heard

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Island Blog – Bubbles and a Rare Bird

Sorry, been a bit distracted these past few days, and, to be honest, I never imagine anyone wondering if this frickin eejit has finally sqwarked her last, fallen off her perch, not to be discovered for days, and then feel an element of concern. I always thought that everyone is absorbed in their own lives. My blogs, and me, might be a pleasant diversion, when bored on the bus or in a tea break. I kid you not. So, when I get a nudge or two, it bubbles me. I suddenly feel seen, important, that sort of thing. And that feeling is affirming, because who feels seen, let alone heard? Not many, I think. Until we are, seen, noticed, and heard, really seen, noticed and heard, we think it only happens in stories. T’is

A rare bird.

I have a strong woman friend, and she, recently, has chosen a new path in her life, in order to be in the right place for the right people, even as it cut her heart. She has had many cuts prior to this one, and they have healed, or she has determinedly healed them. She doesn’t look broken at all, tall, beautiful, standing fast, and yet she has to adapt, once again, to new surroundings, new challenges, a. new location. I watched her leave the familiar, her eyes brimming rainbows in the capture of sudden sunlight, her focus forward to the what the hec now. She’s

A rare bird.

As for me this past week, I found bubbles everywhere, rainbow globes, in conversation, in the clouds, in the sudden and random. And I am lifted, changed, energised and a bit wild (surely not me…!) by these bubbles. I’m going to buy a bottle from the local shop tomorrow, let them fly free, watch them catch the sky, float cloudward and then disappear like rare birds, gone for ever.

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Island Blog – A Mammoth and a Rant

Today was sludge. Some days just are, and not just for me, even as my own day takes on an immense importance. T’is disproportionate, I know, I bloody know. Nonetheless, it is so. I wake too early, about 5am which, I tell myself, roundly, is fine in the months of early light. My other self reminds me that winter is so very loooooooooong up here and those 5 ams are quite ghastly. An oxymoron, just for your information. Something is either ghastly or it isn’t. There is no ‘quite’ about it. Just saying. I trudge on through coffee, sweeping a floor, putting away drained dishes from my solitary supper the night before. I light the fire. In May,? Myself catches me by the arm. I want to swear at her. It is cold, I annunciate each word, my lips exaggerating ridiculously, just in case, overnight, she has suffered a demise of the brain or a loss of hearing. I eat breakfast, of sorts, and it is done and swallowed by 6. Now what? I wander through the rooms, looking for an answer. The carpet needs hoovering but it will do and, to be honest, I cannot find the energy to connect with my hoover. I shower, dress, come downstairs. 6.15. My mind heads off into loony land. What, I speak this out loud, is the point of my existence, hmmmm? My husband is dead, my children, and theirs, are all miles away and I am tired of everything. I can write, oh hell yes, I can write. I can sew, walk, watch nature, tidy, cook for one, clean out the fridge, even hoover the damn carpet/s. How exciting can a life become?

But, when will I pull on my fancy boots and be whisked away to dinner, one I don’t pay for? When will I look forward, in anticipation to a shared evening, a game of scrabble, the intercourse involved in the tricky process of preparing mango chutney from mangoes, or plum brandy for Christmas, the fun of discussing an evening with friends, the shall we do this-ness of real life, because being alone after so long is not real life. It is not. It. is survival. Who will dip the oil tank? Just me. Who will repair the faulty back door lock? Just me. Who will watch a fantabulous sunset and marvel? Just me. Eish , not enough, not by a long chalk, whatever that means. The rip asunder of a shared life, no matter the palaver of it all, is like a chasm and there are days I fall in, spending half of the next week climbing out, and for what?

A rant, on first looking, is like meeting a mammoth in a doorway. It is huge, inappropriate and tusked up. It is also, by its being there, blocking forward motion and also a massive startlement. It has to be named and addressed. There’s a mammoth in the doorway, you might say and those around and benigh you would immediately tell you there is no such mammoth. But there is. No, they say, kindly, a hand staying your pointing arm, there is just a clear and empty doorway, a way through, a clear passage. It is infuriating to be thus denied and fixed. When I am facing a mammoth, what I need is someone to believe me, whether they see said mammoth or no because if that did happen, and someone stood beside me, listened, heard and never said anything, I would disappear the beast all by myself. I would feel seen, heard and honoured, and the mammoth would, I just know it, look puzzled and confused. Oh, oops, wrong doorway, wrong timeline and way too warm. He/she would turn around and lumber off, soon distant, a natural departure. Instead, when I hear a trillium of flowery wonderments, covered as I am in slime and mud, cut and grazed from yet another climb out of the chasm, I feel unseen, unheard, dishonoured.

I know it is a natural desire to fix a ‘problem’ but if someone just needs to name the mammoth and you are privileged enough to be that much of a friend, just be there and say nothing. It is the quickest way to send the mammoths away.

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Island Blog – True Communication

The weather here in Africa changes every day. Yesterday was too hot for toffees and bare feet on the deck, burning, broiling sun, the need for shade essential. Inside the weather stays much the same until load shedding when no air-conditioning cools the skin, when it becomes a sweat-fest, when moving around at all must be performed slowly in order to avoid a meltdown. Unusual, they tell me, those who live here. I can walk out in bright sunshine beneath a perfectly blue sky and return after one cup of excellent coffee in a deluge of warm rain, as if the clouds all agreed to dump their load and all at once. Just as quickly, it changes again. I am forever dinging back and forth with anti-mosquito spray only to have it showered off, reapply, shower, reapply. But this is a small problem in the face of the continuing elevation of power offs. For those who need power in order to run a business, it is a big deal, unless you have a noisy generator to fire up at such times and even that harrumphing beast won’t run everything. It wonders me. Is this a worsening thing or just for now? I believe the former and not just for Africa. It will come to all of us eventually. The key is in preparation, alternatives and attitude, much like everything else in life over which none of us has control. The only control we all have is over ourselves, our choices, our attitudes.

The Ha-di-das awaken me early each morning with their cawing. I am certain that they line up outside my window like a choir with tonsillitis, one, two, three, now! and I am blasted from sleep like a rocket from a bottle. They are big birds and everywhere and it is impossible to hear what another person is saying when they ha-di-da overhead. I decide they’re the crows of Africa but without crow intelligence, all that fleeing’ aboot and yelling the same stuff around the houses, following or chasing each other from tree to tree as if that’s all they need to do to justify their existence. In between their cawing chaotics, a sweeter song, the bulbul, smaller, softer of voice and considerably prettier of hue, lift and flutter between the branches preparing the second nest of the year. One bulbul calls, another answers, so politely. There’s no everyone-shouting-at-once thing with bulbuls. Other beautiful rainbow birds with floaty tails that arrive on a branch a few seconds after the body lands, petrol on water, aurora borealis, blood red, butter yellow, sky blue and emerald, the birds delight. None of them shout at each other. It thinks me of communication and the different ways we use it in our own lives.

We all have our colours, our voices, and we all want, no, long, to be heard, to be listened to. Sitting with another I want to hear what they say and then respond, probably with a question, thus making it clear that I have heard what you say and want to know more. If I am being a ha-di-da at that point, I may fall into the trap of counterpoint by bringing up an experience of my own. This, I have learned, is not what you want from me, not at all, because what I am doing is to dilute your story, thus indicating that I know how you feel, which is, of course, a nonsense. How can I know how you feel when I am not you? I can’t. So I ask a question based solely on what you have told me, a question that encourages you to continue. It is odd that we seem to need to compare stories as if that brings us both into a shared place, but we all do it. When himself died, so many people told me they knew how I felt and it was like they had taken out a great big eraser and rubbed my experiential feelings off the page. I stood my ground, said nothing, but felt myself disappearing because all of a sudden, the moment was lost to me and claimed by them as their own. I smiled but wanted to leave both them and the so called conversation which had suddenly become a competition.

I feel the same when someone keeps their mobile face up on the table between us, their eyes darting to look, their eyes off me. I just go quiet because I feel I am now unimportant and definitely unheard. But don’t we both have agendas and busy lives? yes, we do. However this moment we share is the moment to share, to listen to each other, eyes on each other, body language relaxed back and welcoming. You are here with me now and we are not ha-di-das but bulbuls or any other bird that has learned how to communicate softly, listening for a change in tone, in colour, feeling the story and learning from it. You tell me, beneath your words and if I am really engaged, that you are troubled about something, something that is of import and concern. You honour me by sharing, whether it be beneath your words, in your body language or clearly readable on your face. I want not to fix you because what you want from me is validation and a listening ear. Often my mouth doesn’t open at all at such times, because the urge to ‘suggest’ my solution to your problem is full in my mouth and I must needs keep my teeth firmly clenched against the spray which, if freed, will only serve to soak your story, to dissolve it.

Learning learning learning! It bizarres me oftentimes that I still have to, want to, learn a better way to communicate. When I was young and full of my own ha-di-da shrieks and rants, I never considered the rights and wrongs of conversation, my own agenda loud in my mind. I knew the way to solve this problem for you and I rolled it out like a wonderful bright carpet for you to walk on. Ridiculous, I know now, although I was mum of five and that brought a whole gamut of problems requiring immediate solution, but not now, I don’t ‘solve’ now because by not solving, not interrupting you with my marvellously mind-blowing idea, I allow you to find your own way through. And isn’t that all we want as we spread our problem out like a faded map across the table? I believe so, nay, have found it to be so as I listen, question gently and without challenge, without my agenda or my marvellously mind-blowing fix, I watch you light up with an idea, one that just might work for you, and all because I listened and paid attention, sitting firmly on my ego, my need to be the one who sorted you out.

You called. I responded. You spoke. I heard you. Mobile off, eyes on. Rain, sun, power off, power on, none of these are important when someone is vulnerable and trusting enough to tell me of their troubles. I am here. I hear you. I don’t solve you. You do. I know it. Keep talking for I am listening as the faded map between us begins to colour up.

This is true communication.