eagle

I stand beneath an eagle. It hovers, canting on the high wind, still as anything can be up there in the blow. Wings spread 8, 9 foot wide, only its tail to adjust balance. It ticks, the tail, this way, that way, sensing the windshift, balancing. My mouth is open I realise as I watch the flick flick of white beneath its tail feathers. It sees me, I know it does, but I am of little interest being not prey to this predator. Its eyes scan miles whereas all I can see is what I can see from my pinprick of limiting ground. Up there, if I was up there, mountain high and just beneath the clouds (or so I imagine) what might I see, how wide might be my vision? People, roll the eagle eyes, ach People, those straight up and down groundlings, a mass of useless cells, no flight, no feathers, no ability for lift: rabbits, plentiful and foolish, grazing, earthlings: other creatures I could snatch if hungry enough, determined enough, desperate enough. But what might I think if I was up there? Not thoughts of prey. Then, of what? If I could look down on an eagle, a kestrel, merlin, goshawk, buzzard floating on thermals, its entire body line flattened like the pinned down body of a collectors butterfly on a board, would I feel something?

I would. Awe and reverence come to mind and more, the way things, creatures, situations look from the antithesistic viewpoint. When facing a situation, a set of old beliefs, a family tradition or condition from the ground, not much is changeable even if that is what I want and I very oftentimes do want. I must climb higher. The higher I climb the better. So what am I climbing from or to? I don’t know the answer but I do know that, in the process of climb from all the aforementioned limitations not only the view changes. I begin to see things differently as new ideas roll in on the backs of the clouds. Hope rises on the thermals and opportunities I never imagined from ground level lift into my mind. I grab at new breaths as the air thins, my lungs inflating like bellows, igniting new fire. I can feel it in my belly, the endorphins that think me of dolphins, play before me, delighting in the bow wave I create as I push on up and up and up and there it is! I am here, looking down on a flight bird, on groundlings, on chimneys blowing smoke, on skinny snaking roads, on dark valleys that, heretofore, rendered my circular thinking to nothing but a swirl of leaves on the forest floor, so easily twisted away underfoot.

It isn’t always possible to climb a hill. I get that, but an imagination can lift you anywhere, into the sky, onto a mountain top, even into flight. The best adventures of all are played out in a mind, everyone knows that. The point is not of physical but of mental prowess #courage in battle and most battles are played out in an internal theatre. How would you direct such a play, your play? My choice is to remove myself from centre stage, the super trooper blinding me as I stumble, forget my lines, fall of the limiting boards of my life and to step elegantly down and into the front row, and to observe. How different the whole looks once I remove my fretting, fretful and irritating self! Now I see and not through a glass darkly. No, I can see all the flaws, most of which I brought with me. Perspective is powerful and illuminating.

And so, and and so. So. What do I do on my descent? I am just finding my way down after all. I have looked down on an eagle, on life, taking in the Lilliputian life I had considered so very Gulliver. Truth is, I do nothing because my inner mind is way more powerful than I give her credit for and she never sleeps. If I banish (off you f**k!) my groundling interferer and just allow my experiential change to, well, change the whole of me, it will. All I have to do is trust and wait and, after all, I have looked down on an eagle.

A word with more than one meaning. This morning I awoke about 5 and thought, rats, but only one, so, rat. I love the dawning mornings even if I am ready for lunch by 10. I came down for coffee, could smell it long before it was brewed, the good strong ground stuff and black as soot. I heard chaos in the skies, gulls in a frenzy. Hallo, I thought, there’s a big predator bothering these noisy sky-jackers. Then I saw them swinging and dinging around a faraway tree across the sea-loch, circling, rising, punching their white bodies into a space between the woodfull banks of the other side. I pulled on the bins, eyes still cloudy with unslept sleep and the lenses kept clouding from the heat of my eyeballs. Ffs, I muttered, wiping again and oh, again, with my wiper thingy until the glass and my eyeballs stopped posturing. Finally I catch them, two huge sea-eagles sitting quite the thing on a branch that already looked exhausted from the weight of their task. I saw the heads of the two, beaks moving langourously from one sky-jacker to the next with a barely visible shift of the neck muscles. Still. They were still in the face of the frenetic. I like that.

The sky was still, the clouds, not bothered, no wind. They sat like fat observers of my village, my home, me, no judgement, just watching. I felt the calm of both the clouds and the eagles move towards me, me in my jim-jams with soot black coffee on my tongue and in a way too early moment. It calmed me, smiled me. I said Thank-you for waking me at just the right moment to see the very perfect thing. I looked again and the eagles were gone. I missed their gone-ing, but here’s a thing – the sky-jackers kept pinging about the tree, squwalking and squealing like unwelcome thoughts. I have these too, I said to no-one there. I might be stilling myself, madly, only to find that, although no human interrupts this stilling process, my sky-jackers are within. Well, blow that.

Let’s take a look. I know I can’t ‘blow that’ because blowing that is what I have done for decades. Now I actually want to notice the interruptions when I am madly being still. I confront them. What do you want? I ask. The minute the voiced out loud question spills from my mouth, they begin to reply. They’re flapping like dingbats in a turmoil. What does this tell me? That they want me to listen to them. Ok, ok, I say, patting down the air around me. Form a queue. And they do. Ok, first…? I hear First. First reminds me that I had decided to check my household bills about 3 weeks ago and procrastinated because the thought of doing that is the ultimate yawn. I write it down and promise I will check that list this very day. Next? Next marches up with yet another thing I knew some while back demanded my attention and action. And so the list goes on. I actively respond to all of the demands. Then I still. I am like the not bothered clouds with no wind. And that is all it takes.

Cousin to this process of sorting out the immediate buzz flies or sky-jackers in my life is to respond to those who sing at me in a lower key. They come from way back. They are the Dodo, the Great Auk, The Tasmanian tiger of my life. They are, so called, extinct, but they are far from that. These other selves, our past selves, are still alive and kicking inside us and longing for love. I know this. My little girl and my teenage self were both angst ridden and for many years. And that is how it is and was. But because of studies into connectivity with our past, and with the exciting knowledge and support we now have access to, to heal our young hurts and breaks, there is the chance to be still again, to be at peace with the strong, bright and beautiful souls we have made of ourselves, no matter our beginnings. And we did, those of us who did the work. Just look at us! We changed neglectful, unthinking parenting into warm protection for our own children. We did that. We became eagles on exhausted branches not fussed by sky-jackers. We decided not to be bothered by old thinking peckers and baiters. We stood strong and our children are free-er than we ever were.

And for those of us who are still working on ourselves, allowing the mistakes we made as innovators of a future we had no manual for, we might like to say to ourselves this:- Well done. You shifted the time belt. You decided, whether consciously or unconsciously, to make a change, to do the old in a new way. To love instead of judge, to let a child think for his or her self. Go you. It isn’t done yet. But it is on its way if (thanks Maya Angelou) Still we rise.