who won Strictly. We are fools to aspire to such ‘success’ unless we are prepared to swallow the bitter pill of the millions of small steps that would make that success possible. I don’t want awards, nor to win Strictly, but I do want that sense of warm pleasure that comes from any job well done, no matter how pointless it felt at first. It doesn’t matter if nobody sees because I do and I am my finest seer. We all are. I wonder sometimes that we teach our children shortcuts, to run fast and not to stop for anything, resulting in hollow hearts. Taking the fast route can work at times but not all the time. There are small whispers being missed at a cost.

So, I would say this. When a small task whispers in, take action and value that connection. You never know what will come in to help and to guide. Don’t give up and don’t give in to old Purse Lips. What does she know, she who never partied till she lost a shoe? Live wild, people, no matter how old or young you are. Adventurize your life right now. Otherwise that life, our only one, is nothing at all.

And nothing is pointless, at best.

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Island Blog – A Bluebottle

It was behind something. When I wheeched out the riser recliner chair in order to move it on, there was this low buzzing like the dying sound of a motor. I watched it lift, just, into the room as if suddenly awoken and a tad unsure about the whole wing working thing. Oh, hallo, I said, as it almost took me out in its faulty rise and watched it carry on across the room towards the dim winter windowlight. You poor thing, left behind by all your mates, your tribe, all of whom, to my knowledge became a robin’s lunch some time ago. I am not sure your fate holds a better ending, but I won’t kill you, so fly on my friend. That was two days ago and it is still here. I notice it doesn’t do what it would have done in the summer, pinging itself against windows in a desperate fight to get outside of the inside and leaving black stuff on the frames that is frickin hard to wipe off.

The next day it swings into my bedroom, does a couple of loops, checks out the lamp just in case this light is the right light leading to freedom, the chance to soar into the sky, into danger, but to soar, nonetheless. I quite fancy soaring. I haven’t heard it today but, unless it grabbed the short chance of my sorties to the wood pile when the back door is wide open, it is still on the inside of out. I don’t look for it. Its presence bothers me not. Perhaps, by now, my lodgers have caught it, for they are always hungry and quick off the mark. Their webs are stronger this time of year. I sort of miss it. It was a living thing with sound effects inside the complete quiet of a solitary life. It thinks me, not the me part but the bluebottle part, that deep inner need to escape the inside, to find an outside full of perceived promise. I notice my thoughts. I can’t tell you how fascinating that process is. To stop and to study, then to question what I was thinking, or why that thought came at me slam dunk and out of the blue. A first reaction to an uncomfortable thought is to push it away and to ‘get busy’ with an ordinary task. In other words, to deny its existence. But it did exist. It came to me, the thought and then the feeling and the feeling was not one I wanted, so I denied it. In my past, but not now that I am wiser on such matters. Now I let all thoughts in without fear or denial. Discomfort or the skittles of fear I can bowl down with a good eye whilst still hearing the Bluebottle buzz. You are here. I see you. I hear you. You are no match for me, more, I am not your enemy and you are not mine. We just co-exist.

As I consider the outside of inside, I could in my past, and did, have to run, to get out, to be faster than my thoughts, to dam the flow that sounded like a river in flood or a thousand bluebottles coming for me. Not this day. This day, feeling floaty after my booster and flu jabs, I smile and settle. I light the fire and find a film to watch. I lift into the storyline. My thoughts settle beside me. We like this one, they say. A gentle sweet story and well acted.

Me too, I say. Me too.

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Island Blog – Forward to go

Today I drove the hill road into the harbour town to meet a friend. I was early and picked the sofa and the comfy armchair beside a warm open fire. The buzz was…..theatrical. I think I say this because the welcoming staff were all dressed in colours, with rings and tattoos and artistically coloured hair. Smiles wide, looking at me. I get it. An old woman in a big frock with bare legs and short boots and a home-fashioned jacket, seeded once in an old cardigan that freaked out when I washed it on ‘Too Warm’. I had thought at first, dog blanket, then I heard the story in it. My feisty impossible mother-in-law had knitted this thing, and for me. That had to have been days of knitting; days of love and commitment. No, I will lift this hunched and crunched woollen thing into my life, breathe my breath into it. Okay, great big respect. Now what? It thought me. I decide to wheech out the material drawer. I find velvet, or something that thinks it’s velvet and it is not for me to disappoint it as I finger the hold of it, the depth and then bring my own knowing into this I am Velvet thing. I am quiet on the subject, lifting out the deep colours, just knowing that this Not Velvet will be a right bugger to shape. It won’t shape. It yawls like sails in a slack-flack wind somewhere off Cherbourg. Hmmm.

I brought down my ridiculously pink tailors dummy on a white stick. I laid the compromised cardigan around her perfect pink shoulders, marvelling, with a snort, at her perfect pink breasts. I tell her this. I am amazed that anything I make for me, knowing my own body and using you as a caption of what I never was can ever fit, not with those pointy things almost taking my eye out each time I move around to pin or tuck, or wheech. But I, we, move on. She stands quiet whilst I pin and sew, pin and sew and then it is done, this bejewelled jacket that can only come out for air on dry winter days. Two, maybe three. Today was one so there won’t be many more.

We ordered soup. It’s always home made and so is the bread, so are the scones and the sweet baking. The fire was tended by a smiling young man. I hailed an artist I know well, one who has got his work into the online Saatchi gallery, and congratulated him as he passed by. There was a writing group just finishing up on a table nearby and I hailed the leader and signed myself up. So cosy in there, so easy, so fine-art. After lunch we visited the new exhibition, all local artists. I was enthralled at the work. I knew most of the artists just from their work. Many had sold and I was not surprised. I talked with my friend, an art therapist working with textiles, and we laughed and shared and quite forgot our old caring roles as we became two women in a space, with nothing but forward to go.

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Island Blog – I hold the balance

I watch the rain. A constant, a steadying. I am not overly fond of endless rain but there is little I can do about that. There is also little I can do about long evening darkness, one that holds on like a black fist for way too long, well into what laughingly is called My Morning. Sleep is a friend, yes, but fickle. She soothes me for a few short hours but she allows in dreams, nightmares, startlements that shock me into waking and leave me still shocked even as the dream evaporates. I am not good at ‘still shocked’, won’t stand for it, get up, go downstairs to watch the darkness, try to love it at 4 am. I remember trying to love something when it defies the rules and it was never easy, my skin prickling, my mouth empty of words, my body longing to run, but if I could do it once, I can do it again. Let it be.

But. When someone who has no idea about widowness, my widowness, says something that doesn’t even come close to the depth of my feelings, I snort. I hear all the advice, the platitudinal fiction that spills from lips and eyes and I want to roar like Aslan. I don’t, naturally, but that roar held in my small body is wild and dangerous. I smile and thank them, the grief counsellors, the Facebook lovers, the ‘friends’ who write another supportive line pinched from a book they’ve read, but the within of me belies the without. Thank God for skin and good manners! Deep down I am grateful for kindness, nonetheless and all those words of uplift and encouragement come from good warm hearts. I know this and it thinks me into a questioning.

What is it that bothers me when I hear or read words that are just birds around my head? I consider the question and it comes to me as a flash of light. It is my inner speke that needs my attention, not the words I hear, the intention behind them. Oh dear, that can feel so impossible at times when I am busy doubting and fearing and self punishing, even as I know the truth of mind control. I decide to step into my own head and there they are, standing like sentry guards at the door. We can’t let any positive stuff in, they tell me as I confront them, not when you are busy nourishing us in our negative space. I sit down to consider the situation. Ah, so it is up to me to select my thinks? They nod. Are you telling me, I continue, that I am not at the mercy of negativity, regardless of my loneliness, my fears around Covid, my lack of confidence without my husband around to confidence me up? Again they nod. So, I fake it, pretend, kid myself on? Yes, they say. You keep feeding the uplifting words, the light bright beautiful birds. You receive all of them both from outside and those of your own making and you catch every one, lifting them gently into your mind and your heart. They are all light and flight. They lift your spirits into a positive orbit. They are all true and they are so much stronger than the loneliness, the fears and the self doubt. They are your true power, and we are tired of sentry duty. It’s time to change the guard.

I begin with ‘I am strong, happy, powerful and all light.’ I hold back the guffaw and the candle burns bright. The sentries fall, one by one and the door opens wide. Welcome holds out her hands, pulling me into a warm, light room, one I recognise. What on earth made me walk away from this! Well, says Welcome, life is not a straight path. The path winds every which way and everyone can get lost from time to time. I make a list so that every time the negative looms, I can hold it back with my own light. I might feel I am at the mercy of negative thoughts but it takes just one candle to illuminate a darkened room. Just one. It doesn’t matter that the doubts are there, the fears and the regrets. They are there to guide me, I know that.

But it is I who hold the balance.

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Island Blog – Turmish

My word. I love to make new words. I remember writing an article for BBC Wildlife magazine years ago. Lordy, the editor was a tough nut and a half. She picked and poked and corrected until I was back before the headmistress who expelled me mid A levels. My embers were stoked and, eventually, I burst into fire, my tether at its end. The loch, I wrote, describing a far north body of water in which, apparently, a minke whale was ‘trapped’, poppled with balls of ice. It, the whale, was no more trapped than I inside my polar suit whilst fighting to remain vaguely upright in a slanty gale on a freezing, sleet-blasted hillside, and in February. I had personally watched the whale slide easy as an eel through the narrows as the tide began to ebb, returning for a feast of trapped fish at the next flood. Not once, but four times. Nobody was listening. The fish farmer freaked out about his cages being damaged. I wanted to shake him, tell him we had observed and studied these whales for decades and any one of them would have considered any such bumping or damaging as plain foolish. Big brains, remember and way bigger than the ones we lug about inside our own small and limited confines. There was talk of ‘herding’ a single whale (hallo?) out with a flotilla of boats. There was talk of explosives. We sighed a lot during that week, I can tell you. But when you are up against fear and small community thinking, you are blowing against the wind, expecting it to say, Oh Sorry, I’ll just go the other way, shall I?

Back to ‘poppling’. There’s no such word, she said, the headmistress/editor said. By now I was busy hoping she got absolutely nothing off her Christmas list, ready to fire, to yell, to tell her many rampageous things, but instead I went quiet, deadly quiet, like the eye of a storm. Leave it in. I said, surprised at how commanding I sounded. She said nothing for a beat, then conceded, reluctantly with a lot of tuts and mouth blowing. Today, I find that very word in the dictionary, so ha, ha, ha.

I digress. Today was super wet, wet like a complete soak just going out to feed the birds. I did not walk the dog who is still puzzling up at me as if I have finally lost the plot. Instead, I lit candles, the fire, and watched a movie. Now this is a rare thing for me, to watch tv during an afternoon. In fact, it is rare for me to settle comfortably in the evening to watch a movie. Watching tv is a sharing thing. My African son said that to me this very day as he watched the same movie and he is right. Perhaps this is why I, to date, have not been able to settle by the fire to enjoy a damn good story, beautifully presented, to get lost in someone else’s world just for an hour or two. When the movie is over and I flick the room into silence, there is nobody there to talk to about the experience. What do you think? What did you feel about this bit, or that; him or her; that happening, that twist? Since the bodach is gone, even though, latterly, he was engaged with some soap series whilst I watched a movie, there was no silence when the light of the moving pictures were turned off. There was some sort of conversation, even at the very end when barely a sentence came from his mouth. I had plenty to say, of course and now I say nothing and to nobody. It is a strange time indeed. A time of turmish.

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Island Blog – Boots on

I still have my boots on. Normally, I would take them off at the door, but tonight I did not. I walked today in other boots, the ones that suddenly split on me, the mouth of one opening into a challenge, one that, sadly, cannot be repaired. These faithful boots are years old, chewed by a dog, slip soled, thinned and ageing. I respect them, love them enough to keep sliding over seaweed and allowing the seep of ingress. I am old too, I tell them, and they know, they already know because my faltering feet inhabit their walls.

Tonight, after a laughing happy dinner share with my young family, via a short traverse in my mini, I still have my boots on. It is cold. The stars shout of Aurora Borealis, and I believe their shout. I see the Milky Way, the Bears, Cassiopia, more. The dark sky is a symphony, a performance, an invitation. Although I am coming in to the fire and the candles, I know the out there is out there, hence my boots on thingy. I might have to dash out to see this, or that and who on earth would ever want to miss the this or the that of sky talk?

I will take my boots off soon. I know I will because it is almost bedtime for old widows like me. But I will go to sleep hugging the way I was ready to run out into the stars, and I will smile at who I am.

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Island Blog – Roots

I watch the sky. Been watching it all day as it recovers from the Big Wind, the cold one full of hail and snow and threats that came to nothing. I know that those threats did manifest in other places and while I watch the sky I think of them, those who had, and still have, to deal with power outage, destruction and the cold coming in as if it felt welcome, which, in my experience, it rarely is. Pushy bugger. I walk through the trees, the today trees, for yesterday they were bent like old women, fighting to retain a gravitational pull. They are calm today, calm with a Phew in their breaths as I congratulate them all for remaining upright in such freezing blasts, holding hold against those gusting spirits with grabbing hands, hands that can uproot an ancient pine, tall as a building and old as time without a single regret. These old folks have roots that stretch beneath tracks, beneath whole expanses of hill and heather, gnarling into fixation but always ready to move on when the threat above is told them in a story. A warning. I noticed the garden birds yesterday, no, the day before, behaving in a way more alert, more dynamic than usual. They always have to watch for the fast dive of a sparrow hawk, but this was different. They were telling me something ouchy was coming. And they were right. I noticed but already knew thanks to Google weather. Disastrous winds, destruction, high risk of death, all the usual overly ridiculous hype, thanks media, thanks news, thanks but no thanks. I have the birds. Back in the Tapselteerie days, I had the cows, the horses. Their behaviour changed as they sensed me into ‘alert’. What’s going on my friends? They might buck or run, slow or hunker but whatever they showed me told me a new story was about to show itself, demanding to be read and absorbed.

It all thinks me. The trees knew it was coming and some of them, like that big pine there, the one holding up a mate who fell, but didn’t quite, some time ago. As it fell, but didn’t quite, it compromised the rooting of the one who held it up. The holder’s roots lifted, became exposed, created an unsafety, a new unknowing, a lesser ground hold. Nonetheless, they stick together. I look and I pause to consider the new root growth that will, for sure, have been implemented as a result of this new challenge. From where I stand, and with my limited human ground level thinking, I see two trees going down, exhausted. But today I reconsider. What do I know of the intelligence of trees? Absolutely nothing. Everything they do goes on underground, a dark forbidden realm to me. But it does think me of roots. I can be afeared of storms. I loved them when I had a husband here, one who was unruffled by pretty much everything including storms. The story in the storm was all he heard, dealing with lifting caravans, rawling boats on spindly moorings, children blown into the trees, dustbins heading for another island, with a calm acceptance and a strong hand to right whatever was rightable. I am a tad unsure about my talents in the realms of unrightable. For now. But I get stronger, less fearful, more ear-aware, hearing the story in the wind, watching the birds, the animals, the trees and leaning into their wisdom and the words they say are always the same.

We have been here before, many times. So have you, you just don’t trust your spirit, your story memory, your inner strength. The world and all its fear mongering has polluted you. Breathe. Let it be. All is well and if it isn’t right now, it will be soon.

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Island Blog – Agape

We have wind. Not personal wind but an agape wind, one that loves all, right across the nation and then way down into Englandshire and way beyond. Actually, that thinks me. I know, I know that there is a divide tween Scotland and England, one that was defended and attacked for decades with all sorts of big gallant men, wearing armour or tights, wielding swords way too heavy to hold, lunkering across fields in armour that took hours to affix and moments to penetrate. Horses were a by product, their faithful lives given without permission, and in their thousands.

Moving on. Back to the wind. It rages as I write. The last blooms are like old women I have met, old men too, only men never tell you how it is for them, which, by the way, is infuriating for we women. Just saying. Wind, on the other hand is wild and without care for what anyone thinks about it. It just fires, flows, rants, throws hail and alarming gusts and thinks it’s ok. I am kind of envious of that.

So, this agape wind. Let me elucidate. Agape is wide love without judgement or the need to control. As we watch the new storms coming, and the ferocity, we are allowed fear. Allowed? I cannot believe I wrote that. What I mean is nothing to do with permission. Why do I think Agape? Well I just do. We all know, or are aware of what is happening to our world, the one we had so much confidence in. We still should, for it is not gone, no way, but our eyes need to be on it.

Stories speak the truth. From Grimms (ouch) Tales, to the memories of a grandmother who is happy to speak out, when welcomed. They get lost, stories, buried with the teller. But they are the roots that root us, the ties that bind, the interweaving of agape love. In our island lives, our personal island lives, inside a non stop city noise, our new lonely flat, our new digs, a new school, a retreat, a safe house, a scary landscape. We land like an albatross in Piccadilly.

The storm rages on, but it will fade soon, after a last night of crocodile teeth and the pounding of a prize bull against the triple glazing. It’s just a night or two. So nothing. I think of those out there in the wild raw of life, this cold, the sleet, the judgement, the aggression. And I wish I could send out Agape.

Maybe I can.