fight

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Island Blog – Shamshackle

Days slough on, canter on, dither on, as normal as it is for everyone else. Not one of us has the hold of the microphone on this, this takeshot of a life, moments, held, and held too long, or not long enough to learn the something of it all. . The past is whipping at our tails every second, and, as we all know, we do not see things the way they are, but see things as we are. Now that is one hec of a fricker, don’t you think? I think I see the truth and the one beside me, although he isn’t anymore, would turn his head up to me, his eyes astonished, and wag his head. I wasn’t there that day, he said. He was, but only in my story. How in the helikinns are people able to stay together for decades? I have no answer to that. I did. He did. But I am not sure either of us wanted that. It just kind of worked. We were tired, fricked and tricked out, beyond the the beyond of ourselves, as if there was only the Edge left to either of us, and there was no option there. We had frolicked and bolloxed our way through a million miles of forever, sagging together, furious together, lost together, shamshackled. 

I keep walking each day. I keep the rules, my rules, the tidy, the hoover out, now and then, the dust a blow in my mouth and the wheech of it laughs me as it just lands somewhere else. Prettier now, I tell it. I approve. A shift shape is always a mighty thing. I miss the Poppy dog. She was not mine at first, under the ownership of the captain of all ships, including hers, and mine. He was divolute with his training, absent, actually, but when he dived into the earth, heading down into the bowels of the whole thing, I took her on. Don’t be telling me that old dogs can’t learn new tricks because that is a load of horse. She learned, no treats on begging. No begging. No sandwich crusts of a lunchtime. No paw up will soften this mother heart, jeez, have I not know this begging thing and not just from dogs in my dithering life?

But, I confess, I loved her. I still do, and just thinking of her out there under the freeze of winter, coming home to the nothing, of the without her, rises the lump in my throat, my eyes looking for her jounce at the window, her bounce around my feet, every single time.  The way she dashed miles through the home, up and down the stairs, a toy in her mouth, her skids flipping the stairs into slide, so fast she was, her arse bumping against a wall when the curve confounded her.  Was. Not a great word, Not about her. Thinks me about other wases. Not sure there is a plural available just yet. There will be one day. We have new young writers and a serious need to blow the dust of the Oxford Dictionary. Another Shamshackle.

Seeing things as we see, or saw them, is how it is. But, and there’s a butt there. Moving on is never easy. not for nobody. Notwithstanding, if we refuse to move, we will be left behind. I can feel it, hear it, see it all around me, us. The shamshackle of it all. It is a sham and a shackle. Not for me. I am old, I know this, but the fightlight is wild in me and strong and I am hoping it is wild in you too. I think life is not the dream we imagined, but better, because whatever we go through, whatever we face down, sham out, shackle out, we can rise, torn, yes, broken, dirty, but still with the rising in us. 

Tomorrow is the Monday of it all, the ghastly wotwot of having to shiftshape into a someone else. For school, for a job, for the weather, for new clothing, a new identity. You know yourselves. You see and know what you see and know. Be clear on that. It might be a shackle, but it is not a sham.

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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 – Cats, Strong Women and Learning

The cats greet me at dawn, four of the five. I’m still working on the fifth, a nervous lad, a rescue like all the others. He is coming around, inch by nervous inch and I am hopeful that one day we will be friends. As I observe these cats I notice how independent they are, how individual and how they take no shit. Each does what it wants to do regardless of my plan, my agenda. I find that I like this sassy attitude even as one of them escapes my palm to leap atop the fridge freezer and to stare down at me. That’s what they do. They stare down at me. Ah, I think, I can learn a lot from you up there all lofty and dismissive and I rather wish I had adopted that attitude as a young woman. You can watch me all you like, try to reel me in, but if I don’t fancy your reeling in tactic I will distance myself and say not a word.

The South African women I have met have a similar attitude but they do use words, and confidently. They also will take no shit. If they encounter injustice, rudeness or inappropriate behaviour or just someone getting too close or sounding too patronising, they will round, talons out, mouths full of retaliation, minds confident, bodies strong and assertive. They sigh me too, a bit, because they show me who I always wanted to be, but wasn’t. Unlike in my youth, these women were taught to be singular and independent, their lives required it for living in Africa is real, no benefits, no guaranteed safety net, no easy path. There be dragons. In the UK it is more softly softly, girls are pink princesses requiring protection from all the boy stuff or from big decisions and these girls should behave themselves, wielding nothing more dangerous than a mop. At least that was how it was in my girlhood. I don’t think it’s the same now, but unless difficulties are encountered and imaginative practicality taught them at an early age, how can they learn? Here, where most need to face down dangers and restrictions, independent thinking is perfectly normal. If a woman wants something she must fight for it, and with her claws out. I like that and it thinks me.

Looking back on my own wifelife, there were plenty dangers and restrictions and, at the time I probably did mewl and whine as I encountered them but there was only me facing me during those times and I had to overcome my mewls and whines and to get the hell on with it. I guess I learned imaginative practicality on the hoof. If I didn’t sort something it would just stay unsorted and I had pride enough in myself to leap into a higher place and to look down on it with assessing eyes, my mind whirring. Living in a remote place, there was nobody to call on, not while himself was all at sea and guests required answers and solutions. If my kids were in trouble, I was the one to untrouble the trouble and I am proud to say that, in the main, I did just that. If some disaster struck or something collapsed or dissolved, I had no manual to read beyond the one inside my own head. I grew tough even when exhausted and overwhelmed because tough challenges are character building and I wanted to think of myself as a can-do solution oriented woman, no matter the restrictions I lived with. I gradually found room to move, to make space for myself and found, to a degree, my voice.

But I was also raised as a traditional girl, one who was told how a young lady should behave, all mannerly and subservient, all politeness, acquiescence, and femininity. In my time, women did not rise above their husbands, good lord no. Women who did were labelled bossy, man-like, loud, selfish and more, were required to speak with a husband’s opinion, to quietly lay down to his rules and restrictions and never to make a public fuss about it, although it was acceptable to talk with other women (gossip) in order to unburden the angst. As long, that is, that we go to another room to perform this unburdening lark leaving the men to roll their eyes at the pretty palaver of women as they knock back their brandies. A man who has too much to drink of a night is just, well, normal, such a lad, hugely entertaining, let’s put him to bed and cosset him as he sobers up. We’ll tease him at breakfast. Whereas a woman who drinks too much is a lush, disgusting, badly behaved and should be dismissed from the party in a ball of shame and rejection. No breakfast for her.

Confusion reigns in such a womanly life unless that is we can learn from cats and from other strongly independent women who will stand their ground until they fall over and if they are labelled as unfeminine, so be it. I have admired such women and learned from them over the years and I am so thankful to them. There weren’t many, t’is true, but when I found them I observed the way they quietly or loudly held their ground and I took the lesson given to heart. I learned to be not aggressive but assertive, to study my own mind and to put it in order. What do I believe about this? What is my position on that? Although I still step back when a strong man steps forward, for goodness sake, I am learning how to unlearn this, to question this presumed privilege and not to falter at any ensuing male startlement. I just hope the young pink princesses of today learn too, and a whole lot quicker than I did because the world is changing and the need for strong leadership in women, without the black cloud of bias, has never been more important.

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Island Blog – Some Days and a Dragon

Some days lift without me doing a thing about said lift-ness. Rising with the early light, everything flows in perfect synergy with everything else and there is no chaos within or without. My body feels lithe and supple, the music, Satie’s Gymnopedies, swims through the dawn, my home and me. Birds flit between the feeders, goldfinch, siskin, blackbird, sparrow, woodpecker, dunnock, chaffinch. No neighbourly cat yet to explode them into the sky, no sparrowhawk to bring them down, just soft reverence to Life herself. I dress, make coffee and wonder how everyone else feels about this morning. Across the sea-loch, mist ghosts the hills below what might just be a blue sky. I haven’t seen one of those for weeks and it’s a welcome sight, one not to be taken for granted as we don’t get ‘spells’ of weather on this island. One day may be all we can ask for, one day of dry, a gift and not one to be ignored but instead to be celebrated actively, mindfully, each minute thoroughly lived because tomorrow, that day that never comes, may well open grey and wet, the sky closed once again.

During these widow days I have known many mornings, many hours of self-doubt and fear, of loneliness and sometimes, despair. Although I know that I must, absolutely must, animate my inner poltroon, start believing and continue to believe that I am more than able to live not only a solo life but one which can still really live even with a missing part. It will always be thus because 50 years of marriage is a very big chunk of any life and to be left behind inside that life now empty of all that was familiar is discombobulating at best. It is almost 2 years now, no, more, because dementia eats a person up little by little and ten years of watching that monster nibble away changed us both. But still, the familiar remained. I knew him and he knew me and no matter the ancient battles fought, neither of us ever won. Now I am just me and sometimes I feel very small indeed. I can spend all night awake freaking out about absolutely nothing real, such as what I will do when my oil tank leaks gallons of oil into the garden, or a huge pine crashes through my roof opening me to the sky in the midst of a hooligan gale when it’s snowing and my neighbours are away in Tenerife? Now, however, a bit further along the road un-travelled I find myself wandering through interspace, a sort of misty corridor of in-between. I am moving, learning how to create a new familiar. Ignoring the clamjamfrie of panics, I sit with myself and we chat. What can you do within this situation, she asks. I close my eyes and let said situation settle into some sort of shape. Nothing about the being alone thing, I begin. She nods. Nothing about the gale. Ah, but I can ask a tree man to check the pines and I can call the oil tank man to check that. Good, she says. Get on with it.

There is nobody in this world, no matter how rich, how well-organised, how balanced who can avoid the big things. Things like gales, oil leaks, death. Nobody. So that means that all of us can learn new ways, a new familiar, but only having gone through the dark times, the rain days, the storms both inside and out. Courage in the face of ‘disaster’ has legs, a brain, strength and power. Fears flit like birds all the time but I can explode them into the sky if I think ‘cat.’ Imagining disaster is normal but not liveable with for long. This state demands action, not helpless panic. To ask, What can I do about any of this? is the question, followed by action and fuelled with courage, even if it feels as though courage seems to have gone off to India to find itself. The human spirit is unbreakable unless that human turns his or her face to the wall and I am not doing that, no matter what.

I was reading about Koi the other day, those beautiful Japanese fish (originally from China) we might see in lakes and ponds far far away from this place. Koi represent courage, the overcoming of difficulties, challenges, big horrible threatening life-changing things. It is said that Koi can swim upstream against any current. It can fight its way to the top of a waterfall and when it arrives at the top, will transform into a powerful dragon, not a destructive one but one re-shaped by all that life has thrown at it, all that it has learned on its journey. I like the idea of that. The thought lifts me, encourages me to face my challenges, make friends with my loneliness, and more, to keep on keeping on whilst engaging completely with it all, even the fearty times. I might become that dragon one day. What larks, Pip!