boundaries

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Island Blog – Shmoodleflampers

Words can turn into a new magic. to describe feelings or nounage within a sentence being described in a moment, arms flying, the right word not there for the grasping and suddenly a new word can swing in like a risk. This word aptly describes what, in the dictionary, might touch on a ‘melee’, but more, it brings in confusion, wild weather, an abundance of something with an authoritative ‘shhh’ finger upheld and a willingness to do nothing about anything, whilst the arse of it shows freedom, the don’t care flip of a. dolphin’s tail in the middle of a massive ocean.

Many of my made-up words come from my wordsmith son. We talk often in this language and as we curious our ways through language and the wildness of it, we find no boundaries within our conversations. We fly out there, laughing, playing with syllables and making verbs into nouns, nouns into verbs. There is no right and no wrong in this play. Dr Zeuss knew this place. It thinks us, thinks me. I can’t speak for him, but for me, I am a boundary fighter, a limit fighter, a don’t tell me where I stop and start woman. There is no aggression in me. I have no interest in what others see as confrontation. I am a peacemaker who likes to push limits and boundaries, gently, respectfully, curiously, definitely.

It rained today, and rained and rained and there’s a winglewangle for you. Cabin fever, yes, even though I had a wonderfull long walk this morning, sans cloud dump, with a friend and two gorgeous labradors, but, by afterlunch, the rain steady and proffering handcuffs, I had to get out. Local shop, loads of laugheroo, pulling out on the skinny village road, peat fires burning, lights ready for Christmas, I pulled into the pub. Twinkly winkly lights, gentle music, a glass of house red and a good chat, the exchange of info and warmth just perfect. Home now, wood burner aflame, candles lit, a meal ahead.

Not for the feint/fainthearted living here but here still lives the wild. It’s brutal, but so dellictrous.

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Island Blog – And it Did

When time stops for someone else, it also stops for me. If I don’t know them well, it stops for a little while, a gasp of shock, the ensuing ripples and thoughts and rememberings of the time we shared, upsetting my natural flow, and I understand and accept it. However, if it is someone much closer to home, this time-stopping thing courses like a virus through my mind and body. It’s as if my days are uppity wee shites, refusing to walk the way we have always heretofore companionably walked, through an ordinary routine, however dull, acceptable and, above all, recognised and known. I can wake without the day, out of kilter somehow, but not in a somehow I can re-jig nor whack into submission. It’s a stumbling, and it disorientates me enough to rise a roar in my mouth.

Because why? Hmmm, perhaps because all my thoughts seem to collude with the ‘stopping’, a timeline snipped like a ribbon, that fragile, when you think of it, the Big Scissors and the delicate ribbon. My thoughts, like all honest folk will admit to, are for myself. In the gone of someone, my own Gone thwacks me in the face. I can feel boundaried when I didn’t before. Of course, it isn’t about me, and why do I say that, because the me in this situation is definitely loud as a claxen? When any sadness comes, I battle with the elements therein. The reason, the why, the what, the what if, the how, the where. I am a strongly emotional woman. I am unable, nor do I want to be ‘able’ to take any loss as a ‘whatever’. I know those who can, and I find it odd, weird at times, that anyone can just shrug off anything that happens to someone else, to the over there of their lives, and just move on, light-foot, confident. Confident in what, I often wonder. In the immediate truth that nothing such as this will ever come their way? Or is it that their inner wiring is right and mine is faulty? Looking at that sentence, I know it’s not true. There is no Right. There is no Wrong. There is just a different wiring. It isn’t perspective, because I know about perspective. I lived with a long-term husband who never saw anything as I did, beyond the obvious mathematics of lambing, or the positioning of the massive Christmas tree. It was in the area of emotive intelligence that we found ourselves on different continents. I don’t say he didn’t feel emotional, because he did, but all that ‘mess’ was kept firmly under wraps and almost never turned into words of communication, whereas I could bleed noisily and copiously over the death of a lamb, a cat, a dog, a friend, even a notreallyfriend.

It wasn’t that I was a damn fool about death. Everything has a timeline, everyone dies, I knew and know that, and it doesn’t enfrighten me. I just might not be ready for that delicate ribbon to be cut, is all, because it comes on an ordinary Tuesday morning with the day mapped out and things ready and the linchpin working just grand on all four wheels of my wagon. Suddenly, out of nowhere, there’s a cut, a stop, a finite, and my hold on the hours ahead falters, hours and hours escaping my fingers like a jail breakout, and I am left here on my sturdy wagon, fingers splayed, mind blown, alone and thrown, suddenly pointless. Shopping for groceries, visiting friends, laughing gaily, all of those a stop, as if the curtain just came down, which it did.

And it did.

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Island Blog – Feral Contours

That’s an oxymoron, by the way you academic goonies, but you know I like to play with words and to challenge boundaries. In my contoured life, I was as feral as possible, and deliberately. However, I’m talking about snow just now, not the blanket covering thing that you may know as snow, but the white stuff that drives in on the back of a blustering wind, only to whisper itself into corners and crevices, and then, to melt. I watch the hillsides on the other side of the tidal loch, as the waters barrel in and out, capped today with ruffles of white water, like a line of choir girls in a hurry. Gulls float backwards, the wee birds twink and startle above the feeders and even Madam Sparrowhawk missed today, her skirts flipping about white, feathers in somewhat of a disarray as she sulked atop my berberis. Although I know she needs to eat, I won’t make it easy for her, not with all these miles and miles wide open to her, for she is a she, the fastest bird of prey and horribly accurate. I have watched her close her wings at 80mph to get through a wire fence, then to fill out once again, to flip and level and to grab Jock. Jock is the name of all male blackbirds. I notice that the girls are far quicker to juke away. Much like women.

Back to the snow. It came suddenly and making a hoor of a noise. Actually, it was the wind, the shout and slam of it, suddenly elated with a thousand snowflakes on its back, and laughing at the slamming thing it achieved against all windows and doors. I am sure we were collectively startled, even though a cloudreader would have known what was about to come, the whole flinging aboot of wheelie bins, the tattering of bird feathers, the resigned bend of the big ass pines on the shore below me. I watch the way the snow has stayed. Over the sealoch is the cold place, little sun for months and a frozen promise when, over here, we melt. It isn’t resignation, but just a good choice of position. I can do Dark, but I need light, particularly natural light. I have gone from my home, all wet and leaking and light, to a friend for coffee across the water, and crunched my inappropriate shoes over solid ice. T’is bizarre. 

I look over by, as they say here, and see the snow has painted a new picture. It was just a few hills yesterday, with empty land after felling. Larches still stand, now ghost trees, elevations, dips, wrinkles, brown and more brown plus boulders which sometimes catch a wink from the low sun and rise into a glister of beauty for just a moment. But now there is snowvelt. There is a new land over there, the ridges crisp and with a curious turn this way and that. The forestry lines are ruler straight, pulling up into the bumpy clouds, all shades of grey and quite unsure, it seems, of what to do next or where to go. I see faces in the light touch of the snow painter, here an old man puffing out his last breath, there a child running out to sea, chasing a ball. In one place the snowland is thicker. Why? It wonders me, until I see the stand of evergreens. I think of who might have planted them and why. Stories abound when we are curious and I am always thus. 

We all have to live within contours, some of us more than others, when our sky is grey and our light lightweight. We can think sink or we can rise like a surprise. We can speak out, even as we are hoping our bladder won’t let us down. We can. We are naturally feral. It isn’t any easier for a so called privileged person to find a voice, to speak the truth, to point out the cutaway contours, to definate the self, to see the old man dying, the child chasing a ball out to sea. 

A new year lies ahead. Sounds good at first until the old stuff kicks in. Don’t let it, if it isn’t what you want. Be brave enough to see, to acknowledge and to act. Create new contours, feral, of course.

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Island Blog 135 Little Weeds

 

Flowers close up 1

 

 

As the garden grows into complete hilarity, with an ebullient chuckle, I watch the weeds find their places.  They’re clever, these weeds, finding quiet little dark places to begin their journey, rising into view long after the roots have winkled their way around, along and through those finer species, once carefully placed by us.  When we clear space for such a planting, we see, not the weeds to come, or those now removed, but just this fine sunny spot, allocated to a shrub or bush, envisioned in full majestic bloom, with the ground floor as peaty brown as it was at the start.

Well Ho, says Mother Earth, and Hum to that, for she has other plans and she’s not giving them up to any old human.  Let them eat cake, she says, for now.

Over winter the roots keep spreading, like witches fingers, in the silence of the earth, out of view, out of mind.  Some of us employ evil sprays, conveniently forgetting the lasting damage any of them might do in the long term.  We don’t worry too much about long term, unless we are a fledged and experienced gardener, which I am not.  I quite understand those who buy all their bedding plants each year, thus creating what appears to be an established garden.  It’s tempting.  We don’t use sprays, choosing, instead, to allow the witches fingers room and time to stake their hold.  Then, whatever Spring might bring in showers, snow, frosts and sunshine, these roots decide to reach for the sky, pushing up green and strong, and tempting me with pretty yellow blooms the bees love to visit.  Well, that makes it okay then, if the bees choose thus.

It thinks me about weeds, or wild flowers in the wrong places.  But who says  it’s so?  The wild flowers were here long before me and they’ll be here long after me, so which of us has rights in this little hill garden?

I was a weed, once. I think we can all admit to that at some point in our lives; when we just don’t fit in.  Actually, I think I have often been a weed, but not ‘weedy’.  Finely pedigreed folk who do fit in, might want to remove me, for I pinch the light and the live-giving water allocated to them.  But, the strength and tenacity of me might undermine them, as long as I keep moving, keep finding new ways to reach the sun, keep producing pretty blooms for the bees.  This is not a ‘them’ and ‘us’ thing, for we all have our place and time in this life, but, instead, of ‘both’.  I never did like either/or scenarios, opting every time for a laterally sought choice.  We know there is room for all of us, but the trouble is always one of boundaries – where you stop and I begin.  After all, we don’t have the same voices, you and I, nor the same dreams, visions, hopes and plans.  You may be planning for something I have no interest in.  This doesn’t make either of us wrong nor right, just different.  We laughingly say ‘Vive la difference!’ in our best french accent, but most of us have no idea what it means as a life choice.  No matter how careful we are with our inner thoughts, we all make judgements on others.  Words like ‘should’ and ‘ought’ pop into our mouths and out again and we feel regret long after the damage is done, for, in speaking those words about another living soul, we have shown we are better than they and have established it firmly in the ears of the listener.

I kick myself often for such worthless chatter, gossip to call it by it’s proper name.  If I name a weed, I damage three people.  Myself, the weed and the listener, and on what authority I ask myself?

In reply, I look out of the window, at the fancy shrub about to bloom, and, then down towards the so-called weeds.  The shrub will never surprise me inside it’s controlled boundary limits, but the long-tailed fronded grasses, the speckly indigo blooms of the wild forget-me-nots, the creeping buttercups, the purple-belled ground ivy and the Lady Elizabeth  poppies, the colour of sunshine……?

Well they will.

 

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Island Blog 116 To See Darkly

 

snow-goose_711_600x450

 

 

 

I saw this large white thing on the sealoch, pushing the water into a triangle with the rocky shore as the third median.  I peered for a bit through the paint-spattered windows as the cover of the night slid back to reveal a new morning.  I always do this ‘peering’ thing first, actually not just first, but second and sometimes third, in a vain attempt to kid on that, overnight, my eyeballs have grown young again.  Ah, halcyon days….. when I could see so much more, often too much, and sometimes that which would have been better not  seen at all, and certainly not by me!

Anyway, I waffle away from the large white thing.

Before it disappears completely, travelling at a fast lick through the frothy tide line, I grab the hefty set of Zeiss binoculars, or ‘bins’ as I gather they are fondly known, and nearly fall into my coffee with the weight of the things.  I don’t believe any bird watcher ever held these up to their eyes for long.  I would need to consider the employment of a personal trainer for at least a year just to manage a period of time longer than 35 seconds.  However, being a woman, I can achieve a great deal in 35 seconds, so I stick them onto my face and focus quickly, to the usual no avail, because why?  Because, as well as giving me instant arm ache and the beginnings of a shake in my ulna, well, both ulnas to be honest, the flaming glass bit mists up as my hot eyeball challenges the cold lens.  Vital seconds pass, as does the large white thing, into the trees that overhang the near shore.  Hmmm.

I call it a Snow Goose.  It was too big for an eider duck and too small for a swan or a flamingo.  Snow Goose it is.  There!  I feel dead chuffed and highly priveleged and can live this fantasy for days.  I saw a Snow Goose today!  That’s what I say in the shop to a resounding chorus of envying OOhs and Aahs.

It makes me think.  Of how we can see things that aren’t there, and not see things that are there.  How an un-misted glass lens can show us something we think we can explain, and how a misted one can talk complete pants to our human brains.  When we ‘see’ something through our eyeballs, we bring a process into being.  First, we see, then we fix this vision into a place, and then, without any conscious decision, we pad it out with all manner of daftness, imaginings, past baggage, phobias, indoctrinated beliefs and hopes.  When I see a beggar on any street, I see someone calling for help, and I will always give something. I follow my own heart in this matter.  When another sees the same sad sight, they may feel angry, begin to judge, or see laziness, bad choices, weakness – in other words, they might look down on the beggar as less than human.  It’s called ‘perception’ and it is in every one of us, however much inner work we might embark on to learn humility and compassion.  We can’t help it.  It is part of who we all are.

When I decide, which I sadly do, now and again, that someone else is heading in the wrong direction, I say so.  And then I learn a new fact or two about them, and regret, deeply, my hasty judgement.  I work on, to soften my perceptions, or, rather, to shut them up, but they can rise unbidden, un-called for, and always at times when I am not mindfully in control of that sneaky little set of wires that run from my brain to my mouth.

One area of perception, that never fails to cause a stooshie, is that of Boundaries.  Whether it is between black and white, the Ukraine and England, England and Scotland, or the African States, there is this thing about boundaries that could curdle milk in a nanosecond, one that everyone has an opinion on, based on personal perception.  Oftentimes, I hear folk talking heatedly on a ‘boundary’ subject. It can wire up a whole shopping queue once it gains momentum, but what saddens me is that I so often hear not what any individual really thinks, but what someone else has said on tv or written in a newspaper.  When you actually consider the other human beings involved in these situations, with only theories posturing as reality, how can anyone opinionate?

My world may be laughably fantasmic to some, even to many, but if we all  (and I believe we all do) want a life of peace and neighbourly-ness, then our arms must be open, our hearts too and, one day, our countries.  Voltaire said, ‘It is sad that, if we are to be a patriot, we first have to make an enemy of the rest of mankind.’

I think a different way to you, and you, to me.  I feel differently about the whys and the hows and the whens of things, but this can either be a glorious Snow Goose pushing through the saltwater of a new tide on a new morning – or, it can be ignored as something I couldn’t quite see, through my glass, and darkly.