everything

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Island Blog – Everything a Touchstone

Another damn gale. We have many damn gales up here in the pointy end of two countries joined together at Gretna Green. It’s all thanks to the fact that there is nothing but Altantic swell for a gazillion nautical miles, which, let’s be honest, makes for the best playground. However, I took notice of something. It wonders me. Wind, at any level is actually silent. It just blows. But, when it hits something, a building, a person, a mountain, a ship, anything held by gravity, it can shriek, whine, even sing. Think of the rustle of leaves, the melody that comes through cracks, the siren scream around the corners of buildings, the blatter of bamboo wind chimes, and so on. The thwump of a wheelie bin toppled: the sigh and crash of a falling tree.

Power on, power off, power on again. It is island life, life in the land of the Scots, and across other countries in the northern spheres. When I talk with others who don’t live here, they are amazed at our resourcefulness and we have that in spades. We have known saving cows in blizzards. We have known endless winters and even smile at those who are filling flowerbeds in April. Our winter has a greater hold on these beautiful, exposed and rocky lands. Was Englandshire formed by ice age or volcanic eruptive chaos? I don’t know, but we were. Collisions, cosmic fury, undersea upthrusts, the moon in a right stooshie. That’s us, and do you know what? We are tough as nails, but more, so much more. Nails are rigid. We are not. We learn to bend with the winds, we laugh at the rain. It’s just rain, after all. So, when ‘Disaster’ happens, let’s say on social media (and god, those disasters are endless) such as when something isn’t delivered, or the nail surgeon has ruined nails, or the dress isn’t really silk, or Deliveroo didn’t, or the whatever didn’t whatever, I do wonder if a winter on a remote island might be a grand idea. Not in an expensive rental with all accoutrements and a live-in maid, but in one of those wee bothys with the best view you will ever see in your life, the seabirds overhead and the selkie singing you ancient stories: where the ferry may well not run: where the mail arrives when it can: where the skinny roads may not be gritted; where outlying farms and homesteads are way more than a bycyle ride away even on a good day: where the path is not perfectly gravelled, the door sticks a bit and the fire takes a bit to get going and the kindling is damp.

Where, after dark there are a million stars and all of them silent, and where you can hear all those words the wind never got to say.

Everything is a touchstone, or it is lost as nothing.

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Island Blog – Lemons, Zest and Loving

I was angry, and anger, in my life has played two roles. One confounds and limits, sinks me. T’other fires me up like a rocket. I have heard so so many people tell me, intelligent people, I thought, who told me any anger is a BAD thing. Much research and even more inner work has taught me this is not the truth. Anything in ‘overdose’ is damaging, yes. Any emotion without reflection, introspection and direction is damaging, yes. But with inner work, intelligent work, and with a heart that does not want to entertain any controller, and certainly not the control of any emotion beyond the timing of its natural flow, anger can turn into a flower garden, a new path snaking through old undergrowth, old limitations, old beliefs, old stuff. Anger is random, sudden, a boom to the gut, the heart. It traverses a whole body and not just then, but perhaps for days, weeks, months, but if what a goodly loving and trusting human being wants are peace, dance, chances and a new path, the latter will reveal itself. It always, always does.

Yesterday, and, if I’m honest, the day before, too, I just wanted to sleep. And so I did. Although Sleep and I will never be easy bedfellows, separating many times during the hours of darkness, whilst the oystercatchers make a right bloody fuss of pretty much everything down on the shore, I could sleep these past two days. Not all the day, but in bits and bobs for it was necessary that anger calmed his boots within me. He is calmed. I went to work today feeling quite the thing, as they say on this lovely island, and I know, now, what I know. I let go, or try to, of self-hatred, of the sting of rejection, the confirmation that I am not the vibrant, exciting and fun-loving woman I believed myself to be for a few short weeks. Well, I try to let them go, tell myself to let them go, insist in fact that they bloody go, and they do for a short while until they curve back to me with renewed energy. It is hard work living alone when that is not what I want. Others have confirmed this belief. In order to be cheerful, I have to start the process. In order to see a friend, it is I who must make the call. In order to laugh, I must pop one into my mouth prior to a visit to the shop or into the harbour town. It is, oftentimes, exhausting, all this DIY living. If I want to build a new life, I must find the tools and get to work, I know this, and, before he came to mess things up, I was actually finding my stride. Now, back at the start, I have to summon up enough get-go to get going all over again, erasing, as best I can, the memories of happily shared days, of conversations, of plans and of companionship.

But, (again) I have fire, yet, in my belly, fire for life, for a good life, for the one I want, and no-one can extinguish that fire, unless I hand over the water bucket. Which I will not do. There is too much zest in my thoughts, my heart, my imagination, my brilliant brain and strong body. I think of others who have been rejected, of children, teens, older women like me, men, boys, those whose sexuality brings in black storm clouds, the marginalised, the unwanted, the extras in this game of life. I am fortunate, indeed, to have so much loving support from family and friends. And, one day, I will laugh at this, at myself, my reaction, my sinking into negativity. I will say, Oh, this happened to me, once, trusting me, loving me, and, believe me, time will heal the cuts. There will be scars, but scars are beautiful things. Scars hold compassion, empathy and understanding. Love your scars because, one day, you too will laugh at this pain, and you too will be quick to hold another who has been rejected.

This is how we love the world.

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Island Blog – Call on Pooh

Although I always awaken with Tigger bouncing in my head, even that striped loon can change shape as the morning unfolds. I never know how it will be until it decides for itself. It isn’t to do with what I do nor what I don’t. It isn’t about the weather, the season or my best laid plans. I can continue to bounce until even I get tired of the bounce thing, all the way up to evening, or I can feel myself turning grey. On the outside of me, I laugh at this. It’s the same for everyone else isn’t it you daft old eejit? Your grey slump is not new, nor is it original enough to warrant a voice. No, it is just a grey slump. Get on with it. You could, if you subscribed to self-pity, find a load of reasons to explain this. Or you can try to outrun it by attaching yourself to Blue (the marvellous hoover) or a bucket and mop or the iron or a pen. Third option. You could just stop running, stop searching for the reasons for grey, and let go. It is allowed.

I paragraphically distance myself from this conversation, as you can see. I have never been good at allowing myself such an indulgence, as I see it. Oh, I am really good at this allowing thingy with everyone else. It thinks me. Am I perfectionist? Well, maybe, because my standards for myself are as high as the sky and equally unreachable. I look up. Everything up there is doing what it does, naturally and adaptively. Clouds move because the wind moves them. Sun rises and falls, ditto the moon, all naturally. Down here it’s not so easy to adaptively flow. Our wonderful brains make mince of us if we are not in charge of them. We are also impatient and expectant and judgemental, often and mostly of our own selves. I find it reassuring to know that the grey hits each one of us, not that I wish it on a single living soul.

Today began with Tigger and became Eeyore by 0800. He’s a sad old sausage, tail gone plus other losses. Imagined? Possibly. Then I considered the stories lived out in the 100 acre wood. That is quite a wood by the way, and an opportunity to be lost for days. Moving on. Each of the friends find each other, seek each other out so that no distress remains thus for long. They are a team.

I believe that the writer fashioned each creature on the moods of a human. Winnie the Pooh, happy with everything in life, every opportunity a gift; Piglet, scared and lacking in confidence; Eeyore believing that life itself worked against him; Rabbit, tense, anxious and fearful; Kanga the mother, the carer, the soother of troubles; Roo, well, Roo is just Roo; Old Brown trying so hard to control whatever comes his way and failing and Tigger the jester. We all know all of them. We experience them all. What might trouble us, and troubles me is that I want to be always Tigger or Pooh but I cannot control that (Old Brown). Life has a life of its own and all we can do is to be okay about cloud thinking in the face of whatever wind decides to luff into power. Yes we must plan, yes we must take action, yes and yes. But when Tigger turns into Eeyore before the school run, then we might consider leaning into the grey, which, by the way, takes forever to create on the palette, more than 7 colours and in such cautious amounts that it is very easy to turn it into slump mud if distracted.

So when Tigger becomes Eeyore, call on Pooh. Always works for me.

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Island Blog – Inside Out

My washing machine, which, by the way, has behaved normally for a long time, has suddenly begun to turn clothes, bedding and other things, inside out during each wash. At first it annoyed me. What do you think you’re doing? I asked it. I mean, you have washed things as I rendered them into your maw for, oh, years now, and all of a sudden, without consulting me, you turn things about. Yes, I know that most goodly women wash everything inside out. We are advised to do this. It says so on the label. But I never read labels and there was a frisson of excitement that arose in my goodly breast as I pushed everything in with the outside on the outside. I love to break the rules anyway.

As I fight with a huge cotton/linen duvet cover that is half inside out and half outside in, I have some thinks. Going deeper, I wonder if the Universal Mother Protector is trying to tell me something. What could that be? Is she advising me that, before it is too late, I begin at the age of 67, with a hec of a lot of washing years under my belt, to obey the rules? Surely it can’t be that. This bedding, these jeans and tops, frocks and socks have managed with my disobedience for as long as I can remember and nothing has fallen apart. Well, not many things, anyway.

Then I walk my thinks into other areas of life. I ponder the inside and I ponder the out. I know only too well that if the inside of me does not relate and connect with the outside of me there is trouble. If I feel one way and communicate another, I am lacking congruence. My inside, feeling as she does, is sloshing about in my drum if I don’t show her to the world. If I see injustice, feel the pain of it, the wrongness of it, and say or do nothing, I am disconnected from my own self and I will carry that disconnection like a lead weight for a long time. Regrets, shame, crimes of omission, admissions of guilt, apologies proffered, wounds healed, all will fester in a darkling silence, challenging the health and well-being of both my mind and my body. You, on the outside of me will see none of it, feel none of my disconnection. But I will.

The start point is to admit this disconnection to myself. To acknowledge that I am outside my inside and that the two haven’t been on speaking terms for way too long, is critical. Do I want to? Well, no, not really. I want the outside of me to look goodly. I want the inside of me to catch up, to hurry up and fit the space without me having to do any of this tedious inner work. But this is not how we learn, not how we grow, develop and understand the vital need to be inside out. Now, I am not saying that we need to rush out to tell folk a thing or two about what we don’t like about them. Not at all. In fact, what we find, as we admit our fear of being inside out, is that we don’t want to do that at all. What we find, as we gently open up to our own fears of being naked before all men (dreadful thought) and women (slightly less so) is that compassion arises like Venus from the waves, gentle, soft, loving and at peace with both ourselves and all those who are not us.

As I pull out the washing nowadays I smile at the inside out-ness of random things. I know this washing machine, this behemoth of importance, has a lesson to teach me. Nowadays I can inside out-flip a big duvet cover in minutes. In paying attention to something that most of us would dismiss with a worldly snort, I am learning to reconnect with the inside of me. I recommend it.

And so, it is.

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Island Blog – Daynight

The clouds are pink. So are the hills, the trunks of the hazels, the rocks and the sea-loch. It is 4.45 am and everything is pink. I am also pink, according to the mirror reflection and my face needs ironing. This is due to the crumpulation of pillow, duvet and face, conjoined in a less than harmonious trio. We obviously fell out at some point during the night, fought each other until we ran out of oomph, and then collapsed, like all menage a trois do in the end.

The house creaks. The floorboards creak. My knees creak. We are all coming to life, beginning to breathe in a new morning, taking in the pink, leaving the night behind, letting it go. Sometimes I am delighted to let go, sometimes I wonder if being awake most of the night makes it day and not night. Perhaps there is an in-between, like a no mans land, a wild place that has no name, as yet unlabelled. I can give it plenty names, however and not all of them polite, but in deference to social rectitude I shall name it Daynight.

Although it may sound terribly awful spending a deal of the dark hours awake, I am well used to it and find myself able to recover quick quick during the hours of light. Just a 30 minute catchup snooze can lift me right back into a Tigger bounce. It thinks me. Have I devised a splendid plan of action, a modus operandi, one that will always lead me into what may sound like a child’s story, or am I a natural bouncer? Did I learn myself this attitude or was I born with it? Ho, I say and Hum. I don’t have an answer but, for the record, I am very happy with my bounce, even if my knees do creak nowadays. And, even if I did come up with an answer, what would it matter and who would care?

I watch the pink clouds. There is Robin Hood with a huge snake in his grip. Here is the Rockbiter and over there, oh look, it’s Noddy’s car, complete with horn. If I called you over, it would be too late to see what I see. Clouds are like that. Shape shifters, game players, always moving on like night, like day, like everything. Even if I grabbed my camera, it would be over, the cloud show and they would just look like pink clouds. It seemed important, back then, back when I didn’t understand that the whole point of anything is that it changes every minute; people, time, clouds, weather, happenings, all change. The key is to just look, to watch, to stand quite still and let the eyes have it. And with every look, watch, stand still thingy we change because we have experienced something new, something that will never come again, not in this way. A kindness given, a word of support, a smile, a wave; the way rain falls on a window, the swing of a feather falling, a catch of rainbow light, the scoot of a rabbit, distant laughter. A pink sunrise may come every morning, but it will never be the same twice, like zebra stripes and snow flakes, every one unique.

Like you and like me.

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Island Blog – Steer Your Heart

As we move into Easter, the weirdest yet, without family around the table, perhaps even without eggs, we are having to be inventive. I think that is one of my favourite words, perhaps because I have been re-inventing myself all my life. I like this, no I don’t, I like her/him, no I don’t, I want to be an air hostess/intrepid explorer/dancer/aid worker………no, maybe not. Perhaps we are all like that as new fizz comes into our mental veins on hearing of someone else doing any of the above, until the morning comes and with it an abundance of realism, dammit. I often think morning has a lot to answer for. By the afternoon, anything is possible, I am possible, what I long to do is possible and I can go to bed with the absolute certainty that I will awaken to a dawn never known previously, one that affirms my breakout plans. It hasn’t happened yet.

Today is Good Friday, or Easter Friday if you don’t buy into the Good bit. Either way, it is a time we look forward to, as we do Christmas and Birthdays. Our own, anyway. But this year we can look until our eyeballs fall out but we won’t see what we want, what we have always known. First time ever for my generation and below. The Aboves knew it of course. War was woven into their memories, as this one will be for us. Everything this Easter must be done remotely, or from a distance. And it matters. Regardless of how inventive (there I go again) any of us are, it still hurts. There’s a slump in it as if life is lying doggo and we have no idea how or when it will wake up again with a Ta-da! We are moving along, going through the days, hope alternating with despair, bright and beamish one minute and sad as Eeeyore the next. It’s normal, its acceptable, more, it’s human. We long, we love, we care and without touch it feels like homesickness. Nostomania. Our instant leap to logic creates a pedagogue. This teacher is one of those I longed to flick cold chewing gum at, without being caught. Telling ourselves we must only think of the positive can send us captious. We might criticise others for walking twice a day, or those who shop every day and we know they do because they live upwind of us and the shop is downwind. We must take care we don’t let that thinking be our guide. Each one of us is required to make our own choices, our own decisions at this time. I remember, weeks ago, people saying to me….We will wait for the official decision on this, or that, whilst I had decided to release the carers and lockdown. Waiting never suited me.

So, I say, people, steer your own heart. It will guide you right, always. I notice some visitors have come to the island. I have a few opinions on that, not least because they may extend this time of lockdown just by travelling here. However, I won’t let myself become the judge. Instead, I will continue to make my own decisions, listening to my own heart, my best friend. As, I am sure, will you. There is no room for dithering these days, nor waiting for the official ruling, nor, even, asking someone else their opinion. After all, we all know at our deepest level, what we need to do to survive and to make sure our loved ones do too.

Happy Easter my friends. I wish you serendipities by the score. No matter what is to come, we may be broken, but we are not beaten. We are strong, intelligent, wise, loving, emotional, caring humans. I salute you all.