Change

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Island Blog – A New Beginning

I started work today, at a new venture, or an establised venture, now in new hands, which means it’s new. btw. Moving into a new place, even if the venue, the stones and location are the same as they ever were, a newness is created. There are new ideas, changes, alterations, a personal stamp stamped. I always love new beginnings, have no problem with change, mostly speaking. We greeted, checked out the lay of the land, heard the ideas, decided to be dynamic. Let us go, I thought, as we did just that. I knew it before, the way it works, the flow and rhythm of what had been the been for yonks, shifting its gaze into a new sky. This, I said to myself, is a be. Not a been…… and I am in.

We worked, and hard, and busy, fixing, trixing, laughing, sharing, sticking, unsticking, wiping, washing, tide-fighting, tide-aligning, talking, finding out about each other, watching, checking. We are creating a new dynamic. There are wonderings, doubts, fickle-twiddles, stopstarts, upskittles, solutions flying in like birds through newly sequined window panes. Tables – juxtaposition, chairs too, wall hangings yet to be wall-hanged, or not, lights to be twisted this way, that, this something to be considered, this something else to be moved, or removed, all a considering, for now. It’s like a birthing, and I am at the business end. I have no idea what I am doing, beyond the obvious, the cleaning prep work and the beyond of the dance of mischief I will always bring to anything. However, there is no fun, nor mischief (interesting word if you. break it down……mis…..chief…….just saying) if there are no-ones to work with, to laugh with, through tricky stuff, when this isn’t working well and that isn’t working either.

We had fun today. My first day. I loved it. I’m as tired as the others, but so excited to be a part of this new beginning.

I thought I was all out of those, to be honest!

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Island Blog – Cloud Shunt

I’m watching them. The big cumulous rising behind the Blue Ben, across the loch, wherein the tidal flow is one hell of a sassy. Must be a new moon a’coming or some other disturbance in the multi confusional vortex. It’s something, anyway, enough to strange the skies, upset the clouds and cause a load of upturned eyes in places like this one, glorious in its lack of fumes, and the noise of people, who, in my observation, would much rather not be under the control of the perceived rigidities of a worldly expectation, domination. Back to the clouds.

The cumulous were big puffs, highlifting, and like candyfloss but super white. No sunset yet to paprika their tips. Perfect virgin snow. I looked away,but for a few moments, to bring in wood, answer a call, light a candle, moments. When I looked again, there was a straggle,a shunt, I could see it, almost feel it, a slide of grey, like a teachers line through dodgy text in a presented essay. I watched the grey move, split, absorb the ice cream clouds, divide, consume.

Now, the hills are flamingo tipped, the sea-loch pinking, the sky above already bored with the artist. It will darken soon.

Obviously, things change. Sometimes too quick.

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Island Blog – A Spangled Lacuna

In every life a little rain must fall. The trouble is that we, as negatively wired humans, tend to collect up all those rain days until the sunny ones get tired of shining, and all but disappear. Folk around us can say ‘Look on the bright side’ until our ears deafen, but it makes little difference. They can also suggest that we focus on the positives, but blind inside our fog or darkness, we just cannot find them. Am I a ‘glass half full’ person, ‘glass half empty’ or ‘no glass at all’ person? Oh please…….too much platitudinosity! In truth, we are all three of those, at times, all of us, even the ones who exhaust us with bounce, their faces always lifted, the lie a cloud in their eyes. None of us are Either, nor Or, Black nor White, for we are both at times. A million colours and a million greys at others. And to feel disallowed when wallowing in black is to feel corrected, fixed and re-routed which does little, if anything at all, to help. We long to be heard, listened to, accepted, befriended, our injuries noticed and respected, and only then can we decide to lift our heads from the ground. It is not easy to find such support outside of a counsellor’s cocoon, because, bizarrely, we all feel the need to elevate a ‘fallen’ one, seeing it as encouragement and inspiration when, in truth, it only serves to highlight the state they are currently in, stuck in mud, pale and lost, beaten down by life.

When I, rarely, flip through social media, I notice there are a gazillion ways to lift my spirits, wisely worded, some ancient, some contemporary, and they all make perfect sense. To my mind, that is. But this is for others, surely, not for me down here in the oubliette. I can see the daylight, yes, long for it to surround me as it seems to surround everyone else in this whole coloured-up world, but I cannot reach it. I am unworthy of this light, obviously. The platitudes and uplifting phrases are as irritating as bluebottles around my head, buzzing out my failure to keep above ground. Until, that is, my eyes adjust to the dark, until I can smell my own decay. I might look back on my life already lived and recall a flash of rainbow, a shift of perspective, and remind myself that I played a leading part, and I played it to the very best of my ability. It was I who made that choice, that decision, took that first step, activated a change. Nobody else did. It was all mine, and still is. Yes, I made mistakes, some ghastly, but I made something happen from nothing. My head lifts as the sun glides overhead and I feel the warmth brush my face. My shoulders soften, my mind gentles, the tanglewire now compromised. Yes, I have been weakened by this decline, but I am stronger too, because I am done with this darkness, and it is I who found my way here, and I who will raise myself up again, with new thoughts, a new energy, singular and vital.

It is precisely because I have become lost in this lacuna, that I have learned just how strong I am, how resilient, how much I want this one life to be all it can be. Others’ lives impact on my own, of course they do, and some have taken all I can possibly give, too much in fact, I gave too much. What was it that led me to give myself away, to believe that, in doing so, I could ‘fix’ all their manifold human problems? We are taught to give, are we not, that to be ‘selfish’ is to be a ‘bad’ person? We are also taught that everything healthy grows from self-love, without which we cannot effectively and wisely love others exactly as they are. If, however, we build ourselves from the amount of love we are given, and that is often lacking, we tell ourselves we don’t deserve it, anyway. We are easily hurt, put down, can feel judged and misunderstood, awkward, unseen, unimportant, invisible. Just as in the oubliette.

I see a rope, one I hadn’t noticed heretofore. The spangle-light dances off rocks, footholds. I rise and stretch my limbs, turn my face to the sky, and begin to climb.

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Island Blog – Ordinary Life

There’s still a lot of waggle and shiver going on here. Shrubs slewed sideways, drunk on the gale, tree limbs felled by it. It wonders me, that felling thing. Obviously the fallen were already showing an inner weakness, unseen by me, or anyone else, for that matter, but known by the tree. The limbs fall higgle piggle, downing others who, or is it whom, were probably astonished at the invasion of their space, and who(m) were not ready to fall off their perches quite then. There are always innocent victims. The shrubs, well, they had to go. When you are already stemmed up to three feets, you don’t lookd good at all, collapsed like a load of young vicarious hopefuls at a hen night, blooms bashed, squashed. I am so glad I never had a hen night. The thought of one of those sads me. Just to think that any about-to-be ‘bride’ is already missing her freedom makes no sense to me at all.

I went today for lunch with a wonderful friend. It is the last week of this fabulous cafe being open for the so-called summer. I love my friends, our meets and chats and laughs. From our ordinary lives, we lift into an hour or two of random, when anything can happen and everything can be said. And then, we part, and return to our own ordinary lives but with our thoughts changed, shifted, eased, recognised. A powerful time. We all have troubles, but in the talking of them, in the sharing, even in the not sharing, just that connectivity is dynamic and changing. I come home along a road (track) that dips and dives, the sides deep enough to sink a mini, watching a waspish sun-god pushing (I can see it) against cloud bullies, his light diamonds sparkling on the surface of an incoming tide, all salt and salmon hope. And I am home.

I walk beneath shiver trees, gold and red, or what’s left of all that spectacular. We never enjoy the autumn colours as others do in places where the gales have no room to flex their full span, nor expand their blow. Our leaves are stripped quickquick here. It thinks me a bit. We have trees here. At least we saw a bit of autumn colour. I have been to islands where no trees can grow, and not far from here. And I am thankful for the glimpse of such beauty. The sky is a wild grey bonkers, clouds shifting sideways, wind pitching like a bowler. Kids barrel noisy home from school. Folk walk by. Ordinary life.

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Island Blog – Equinoctial

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

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

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

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

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

Hallo You.

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Island Blog – Catastrophise, Dramatise, Realise

I am altogether not sure about the z and s in the spellings of these words. It was always s in my day, a zillion yonks ago, and there’s a thing. Zillions were Millions back then and that was beyond most everyone even then. So I play with the ‘zee’ and the ‘ess’ for godsake. Language changes after all, and I don’t know what that means, not neither. Moving on……..I have been full of thinks these past quiet times, and not just thinks, although the thinks-thing is of value, in that it, the think, thinks me. I had the eyeball check, all ok in that nothing will heal my left eyeball. My right is right as right. I was always right oriented, not that I need to be right, but my right side is my strength. Writing or any other thing, I do with my right. But I need my left, to educate me. So, my leftie is a tad compromised? We can deal with this, the two of us. And there’s the thing, again.

The clouds louer, growl, hover, push down, closing the sky. That sounds so like a sentence, but it is nothing of the sort. We know clouds out here, in the hawk spit of a volcanic finality, where it landed, where we live. It rains and loud, like a growing out of all sound, even the meen of a liquidiser, conversation stalled, loud, that loud. The Western isles clouds move like queens out on the raz. They come with punch and independence and consequence. I have known these trixy clouds for decades. We have had many conversations. They have guided me through lambing, sailing, hanging out the washing, choosing time to walk, to lead the horses, the bull, the milk cow to a field, or out of it. A keek at them clouds, and a wee question, sometimes a negotiation, and we have worked our way through the days.

I know that weather has changed, but for those of us who knew this was coming, it is no surprise. I know I have the benefit of longtime association with clouds, and intuition around weather patterns, but anyone can learn this. I am no scientist, no clever student. I just know that we can catastrophise and dramatise. We can hide, pretend it isn’t happening, but it is. And, happily we can realise and research and be aware as much as possible. And life is so beautiful. I hear at times, those who hold on to what was, the summers we knew, the way fungi should not be rising just now, what happened? That pointless question.

We can catastrophise, dramatise, or realise, and get going with how it is, how things are. It is a beautiful understanding, and an opening in the clouds, and more, an opportunity. Roses are fabulous this year, the sun blast sudden and as a real head turn, the random warmth like a mother, colours rise like fires in the grey, raindrops diamond, people laugh at the turn of it all. There is so much for the ones who notice, who engage.

Dont’ miss this. Realise.

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Island Blog Clouds and Colour In

I watch Clouds. They’re like television for me, so much big ass sky out there. Below, a sealoch, reflecting. Clouds in the saltwater flatwater, trees and homes too, otters, fish, sometimes kayaks, canoes, people spinning over they know not what. The clouds bump each other, argue, lift above and change shape, give in and dissolve, or are pushed into nothingness, wind-altered, dismissed. Like us down here. There is music in the sky, melody, dissonance, discordance, and dance. Same below, changing moment by moment. It thinks me.

Down here, we have to walk in boots. We are grounded and sometimes stilled and stopped. We don’t have cloud privilege. I know that clouds are moisture and not there and all that weatherly wotwot, but from down here they have substance. And, when the landing you inhabit feels like a place you would rather not be, the chance of a lift into the sky is not so weird. Thankful am I for my imagination, for my belief in the extraordinary, in the impossibility of possible, in the chance, the random, the wild connection with all that not one single one of us can ever explain, nor define. However, and nonetheless, I, like everyone else, am damn well stuck here, and in boots. And when the knocks knock, it hurts.

We are taught, and I am thankful for that taughting, that there is a way beyond loneliness, rejection and self-recrimination. More, a swipelift on and up into the wild and the fun and the adventure. I believe it. I also know that, without such guidance, I could have fallen off my perch.

I walk under clouds, as you do. We know that things ethereal are changing. It will affect us, the grey, the wet, the cold. I bought red boots today. Colour in. Colour in.

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Island Blog – The Atticus and the Reflexion

I’ve been allowing a whole load of thinks over the past days. They swirl in like twimbly waves against the atticus that stands strong, stoney strong, against any natural flow, like a frickin blockade, salty confusion and a whole load of ineffective slapping at a finite. I got sick of this. To slam at a solid truth is to waste energy and intelligence. Although most of us, if we are honest, keep swirling twimbly waves at a solid something we don’t like one fricketty bit, by the way, until we eventually blow out of breath and energy. And we see the pointlessness of such a flagellation. As I have done, thank the holy crunch. I decide to employ reflexion, a different word to the one with a ‘c’ and a ‘t’ and with a shift in meaning, if not a complete one of those shift things.

I can see behind me, beyond me, I can see from whence I have come and this damn atticus is right in my path, if waves can ‘path’. And I have been slamming at it with full ocean saltforce, without intelligent thought. I suspect this is normal, whatever that means. It isn’t just me who confounds, surely? And then I find reflexion. It’s a flexi word, dynamic, inviting and entirely appropriate. It is ‘the phenomenon (I’m already in with that word) of a propagating (again) wave of light or sound, being thrown back from a surface’. Don’t you just love that! Opportunity, choice, intelligence, all so dynamic. However, I do know what it feels like to be on a boat in wild weather and facing an atticus, and it took a brilliant skipper to draw us all safely away from a slam dunk that would have so pissed me off down in Davy’s locker, as dinner was all prepped and the fires lit and the candles just squatting there all ready to fire up the evening. The undertow in an ocean is never to be ignored, not for one minute. Just saying, and maybe my just saying is saying something. Overboard, and you could end up in Venezuela for Christmas.

I know atticus is always a sudden. I also know how reflexion can tumble me over and onwards to fret another shoreline, to tingle more little toes, to whisper over other sands. But, without an atticus, there’d be no limits, no new startings, no haltings that help us to consider our choice of direction. We are in control of our own boat. I just got that. Once again.

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Island Blog – Moons in her Mouth

I find that there are as many ways to respond to change as there are people. I recognise resistance, fear, exhilaration, denial and many more unspellable words describing the palaver of response. Trouble is, change is invariably frick all to do with us. Someone or something else initiates this change thing, muddying still waters and messing up picture perfect landscapes. It’s like the world without or within just shifted a whole 45 degrees whilst we, busy doing the same thing in the same way for ages, remain rooted to the spot and staring at nothing. Where did what I know and understand, go?

The answer is, Not Far, in my experience, but why life has to do this irritating shift is, well, irritating, at best upsetting/confusing and scary at worst. But wait……..if I can see that in my security I was just an automaton, performing tasks in the usual way and without questioning anything, and, thus, not really alive at all, then perhaps I should take a closer look at what change has on offer. We humans have been gifted elevation above all other living creatures, and, yet, any animal, bird, reptile or fish knows more about adaptation to change that most of us two legged bright sparks will ever know. And, yet, change is wild around us, moving in on a storm, in stories, in the turbulence of extreme weather, the warning loud and clear to all others, it seems, but us. I can see that we have depended too much on a material infrastructure, trusting in impermanence, thus gradually losing our natural abilities as intelligent and sentient human beings.

Even as a young woman, well, girl really, I knew I wanted the insecurity of the traveller. It scared me, the thought of the riptide, the undertow, the wild and desolate landscape, an unpredictable sky, but the call was strong. Thankfully, I found a man who had more experience, more knowledge on such travelling whooha and who reckoned I could be a good travel mate. I learned so much from him, thirsty for the knowing of how to react when encountering danger, for example, or of what physical and mental strengths I needed to develop in order to be, not unafraid, but canny and unpanicked. I did panic, a lot, in the process, but I also learned a gazillion lessons on survival, and I don’t mean living on Mars, but more just living with constant change.

And then I learned to love becoming a dynamic part of Life with all her shifts and shouts. Sometimes she whispers, and I turn my head to hear. I know that businesses fail, that shops go bust, that hackers grow like weeds, that war is a boundary away, but I also know that I am a survivor. This is not arrogance, safe behind a locked door of smugness and control, but just one woman, spinning in harmony with the world, vigilant, always learning and with moons in her mouth.

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Island Blog – Singularity, Tile number 17 and the Frog

I was thinking, or was I being thought? Good question. When a whale in the wide open ocean, or a stag within forest cover, or, even the frog I found in my kitchen this morning, looks at me, I do wonder who is looking at who, or is it whom? The wee frog shifted its unrestrained eyeballs this way, that, up and down, over and above and wotwot, unlike my looking, which is forwards, pretty much. Such a limitation, I said to said frog, as I lifted it’s cold wee body out into danger, aka, the outdoors. How it got in infiltrates my thinking. Not that I mind. We are all travellers, from one season to another, from one state to another, from sleep to awareness, from one birthday to the next. But this frog stopped me, thought me. Beyond the how-the-hell-did-you-get-here questioning (and I am quick to beyond myself from that poibntless question) I wondered about the help thing. My help. I did not squeal nor pull back in revulsion and call the fire brigade or, worse, pest control. No, indeed. I hunkered down, best I could, and watched its eyes, felt its fear as it froze on tile number 17. I only know this because, in my oldness it helps to count my way in the dark. I liked being 17. Finally I was free of curfew and about to find the damn lunatic with whom I fell in love, and who fathered five astonishing individuals. I digress.

We all walk singular. Oh yes, we join others, conjoin with a few, stick with one or two, but, even within those comforting boundaries, we are still singular. I am still me, and that me can cause much eyeball switch. Change comes, to one, to another and the timing is always off, or so I have found. So how hard it can be to retain self when others want, or appear to want, me to change shape in order to fit. We all build our protections, and, yet, when we meet a rigidity, we are thrown. And what we do, all of us, initially at least, is to doubt ourselves. What did I do wrong? Is my change a bad thing? And, sadly, many of us slink back into the dark of those unnerving questions. I certainly did. But, as we do that slinking thing, which is, to be clear, safe passage, we lose our singularity and our voice is silenced. We have watched this scenario played out in many films, cheered the one who rose, naked and scared and singular into their own light, risking the wrath of anyone at Ground Control.

It takes courage to stand strong. I don’t know the way, can’t find the words, have no plan beyond the truth that I will stand for this no more, allow this no more, will not bend my shape. I know this place and, trust me, singularity is not single. Not at all. There are a gazillion singulars on heretofore unknown paths, feeling the fear, pushing on in trust and faith. You will find them, as I did.

As the frog found me.