feelings

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Island Blog – Truth and Connection

I considered not writing today, I did. But, if writing is a compulsion, there really is no point in any attempt to avoid. It considers me. I write to uplift, that’s my thing, not contrived and with no agenda, but just because I am who I am. In uplifting, I gain so much. I cannot, not, do this uplifting thing. It is part of me. So, when I am tired, bone weary, feeling shit, I hesitate myself, if that is indeed possible. I pick up and join with the voices of my past, those in my own parental home that said, and clearly, You never go out with a face like that, or Nobody wants to know about you and your current angst, of words to that effect, and so we didn’t. We left our feelings behind because the mess of emotion is, was, something to be ashamed of, an affliction, and everyone else is just fine by the way, so keep your smile bright and your lies constrained by chains in the cellar of your soul.

When I question this now, many miles away from youth and my now dead parents, I find my own answers. They come slow, like geese on a spring wind, like daffodils in an ice cold sky, faltering, halting, holding fast to a risky opening. That thinking was then, I say. Yes, it was, comes the answer, but the truth of it remains steadfast. You don’t ‘go out there’ with your smile half way down your legs and that boring liturgy of stuff that nobody wants to hear pushing at your teeth until it blasts out into a How Are You face, sending the asker into a wall of regret at asking at all.

Another answer that lifts like blossom from the sludge of thinking is that it is a huge mistake to attach possibles to a feeling. Defining a feeling is very important. I feel very tired. That’s how I feel. It isn’t because I have had a tough life, nor that I hold regrets about my motherhood, nor that I find it hard to pump up a car tyre, nor that I find it a damn menace to chop wood. None of that. I am just tired. Funny that we need to attach reasons, when a feeling is just a feeling, and that feeling will pass, as everything does. But, being human, we question, and isn’t it interesting that the judges, bored old buggers who haven’t tasted limelight for a while, leap from their chairs and into the ring, the moment we allow such questions the floor. So don’t do it.

A young friend visited today. I knew her when she was 12 and now she’s a granny. We had a wonderful time, talking of our memories, our connections over 30 years or more and my tiredness got fed up and lifted. Connection is everything, because it takes us out of our own story and into a new and interesting narrative. This might seem that my story is not enough and, at times, it isn’t, and that, I believe, is the same for us all. To question is to quest. To reach out is to reach. To be truthful about feelings is to honour them. I’m learning, all of the time.

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Island Blog – A Rightful Name

When I ask someone how they feel about whatever is going on their lives, almost without exception, I get answers of logic. ‘It will be alright in the end,’ they say, or ‘this will heal, eventually,’ or even ‘I have nothing to complain about. I have enough food, a home, friends and work.’ Invariably, but kindly, I will round on them. I asked you how you feel, feel, FEEL about what has happened or is happening to you. Can you tell me that?

It is the toughest question, I know. Many of us ignore our feelings, so jumbled and ‘illogical’ are they, so messy and loud, so scary to name. If I say I feel afraid, I will, inevitably, be ‘fixed’. If I say I feel angry, the room goes quiet, as a room does just after lightening and just before the thunder crash. In my young days, feelings were allowed, providing they were ones of joy and delight, and even those must not be allowed to erupt. You can spin around, arms wide, in sheer delight, but don’t dislodge that vase of roses, or step on the dog or knock the musical score off the piano musical score thingy. And, this mustn’t last more than is bearable for the ears of all others in this confined space.

Feelings of pain, sadness or grief, such as the abandonment of a trusted friend in P3, is something you will get over and laugh about one day. She wasn’t such a great friend anyway now was she? Yes she damn well was, and now I go to school feeling sore and vulnerable, ashamed and brimming with self doubt. Who is there to hear my agony? Well, perhaps someone will ‘hear’ it, but who will sit with me whilst I burn and drown in this unbelievable flood of feelings? It is no surprise to me that, as ‘mature’ adults, most of us suppress what can only cause inner damage eventually, those deep feelings of rejection, abandonment, neglect, cruelty. We all know what I’m talking about, but too many of us keep burying the undead. They will rise again and again, twisted now, neglected for too many years, layered over with logic and life. The undead are not dead, not unless we dig and dig until they can finally rise into the light of our Now. Who is brave enough, I wonder, to admit (why ‘admit?) to feelings of pain and fear, shame and doubt, anger and resentment? Because we just know we will be ‘fixed’.

Feelings are the one thing we cannot, never could and never will, control. They come, unbidden, sometimes as tiny whispers, sometimes as a tidal wave, bowling us off our feet and into the gutter, upside down, knickers showing, wounded, bloody, feeling like a fool as the rest of the world checks their watch and hurries on. How we deal with our feelings, however, is completely within our control. It is not the fault of the world that it rushes on by as I lie here broken and tumbled. It’s not my fault either. It’s nobody’s fault. If I have the courage and the guidance (very critical to healing) to dig deep down for the undead feelings from childhood, from before the Now of me; to dig and to unbury, to lift into the light and to name, I am on the road to freedom. If my current pain relates to neglect, rejection, abandonment or cruelty in my past, I will overreact to the world in which I live right now, but, if my deepest longing is to be seen, acknowledged and celebrated for myself, to be valued just as I am, then I have to dig, have to unearth the undead. I can do endless goodly works in my Now, but I am kidding myself if I think this is going to eradicate my strong need to be seen, acknowledged and valued. I will meet rejection, lack of respect, careless or neglectful behaviour but it is not because I am ‘nothing’. It is, simply, complexly, the result of buried feelings as old as I am, pushed down, labelled foolish and ignored.

So, when I ask you “how do you feel about what just happened?’ might you pause a little before answering, and might you have the courage and trust to give your feeling its rightful name?

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Island Blog – Hallo and Thank you

Today I woke too early, my head full of monsters. Will I have major or minor surgery? Will I be strong enough to deal with it all? What will be the treatment after? Will I forget my headphones? (locate my headphones), or miss the ferry because the milk lorry has capsized in the Glen? Will I arrive, as I did for the Nearly Dead hospital visit, with one nightie, no cardy and no tweezers? Tweezers? Seriously? Will my little beloved dog fall ill when I’m away, and how long will I be away? Will the chimney sweep come, will the garden go to riot because I’m not watching it? Okay, you get the monsters. They all say YES, to all of the above, of course they do, the negative bastards.

Right, you lot, I said, startling the small dog into barks and a leap from her bed. Right! No, Wrong! You is NOT getting me in a right fankle at 04.30 whilst still inside my nightie (take 3, maybe four, do I have four?) and with my eyes barely focussed, you is not. We all rose from the tangle of duvet and I did try to leave them upstairs but they had a different plan. We watched the early birds, the light spreading over the sea-loch, over my garden, over the land, like a new story. Heretofore, this has given me a new vision, a new day, a new dawn, but this morning, no. The damn monsters of fear and anxiety, of a still resident exhaustion in my battle to be undead, kept up their clatter-chatter. It is a longtime since I had to fight them in this way. I tell myself, it is okay to feel these feelings, but it isn’t okay at all because they give me indigestion and backache and a squiffy head and no inner peace. I tell myself that anyone else would feel this way, but that doesn’t help either.

Do I not appreciate the support and love from my family, friends and blog readers? Yes, I do very much. So, why isn’t that enough? It thinks me, a lot and those thinks lead me to the (possible) conclusion that, no matter how many are around us, surround us, we ultimately sail alone. We need to manage our own craft across all sorts of dodgy oceans. In the knowing of that, I managed the hours of today, just. I rested a lot, read a whole book, walked into Tapselteerie and met not one soul, something that would normally delight me, but not today. Today I wished for an encounter, just a wee hallo and a passing chat. I went to the shop for a few bits now that my ‘recovery’ and ‘preparation’ demands a whole load of dark green vegetables, pulses, seeds and probiotics. I didn’t even know what that meant before now. I just cooked and ate.

I have decided that this living alone thing is not much fun, not when you want a Resident Familiar to proffer balance in the face of inner monsters. That smile, that joke, that ‘come on, let’s go out for coffee’, or to the beach, or something. Although my Resident Familiar left the relationship a long time ago when dementia arrived to take up residence, he was still here, a sometimes warm, living Familiar. I don’t want him back, but that is not the point. When a girl is swept off her feet at just 18 when she still has no idea about life beyond the parental home, she can be forgiven for feeling somewhat lost after 50 bonkers years of marriage to a dominant male and on the adventure of a lifetime. Being alone means I have to instigate everything and others, who have a Resident Familiar, are, well, busy until next Tuesday. I get that. I was always busy till next Tuesday, and for decades. But, on the other side of that, being alone is marvellous, so freeing, so uplifting, so damn new. How bizarre.

I am not moaning. Tomorrow will come and will proffer a new set of ideas, new feelings. Today is just today. So why do I write a blog? Should I not, instead, keep all of this to myself so as to spare whoever reads these words? Possibly, but I have been a polite girl/woman for a very long time and right now I feel raw and bloody and honest and congruent. I don’t want phone chats, don’t want visitors, don’t want anything at all, in truth, other than for these feelings to melt away. I am effortlessly positive as a rule because that is how I see this gift of a life. Perhaps, then, I am simply in a place I do not recognise, one that upskittles me, tries to trip me right over. Yes, that’s it. I don’t know this terrain and it is hostile. Simples. And it really helps to write and to post. Really, it does. In writing out my feelings about whatever is going on, and to send it into the ether, whatever that is, my spirits lift into a reassurance, that no face to face contact can give me. I think of you all, in Canada, In the States, in Englandshire, in Scotland, on islands across the world, and I reach out, saying, through my own stories, Hallo and Thank you for being there, for clicking on the ‘follow’ link to my blog, for reading my words. I also imagine your lives, tough at times, maybe many many times, easy here and there, the infuriations, the lifts, the shocks, the abundance and the lack. The bones of a life, the flesh and the guts of an ordinary/extraordinary time on this goodly earth. Life, I love you. I truly do.

See? I feel better now, just writing this. Hallo you all. And Thankyou.

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Island Blog – How we really feel

The day dawns fresh-breezed and sunny and we have jobs to do. We bought sticky tape, non-sticky tape, varnish, oils, turps and scrubbers, many things hardware, for we are preparing this house for letting and leaving. As the lists are made, we see how much there is still left to do, and remind ourselves how much we have already achieved. The five indoor cats watch us through the windows, follow us from room to room, sensing some change is afoot. The jacaranda trees beyond the walls bend and flip in the breeze whilst vervet monkeys leap the branches, sure-footed, swinging like acrobats. Perhaps they watch us too, curious but uncaring. Sunlight lifts the newly oiled deck boards into a shiny conker warmth, one coat complete, a second to reapply, hot work under the broiler in the sky. Various bits of furniture are advertised and sold, little holes filled in, taps re-washered, walls brushed and touched up, door and window frames varnished to a shine. Moving forward, ever moving forward. Sometimes a task presents as too demanding so we break it down into smaller parts until the whole thing is complete. At others, we sail merrily along, buoyed up by sharing the process, bantering, laughing, pausing for breath, discussing the best way to achieve the end result. We allow for rests and diversions such as going out for Eggs Benedict with avocado and strong coffee, or a trip to the dog park to throw ball for the big soft retriever to catch and chase after. And all the time we talk on many things, not cabbages and certainly not kings, but on concepts and reflections, mind-mapping and acceptance of self, gatherings and solitude, our observations on everything Life. We have always talked that way. Not for us the idle chatter of wasted words. We are sentence makers, thinking people, curious and interested in a new way to see old things. We ask each other, How do you see this, or that? and then we listen to and consider the response we hear.

When we join others, I sit and listen to their discussions on what appears superficial to me. It isn’t that I judge, because I don’t but when the subject under the lights is only about a situation they all know and inhabit, the words just seem to circle pointlessly to me. Unless there is curiosity and reflection, the subject remains solid, unmoving, stuck in time, with the inhabitants thereof stuck with it. There is no right or wrong in the way we converse, but I always want to dive beneath the surface, to discover the depth, texture, movement and flow of this subject. It could be all about bin collection or the lack of it and that could take up a whole evening, resolving not at all from where I sit. It could be any number of similar issues under the microscope, until the minutiae has been thoroughly talked out and absolutely nothing has changed and my legs are itching to move on, to move beyond the tiddleypom and out into the wide open spaces, curious like Alice.

Sometimes I think I am an onlooker in this life. I love people and gatherings, conversation and laughter, sharing a meal and so on, but give me anytime the meeting of true minds, of thinkers and wonderers, of those who live on the edge of all truths accepting none of them and all of them at the same time. I am a loner, a weirdo, different, odd. So be it. Although I have met only a few differently odd weirdo loners, we know each other immediately even if we never met before. We connect instantly and then, as is our nature, break apart. I used to want to change myself, to find complete happiness in evening-long conversations about bin collection or lack of it, but I cannot change so instead I accept who I am and who you are and it is a peaceful warm place in which to live. And, over time, I have learned that to initiate a conversation by asking the right question can result in a shift in direction, in content. I can ask, as the chat on buying carpets is wearing me thin, Have you ever made a carpet, dyed wool, walked barefoot on a silk Persian rug, been to Turkey, or anywhere else, for that matter, to watch a carpet story being assembled in full technicolour? Oh yes? How did you feel watching that, do tell, all the details please. Ah, no, not facts, not facts, not pronouncements, but feelings. How did you feel?

After a few blank stares and some throat clearing, my gaze fixed firmly on my target, a tentative response trickles out and I finally get to hear the voice of the person before me instead of the repetitious rote, the factual quotes, the I-agree-with-him platitudes. I get to the real beneath the mask. It’s exciting and informative and suddenly I am engaged, fascinated and gently questioning further until I see you, oh there you are, just you, no pretence, a warm lively interesting human being.

How easily we bend to a shape in order to fit in, with our statements and judgements, and yet how soft and vulnerable we really are, and how very beautiful we become when just one person shows true interest in how we really feel about something.

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Island Blog – Dreams

We all have them, dreams, the night ones, disconnected to morning sensibilities, the ones in which we fly with Pan or save a child or fall off a cliff or battle with rats. I have had them all. Then there are the dreams we deem realistic. What I want to do, to achieve, to move away from or towards; the impossible ones given present circumstances, the ones folk say we can never achieve considering our history, financial situation, lack of experience, or of our hare lip, our stumble foot, our size, our faces our lack of voice, confidence, location.

In our night dreams nothing and everything keeps us from our goal. We are omnipotent, invincible, or we are weak and warbling as we cascade the cliff. It might seem as if we have no choice over our night revels in a dream state, but I would countenance that with the face of what our life feels like to us right now. There is so so so much talk on how it is up to us to alter state, of mind and of body, so much, as if we are students in school and all we have to do is to learn the lesson taught. A night dream is an overflow, if you like, of the feelings of the day, the week, the life we lead. Yes, in the perfection of theory, if we have the courage, the means, the help to change our life, the one we don’t like and possibly haven’t for years, we have the power. But what is power faced with decades of supposed weakness, compliance and acceptance? It is a flimsy thing, a spent balloon, a scribble on a wall.

To rise like Joan of Arc is not for most of us, besides which, armour is hard to find in a shopping centre and horses are for those who can afford them, not to mention gathering an army. I might be hard pressed to gather men together for a bowls game, never mind an army of crack marksmen. I realise I say men. For now, allow me. Men are physically stronger after all. But I am not really talking about a woman leading men, more a person leading themselves. I know that just to lead myself is a frickin pain in the ass a whole load of days, and not least because of the conflict between my dreams and my ‘supposed’ realities. Back then I could not see one inch outside of my confinements. Had I challenged with my Joan of Arcness these confinements, well who knows? But I didn’t, not like her. And now, in my thinking years, the quieter days of soft reflection and occasional muddlement, of guilt assuaged and more soft landings than I ever knew before, I consider my dreams. The night ones come, and go, but I still have the daytime ones, full of ideas, aspirations and wide open thinking. However I am no fool. My time is less, my mobility less, my brain a little slower to catch up and I am okay with all of that. So I retune my myself as I might a guitar and know that I can still play a tune.

As a younger and foolisher woman, I aspired to the stars, to impossibilities given my situation. I ached to fly, to run, to be myself in a world of my choosing. Now, I am glad I failed myself on that one. Dreams are wonderful things, the daytime ones, and powerful too, but they need reigning in, cautioning with a big fat reality check. If you are going to be Joan of Arc, plan every single step and be very prepared for the ghastly. Dreaming into a dream is where the lost children are, those whose lives are just beginning, those who thought it was enough just to dream.

It isn’t, but then again, it is.

‘Saddle your dreams before you ride ’em’. Mary Webb. 1881-1927

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Island Blog – After the Facts

Recently I had cause, and pause, to think on how things are and how I feel after the facts; how I notice what was what and then what arose from those facts. Fact was I had a notwell thing, the details of which are quite irrelevant, and it lasted one day. However, the hit of it was like a sandstorm in the desert, or a tropical raincrash in Africa or even, if I look at it as a thing of change and possible loveliness, the birthing of the Monarch butterflies. The timing is the same. It stopped me in my tracks. It levelled me, decided for me, flawed me. All this is good, I tell myself whilst in the thick and the thin of it. It will ‘pass’ and I will not.

However, in this thick and this thin, it is sometimes tricky to see so sensibly. It is all ooh and ow and oh dear and will this take me out kind of nonsense. The day was slow and difficult, the dog un-walked. The only reassuring consistent was the rain, for which I was grateful. If there is a constant to hang onto whilst riding a roller coaster, or when crossing an ocean that refuses to stay flat no matter how loud the pleas, I recommend holding on to it. Later in the day, one that felt as long as a trip to Mars in a balloon, I thinked. I could just say, well I had this thing and now it is gone and I am thankful beyond measure. Or, I could notice the slow rise of my strong goodly health into her rightful place and I could communicate with her. Where did you go my lady? I went down, she replies, and you came with me. Oh, I know that, for sure, I might snap. She smiles kindly. We are sometimes caught by storms, she says. Some storms are stronger than us, but know this; they are short sprinters, not long distance runners, as we are.

I find that reassuring. Now to the next bit. In the re-tell of my crashbang day, I could major on the superlatives. A horrendous day; So much pain; I thought I was going to die. Or I could pish-posh that melodrama and notice how I feel today, this day, the day after the facts. Facts will always come in, will always stun us like a tropical storm, soak us, fry us, fell us. Are we always to be at the whim of the facts, or might we learn how to accept them as they come, welcome or not, and then to notice ourselves within those difficult times, however long or short they are, and, as the shock of them dwindles like a fire without wood, to see ourselves rise up again, thankful and somehow stronger?

Well, how-in-the-hec am I stronger ps and btw? Well, says I, it is all in the eye of the observer. To notice thoughts and feelings, no matter what facts come stomping in like an army of boots and weapons and ghastly days, I will rise from the whatever and into new light, the light of learning, the learning about me, about my resilient strength and ability to accept and to move on, empowered, bizarrely by the facts that sought to bring me down. And this is not just me. Every single soul can do this. I am tired of hearing about awful days, bad years and terrible this and that. Once the facts are broken down, it was nothing so bad. Sob stories make me want to ask So what now? That happened last week, last month, 10 years ago, 20. What are you doing to alter the facts?

It does not mean that I don’t appreciate grief and loss and stories of abuse, neglect and desolation. I really do, but I have met too many people who have survived appalling things and who have decided to rebuild their lives and it changes my thinking. I see one woman, one child, one man, one tribe, one nation, one religious sect who still keep their faith in the light of life, and it alters my thinking. If we are to live life to the full we need to notice and pay attention, not to the facts, beyond being ready for the ‘sudden’, but to the beyond of them, the beyond in which we can relocate our own strength, a strength we may not even know we are brewing.

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Island Blog 153 On Good Men and Unicorns

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I have heard said, that good men are like unicorns.  Everyone talks about them but nobody ever sees one.

To compare a man with a unicorn, is, indeed, a strange thing to be sure.  Unicorns may be ‘fictitious’ creatures, but they are very real in fairy stories, folklore and even in Harry Potter’s world, which is one I almost believe in.  Many times I have faced down a pillar on some bleak and windy station, thinking positively about rushing towards it in search of Platform Nine and Three Quarters.  I don’t, of course, being ever so slightly aware that I may, indeed, be a Muggle after all, and, thus both bitterly disappointed, and in need of cosmetic surgery.

The other thing that stranges me about a comparison between unicorns and good men, is that men, in my experience, couldn’t be more earthed.  I may attempt, for example, to unfold my feelings about some aspect of my life only to be asked scientific questions. What shape, when, why and how.  I may float (just a bit) around concepts of life, love and marmelade and be yanked back down to earth with a sensible ‘fix’ to the situation, one that completely misses my point, not that I have had one of those in a long time.  In fact, my being afflated about some other-worldly issue very possibly negates the need for a point, as there are many and none in the mackle mind of a woman at such times.

Now, I know, like you do, that unicorns have hooves and must, therefore, do things like walk, trot, canter and gallop, and for all of these activities, they require some sort of stable terrain, one with depth and structure, one they can see and expect to see whilst they do all of these things.  In this, they are very like men, I agree.  But, and this ‘but’ divides and separates, they can fly, of float, or elevate and there are few, if any, good men who can do that.

But is there a difference between Men and Good Men?  I wonder if this is simply an act of perception.  I say ‘act’ because it is a doing word and not a being word and there’s my point.  And I have another.  Does the perception of a man make him good?  If I imagine him to be like a unicorn, powerful, there when you need a lift out of danger, able to move fast over ground or through the air, beautiful, intelligent, magical and interesting, might he not become so? Whereas, if I imagine him stupid and blunt, strong-like-bull but dimwitted and messy and thoughtless, might I not be fashioning him that way?

I know this is a chicken and egg question, but it has thinked me for a while and made me watch folk and consider.  We can divide our lives into little controllable units, and, in many ways, this is a good thing.  I want my day planned, to a degree, to the degree that is important to me, that is.  I want to know when this or that is needed by my family, and what my role is in making it right for them.  But, if I have forgotten what it was like when first we met, then, chances are, so has he.  Life and the gravity of it has pulled us all down.  It happens, but the clever ones among us notice this.  If I stopped the car suddenly and said to you, Look There Goes a Unicorn, even if you were the biggest domesticated woman cynic ever, you would look, you would ask Where?  But if I said There Goes Your Husband, you might look, you might, but, if it was somewhere you didn’t expect him to be you might say…..well you might say all sorts of things but you would not have the same look on your face as you did when I called him a Unicorn.

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Island Blog 147 If Not Now

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Today is Halloween and I already have a witch or two in my head, and if crossed, in my mouth.  Not a really bad witch, but one of those ones that knows her power and won’t take any messing.  I like her.  She is a tad unpredictable, but we work together pretty well in the main, perhaps because I am also a tad unpredictable.  Witches are really ‘storybook’ to me, I don’t do black magic at all, although the white ones are worth a second look. I pull them in and shape them up for whatever hurdles I need to cross on a daily basis.  My witches are humourous and feisty, clever and quick, kindly but firm, independent, solo, and able to lift above any situation with a switch of a wand.  They don’t sport warts, nor crooked chins, nor do they cackle unless it’s whilst watching the ‘bad’ guys fall into their own come-uppance, in which case, I cackle too.

My time on Skye was wonderful.  Every time I travel to new places, I meet new people and people fascinate me.  I watch them and I listen and I learn.  I stayed as a guest in a lovely home overlooking a sea-loch that raged and spat for days, driven mercilessly into a right stooshie by strong winds and heavy rainfall.  The rain travelled sideways, whipping into my face and grabbing the breath out of me.  It was hard to stand up whilst walking two lively spaniels whose main aim was to find rabbits and chase them, not possible whilst held firmly on a lead, but nonethless, their aim.  When we had the rare sighting of a car approaching along the single-track road, we had to bundle into the grass in a fairly undignified heap, the spaniels panting for breath and the blood cut off from my lead-holding fingers.  Waving was tricky, lifting just my hand and not a whole spaniel into the air.  I was treated like royalty and yet welcomed as part of the family and now I have new friends, new people to learn from, a new bond between us.  Just as an aiside, I belong to the Scottish Book Trust who can sponser such trips and I am always delighted to be invited anywhere in Scotland to talk about Island Wife, to sing my songs, to reach out to people who relate to my story, in book groups, libraries, or at any public event.  I know, shameless marketing!

Moving on…….

In every area of life, there are people.  Machines do a hec of a lot to assist communication, its reach and the speed of it, but we need people or there is no heart.  Talking of hearts, I believe hearts are inherently good, even when the outside of someone challenges that theory.  Nothing is black or white, we are all both, plus all those rainbow colours in between.  Of course, life can throw us from time to time, but none of us want to be remembered, or pidgeon-holed at such times, especially if the outside of us says different.  But we can and do define people, if we’re honest, by their behaviour on a certain day/week/month or year.  We may be asked to describe someone.  We may say…..well, she is very good at her job but dreadfully overweight.  Now why do we add that last bit?  Is it that we must balance a good thing with such an unnecessary comment?  It’s irrelevant to the profile of that person and, sadly, the one thing that will be remembered.  Her overweight is something she doesn’t like either, we can be sure of that.  I have heard such defining often and, to my shame, said nothing.  I remember one of my boys saying once ‘I wonder why we don’t stand up for each other’ and he is right.  Why don’t we?  Perhaps we don’t want to be the reason for any awkward feelings.  After all, we can just remove ourselves can’t we and think how judgemental that comment was and the person who made it.  It’s easier that way.  But aren’t we judging too by keeping quiet?  It has a name this keeping quiet thing.  Although we didn’t directly commit the crime, we affirmed it by omission.  We omitted to stand and be counted.  In this climate of not standing, we need to make changes.  I have a rule for myself.  If I wouldn’t say something direct to a person, then I won’t say it at all.  I can’t always manage it.  I am human.  But what I aspire to, and practice, will eventually become a habit.

We are all doing our best to manage our lives.  We fall, we falter, we stumble and we crack, but we are not china cups and we can mend.  Not one single one of us knows what it is like to live another’s life.  The saying that we should not judge another man till we have walked a mile in his shoes, is a good one.  Even living closely with another human being tells us little of what lies in their hearts, what dreams are shattered, what disappointments hurt, what shame or oppression has done to their sense of self.  Little choices make up our pathways, but we cannot all walk straight and tall if those pathways are not going the way we want them to.  We redress the balance as best we can, and it takes time to find the normal, sometimes a long time, often a long time.  If I have learned anything in my life it is that I am not an island.  Although I love solitude and am happy on my own, I still crave a warm smile when life feels like it’s wrapped me in chains and thrown a tsunami in my face.  Stopping to smile back, to ask How Are You? and to listen to the answer can lift me far higher than any job-well-done will ever do.  I may rush by you, Can’t Stop, and you may understand my busyness, and I may complete the housework in record time, but, I am smile-less deep inside and not lifted up at all.  Better, by far, that I dally a while with you beside the dried goods and coffees for a human encounter.  We are dead a long time.  Life is for us to live or it will carry on without us.

If not now, then when?

 

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Island Blog 92 On Writing

On writing

As you may know, it is essential to read, especially if you are a writer.  I read avidly, even during the day sometimes, which would have had me thoroughly tutted at by Granny-at-the-gate.  Reading is for pleasure and wifeys don’t do pleasure inside of working hours which numbered, in my recollection about 22 per day.  But now I have less demands on my time by little or big people, although sometimes, just before collecting my book and settling into a chair, I do check the clock and feel a frisson of minor guilt.  It is so much easier to busy up with faffing jobs that lift the dirt or fill the larder with goodly smells, leaving the me part of me just a bit skinnier.

When I am writing, I become lost in the story, as I am now.  Nights are broken as I weave my web, and ideas come at the most inconvenient of times, when the night is dark as a cave and I know I should fight on to achieve my 6 hours of rest, but once the next idea comes, the something that might happen to someone, the how of it and its consequences gets a hold of me, then Lady Sleep leaves the room.  Over the years I have worked with various top tips.

Get up and start writing.  No thanks, its too cold downstairs.

Keep a pad beside the bed and write down your idea.  Yes I do that sometimes, if the story is just a foetus without a name, but if I am well on with the tale and the tellers of it, I can just lie there and follow the thread.  Often, almost always, a character takes me in a direction I never mapped out for them, and that aspect of story-telling has always surprised and delighted me.  It is, as if, once named on a page, each character accepts an initial structure, quite quietly it seems, until he or she decides I’ve got it all wrong and should listen to what they have to say about themselves.

Yesterday, a woman took an action I would never have expected of her, with a confidence that never came from me.  That action changed the whole course of the story and I sat back in my chair, fingers hovering over keys that had just become a jumble of confused letters.  A moment or so earlier, I knew just how to write a sentence.  I knew where he was going, what she would say, what they would do as a result.  Now I stare down at a keyboard that is singing me, not the other way around.  I have become a player in the greater game.

Some writers don’t like this state of affairs.  Some painters, musicians, song-writers too.  But for me, it is the time when I can, to a degree, let go of control, and enjoy learning about each character by listening to their guidance.  I move wholly and completely into their world.  I work to understand their feelings, often not my own, about what has happened to them.  I endeavour to find empathy with choices I would never make, have never made, although I do wonder if that bit is quite true.  If I have considered, even for one minute a choice of action not in sync with how I see myself, might that mean that I could do that thing in different circumstances?

When I am writing a story, I move into it.  I have to, or nobody would believe in it and the book would be closed and sent to a charity shop, un-read.  Good drama draws us in, involves us and we can emerge from a book feeling angry, upset or filled with a happiness that never came from the outside.  We can love a character, or hate them, wish them joys or want to punch them in the tonsils, but we can never find them dull, for if we do, we won’t bother to read on because we just don’t care.

Once I have found my characters, and, believe me, I do find them, or they find me, more truthfully.  These characters came to me in an ordinary moment when I wasn’t looking for them at all.  Two people sharing lunch in a café, and the dynamic between them.  It captivated me and the story began to tell me how it wanted to be written.  I made notes, kept looking at it as I walked, worked, cooked, cleaned and gradually the protagonists revealed themselves.  How they dress, laugh, eat.  How they love, how they live, and how they wrote their past.

Then, one day, I know it is time to begin and not long after I do, there is a knock at the door and in they all come.

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Island Blog 47 – Upsettings

Island Blog 47

Yesterday, just as I was finger-tap dancing out my new blog, my almost new laptop made a groaning noise, flickered her eyelids a few times and disappeared into silence.
Apparently she has died, which is not game on at all, at only 4 months old.

This is when I realise with a jolt, that there is a body of ocean between me and a laptop hospital. It matters not one jot how brilliant the technology is, how fulsome and encouraging the communication, which by the way was first with Jamaica, then Holland, then India. I felt quite well travelled after visiting all those countries, and in such a short space of time, and I believe I made a couple of new friends, one of whom is definitely looking out for Island Wife to be published in her part of the world.

Are you sitting there in skimpy shorts with a Coolade on the rocks? I asked her and she laughed uproariously.
Not one of the questions I am supposed to answer! she replied, and that is when I mentioned my book, knowing I could say anything I liked at that point and she would be bound to listen, even if that piece of information wasn’t on her Answer Sheet either.

Today I feel a bit odd, to be honest. My nice new red laptop sits in silence, with her flaps shut, on my desk and there is no sound of that thinking hum with which she has, to date, filled the room. Perhaps that’s the problem. She has been way too cheerful working with me and somebody doesn’t like it.

When I spoke to that nice young Dutchman, he did suggest various attempts at CPR, such as flipping the laptop over….
Sorry, I whispered…..such indignity…….and taking out the battery. Then replacing it after a number of seconds and pressing the on button 10 times (exactly). Then he asked me to do something requiring a lot of pressure on the Delete button that upset all her settings right back to the ones she came with, and they took long enough to get rid of when she first arrived.

I didn’t know her at all after that, and so the bereavement process will be shorter I believe. All my orderly little icons and boxes are quite gone now, and it is only with foresight that I had asked my husband to back up all files and documents and pictures and so on onto some flashing box that normally drives me mad on dark nights when it suddenly springs into life and turns the sitting room a luminous green.
I won’t moan about it ever again I promise.

So, the box sits on the ground, complete with warranty information and laptop-shaped polystyrene in a fetching green, and all we need now is for Miss Jamaica, or Mr Holland or even Madam India to call on Monday with a return address. However, I doubt it will be Madam India, as I was fairly sure after a confusing exchange of information, that I had dialled a Flight Booking Service and almost took myself and the laptop to somewhere south of Mumbai.