humans

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Island Blog – If there’s a tree, I can nest in it.

I watch Sunbirds today fluttering like trills of music as they build two nests in the squidgy looking not-palm over my head. I am sitting just upwards of sunrise on the stoep, my head thrown so backwards it just might fall off, but I cannot stop looking, watching, as their outflight feathers catch pink, gold, blue. They couldn’t give a damn about me, mere inches away and thoroughly grounded. I am no threat to them nor their nest building and they seem to know that. They perch en route to said nest building thingy, on the framework of the stoep shade, caught pistol sharp against the sun, almost a silhouette and perfectly formed. It’s breathtaking. I forget time, the pain in my neck, my thoughts and any distractions. My entire focus is on this four, and that thinks me. Are they like sparrows, nesting in a commune, or do they select another pair with whom to coorie in, or am I reading this all wrong? Their slender shape, the black cap, the perfection of body shape and wing spread is marvelling and maybe that’s more than enough. There is so much that is not right in the human world. You are right or you are wrong and that ‘wrong’ word has followed many of us into our own protection caves, silencing our voices and nullifying our opinions on pretty much everything. It is good to be reminded that beyond the rules of life for us, life is more instinctive, freer somehow within the mysteries and the magic of Nature and her unstoppable evolution. Living wild and dynamic, yes. Watchful and adaptable, yes. Able to shift and change when there is yet another deforestation to make room for a housing complex, a luxury hotel, a tourist haven, yes.

I like the Yes in Nature. However limiting the options, positive plans are made. In our world it takes hundreds of years to adapt and there’s a deal of gloom and moaning on that journey, as if everything is all rocks and dried up water beds. We could do with Yessing more, looking out and up. To keep showing up bringing our talents with us, leaving the ‘wrong/right dichotomy in our caves and stepping out into the light. What do they say now…….?

What you look for, you will find, or something along those lines. Like the Sunbirds did.

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Island Blog -Dishwasher and Changial

As I load the wee feisty dishwasher for the nth time today, it thinks me. For a few days, this wee and faithful soul has made herself a feature, not because she performed to standard and without complaint, but the reverse. Coffee cups came out still coffee-ed, cutlery not up to scratch. She is saying something. We listened, we scoured and scrubbed, took her vital innards apart, and I felt we stood her tall then. She is diminuitive by the way, down there, a wee fat square of genius with a big mouth. Our care and concern (I watched us doing this caring and concerned thing, talking, suggesting, idea-ing) guided us and we came to ‘fro’, as one of my forbears said, although I forget whom. I think he meant a. together thing, an agreement, a forward action put in place. Anyways up, she, the moothie darling, now washes everything into spectacular. We laugh about this and it thinks me, a lot.

Around humans who are a gazillion nautical miles more away from machine-land, we may presume too much, as we did with the dishwasher, that the way it was, they were, last week, last sometime, still stands. It doesn’t. It really doesn’t. I have heard too many say things like ‘I thought she was fine, he loved his work, they enjoyed their evening class in Belligerent Living Tactics, had fun with Granny, were really committed to classical piano lessons, wanted to stay living with me, and so on’. Unless we check our collective self, almost daily but without intent, agenda and without too many questions, just observing, we can still presume too much. After all, we want the status quo. T’is comfortable, an easy grab each morning as we dash, all dyspepsia and inner angst, into our own selfworld, and, if we are honest, that is our world, no matter how much we try to persuade ourselves and others that our thoughts are always on them, him, her, they, I, me, and more.

My thinks are thus, or this if you prefer. Thus is a tad ‘older generation’, even as I believe thus means more than this. It has depth and mystery to it. Just saying. In any situation, what is anyone looking for? That’s a bit broad, I give you that, but let us settle on the dishwasher for now. We need her, big time, we need her, the moothie one. We discuss, disemminate. The doors open in 20. We do what we do, and as we do, we share, we laugh, we idea, we watch, we are curious, we observe, we learn and the end game is a caring synergy. Synergy equals mutual growth.

Amongst humans it’s not so different and it is so very different, of course it is. As we come together on an ordinary morning, it isn’t necessarily one for one of us. The mood shifts, the dynamic changes, the unpredicted has joined us. We might need to support. We might not want to. We might find our flow from here to there compromised because of a perceived threat, we might stand back and snort at this whole circus, thus refusing to learn, to change, to alter within a changial. My word. However, I believe we have presumed too much and for too long. I do raise a glass to the very few institutions which actively embrace the irrefutable change in our societies, but their action implementation is too behind the behind of it and that shuckles my head and my heart. We heard the siren song decades ago. Just saying.

I might end there.

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Island Blog – The Trouble with Labels

I would say, and have said, how much I hate labels. Let me explain. The first time I met them, there were four, written down and explained by an author whose name escapes me. At first, it felt reassuring to discover I was thus labelled, at some big business meeting, somewhere, way back when. It was exciting, because it was as if I had finally discovered me, the who of me, and it explained a lot – why I never had my endless questions answered, why I was the LOUD in the room, how I could walk into any gathering like a new adventure just arrived, startling everyone, and, unfortunately, receiving glares and go-aways from those in the other three categories.

Over many long years, with that label pinned to my chest, I have spent time breaking it down, because it was so finite, and that sort of blockage is anathema to me. Life and people are a flow, ever changing and adapting, so that labels, fine on something you want to buy, are little short of irrelevant when it comes to human beings. When I look back at the definitions of each of the four tyrpes of human, I can see myself in every one of them, at times, when required. Let me list them, if you don’t know what I mean:-

Choleric – strong-willed, passionate, direct. Melancholic – introvert, sensitive, suspicious.

Phlegmatic – neat, diplomatic, reliable. Sanguine – extrovert, optimistic, talkative.

I am all of these, when I need to be. I believe we all are. How would we not be all of them at times? One label does not define any one of us. Take People Pleasers, for example. Does anyone want to be stuck in that set of chains? Of course not. I can happily relate to my passion for making sure others are happy. I am sensitive and observant and can make a room of mis-matched humans into a happening, a melding of unlike minded souls, just by choosing the right music, the right time to say something, the right time to say nothing and just to listen, the right time to move towards a soul alone and to engage with gentle questions. All this does not label me a people pleaser, and leave me there because I, like you, am moving on. Life is swerving us, compromising our decisions and choices, picking away at our incomes like seagulls on chips, and we are adapting because we are strong and resolute. We are passionate but suspicious. We turn out neat, can be diplomatic and reliable, as we can also be strong-willed, optimistic and sensitive.

What we are, if a label is ever required, is dynamic. I, and you, I’m guessing, have denied self in the interests of others and the situation. We have been determined and strong-willed when a situation requires a leader and we are that leader. We have been introvert at times, extrovert at others. We have flexed and moved, stopped and turned to stone, elevated another, then thought that one through and grown wings for ourselves. We are passerine.

This merry season is a challenge for so many, perhaps for us all. Moneyed up or not, there is pressure. Please remember how far you have come, through (very possibly) many ghastlies, and who you are now. Not one label, not two, not twenty two. No labels. We are extraordinary humans, able to twist in any storm, able to guide others to safe landing. We are quiet and we are the voice that saves the day. We are passionate but able to hear another’s opinion and to consider. We are neat but don’t judge those who are not. We are suspicious but not of everything and everyone. We are always reliable, doing every task whether someone is watching or not. We are talkative but can laugh when someone says Shut up. We are all of this.

Someone recently asked me my advice for the day. I could only think of one thing.

Keep moving, watching, listening and learning, and, above all, recognising and saying hallo to every single person you meet along the way. They just might need it.

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Island Blog – We Can Too

There’s another hoolie blowing here, strafing the daffodils, splitting the petals into suncolours on a lewid grass. It isn’t really lewid, the grass, I just found the word and it would out. The grass is, in fact, growing strong and upwards, but only the latter bit when the hoodie pauses for breath. I swear we are all bent over these past months, the taller ones, like Jim and Archie are almost paperclipped. We work with the gales, that’s what we say, as we cheerfully take fifteen minutes to unfold from the driver seat and take another ten to straighten, pre entering the local shop. This bit is very important, because the paperclipped could well be in danger of leaving with all the wrong products, thus being unable to stick to their diet plan. A terrifying thought.

It thinks me, this wind, Kathleen or Jinx or Indigo or whatever is the sequential naming nonsense applied to ‘just another bloody gale’, which is what we called the whole damn lot of them when I was younger and when we believed in a world that talked straight, unencumbered by the ridonculous need to put everything into prettily labelled boxes. I sincerely believe we understood wildness, back then. I digress. My thinks, spiralling away from the whole gale-ness of things, make me consider disruption. As, indeed, a gale disrupts. But when something disrupts us, as humans, we respond in so many different ways. Some hide away, some rise in latent anger, some observe and consider, some run for higher ground. I’ve done them all. Trouble dropped into a community, a family, a couple, a crowd, dissents, if that’s a verb. It is now. If we can allow any respondents to respond in their own way, without judgement or, (or is it nor, Dad?) and we are not saints, not at all, but simple humans, then we have cracked it. I don’t say it is easy when challenges to said trouble comes thwack attack and feels personal. It hurts, until, if we have engaged in a lot of personal (and personally uncomfortable) inner work, such that teaches us about empathy and acceptance and humility, we just let go and listen. No, not just that, we actually hear, and grow.

Gales flail daffodils, tulips, anemones and narcissi. And, next Spring, they rise again. We can too.

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Island Blog – Take Another Look

Let us take a look at Olding, from another aspect. Olding can be dire, upsetting, astonishing, in fact, but if we look at it through laughing eyes, it can also be hilarious, not just to those who are nowhere near missing the edge of any pavement, but to we who know how it feels to be anxious about exactly that. Stepping out of a body in some level of decline is to free a mind. It allows a sense of humour to engage with a strong spirit and a still beating heart. Look back, my friend, at what you achieved in your life, how hard you worked to get it right, to BE right for those you loved and whom you still love, here now, or gone too soon. Remember that time you lifted other flagging souls into your arms and carried them over stony ground, through fire, over oceans of shit. You did all of that, we all did all of that, and yet the memories of the times we have faltered or failed, said nothing or said too much, halted instead of running towards justice, fairness and inclusivity always leap to the front of the queue. We judged, yes we did, unfairly. We decided what came next and now we might regret that. We were unkind, dismissive, rude, even. So what? Do those ‘faulty’ memories define us now? I say a bit fat NO to that, even though I can be guilty of such regrets. It thinks me.

Why is it that we daft humans can always find and build on, the times we got it wrong? Do we stand as our own judge? I think we do, but we can also judge others wrongly. We can look at how the world is changing, decide we don’t like it, it isn’t familiar, and diss it all, but I can remember my own ancestors doing exactly that when I was young. I laughed at them, behind their backs of course. Old fuddy duddies the lot of them. Young people move too fast, mumble their words, wear extraordinary, or skimpy clothing, and not enough of it to cover an egg, let alone a whole set of buttocks and they speak a language definitely not grounded in the Oxford English Dictionary. We have come full circle, it seems. However, in my observations of self, I can see that, if this Oldies attitude is allowed to surface and thence to take over, like pond weed in an untended body of water, it clouds vision and grows stagnant. Lord save me from stagnant! How will I do this, how will I bring in the light, clear my own weeds, unblock the blockages that prevent a free flow of fresh clean water, bubbling with oxygen and all of life? To embrace the unexpected, to show interest in it and enthusiasm for it, even if I, the Oldie, must only sit on a bench as observer, is to engage with the unfamiliar and to embrace it.

The Oldies I remember first, and with deep affection, are just bones now but the light they brought to my skimpily clad, fast moving, mumbling life, fraught with agonies and doubts and angst, stays with me to this day. They might have been on that bench as life flowed past their rheumy eyes, but the sparkle was there, the stories just waiting to be told, the mischief alive as a pixie in their hearts and minds. Despite their loneliness, sickness or restrictions, these people could still delight, as was their intention. Not for them the moans and groans, not for them the lack and loss they all must know so well, not for them the criticism of a younger world, young and determined to get things right once and for all, in new ways, ways that really will save humankind from the fiery pit.

My granny, who had endless health issues that she never allowed to control her mood, and I sat on a bench once. My legs dangled miles from the ground as I watched my jelly shoes swing back and forth. I was bored and grouchy. What can you see? she asked me. I looked up into her wrinkled and beautiful face, saw the pearls at her neck, the softness of her jumper, the smile on her lips. I turned back to the view of passers by, with shopping trolleys or dogs or husbands at hand. Nothing! I grumped, and swung the jellies some more. Right, she said, now cover your eyes and look again. I covered my eyes. What can you see now? she asked. Oh, Granny, I can see fairies and dragons and there’s Alice in Wonderland, and Pooh and Piglet! I heard her chuckle. Good, she said, me too. Let’s follow them, shall we?

And so we did.

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Island Blog – You have to want to dance

There is a scowl in the sky this evening. The grey pushdown clouds point fingers. The Blue Ben bothers not and why would he, standing there all granite push-up shoulders and for centuries? It doesn’t mean he doesn’t notice. What we eejit humans don’t understand is the natural communication between the elements. Earth, Wind, Fire, Water. They were here and talking long before our ancestors arrived, whether from the sea or from Adam. It matters not.

There are times I feel very small as an eejit human, as a sudden ‘insider’, in such a huge story that tells of life so long before me that it means nothing beyond its echoes. And, to be honest, they are easily ironed or washed or swept away along with the dust and the creases. However, I am very busy noticing myself. Not in the mirror, no. But in my responses to whatever comes in, including my thoughts and my ditherments and my hesitations. I have to say that once I step into those footprints of acceptance I feel engaged with the oldness in me and with all the ridiculous crap that goes with oldness. I won’t say it is a fear-thinking thing because it is so very not. It’s in the bones, the creaks, the inevitable inability to lob a fence as I used to be able to do. It also isn’t about striving for that agility. No. I get my limitations, but I will not accept without challenge. Again, No. I just step up. I acknowledge that I will not be young again. I say that I know where I am and who I am and I will (don’t do this) always accept a challenge. I will dance the rest of my life. I am under nobody’s control, only my own.

There are scowls. There are fabulous starlit nights. There are cold wet mornings and sunshine afternoons. There is that moment when the sunset blows poppy red, and suddenly in a dawn when a new daffodil takes the breath from me. I am watching myself. I say that because it is so easy to keep flopping onwards without noticing ourselves. I know because I have done just that until I clocked my flopping and turned around to question why. It whirled me around and back till I looked at the old thinking and saw it cobwebbed dark and without the spin of a live spider. It takes mindful thought. You have to notice and to question. You have to want to dance.

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Island Blog – Along the Way

On my road to recovery I learn many surprising things, see much through a different lens, complete old puzzles that I had thought missed an essential piece for decades, the very one that would show me the whole picture. It bothered me, this missing piece thingy and I would find myself going back over and over again, my fingers digging through the dirt for that chunk of gold as if I believed everything would be just as I remembered it way back when my ass was pert and my feet fleet. It smiles me now, for nobody can piece together their past from where they stand now. Not nobody. And also I recall recalling memories with himself and seeing that ‘what are you talking about woman’, a statement not a question on his face. He wasn’t there apparently.

When I say recovery, I don’t mean me coming back to me because I will never be that me again and because I have nobody to remind me of that me, I am free to build, foundation up. First off I need to find that foundation and I now believe that this is the hardest part. When there is a ‘we’ in the mix, there is discussion, argument, tantrums, acceptance and solution, not least because the digger is revving impatiently just a hillock away and costing money. So ‘we’ decide and there it is. It begins.

It is the same within a shared life, sometimes tantrums, sometimes arguments, hopefully acceptance and solution, but nonetheless, each ‘I’ affects the shaping of the duo dynamic. When he is in this mood, I keep clear. When she is slamming doors and honking horns, I look out at the birds and say not one word. And so on. We change each other without even knowing we do. We can tear down and we can build up and most of us do a bit of both, but as we grow above the foundation we alter each other, smoothing down edges, rounding them into a learned shape that works, even if only as far as the next volcanic eruption.

Alone is not lonely. Alone is powerful and free and scary at times. Nowadays there is no other close enough to perform any shaping manoeuvres on the one of two. Just the ‘I’ is left, an ‘I’ with complete autonomy, absolute freedom of movement and thought; a singular soul who can, and has, felt both utterly bereft and warmly supported. Happily, if this person is curious about life even if he or she finds the whole thing terrifying, he or she will find others along the road, surprising others. In my afterlife I have met with kindness I never expected, such as offers of help and then those who actually see what I need just by walking by and who turn up to do the job. I could think that this is just the way islanders think, the community strong and bonded through winter gales and no ferries running but I don’t believe that. I believe, as I always have, that although this world is broken, she is beautiful because of her people. Of course there are those who choose greed, corruption and worse and who’s actions cause terrible consequences but they are in the minority. They do not define the human race. I see community and kindness everywhere because it is everywhere. And I for one am a very grateful beneficiary of that kindness.

We all have some kind of shit flung at us, but along the way we will find those who give of themselves just so we can rise and shine once again, and in a shape we are still working on but one we rather like the look of.

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Island Blog – I am alive

And so it rains again, sideways and spiralling like wet smoke. I watch islanders walk by attached to damp dogs, legs all a-skitter. The humans are water clad, their faces shining rosy, their laughter lifting into the sky as they share a chuckle, again, about the rain, again. Visitors drive by, droop-faced, vision misted, windscreen wipers tick-tocking to keep the skinny road clear ahead. Where will they go today to see notverymuch I wonder? Inside the heating warms me, the fire curling amber red flames around the dry wood that spits and crackles; timpani. This is the island, the one that tongues far out west, dividing the Atlantic with its basalt and granite determination. I am content.

Walking out to feed the jittery birds sinks my feet into the sodden grass but no weather stops the need to feed their hunger. They scoop and swoop in, wary of the neighbour’s cats, of the sparrow hawk dive. I watch them cluster around the swinging feeders and am thankful that my meals are easier to access and without danger. I hear the drip drip of a ceiling leak, the plink of the drops as they land in an enamel jug. I used to need buckets, four of them, but not now, not since the ingress was located and bunged shut. And so I am thankful for that. Soon the day will kick off, unfold, pull me here and follow me there. I have music, words, timpani, birds, windows and rain. I am alive.

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Island Blog -Still Breathing On

I meet with two other widows over coffee in a brightly lit cafe/chocolate factory. All last night I was fearful, not of meeting them but of going out at all. I had to choose paint, collect a prescription, buy soap from the best soap shop in history deliver a huge landrover tyre to the garage for unpunctuation and leave my own mini there for an hour or so. She, my mini, Miss Pixty Forkov, was having an argument with her onboard computer and I don’t blame her. She was telling me her tyres were fine thank you very much whilst her screen flashed me dire warnings of certain disaster. This long list of things confounded me, overwhelmed me and I had to take 3 deep breaths prior to firing up the engine. I realise this to be ridiculous. I have driven this tootling switchback road up and down endless hills and skirting 2 lochs for decades. But nowadays it can take on monster proportions inside my overactive imagination and it has everything to do with Covid restrictions and fears and widowhood.

Needless to say, once my lungs are well pumped back up again and my head silenced, all tasks are completed with ease. I arrive at the cafe and settle down with a double shot cappuccino to wait. I can feel myself calming down as we talk about how life is for each one of us. All our husbands died differently. All of us are still somewhat lost without them, no matter how pragmatic, how busy with ordinary tasks we may be. We feel abandoned and rather pointless. We live on for our children, not quite yet able to say we live for ourselves, having not lived for ourselves since we were 20 and that was half a century ago. What happens to souls after death, I wonder to myself. Is there an end date for a soul as there is for a body? If not, heaven must be overcrowded when I consider the thousands of years humans have been living out their lives. I look at my friends, two good strong women whose faces show me what they must see in mine. More lines, eyes not so bright, mouth busy but changed somehow, the ends pointing chinwards in repose. Is my heart broken? Is yours? We all agree. Yes our hearts are broken, our lives as we knew them stopped forever dead. It doesn’t mean we won’t heal, although the scars will always be there. It doesn’t mean we sit around feeling sorry for ourselves but it does mean we give life to these deaths in that we talk about them, about our dead men, the impact on our children, the legacy of loss, of father loss. You only ever get one of those.

For my own part, as the most recent widow, I have only just come to a place of acceptance, a sort of quiet river flowing underground. Sometimes this river hits a confoundment of rocks that cause a lot of hiss and spit, spume and roar. Other times a waterfall, rapids and quiet swirling pools. There are bends and long straights, deeps dark as the middle of a forest at midnight, shallows where fish skitter and reeds wave softly from where they root, denied air. I inhabit the ground above this river, walking alone. The river compels me, beckons me, calls to me and offers me continuity, hope and a future even if I have no clue what that future will be. I know, as my friends know, that our children watch us now like hawks, picking up on every stumble, every doubt, every fear. Mum is all we have left now. Mum must go on and we will make bloody sure she does, the old bat.

When we separate back into our own solitary lives, having covered most subjects in the book of subjects, I know we all feel lighter because of what we all have in common and because we are not afraid of death any more. It is not a word whispered as it was before we watched it happen to our life partners. At the very point of death, when we turned all practical and businesslike, we left a part of ourselves behind for ever. We can be afraid of driving short distances, of imagined dragons, but Death has no hold over us now. We met him, after all. We watched him cross the room. We felt his presence. We are taller now, stronger now and more likely to laugh with abandon at things we might well have censored before. We are woman, invincible and still breathing on.

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Island Blog – Autumn, Our Gift.

I almost didn’t go to the pier today, to sit on the flat rock and to watch the tidal activity. Almost. Waking twirly and feeling it as the day slowed on, I conversed with myself as though to allow such a falter, to give it credence and approval. I will walk the short walk today, I said. It’s fine. I am allowed. But, as I moved closer to the exit opportunity, the rebel in me drew blood and stood in my path. I could see her in my mind’s eye and she laughed me. Ok, ok, I said, I will walk on. She withdrew to allow safe passage. I would so not want to challenge her.

Leaves are turning. Above my head, beech, alder, hornbeam and birch show me tip. That tip into Autumn, that acceptance with a rebel of colour shouting at them. No dying without colour, she says, no dying without that glorious dress of swish and ruby, of gold and speckles, that differentness that comes only now, only as Summer with all her flounce and confidence yawns like a princess and takes a first class flight across the world. There, she can astonish as only she can, lifting tired human minds, human bodies into swimsuits and flowing wraps and barbecues and beach encounters, but Autumn is pragmatic. She speaks to the dying light, to those on the cusp of change, she is change. And she does it well. Even though the storms may come and the light give way to a big dark, she is clever with time, for those who are watching. She is not one to sleep in.

The light lifts as I walk. Although it seems that the sky is closed, all grey and without comment, there is a shift. I can feel blue coming even if I cannot see it and it comes, with dissonant clouding and cerulean blue. For now it is just sweaty and cloying and my frocks clamp my skin. Then home again as Father Sun finds his spot and beams hot and sweaty after a jumper and boot day. I roll my eyes and peel off morning layers, damp down the fire. The temperature flips from nothing much to 27 degrees in a matter of moments. My neighbours suddenly barbecue. It is what we do if we are working with what is on offer, much like Autumn. I like her. She is feisty and determined. She is beauty in the face of death only it isn’t death. Death is forever, whereas she, Autumn is just one of four and playing her part. She is that jazz singer with a whisky/cigarette voice you hear whilst walking home, one that draws you in to hear more. She is nuts and berries, vibrant and wild, offering a harvest that comes only to her. She is preparation for the winter months when we all lose the plot, light endless candles, and pretend we don’t mind the dark and the cold. She is a herald, nonetheless. She is saying, get ready, pay attention, get real about this time, in particular, This Time, for we are all afraid, all wondering, all peering out at a world we are no longer sure about nor confident to walk in.

I won’t do the cheesy and say that this is nothing. It is not nothing. But we humans have survived, lived, loved danced and made a difference over and over for thousands of years. None of us know what will happen next but next is out there and we are right here, right now and this is Autumn. Our gift.