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Island Blog – There’s Something About…..

Having no idea who reads my blogs, nor who benefits. Never knowing what each new day will bring, a serendipity or a catastrophe, a gain or a loss, a fall or that moment when I will stand tall as a warrior. It’s as if life lives me, and, in a strange way, I like that, most of the time. I like danger, living on the edge, always ready to do my very best at outwitting. I am naturally spontaneous, a state which can, and often has, found me in a dodgy situation, mudswamp rising up my legs, the dark completing me, eradication. Until, that is, my eyes adjusted. They did, and they do, and once the ‘ayes’ have it, the house is quietened, and then comes sensibility. Love that word. ‘The quality of being able to appreciate and respond to complex emotional or aesthetic influences; sensitivity.’

There I am, was, appreciating and responding to my highest level, and although this life is bloody exhausting most of the time, what with all this learning even when I left school decades ago, I still love life, the way it lives me, the way I live it. Well, not so much the latter to be honest, because I can still flounder in mudswamp and the dark. However the importance of the important is simple. It’s poopy in the mud. I can do dark but not for long. I love light, am light, bring light. And there’s something in that, the need and the strength to defy. Any something is an enough something because we know the opposite of that.

I have no idea where my children are. I have no idea what will become of me, ditto when the next gale will smash down most of our island trees, nor whom will fall sick, nor when this baby will be born, nor when I will see this person rising from the sadness with a smile on her face. I know not whether this shrub or that will survive the winter, nor when I might hear the Arctic swans softly talking from across the sea-loch. I don’t know when a still day with all its quiet glory will come, not after a torrential rainday, the sea all a-popple with white smoke and sprachle. I never know and there’s something about that.

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Island Blog – Two Sparrows

I love my work. I’ve said this before, I know, I know, but I am happy to say it again. The energy required, the energy generated, both are like two sides of a something that has two sides, which, pretty much defines all of us. Our bright talents can go dark, but that is all about personal management, a noticing, the ability to uprise road blocks should one be careening, and our inherent goodness, because we all have that. It is slightly off-pissing that we need to keep a hold on the wonky planks of our personal attics, to ensure that the ‘cobwebs’ don’t become thixotropic, dense. cauterising. Oh, we who are honest, know that place, and there’s a choice thing there. Actually, it’s mostly an ‘oh bugger’ because what we inherently know, regardless of parental influence, is that we don’t want to harm, that we are listening, noticing, learning.

No idea why I went there. Perhaps it is because on my journey to work I meet eejits who are, very possibly wonderful people but who don’t feel the need to wave a thank you as I skid off into the briars and sludge in order that they, in pristine big-ass vehicles with one wife and possibly one dog, slide by. I’m happy with the slide, and I always wave first, but when another living, breathing, vulnerable human makes no eye contact, proffers no acknowledgement of my skid into the briars, I confess I do ‘miff’. Momentarily. It wonders me. Is this how life is for them in wherever they come from? What I do know is that it isn’t a warm community, like a remote island, wherein we all recognise the need for each other. And that is sad.

Today, as the cafe filled with soup orders, dogs, children, bikers, walkers, holiday folk with a hunger for delicious scones and fantabulous cakes, coffees, herbal teas and a welcome that seems to bring everyone together, there was just me, behind pots and bowls and a sort of lull. I heard a sparrow cheep, insistent, and recognised it immediately (the benefit of a mostly silent island life) as a young one shouting at dad. It’s usually dad. Mum has had enough. She is not there for the endless ‘feed-me’ demandings. I emerged from the pots, nobody else there and followed the sound. As I passed by the tables, conversation flowed, nobody else caught this, to discover two sparrows inside the door, on the stairs, baby shouting, dad (I imagined, exhausted, with a ‘what now?’ in his voice}. I slowly rose the stairs, the door behind them, the birds, thankfully open. I gentled ‘ off you go, you guys’ as if they could understand me. Eventually they did.

Inside the busy, the curriculum of any work, the random, the sparrow, will fly in and will think you. Some will notice and respond. Many will not. I want to notice everything, everyone, all of this life, the random, the awkward, whilst learning the ability to accommodate, even to whisper a freedom. For me, there is nothing else.

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Island Blog – I’m In Charge

I light myself a candle. Today was a waiting day, one that wakes me with an inner fog. Thoughts rise but fall again before I can set them in order, unlike other days when I am the one in charge. Even in a voluminous nightie, I am in charge. Even before my teeth are brushed and my dragon breath is extinguished, I am in charge. You stand here. I’ll need to think more on you. As for you, thanks but no thanks, not today. And you…..well I have no idea where you came from, perhaps a deep bog, a sinking, stinking one. Begone! However, this morning’s thoughts just swirled like whispers around me, uncatchable, turning to air whenever I reached out for a grab. The ones I haven’t mentioned? Throttled at source. I could tell, just by their colour and smell that they would serve me no purpose.

Waiting is tough. Waiting for a bus in the rain is tough. Waiting for a baby to emerge through the intense agony is tough. But this waiting, this cancer waiting, is definitely up there with the best/worst waiting thingies. I’m not surprised my thoughts have trouble thinking me straight. I am all wonky lines and inner wobbles. Even my walk down the stairs is old-lady cautious, as if my feet might miss a step regardless of all this foot attention I’m giving them. I even count the steps for goodness sake, as if, in forgetting one, I might not arrive in the same house I left on the landing. I’m not hungry, not anything much, until, that is, I hear the chatter of little girls. It is then that I recall myself, remember who I am. I may be waiting but I can do something with it, fill it, distract myself from it, begin to see through the fog of it.

I check my phone every 30 minutes. 15, actually. Just in case the consultant or nurse has called with an Oops we made a mistake you don’t have cancer after all. I read until my eyeballs threaten to abandon ship and my head can no longer sort out the protagonists of any one of the stories, merging them together until the mesolithic Scots tumble with the Harare prisoners on death row. Not a movie I’d recommend. But that doesn’t matter, the tumble of characters, because to read is to escape and I can think of less healthy ways to do that.

We, those of us not attending our first day back at school in smart green sweatshirts and black breeks, go out to visit a farm shop a short distance away. There’s a wonderful cheese counter and we ogle the selection from Stinky Blue to Not Stinky Goat and everything in between. We sit for a panini lunch whilst Little Boots, the smallest girl not yet at school, enjoys a multi-coloured lolly, on my knee, plus multicoloured drips and multicoloured chatter. I laugh. I now look like an abstract painting. This and other little distractions distract so cleverly. It thinks me, now that my head is fog-less.

I light myself, that’s what I do, that’s what I can do, all I can do whilst I am waiting. It’s me taking charge even though I am not in charge of anything outside of me. But I am in charge of that bit, and that ‘bit’ is me, the Bit Part in a huge production called Breast Cancer. I read that actors in such huge productions spend most of their time inside a trailer, waiting to be called. Waiting and waiting and who would know it once the finished film is on screen for our pleasure? It looks complete, everyone busy all the time, as if that is how it was put together. But it wasn’t like that at all. Nor is this. I will, I know, look back one day and forget the pain of waiting, the length, breadth and depth of it. It will just be mentioned in a sentence. I had to wait. That’s all. But now look at me, all bright and cancer free and filled with my usual overload of beans! And not waiting any more, not for nobody nor nothing.

I watch the candle flicker, the flame waver and wend in the airflow I create just tapping out words. I see the glow of it inside the glass jar, the shine of the melted wax, and it smiles me. This candle may snuff out, but so will the waiting, and the treatment and the anxiety and the fear and the pain. I may be a bit wonky chops when all is said and done, but I will still be in charge, of myself anyway, and that task is not for the faint-hearted, I can tell you.

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Island Blog – The Lonely and a Rose

It hits just like that. It doesn’t matter that I have enjoyed two wonderful holidays with my beloved children. Those times appear to count for nothing against the weight of Lonely, who comes unbidden, unsought and quite devoid of explanation. She, Lonely, requires no justification it seems. She just barrels in as I awaken into a lemony dawn. What is wrong with me, I ask? Yesterday’s dawn woke me warm and smiling, ready for another day irrespective of its ordinariness, its widow’s weeds, the ones I dig up each morning to see once again clear ground. I was in sync with it, my keep on keeping on thing strong in my mind and body. What is different this morning?

Everything. I feel like a rope has been cut and not by me, the hold that holds me to life, to hope. I fly out, flailing, fearful and with no idea where I may land, and, worse, no care of landing or landing at all. I dress, down the stairs, make coffee, everything as usual. The lemony light lifts into morning. I hear thunder, see lightning, watch birds fly backwards, catching their tiny claws on feeders, swinging like One, Two, Three and Off! Just like yesterday. I consider my tasks for the day, see the floors need sweeping, know the wood needs chopping. I make and eat breakfast, select an audio book to entertain, feed the dog, let her out, all the usual but today I am pushing against a huge weight. I turn to look at it, at her. Who are you? I shout, because I can shout now and whenever I feel like it. There is no answer. I continue. You are well over two years old, no, you are well over fifty years old. Why are you still here and where do you hide during the times I really believe I am moving beyond your control? Still, no answer.

I begin to whine. I can hear it in my voice and I do not do whining out of choice. But here I am whining. I tell her I am doing all I am taught to do. Connection. Making decisions. Making journeys alone. Reading endless books on How to Make Sense of Loneliness. I practice daily, no, hourly, gratitude. I notice every leaf, every change on my walks. I celebrate the life I have, the life I had and I work hard on understanding and releasing my past. And still you come. Why?

Wrong question. I know it before it ever leaves my mouth. I turn away from my questions, my whining and my fight against Lonely. I sit and watch the sky, the cloud shift, the travel of light. Although it doesn’t feel like enough, I decide it is enough. It isn’t, but it helps to just give in to it. If I logic my feelings, I will always be responding like a fool. Feelings are feelings and logic is logic. But I do realise something in my sitting-ness. I don’t ask for help at times like this. So, why don’t I? This ‘why’ question deserves an answer and I have one. Aside from the fact that I have dealt with loneliness, trauma, doubt, despair, loss, anger, resentment and blame for decades, I have always found when reaching out for help, a fixer and I don’t need fixing. I need a friend to smile kindly, to know they don’t know what I know and to stick beside me as I falter, fall, fail and flail; when I have nowhere to land and don’t care; when my day is as long as a year and when all my fears surround me like a gossip’s whispers, menacing, fleeting and invisible. I just need a hand held out, no agenda, no words from another’s mouth. Perhaps that is why I am so resistant to asking for help. I don’t want a book club, a retreat, a walking group or any suggestion of a moving forward that works for that person, the one who is not me, has not lived my chaotic life, who has not survived a deal of trouble.

Last night, a dream.

I watched his shadow in the garden of my mind. He picked a rose and held it out to me. I moved to take it, even though we both knew that Life cannot meet Death, even for a rose. In the morning light I found it on the grass, dappled with dew.

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Island Blog – Very Blessed

This day I wake early, faff a bit, clean something, clear another. I like a tidy home. It was never tidy when I lived with a husband who didn’t do ‘tidy’. He scoffed, and said, oftentimes, that he considered it an affliction, like exzema or asthma. Even if it didn’t look like it I did honestly try to outrun his scoffing but it had faster legs and was canny. It could hide in corners and wait for my back to be turned. And it was very successful. In the end I gave up, to a degree, focussing on my innate skills and gifts and, to be honest, clearing up has never been one of those, even if I did, over time, morph into the extension of a broom, a mop or a dishcloth for decades.

I know what is happening later and I am so excited about the happening later thingy. Just a few weeks ago I would have cancelled. I know I would. I was very into cancelling and not just through lockdowns but way back into the caring years when I had lost myself. Everyone does, I hear it through the mouths of others, their tongues working out the consonants and verbs and pronouns and careful, so careful to halt the flood of emotion that could turn any sentence into a grammatical flood of nonsense. I can ride that flood with them, that wave, even if the words follow no particular order. I know, and yet I have no idea, how they feel. All loss and grieving is different, even if the name is the same. Mother. Father. Brother. Sister. Husband. Wife. And, God forbid, Child. But we can go into the rapids together, we can understand, to a degree and by more degrees than those who have not experienced such deaths.

There is a meeting of Bereaved Carers. How brilliant it that! The only people in the room will be, well, bereaved carers. I feel both safe and excited to meet whoever comes. I know the facilitator and she is like a sparkle, so we are all safe. We have a room to ourselves. We can talk out all the shit we feel, or not. We can go into awful detail without wondering if the rest of the room will barf and run. We know each other even if we don’t know each other at all. We drink tea, well they do, but it is strong coffee for me. A teapot lands on the table, a fat bellied old fashioned Derby, I guess, and it is warming, just the look of it. I managed to lose a teapot, I speak out loud. Me too, says another. How did we do that? We think in a communal sort of think. Well, I say, I reckon I must offered my teapot for a bigger group one day and then forgot to collect it. She, with the twinkly eyes and barely a wrinkle on her face nods. Maybe, she says, and we laugh. Actually we laugh a great deal, about caring, about death, about loss and emptiness. We laugh about the slow movement of time, the way we fill in the hours, the way we coped in the thick of caring.

It is delightfully freeing. I am certain each one of us leaves feeling humbled. There was she who dealt with that. She who coped with this, and not just once. There was the one who dipped and lifted, faltered and regained footing over a very long time. We may not see each other for a while but we will all remember this day and think of each other. Each one of us will remember the laughs, the gallows humour, the private sharing that will help us to heal lonely wounds. And, all thanks to the intuitive support we are offered. The Mother Hen. Argyll Carers. Support through caring, through the horrors, not afraid to take whatever gets yelled down the phone or straight to face.

I think we are very very blessed.

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Island Blog – Alice and Me

I have noticed this. In the morning, when I awaken, could be 4, could be 5 and sometimes a glorious sixer, I think new thoughts, like a child, and all those thoughts are interrupted by questions. What is the morning like beyond those blackout curtains? What will the weather do, what will I do? What shall I wear? Do I smell coffee #obviously not? Where’s the dog? That sort of thing. All fresh and spontaneous and floaty, newish, new, light as air. These Alice questions follow me to the bathroom as I wash and brush and take a look in the mirror. That grounds me. Oh, hallo Old Wise Fool, I whisper with fondness. I have no idea why I still whisper, but I do. Decades of early whispering gets stuck in a woman’s DNA.

I descend the stairs, avoiding the stairlift chair. Let me tell you about that. A week or so ago, my little grand girl was chair-lifting herself up and down. All the grand girls know the rules. One at a time. Ask permission first. She had gone through that process. I, on the other hand, being Wise and Foolish, had not checked that the duvet cover, draped over the bannisters, was clear of the workings. She ground to a halt, my little grand girl. Oh, Gaga, she said. I’m stuck. I should let you know that when they call me thus, they refer to Lady Gaga and not the alternative meaning. When I called the engineer of chairlifts, he was most kind and said he would pop over shortly to sort the twist of thick material now almost a part of the cog mechanism, so melded it was, and is, still.

As I descend those same stairs, I notice that early thoughts don’t all come with me as if they know they are dream thoughts and know their place. The Alice in me meets the day about half way down. The day before has its own residue, and rising. We meet for conversation. It’s like I grow up every morning, from dream child to sensible old woman. Sometimes there is a collision. Other times, a collusion. Either way, it is new each morning.

As the day grows and develops, bringing with it a list of things to fill in, such as lawyer’s letters requiring originals of every important document, plus my own ID, for goodness sake, as if nobody knew I had stuck with this man for almost 50 years, and, as if I might be a sudden nobody, I drink coffee and move on. Each day brings its accompanying thoughts and fears and doubts. Overwhelmed, often, I remember the Alice on the mid-stairs and breathe. I can meet her there anytime I choose, and I do. It thinks me, about thoughts. They tend to gather as the ordinariness of a day crowd in like a noisy rabble, set to confound and dissemble. I go half way up those stairs, just below the strangled chairlift and sit. Hallo world, I say (not whisper). I am strong, wise and paying attention. I can do this. I’ve got this. It will pass. I’m not sure the world likes that much.

When I go to bed, I pass Alice mid-way and crook her in my arms. My thoughts are a circus. In my thinking I bring her, fresh young child, upstairs as a gift to my night. Even if my head is thringing with a million thoughts, she, on the stairs, half way down and half way up, is still fresh as a daisy, that beauty that rises with the sun and closes as it sets. So simple, so fresh, so free. I have dealt with lawyers, probate, funeral expenses, ID requirements and also ran. I am ancient by the time I trudge to bed. But she is not.

And she is me.

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Island Blog – Letting go

This year I decided to plant a few things and then just to wait and see. I have got my underpinnings in a right fankle during past summers as the so-called weeds reared like bucking waves and just as impossible to control. I never watched a weed flower. Out with you! Off with your head! I was the Red Queen to my so called weeds. Poor loves.

As I have completely forgotten what ‘few things’ I have planted, or where, everything is a surprise. My red crown is parked at the back of my Narnia wardrobe (please forgive fairytale confusion) and I am just sitting, crown less and watching. Of course, I have no idea what subversive hi-jinks are going on beneath the surface, what clutching control and which dominatrix is at work, but I do know that this letting go is beneficial to my abdicated soul. It is so very peaceful to just watch, to just let go. Past summers had me tutting, grumpy, eye-rolling, stomping, yanking and swearing. At what, or should I say at whom? Mother Nature does what she does and there was me (love bad grammar) thinking I was bigger than she, or is it her…..This ‘garden’ was hillside once, sheep shorn and wild, free to roam, free to collect seeds that could survive the salt blast and the sharp-toothed winds, the frost in May and the broiling sun that comes with no warning at all. Who am I to decide on control? I have seen land closed for 50 years by acidic forestry growth, burst into a riot of foxgloves when the trees are felled. I have seen this ancient land wait patiently for light and space, enough to make me gasp. Whatever shenanigans go on above surface bear no relation to the strong and peaceably waiting power of the below, the unseen, the guessing depth of life always waiting to live. Above surface, there are irritable fingers trying to control, a red queen or two, a factory spread, a car park, a township, and Mother Natures sighs, whispers to her own, Be Patient my little ones, you time will come again.

Well they are all coming again big time in my little patch of wonderful. I have not a scooby what anything is but everything flowers like it was their own personal Christmas Day and the bees are everywhere, plus the other things like look bees but aren’t, the flies, the triangular buzzing things and many many more insects pollinating and feeding themselves nectar at the same time. I laugh and I smile and I just love this letting go. It thinks me of other things I can let go of.

Well, once you start, there really is no stopping.

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Island Blog – Anything I Want and Magic

Out walking this morning, something came to me. It made me laugh out loud, which thoroughly startled the air around me, sent little birds bursting up like fireworks and caused two doe-eyed rabbits to hurtle into the underpinnings of the wood. It was this. I can do anything I want in this lockdown time. There are no checkers with opinions popping their heads around doors at random times of the day. I don’t need to close the loo door when going for a pee. I can wear my frocks inside out, put my pants on my head, cook in just a pinny, drink 3 bottles of wine with lunch and sleep in the same sheets for a month. This freedom is a chuckling thought and my imagination is already running wild.

So, what did it mean before this, before all checkers with opinions were checked out, and for some time to come? Well, I reckon I may well have kept my standards high precisely because of their startlement tactics. If I thought someone might catch me cooking in just a pinny, or appear as the third bottle of wine sank to the dregs, it would think me, and more than once. This structure is/was a good thing, and it will be again, once we are all free to check on each other once more. In fact, I could feel rather unhinged if I considered the possibility that I might never be checked on again. Being checked on created me a discipline, a structure, a blue print by which to navigate my daily life. It kept me upright and moderately sane, grounded and with a strong idea of how things should be on any given day. Does this mean I am now running rampant like a rebellious teenager? No, thankfully. I did that once and it brought me no end of bother, not least because I had no idea of where I was running to, and had I kept on running I would have fallen off the edge of the world. Eventually.

But considering this thought is leading me to all sorts of things. What I am doing these lockdown days is pretty much what I always did. How encouraging that is. For a woman like me who is prone to fantasies of flight on a broomstick it is hugely reassuring to learn that I am grounded in an ungrounded sort of way, but grounded enough to be continuing my standard of living. In truth, it is an elevated one. Now that all the caring is down to me and I am well occupied with an endless list of exciting tasks, I find I have raised the bar. My husband, the sheets, the floors and dishes within this island home are all polished to a shine. Does this mean that I don’t need to feel answerable to anyone but myself? Absolutely. Why didn’t I realise that when checkers with opinions lurked around my peripheries? I cannot answer that, but to understand in the mind of my heart that I am complete, that my conscience is my true guide and that it is I who can give me all the answers, is very refreshing. It means I can talk to myself, always a delightful interaction and most revealing in that I know how me thinks, what irritates me and which way the pair of us want to go.

I am not saying I don’t miss the chance of new light being thrown on an old absolute from the mouth of a friend, but I can still source that via the phone. What I am saying is that this morning I understood something I have preached to both myself and others for years, the fact that I have all that I need for me right here inside this brain, this body, this place, this situation. I just need to go within to look for the answers. They have possibly been waiting for ages, patiently, rolling their eyes every time I expected someone else to bring me the magic I needed. Now I know its inside me and that is a wonderful thought.

We are all enough for ourselves. No, not just enough. More than that. We are completely complete just where we stand right now. And we are the Magic.

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Island Blog – Thinks on Why

This morning I was discussing various outlandish things with my faraway son. We don’t bother, he and I, with myopia, moving with a zip straight into deep thinks on even deeper things such as ‘how is it I can remove my feet from my boots without unzipping the zipping and yet find it impossible when inserting them?’ That sort of deep think.

We spoke on the Why of things, the Why that explodes you out of bed of a morning, so excited are you to get the day rocking. Without a Why, we agreed, we would remain in bed considerably longer, rising with a sad sigh of resignation. The day would not rock at all, not even once. So what is your Why? I ask him. He doesn’t know, yet, but with his investigatory brain, he’ll locate it I feel sure. Sometimes it is there, the Why, but playing hide and seek with you. You have to look for it until it leaps out from grandad’s old chest on the landing with a loud Wahoo!

I think about my Why as I walk, reluctantly, the dog this afternoon. Why reluctantly……when the sun shineth down on all his people and the sky could set up a sailor’s trouser factory to match the largest in China? Why, when you have had lunch, prepared supper, brought in the wood, sorted the palaverous palaver for tomorrow’s journey to the care home, affording you a week of peace, no wheelchair motor thrumming like a bee stuck in a strip light, no spills or crashes, nothing lost that can never be found again, not even the wifi going down, deliberately timed for maximum upset? Because I am exhausted. So you will understand that my Why is not in Grandad’s chest on the landing, nor any of the other likely hiding places. My Why is awol.

However, forcing my tired old brain into action I took a wee donder through the limbic region for something that lit my fire. I meandered through sewing, knitting, caring, holidaying, making money, painting, singing, playing my piano and into writing. That stopped me. Writing. Yes. Is this my Why? Perhaps I wouldn’t have to ask that question if it was. I know that, when writing I am totally engaged, time slips by without me noticing and in a life (nowadays) when I could scream at the slow slow ticking away of the seconds as I wait for a day to run out of puff, this is exciting. Had I even begun Book Two I might be so absorbed as not to notice the dull drudge of caring for decades. Is it a truth, then, that I am actively not seeking out my Why in the vain hope that soon this will be over and I will be free to write without endless interruptions? I am not sure this is a healthy, nor a realistic, way to live.

I know one Why that explodes me up of a morning. I am out so fast that it may take all morning for my bed to regain its comfortable calm. My children. And their children. Whatever skirmishes are going on inside my own brain, if one of them is going through shit, or facing an exam or a life test, I am fired up like a rocket. I can’t manage their stuff for them but my support, my texts and voice messages can tell them I am here for them, always and as long as I draw breath. Probably long after that too. But it isn’t right to live inside someone else’s life, or for someone else’s life. It is the Why inside my own that needs finding, naming, sticking on the wall, fastening to my heart. This Why must be writing. It has to be. Writing is the only island in this turbulent ocean, the only thing that eats the indigestible whilst feeding me at the same time.

There are no books at all on How to cope with long term caring, beyond suggestions for joining groups or taking up community singing. Not that I have found, and, believe me, I have looked. With a How there needs to be a What. If the What, for me, is a book to help others caught in this cruel trap with no sign of an ending that is in any way pleasant for anyone, to make them laugh out loud at the funny side and to let them know they are not alone as they plan murder or an imminent departure from their post, then this book is begging to be written. Experiential learning is critical, as it is to pretty much anything in life. I have that in spades. The How is to flaming well get on with it, find a space, make a space, defend that space. Now, not when it’s over. Right now.

And the Why is the writing. No matter that I have no idea how to begin, nor how to couch the awfulness, the drudge and boredom and frustration of it, in polite language; no matter that there are a zillion stupid tasks inside this myopic life all needing Only Me to fix them, from finding a jersey that doesn’t exist, never was red, nor did it have buttons down the front, this jersey crucial and of great value that will never be found, to relocating the wifi dongle that I deliberately put away somewhere deep and dark out of spite, and with many others in between. Many. Others. Not even these can take away my Why, My How and my What.

How I do this, I have no idea. But what I do know is that if I don’t flaming well get on with beginning it, I might as well howl at the moon in the vain hope she will howl back. And I don’t think that has ever happened. My head is a jumble right now. I am scrabbling around inside my knowledge of a day in my current life and there is no space left. And yet, and yet, I seem to recall great people who made space for a dream, who planted its seed with no assuredness of future growth; who tended and nurtured and waited patiently for a green shoot, for validation.

So, if them, then why not me? Why not you?

I leave you with a quote from one hell of a fine woman.

The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.

Eleanor Roosevelt

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Island Blog – Wild Heart

“Strong back. Soft Front. Wild Heart” – Brene Brown

Some mornings you just wake up happy. I did this morning, helped into sentience by a big rumble of thunder and the tickle of rain dripping from the thatch outside my bedroom window, splatting on the stoep like the marching feet of tiny soldiers. Rain! Good rain, and at last. The birds lift from the sand floor to snatch at flying termites and other members of the flighted macrosystem; too small to be of interest on a sunshine day. Inside this wet dawning the symbiosis of natural life is centre stage, visible and buzzing with life. Without the rain, the insects wouldn’t fly; without the insects there would be no birds; without the birds no germination of precious seeds; without the seeds, no green shoots for giraffe, zebra, elephant, buck, rhino, both black and white, buffalo, nyala and so many more. Without the herbivores, no predators, no leopard, lion, cheetah, hyena, painted dogs, jackals and I could bore the pants off you with a much longer list. And it all begins with that rumble of thunder, the clouds heavy with precious water, more than ready to off their loads. The Blue Mountains are part-hidden in cloud, their heads lost in in the lowered sky. I can almost hear the parched ground sigh in a delicious relief.

The symbiosis found (when studied and understood) is no different to the one we humans need as we need water for our bodily thirst. But here’s the thing. We have forgot. We think, in our foolish ignorance that we don’t really need each other all that much in order to be a ‘success’ in life. We need our families, of course, and our carefully selected friends but the rest of humanity is just there and sometimes we wish they were not. People come with a load of irritating, nay infuriating, habits that we simply do not want to be around. So we circumnavigate these other humans, judging them cruelly whilst not really knowing them at all. ‘It is hard to hate a person close-up’ (Brene Brown). We can happily snigger together about colour, creed, race, religion and an opposing political view, sticking, instead, to those who think as we do. There’s a comfort in that, but it is unsustainable and ultimately unsatisfying for anyone who is curious enough about a life’s journey and who wants to learn more about the path ahead.

Mid-life crisis for example is simply, in my opinion, boredom at the thought on continuation in the same footwear and on the same path. This is quite natural. Boredom, dissatisfaction at our current way of living, with the same old faces appearing in our doorways day after endless day is a vital part of a human’s life. It comes, this huge discomfiture, as a gift, but few of us see it that way. We may think we need to abandon a relationship, or move house, or change jobs and all of those may indeed be a part of a new change (sorry, oxymoron), but none of those are It. It – is simply that we are bored with what we have done for ages and now is the time to think outside the bodily box, to use our big brains, to research, to study, to be open hearted and curious as a child. I know it isn’t easy because our first thoughts are loaded to with all sorts of unhelpful lies such as the one that tells us we got it all wrong to date; that it is my partner’s fault, or that of my boss, or, and this is always a safe bet, that of my mother or father.

Well all of that is bullshit. However, even knowing that isn’t enough. I must decide not to welcome into my ‘boring’ life, all those critical and lying judges that tell me my life has been a waste of time, that I got it wrong about 30 years ago, that someone else is to blame for these uncomfortable feelings and instead to say Oh Thankyou for the wake up call. I must look into something else, a new direction and what is more (and this is the key) I must invite other people, strangers perhaps and homies, my kids and those existing friends who won’t panic when I tell them I am bored with my life, running back to their own, locking the door and refusing my calls, to talk this through with me. I will be vulnerable. I will put my ego to sleep by bashing it on the head with a mallet and I will look out with curiosity and humour. So what if I have lost my job and with it my sense of superiority before my peers? So what if I lose my looks and now wonder who I am without them? So what if I have absolutely no idea what to do next? I have myself, my huge brain, my body #mostlyworking, my memories, my lived life thus far, my family, my friends (who remain) and now I am going to find more friends because this is inevitable when someone chooses to stop trudging down the road alongside everyone else. There are plenty of other everyone elses. I just haven’t met them yet. I can step out onto a new path and risk. If I leave that ego behind, deflate that self-important chest, shuck off that protective armour and just begin to walk into the great wide open, I will eventually see that all of this is just what I need right now. In trepidation I have made the decision to be vulnerable, to risk and to trust, to be without answers and to allow myself to be cluelessly dependent on the wisdom of a stranger in order to learn new rope tricks. This, the path less travelled, has been walked before I ever stepped onto it. The guides will appear just when I need them. I may not eat sausages on Tuesday or a roast on Sundays, as I may have done from habit for decades, but I will taste the bite of new fruit in a new place and it may just be delicious. Under a big sky, alert and interested, curious and fearful in parts, I may find out who I really am, and those stranger-guides could become new friends for a new life.

I leave you with the wisdom of others:-

” If you can see your path laid out in front of you, step by step, you know it is not your path. Your own path you make with every step you take. That is why it is your path.” Joseph Campbell

“You are only free when you realise you belong no place. You belong every place and no place at all. The price is high. The reward great.” Maya Angelou