encounter

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Island Blog – This Day

People talk about, sing about, These Days, Those Days, and as I listen, I hear anew. These and Those indicate a collective, a while of days. But it isn’t the truth, not around Days. It can be, around children, or mountains but not around days. Days are themselves and particularly in troubled times, when they behave like picks in the road we knew as level, aggressing the flat ground, upsetting the flow of progress. They pucker up, cause us to founder and flounder, to twist off piste. Well Dammit. Damn those days.

I am learning to laugh at a lot of things these days. No, this day. No promises for tomorrow. I meet those puckers, and not because I have done anything different on this Tuesday, that Thursday, no, not at all. It is all the same now here in this alone state. I might have written ‘widowhood’ there, but I won’t and because there are many states of aloneness. Some chosen, some welcomed, most accepted and accommodated, albeit unwillingly. We need each other but the each and other of whoever we know or encounter can send us running for the dunes. It is confusing.

So, for this day (no tomorrow promises) I rise thankful and smiling. I walk, cook, listen to music, create some sewing nonsense, talk to family, laugh, visit a local library and connect with friends. As I sit now as the rain comes in (a given up here) I won’t say, These Days any more. Because I know, as I never did when I said those words without thinking, that there are not These Days. There is only This Day.

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Island Blog – Eyebrows, Grief, Cuckoo and a Butterfly

This morning I went for an eyebrow tint, always a risky business as the new ‘look’ is a startlement at first, a gasp, a good heavens because a part of me that sat quietly on my face, barely visible, suddenly becomes a loud statement. I practise eyebrow athletics in the mirror and laugh out loud. I can speak volumes without a single word jumping out my mouth. As the grey comes in, dammit, those ridiculous invading curlicues that appear without permission, without welcome, each one a cuckoo in the nest, I wince. As silently as they come, they stick out like, well, sticks. Husbands have them in spades and not just on their eyebrows but they don’t seem to mind at all. Close inspection is alarming. It’s like having breakfast with someone from another planet.

Whilst I was there I met other women there for nails or waxing or wotwot and, as always happens, we meet and greet before we seat and even after that if twinkle meets twinkle, we chat. I made a new connection with one beautiful woman, a bit younger than me who flies to the UK at the weekend on a month long visit to one of her daughters, the other one being today’s beautician. I watched the affection between mother and daughter and smiled. We will meet for lunch when she returns to Africa and I look forward to learning more about her. Tomorrow I meet with another twinkler, one I met over a delicious dinner with friends of my son and his wife in the wildlife estate. I am sociable, it seems, although I always knew that until the darkness fell around my shoulders and all I wanted to do was hide in the broom cupboard. The phone went unanswered and I even ducked under the kitchen table if someone came to the door. I didn’t know myself then, didn’t want to. If this is to continue, I said sternly to myself, I no longer want you as a friend.

Grieving is a wild thing, shapeless yet living and breathing and unlike cuckoo eyebrow hairs, won’t respond to tweezers and a magnifying mirror. It wakes when you wake, disallows restful sleep, hampers intelligent thinking and reduces a body to a mere stumble. It won’t be explained, nor justified. It refuses to present logically, there is no up nor down, nothing to understand, no map, no guide book, no list of steps that might encourage the griever to hope and to keep on keeping on. Amoebic, erratic and with no care of time, it floats around within, ever restless, ever demanding attention. What do you want of me?? I yelled, and often. You have turned me inside out and upside down and I don’t even feel sad. Who are you Grief? There is never an answer. Friends encourage, fix, suggest and invite. It’s all cold porridge. I didn’t want to do anything, go anywhere, see anyone. What do you want, they asked me and I Don’t Know was all I could muster.

Those days are gone now and I still cannot explain the ‘process’ I have survived. I no longer hide from door knockers, nor do I long for the broom cupboard. I am here, present, ready for adventure and curious about what comes next. The change from then to now feels like a birthing because I am new, not back. I am not the same woman I was and never will be again. I am that butterfly emerging with sopping wings from the black interior of a cocoon and the pain I lived through is the same as it is for that butterfly. The sunshine of new encounters dries my wings as I cling to a stalk, fearful at times but determined to be as beautiful and as dynamic as I can possibly be. I know not what is around the next corner, or at the door, but I will not hide any more. I have something to give this beautiful broken world and something to claim for myself and I won’t miss a moment of it, grey hairs notwithstanding and they are, notwithstanding any more thanks to a good beautician and a startling tint.

Do I thank the grieving process for those two or so years of broom cupboard-ness? Not really, although I accept it was necessary. Hardship hardens a ship, toughens sinews, brightens a brain if it doesn’t kill or maim. I am thankful in many other ways, for my mum’s get-on-with-it attitude, for my children’s gentle support and care, for friends who kept knocking and for my belief in hope even when hope was but a pinprick of distant light. Now, when I meet another who is thwack in the midst of grief, I know not to fix, not to encourage, not to tell of my experience inside the dark, but simply to listen, to walk beside them and to know, even if I would only ever say this with my eyebrows, that this will pass. One light bright day. This will pass.

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Island Blog – Fin Whale and a Change in Thinking

Fin Whale. All 75ft of itself, not that I saw it and even my translation from metres to feets may be dodge. Never trust me on math nor on absolute truth as I am wont to make things more magical than they are according to those who do know math and don’t know magic. Humpback too, big sassy tail holding, holding, almost waving before slipping into oceanic depths. Because my sons have learned cetacean ethics from their dad, they are utterly respectful around anything wild. Stay back, cut the engines, settle, wait and hope. No push, no ‘we only have fifteen minutes’ thinking; either you choose to come and visit, or you don’t; after all, you have your own agenda and yours is all about survival, about food source, procreation, intelligent selection whereas we up here aboard this delicious and luxurious boat complete with skipper, professional chef and guide are as nothing in the above of your life, the minute by minute tensions of such. What do we know? Nothing. So we wait, we invite with respect and no expectations.

This huge whale did come in, was curious, eyed those high above on the superly polished teak deck, slid beside the boat (dwarfing it) and changed the lives of everyone aboard. I have seen this before, way back in the days of Tapselteerie, on Alpha Beta, RIP, when nervous visitors stepped aboard in the morning and almost flew off board on their return, breathless, sun-caught, eyes wide as planets, unable to process an encounter with a whale. Is it that we so infrequently, if ever, have such an opportunity? I guess, yes. But once seen, everything changes because once seen cannot be unseen. It can be forgot, eventually, if refusal to challenge the mundane and ‘so in need of the road less travelled’ opportunity, but I reckon that over the years when the old sea-dog ran whale-watching trips, bringing in students from universities studying geology, marine science, photography, ecology, biology and all the other ‘ologies’, he raised the bar.

Our sons continued his work, respectful ethics at the core, finding wildlife out there and ‘out there’ encompasses hundreds, more, nautical miles in all weathers. Sons go offski into other things but there is one still working the Hebridean seas, continuing the line of respect and strong with it. No matter how much pressure from longing visitors, he will not invade wild space. This son, now a captain for http://www.hebridescruises.co.uk works in the way of the way. I say it like this because it means respect for all ways. It wonders me, a lot, that we cannot seem to respect all ways on the land, those with cultures we don’t understand, skin that isn’t the same colour as our own, beliefs that don’t conform with ‘what we know and believe’. Shame. If we could just be curious and respectful instead of fearful and defensive, we might find a gentle synergy. However, as long as the overland fight continues, I cannot see respect for all ever being taught beyond primary school.

Out there may be just a holiday and a life changing one at that. I have been there many times but never far enough out to see fin or humpback. No matter because a minke whale was more than enough for the seeing and especially when an intelligent skipper cut the engines and told everyone on board not to move, not to speak. Every vibration is felt by the whale. Be open. Mindfully send out your invitation. Wait, watch, breathe. The gift of an encounter, chosen by the wild creature, is a mind blow. Suddenly you feel very small indeed and so very the receiver of a gift, one no parent, no Santa could ever bring into your life for this is a gift like a dart to your heart and that particular dart leaves a wound, one that can only heal by a change of thinking, of direction.

And, no matter how perfect a life (if such exists), a change in thinking and direction is always a good thing.

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Island Blog – The Wild

I walk this day through copper gold and spandangles of sunshine. The track, wet, muddy from all the rain, dapples into light, peckled with mosaic, the light glinting off the water spots, the puddles, and lighting up the prints of yesterday walkers. I watch the down, erstwhile forgetting the up until it calls me to me in blue and gold. Me and the Poppy dog keep the beat, or I do, for she scoots and slows, sniffs at pretty much everything, oftentimes right before my feet and it thinks me of tripping. Old folk do think of tripping. I never considered making such a foolish error before, but now I do. How odd that tripping, a simple fall that comes with an answering bounce back into the upright, now holds menace. I could be here for hours, days, should I allow this tripping thing. Then I wheesht myself, saying, out loud, Nonsense, and loudly enough to startle a quiet other walker with his terrier who rounds the bend in a way that wonders me. Is he a ghost, so quiet is he? No, I have seen him before with the same little terrier, politely held on an unstrained leash. Hallo, I say, unable to quell the launch and startle of the Poppy dog, the gap between me and her ears being too great to prevent a situation. I say Hallo in my quietest tone, in A major, I think, and muted, so as to calm things.

He is unfazed. We talk. He suggests unleashing his dog and I nod in agreement. Dogs are always better off without the strangle-throat of a leash. Always. At best, they will sort themselves out in moments. At worst, the one who knows they are about to be dishevelled, right here on this peaceful track, can get away. Humans always cock things up, these sorts of things, their fear, their ignorance of the animal kingdom. It rolls my eyes and often. Just let them spar, just let go, just let. But not everyone gets that ‘let’ thing. I suspect my life as a farmer’s wife has loosened my desire to control something way more powerful than I. The animal instinct is definitely a ‘let go’ thing for me. And, I have a lot of opinions around the rules of controlling wild animals, even dogs or cats, but I keep it all to myself. Anthropomorphism is a big deal in the human world, and practised to our detriment, but try explaining that to someone who thinks their pet is their pet.

We humans forget our wild too. It is a big mistake and one we can rethink. During lockdown a lot of folk bought puppies and kittens for their own pleasure, to entertain and to fill a lockdown hole. I am really hoping that most realised they had taken on a wild creature, no matter how domesticated they may have been over many decades. The wild is strong, it never goes. It can be battered into compliance by fear but the worm will turn (whatever that means).

I can see a happy and respected dog or cat immediately. Any cowering, any slink back when a hand is raised, speaks me volumes. A canine or feline who is loved and understood will walk straight-backed, will wag a tail, will merry a look, be curious and open, like the terrier and his man I met today in the dapples and around a quiet corner. A good man, a happy dog, a merry, and a bit shouty, encounter. I thank him. He knows the wild.

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Island Blog – Perception and a Blackbird

I sit in the darkling. Clouds are gathering like a people to church, some big and full of themselves, others following shred-like but I have no doubt they will puff themselves up in followance this night for there is rain forecast.

I watch the wintering geese fly in, fly in chatter and in synergy with the leader and with the nightfall. For me they fly right to left. I see the home-lights across the sea-loch, all warm and welcoming, a pipe of smoke from their chimneys. They are warm. They are cooking, chatting, cajoling and considering each other over there, a big swim away. And, they see the geese fly from left to right.

It thinks me beyond geese and tidal flow. It thinks me of how we see things, any things, all things. If geese can fly from right to left for some and left to right for others then what complexity lies in other of our seeings? Ah, it must be manifold. I can see this and you can see this, but you see that, not this. My perception of any one thing may well not be yours. I would like to be able to allow yours and mine and to consider neither one as an absolute, even as I am certain of my right to left of things.

As we converse, you and I, on matters from how to fix this or clean that, on the rights and wrongs of raising children, on the clarity of our shared memories, we move along different paths. What astonished you about something that happened meant nothing much to me and vice versa. We find it at best bothersome and our minds work like dingbats to convince the other of import and impact. But I still see nothing to upset me. Now why is that? Well, if we agree that my experience, my baggage, my history all come to bear on any given subject, as do yours, then we must also agree on a division of paths. We can both see the situation, yes. We can both recall to a degree what happened back then, yes, but where I see right to left, you see left to right and that is simply that.

How long a life do we need in order to come to such an acceptance? I am fed up of learning things like this. I wonder why it is we don’t finally arrive in that lovely place of complete understanding. I thought I completely understood years ago and yet here I am with my feathers ruffled and my heart beating too fast and my good manners thoroughly challenged as I watch your mouth insist on left to right. Although I write this with no actual cause, it is something I have observed recently between others and it intrigues me. To move freely and happily along an individual path of life, it is necessary to merely observe each other without dishing out labels, however silently. We can all learn from each other at every meeting if we decide not to judge. Every living soul has history, baggage and opinions, either learned or personally constructed, based on their experience of what worked and still works for them.

On returning earlier from slathering honey on young fruit trees, ring-barked by hungry rabbits, of which we have the lion’s share and adding a wrap of hessian to simulate new bark that will allow water to be drawn up the damaged trunks once again, I find a male blackbird flipping and floundering on the track. I gather him to me and feel the delicate softness of his feathers as I calm his wings. Is one broken, I wondered? His leg? Was he hit by a car or attacked by a predator and dropped? No, not that. The predators here are accurate as mathematics and there is no evidence of talon damage. I put him in a box in the garage to calm down. An hour later I return to give him water or seed or to find him dead. He wants none of it and is bouncing up in attempt to fly beyond the mesh that holds him down. I push in my hand and gently bring him out. Shall we see if you can fly? I ask him. He turns his head and looks at me through ebony eyes, then turns back to the great wide open. I lower him to the ground and to my delight he lifts and flies, a bit wonky-chops at first and then up up and away over the fence and into the sky. I watch him until he is a black dot in the blue.

Fly! Fly! I call out but he doesn’t look back. His path is his path as mine is my own. We come together and then we part and as we do, we are changed, just as we are changed after a human encounter. As I held that bird, I noticed his soft feathers, the majesty of nature in that trembling body, the perfection of design.

We can see each other that way too, if we so choose.