choice

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Island Blog – Aestival and a Hotchi Witchi

Work today was a spin and a din. Lordy, I swear folk decide to arrive in a gamut, they do. From zero to bonkers in moments, and it is moments, not minutes, although, technically they both may add up to 60 seconds. But it’s the moments that trixillate the arrival thingy. A drift of one family, small noses level with the cake counter, a scarp of I Wants spilling across the wood, echoing, developing. Big parents minding them with hand fusses and gentle remonstrations. Tired, I bet. I remember that time. Nothing pleases for long, minutes, maybe. Maybe. A group of time travellers. Well, they look like Time Travellers to me, all lycra and speedo and helmets and smiles and buzz. Then, older folk, white-headed, gentle, of their generation, polite and smiling, asking for tea for two and cinnamon buns, yes please. These sell out in minutes. All of the baking is ridonculous. So soft, so inviting, so tasty. I plate up, plate up, out it all goes, and in come the compliments, the thank yous.

The spread of the Best Cafe Ever is a good sprawl. Tables not too close and there is, on days like today, sunshine enough for a spill outside into sunbeat or shade, the circular bench tables offering the chance to chat among the feral and opportunistic sparrows who have so worked out crumb snatching. They are even brave enough to sit right beside delighted customers, heads cocked. I so admire them, and the customers who don’t swat.

I love the team of Us. the summer now is full of folk for from Englandshire, school holidays and a choice, I guess, not to fly to abroad, wherever that is, but coming instead to a beautiful island, thrumming with history and the chance to get out there on a boat into the biggest ocean, the Atlantic, the one who controls lives for a gazillion coastlines, carrying as many stories on her back and within her depths as would delight a bedtime child all the way up to adulthood, if said child hears something that lights a light within. And there’s no given on that.

As I drive back home from work, I notice that some still spray poison. I also get it, not that I would ever choose to spray poison. But, I do remember, I do, the overwhelm of bracken, stealing foodal ground from cattle and sheep, and our own internal battle with the choice between poison and the slow and endless alternative. However, there is a disallowance in me now. Where we were dealing with frickin miles of green and the skin-legs of grisly cattle and skitter sheep. this poison is in small gardens, constructs within a wall of hedge and strappish fence. There’s no need for poison here. It’s quick, yes, but it also kills wildflowers, insects who tap down, any water supply, albeit deep down, any birds, spiders, bees, wasps (we need them), flies too, ditto. I do really wish that, in the crevasse that divides generations, there is a wise person, an Hotchi Witchi, one who would not let a single young thing pass until they proved they wanted to be a facilitator of intelligent change.

That’s what I wish for future aestival days, ones I will never see. Maybe I will be the Hotchi Witchi. If so, plan your responses, you young things.

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Island Blog – Freedom and the Pefficor

So what is freedom? A massive question and with a gazillion answers, for sure. For some it means a facilitated or courageous move away from confinement. For others it might mean, well, pretty much the same thing. I get that it isn’t always possible. I also get that it is possible, but would take huge courage and a faith that, eventually, a life would improve. It has to. Confinement is always wrong. Always. However, a person may have been complicit in the confining thing and that bit is often the one reason to stay. I agreed to this. I let this happen. I am to blame. We are such suckers for personal blame, as if it was born with us like a tricky twin.

Here’s a thing, one which might sound bajonkers. Not only might we be the one confined, physically or mentally, but we are also the pefficor, the more senior ‘officer’ in the ranks, of which we are but one. This nonsense is crazy but it is real. Inside our minds there are the critical voices, or just one, from our past, our childhood, and there is the pefficor, quite a gentle name for such an ungentle, who didn’t see us, not really, hear us, not at all, ask about us, our feelings, our life, well, maybe once or maybe twice. We can’t understand the power of that voice, nor why it keeps triggering us into a big response in the life we now live. I know what is missing. A good self-esteem, a strong sense of self within any dynamic, any workspace, any group of friends/ strangers.

The next bit is always inner work. In this world, so lost in the machinations of gain and power, even though all of us seek simple, gentle, loving, kind, we keep listening to the pefficor in our heads. Life is all about success. No, it isn’t. Life is all about listening, learning, uplifting, observing, slowing, watching, accepting. Striving for money is a death wish. We know this. We’ve seen so very many fall into that black, snake-infested pit. The wrong goal.

Whom do we admire? And I omit with a big omit anyone in fame because that place just doesn’t exist beyond a cloudal fluff. However, with many teens in my grandlings, I can see the power of the pefficor in their lives, the subsuming of self into the morass. I can see how tough parenting is nowadays and I am glad my kids, now parents, had the freedom of the wild.

I have no idea why all this came to me as I sat down to write, but it did. All any of us ever want is the freedom to live, to love, to move, to lift, to change, to settle, to choose, to speak, to listen, to be heard. Not a lot to ask.

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Island Blog – Village Life

There is something about a small community that isn’t a bit small at all. Although the wee street is short, the homes hunkers, mostly, against the winter gales, people open doors, emerge onto the skinny tarmac with dogs, kids, bikes, empty shopping bags over shoulders, and all of them wave. If it works, I slow on my way to work, wind down a window, share a laugh, find something out, check on the wellbeing of those whom I value, whom I love, whom I would sorely miss. Mostly, it’s cheeky chat, fly comments, something like a nourishing extra breakfast or lunch, a lift to my soul. There’s almost no parking because all the parking is already done, and the line goes all the way up to where the road divides, a cusp, a problem sometimes because I have to be in first gear to overscape the cusp thing and in the ice times, even first gear, even in my snorty wee mini, is no enough. Needless to say, there is a lot of reversing, pulling back, moving forward a bit, sneaking into skinny gaps and just to get to the end of this wee street. It’s not a street, no. It’s a track, or, perhaps on days when ‘the boys’ have moved in with pot-hole fillings and tarmac hot enough to take the belly off even the highrise big-ass four wheel drives, should they risk a too early move, a road.

The thing here is community, a kindness and a helping, a reversing, a lot of that, a waving, a smiling. I came, we came as incomers 46 odd years ago, and there are many more now. I meet them because they involve, they want to. They come to help, to volunteer, to bring their skills to any situation. I watch them. I see their smiles, their body language, their openness to a complete life change. Coming from cities, from stressful jobs, from awkward familial situations, from judgement and marginalisation, towards the dream that life can be a Can Be. And it can. And I would wish for so many folk that the belief in just that would give them the courage to shift, to lift, to gift a better life to themselves.

When we had to leave the island, a load of whiles ago, and rented a flat in Glasgow Southside, I felt ripped from community. I seek community, love people, talk to anyone and everyone, and all the time. I know I need people, but I am not needy. Oh no. Very independent. Our flat was 3 floors up. It was a fine flat. But I had to find friendship. I knocked on doors, noted when this new lass came back from work, she was unsure about new flooring, her new job, what did I think? I met folk on the cold concrete stairs, said hallo. I met warmth. It thought me. Everyone is lonely. Floor below lived a very old brother and sister, really wonderful Glasgow folk, the best. She baked. He swore and laughed a lot. When she had baked scones, she whacked a broom handle on her ceiling. Come, collect. Even though I could not wait to escape the city, to get back to my island home, I remember those two who gave me village life in a very lonely place.

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Island Blog – Not Just a Woman

I never can find the source of my newly thinks, they just come. Chances are someone says something that stops me in my tracks, or I notice something, a chance glimpse of an encounter without words but with smoke rising above the both of them. Could be the times that tourists haven’t acknowledged that I have snaked my way back in a very competent reverse around at least four corners whilst they, in a big four wheel drive thing as big as a starship, sit and look at me, and, then, when the driver, the man, stares straight ahead as he zooms past and never thanks nor smiles, I. know that’s when the think rose in me. I know you, I thought. I never want you again in my life, not that I did, not in my marriage, but all around us lived out these men and, it seems, still they do and in freedom.

I am not just a woman. I am more than an excellent cook, a skill I honed and refined over years, not just because I wanted to please, because I did, but more, because, when I gave up my dreams, being the centre of the need, the giver and lover, the supplier of nourishment, the one to bring smiles and full bellies and gentle sleep, my skills meant everything.

As children grew, as a community dynamic shifts, I got it. I moved with the viable, with the awkward, the times when my man hid away. I got my role. Never signed up for it, had no clue, but there I was, all young body, long hair, still with a dream whispy in my head. It dies. No, it doesn’t. I still have it, still believe in my dream.

A man. My choice. However, and in my experience, there were only about 3 who ever asked me, and listened, about what I wanted in life. I told them. I am a fiery, terrified, strong, weak, beautiful, ugly, competent, useless, woman. I am not my body, and I am my body. I am gentle and very strong. I am wild, spontaneous, awkward, bloody-minded, but not fixed in any of those. I am rainbow coloured and I am soft shell beach colours. I am the storm, the sunrise, the set, the pull of a tide, the stop of boats, the lift of cloud, the sunshift, the turning of the world. I am the moon as she wakes, loud in a starry sky, pulsing power. I am unsleep, I am warm cuddles, I am immediate, I am distant.

I am not just a woman.

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Island Blog – A Peppering of Sleep

There’s a spicy dance in that, in a peppering, and the dance is my decision. When others hit the pillow and soon are lifted into the warm embrace of many hours of forgetfulness and refreshment, I soldier on. Well, I am no soldier, btw, but there are times I can imagine myself one, although, and this must be said, I would have baulked at the confinement of that ridonculous uniform with its guttural limitations and the inability to bend at the knee and the fact that nobody ever imagined a real soldier would need to move light-quick. Which they do.

Anyway, I am in a nightdress, a long tee-shirt to be precise, and why am I spilling this irrelevance?

I go to bed at an early hour, one I remember, way back, as a Let’s Go Out time. Not now. I have my herbal tea, my book. I close the curtains on the summerlight, apologising and thanking. So far so good. I read awhile, feel my eyelids and concentration shutting down, and courrie in to the feather down warmth, the comfort of a solo bed, the space, the peace, the quiet. An hour or two later I burst up, wide awake, completely ready for a new day. I kid you not. I am raring to go. I listen to the love-call of a Tawny Owl (actually, it’s deafening, but delightful). Mother moon has thankfully chilled her pants now and is a wee Fadie in the star-crisp sky, clouds banished, or just tired of clouding for a while. No human sounds. No outlights beyond those daft mason jars full of solar beads outside my own door. You might think the world has gone out, but no. Geese mumble and croon to each other, to the gathering of vulnerable chicks, who, had they been mine own chicks, would have required a load of gathering and a ‘Muchlouder’ than any mumble or croon. Oystercatchers, always freaking out about something, trillett and dive about around the rocks. I catch them in the moonlight. A plane flows overhead, a dart, heading north. I make another herbal tea. I watch and I see.

Sleep is important, yes. But, and but, there are those of us who don’t sleep to order, and never did. There is a fear mongering around lack of sleep, a feeding of nonsense from the ‘higher-ups’ who might tell us we must have 8 hours sleep. In the times I have known and learned about, the people who determined to make a good life, may have done so with little sleep but with a brilliant attitude. I can dance, no matter, I can laugh, no matter, work, no matter, rise and rise, no matter. My heroes. There are too many lovely folk caught up in tired, in lack of sleep, and I was there, a lot, and for years, until I got sick of myself and the whining. I realised I was looking at the lack of things, of me, of life. Well, that’s only going one way! I asked, instead, What Can I Do?

No matter the tired. What can I do for someone else this new morning?

Ok, morning is a stretch. I’ll ask again once you light-lift my looking, when the owls, geese and oystercatchers shut their wheesht, giving way to a blackbird, a thrush, the dive-dart of a woodpecker, the flutter of siskins and goldfinch. A new beginning. Another one. Lucky, lucky me.

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Island Blog – The A Words, with a C or two

Apocrypha – are biblical or related writings not forming part of the accepted canon of scripture, some of which might be of doubtful authorship or authenticity. In Christianity, the word apocryphal was first applied to writings that were to be read privately rather than in the public context of church services. Interesting, that……….it calls to the rebel in me, just saying, and not just about bible wordings. It thinks me of any authoritative body writing rules and things and with a big power behind its butt. For me, for always in my life, this sort of sedentary, (smug) pronouncing sends my feet light and my flight inevitable because the such of this ‘such’ grew from the wrong place, a place of boardrooms and secrecy and nepotism. Not that I disagree with the latter, not if I am honest. I would give my children, and theirs, priority over others. It would be hard not to. If a friend is looking for a leg up (can you say that anymore?), I would be doing the lifting. We choose. All of us.

Acedia – Acedia has been variously defined as a state of listlessness or torpor, of not caring or not being concerned with one’s position or condition in the world. I get this, particularly in the face of the above. For me the list is long. Parents. Expectations. School/s. College. Society. Culture. Appearances. The Uninvited Role of a Female. History. Ages of Me (you can’t wear that…..you’re too old). And. More. We slide, or I did, into the abyss of many abysses yet to come. I doubted myself, the wild in me, the natural and curious me, the only one I really knew. Rising, politely, into either A, in clean knickers and with a rictus smile, I kept on trying to be the ‘who’ which was acceptable for the time, and the gathered mob. I confess to landing in the ludge of Acedia or Accidie. I like the words, even as I never liked the blob I allowed myself to become, the one who, when asked out, spent agonising times in front of my long mirror, one, I am certain, was one clearly out to inflate me. I allowed this. And, that statement is an important one. I know it now. There is no blame in my heart. However, I do allow that I did not know how to challenge the apocryphiles in my life. They stood a head taller than me, or so I thought, and thus they afeared me, big time.

I am different now, and the only thing I can do with this differentness is to spread it wide, like petals. I can tell my grandlings, mostly females, that they probably have to tow the history line, suck up the rules and regs, for a while, because, and I tell them this, their parents have experiential learning. They know their bruises, feel them still, remember the hard knocks, the shocks, the blocks. They also, and I did too, bring to the table their own fear results. Don’t go there, don’t say that, don’t risk this. T’is human. I try to bring a new intelligence into the mishmash of life. Pause, I suggest. Think, breathe, find a question without aggression in your mouth. What you have, and will always have is….

Choice and Control. Not over others, never that, but over yourself. You can go left when some apocryphal someone shouts Right! However, the learning which lifts accidie up and out of the abyss and into the light of a newness takes guts and intelligence and a very good ego control. Ego is useful but it’s the jester in the mix. I learned that too. I fell into the apathy of accidie often. It eats away at a soul, did mine. Jumbled thoughts, not my fault, I’m a victim, that dunk in the sludge. Perhaps it took me a whole lifetime to understand that I always had Choice. I always had Control. I didn’t believe it, too conditioned, too a product of another time, another culture, anotherness. Whatever.

I choose now. I control myself now. And, I have to say, admit, that I really wish I had done it sooner.

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Island Blog – The Pretend and the Real

There’s a thing after a big occasion. It’s a bit of a down in the boots. The build up to something takes frickin ages, months of thought and prep and unholy panic. And, then, the day comes, as it always will, skidding in too fast, knocking those who aren’t prepared right over on their butts. We get through it, love it, hate bits of it, and then the night comes like a full stop to all that thought and prep and unholy panic. And, even though it is done for another whole year, there’s a wistfulness squirking around because for one day everyone got together, rising above the ordinary, the boredinary, the slough and chuff and scuff and dribble of the next bit, which is much longer than a bit. It’s going to work again, to school again, to facing the weather again without the lift of pretence. It’s like stepping out of fairyland and back out onto the street, wetter and colder than before.

I get it.

Oh, I know I am in Africa and Christmas was super hot and sunny, no need for a merry fire in the grate, no need for candles, which, by the way, would have melted into puddles by 8 am, but I still need to come home to the ‘street’. It wonders me, this whole shift, not just mine across timelines and a gazillion air miles, but for everyone else. Life will never stay still. Such a damn nuisance, that. But, it is how it is, and the slump after two days of festivities will affect all of us, no matter whom nor where we are. We love to celebrate, to have fun, to lift ourselves up and away from the pressures of our lives, to pretend, just for a short time. I believe this to be a strength, because I have met many, so many, who say MEH to celebratory felicitations. That saddens me. You, my friends, have lost the child in you, and that is a massive loss. We love to play, however stiff and starchy we may become, through pressures, hurts, wounds, damage and disappointments. Good news is that the child still lives in there, somewhere. And, the most playful people I have ever met, have always been the most broken.

We make resolutions. We break them. We set them too high, way above the beyond of what we can reach just now. We want to change, or we would never set these damn things, these Don’ts and Do’s that may never be us. I just decide to be more playful, to see the fun or to initiate it. To laugh more, to share smiles, to say hallo to anyone, everyone. To bring out the little girl I once was, before the pretend became a conscious decision, when it just happened because it was real.

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Island Wife – Lift and Slideways

I love the way they lift. Birds. It gasps me every time, the sudden sight of a life that can do that lift thing, all feathers and aerodynamics and who the eff cares, thing. I’m behind the wheel of my sassy mini, one, bless her, whose brake pads are skinnyrink. Not her fault, of course. It’s those tourists who have no clue about passing places, reversing, spacial awareness, nor a care in the world for the big ass drop on my side of the single track road. I digress. Back to the lift.

As I watch the Little Gull lift without any sign of a run-up, just an effortless rise from Terra Firma, I not only feel my own body lift, even from within the clutches of Matron of Seatbelts but I also sense a deep longing in me. To fly like that through a whole life, to lift from standing when something bothers or threatens, or just from boredom, must be truly wonderful. I watch the white and grey touch the sky, slide sideways, cutting a line, a definite line, then scooping up again, and around, and all of it in silence. It thinks me.

I can do that, I whisper to my home. I can live that way, just not exactly that way, being featherless and weighing a few stones more than that wee body of lift and slide. But, in my mind, my attitude, my chosen direction, I can. Yes, it is a damn pain in the arse being a thinker, I agree. These beautiful elevators, and the animals grounded, don’t think at all. They respond to instinct, our own fight or flight part of the brain. They just respond to an outside stimulus, and they are always on the alert for danger. That part must be exhausting, although, and this thinks me too, how many of us live that way, feeling so under the power of ‘someone else’ that their innate sense of independence and choice is quashed into mud? I suspect too many beautiful souls.

Every single morning, and through each day, I self-correct. The Terra Firma of my thinks, could sink me in that mud. I kid you not, and here’s another thing……those of us who really feel, Really Feel, for others, for the world, for our future, for our even now, for our self image, and that’s the biggest pull to ground, feel bloody everything, question everything, are consumed by everything. We need to remember our feathers, even if those around us just don’t get it. My advice? Don’t bother to explain. If you are a creative, recognised and acknowledged or not, know this…….you will find your place among others who recognise you, even if they never met you before. Trust in this, through all those awful lonely times, those dark places, those rejections and mockings and nightmares. I have no idea why I went there, but perhaps someone needed to hear the hope in my words.

Back to the lift and slide. In this ridonculous world of rules and behaviour parameters which seem to close in like jaws at times, there is, for the brave who just say, Enough, just once, and stick with it, a new flight. Yes, it will be tough, dangerous, all of that stuff, but who wants to live the one life under another’s control? I watched a big predator lift from the sea-loch, all 8 foot wings, big ass, confident, the queen of the sky. She rose up and up and frickin up until even a cloud gave in with a sigh and a divide, so intent was this big lady on full exposure. Then I saw the Little Gulls, wee smouts (look it up) in an immense sky, skinny wee things, intent on moving this big lady on and away. I heard them talking to each other, You go this way, You round on her, You tackle her, You deafen her with that dreadful squawk of yours, and so on. The Whitetail lifted, slid, lazy, like I’m in charge here. But the gulls, the small people, were having none of that shit. Persisting for a whole skyline, they moved her on. I’ve seen it many times, and have always wished that the ‘small people’ in business, in the world, could band together like Little Gulls, and not just in business. I think of a book I have with me always. Jonathan Livingstone Seagull, by Richard Bach, a slim book with fat wisdom. One gull decides things are not right. Just one.

Please never believe the shit inside your head. It isn’t you. It’s learned lies. You, too, can fly.

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Island Blog – Reflectology

It seems to me that, once way ahead of an unpleasant thing, I can see the, heretofore unseen, benefits hidden in the turbulence, sadness and pain. At the time, in the thick of the thick of it, I am no more than a tumbleweed in a vast empty desert. All my supports have abandoned me. I am left entirely alone, and yet not alone because my thoughts, often my enemies, stick super close. Child, teenager, young wife, mother, disappointed dreamer, et la and la, all morphoses requiring me to change more often than I do my knickers. Life, anybody’s life, is like this. I sincerely doubt a single soul can say, truthfully, that everything that happened to them was just what they wanted and, better, predicted. Looking back, I can settle, somewhat, swatting away the bluebottles of Why and How, quick sharp, so they have no time to lay eggs in my brain. At this end of a long and adventurous life, I can see so much. Rejection strengthened me. Neglect taught me to love myself (eventually). Abandonment, judgement and loneliness made me resourcefulness, a respect and love of my own company. In short, I learned tactics, found tools, good tools, ones I can always rely on because I always keep them sharpened and greased. This is Reflectology.

The study of reflection is a good thing but, and there is always one of those, it is essential to remember that one life is just that. One change, one ticket to the dance, and balance is everything. To fall down and to stay down is a choice, presuming appropriate limbs are still strong. Something in me, deep, deep inside me, probably a bloody connection to my parents, will not let me stay in that down place for long. Oh, I can go there, all mawkish and brimming with self-pity, sinking into the black, the sadness, the regrets and the rage against any dimming at all, and then this Get up and Go does it’s thing anyway, patiently waiting for me to do the same. It stands there above me, all calm and cocky and that ‘we’ve been here before’ look on its face.

Go where? I whinge.

Who the frick cares, comes the reply. Just do it or that bus, see that number 38 rounding the bend, will flatten you and then what?

I’ll be flat, I say, defeated.

And useless, comes the eye-roll answer. I can’t make you, can’t lift you. You have to do that.

This has served me for decades. I could tell my grandchildren this, and they would puzzle. They expect someone else to lift them back up again, bring them back into the light, love them again, just as I did. It wonders me, the fairytales we read them, much as I love a fairytale. However, to read them ‘reality’ might just turn them into tumbleweeds on the spot. We learn slowly and by experience. We learn how strong we are only in times of war.

I fought everything and everyone as I did this tumbelweed thing. Not openly, covertly. I internalised the bad stuff. But it seems to have done me no harm, not when I reflect on the utter brilliance of my bonkers life. Yes, there were cuts and bruises, yes I felt rejected, abandoned, all of that, and very sharply, but here I am a septuagenarian, and still ready for whatever comes my way. The key, my key, is that I am thankful for all of it, even the shit times, and I honestly believe that such a choice, because that is what it is, means I can keep getting up, even if I have no idea where I’m going.

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Island Blog – Calypso or Collapso

We deal with much, these days, in real time and online The online-ness of it all. Everything was fine for a while, until suddenly we have to update, or change, when neither of those demands are fine, at all. Someone wants your mobile or home details, and there is a suddenly in there, a stop, a halt, and then endless questions, most of which ask you if you are a dunderhead, an eejit, a left behind, even if those judgements are not voiced as such.

We are in a new era. We can go with it, learn new tactics, ask family of friends to guide us, or we can concave, we can bow to what we no longer want to welcome in, and rest. And I get that. But that’s not me. I am so out there with curiosity and barricades which thought they could keep me confined. Well, arf to that.

I meet many folk my age and older, and I just love them. Such beautiful folk with stories I wonder will ever be heard beyond my ears. I love stories. The why of this plant pot, the why of the way you make coffee, the how of your choice of dress for a ceilidh, the what of all of it.

And I meet choice, all the time, on the street, in the shop, as I travel this beautiful island. I meet it, There are those collapso. Then I meet calypso. The laughing connection to the wild, to hope and to the dance, the always dance. You know who you are my friend.