influence

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Island Blog – Faith

I wake into a ‘meh’. Most unlike me, but I can feel it trail my feet, sludge my steps, halt me in my walk to the bathroom. Actually, no, stop, it bothered my sleep too, waking me with anxious nonsense. Anxiety is always nonsense, I know this, because the images are those of fear, of what hasn’t, and probably will never, happen. I do remember, inside one of those nonsense moments, actively rising in the very dark, and walking around my bed like some circling eejit in the hope that I would lose the damn thing. I didn’t. These things are sticky. I also remember lying there, staring up at nothing, seeing nothing and wondering why it isn’t possible to take off a head, mine, lay it on a chair, preferably in another room and behind closed doors, maybe even locked, and then sleep headless, just body resting without the interminable nonsense of a rollocking mind. I don’t know about you, nor your mind, but mine is a terrorist, or can be, a rebel with no specific cause, a vandal, a schemer, a troublemaker. I do not recall requesting this as a child. Is it a punishment? And yet, the other side of this grubby coin is a brilliant thinker and I am she. It seems, she sighs inwardly, that the light requires a similar dosage of darkness.

And so, and so, I am living still as one who must (never should, never ought) work with the palaver of my mind because this damn thing is of use to me in a million ways. I can write. I can speak. I can influence. I can encourage, facilitate, lead. I am fearless on behalf of others. I can stop to sit on pavements without embarrassment, to talk with someone else held in that place. I do not bother about comments, will not judge, will sing in a toy shop if a song comes to mind, even dance with an ambulance driver out for a smoke when someone begins a fiddle tune. My mind is my friend, and my not friend. I remember ‘not friends’, at school, at work (although I only lasted a few weeks in that job) and I took myself off. I did. But when my ‘not friend’ is my own mind, without heading (sorry) into the impossible, I am stuck with her.

We moved through the day, me distracting with music, an audio book, a load of looking out, even more ‘noticing’ until we were all exhausted with the whole thing, me, my mind, my body. There are three of us in this thing. We shopped, snoozed ready for the four day work shift ahead, listened to a story, moved a few cobwebs aside, cautiously, checking for the mama house spiders (I won’t hurt) and felt alternately shit and okay. But I think my bonus ball is that I have faith. That tomorrow will show me a difference, that my eejit mind is exhausted and will shut the eff up tonight, that the roses still bloom, that day will dawn, that the sun will rise and dip, that my children will continue to fly.

T’is more than many can say.

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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 – The Elbows of the New Moon

Back from work, I’m watching the tide ruffle, lift, push against the rocks, elbows out. There’s a moon in this, somewhere, I know it, and there is. A new one, yet another, and isn’t that a wonderful thing? I mean, well, the moon catapults many of us who recognise her influence, sending us into haphazardness – and many more who justify their bad temper and bizarre choices to something else, like work, or her, or him, or school, or envy, a hightened sense of failure, or of a choice made in faith, hope and love, as being a grave mistake. Hmmmm.

Because of the discomfort, a big tide brings in, it reminds me. Living all those years on Tapselteerie, we would, or I would, walk my way to a ‘spending beach.’ Such a beach, almost a wee cove, a cup of catch, like a hand grab at whatever might come in, a something of value which might be held and captured. Then, it would be plastic, the weariness of toil and spoils, ropes and hopes thrown overboard, en route to somewhere after fishing, playing, not-caring about the ocean and those within her depths, who, btw, don’t want any of that sh*t. It hasn’t changed, but worsened. We gathered, cleared, unleashed, yes we did, seal pups from rope strangulation, setting them back to the ocean, scarred, disorientated, already time-separated from their parent, their safety. However, the beauty of a tidal flow is like a photo to anyone who has no idea of what really goes on. I won’t lecture. But, having seen what we are stupidly doing, does, I confess, alter me. Plastic blows and goes up with any passing wind.

Back to the new moon. She’ll have some ridonculous name, for sure, as if she could be tamed like a terrier. I see what she can do, the lift and luff of her influence over a tidal flow, big, lush, swelling, feisty, sexual. Her voice quiet. And yet she moves, grows, with no care for a sheep stuck on a rock, no care for uninformed canoeists who set off in all the gear but without respect for her. She is wild as the wind, stronger, more powerful. In fact, I think she controls the wind, brings it on, shuts it the eff up when required.

For now, in this balmy soft, sunshine evening, on this beautiful, grumpy, shifty, awkwardly weather controlled outscape, this most westerly point, this wild and wonderful place where folk gather to celebrate anything and everything, I am just going to sit quiet and watch the elbows of the new moon widen and spread.

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Island Blog – Purview, Find your way

This word came in like a cat, slicing away when I tried to grab it, but leaving me with half an understanding and wanting to follow. I get the ‘view’ bit. But why the pur? Well, as a latin student, a history student, about a gazillion years ago and with the whispers of learning still like flit fairies inside my old head, I scrabble about. I do.

Recently, I have been looking at my past and its influence on the now of me. This now ‘She’ who walks with cancer, with all that happened last year. The cellulitis, the healing, the discovery of cancer, the subsequent marvellous of needles, biopsies, surgery and radiotherapy and , thus I arrive at Purview. She is still a cat in my smile-thinking. She’s a dismissive but loving feline. She might respond, she might not. She is always watching, but slow on committing. She sounds like me.

I am influenced, infected, by all of my past. We all are. The word Purview, which encompasses all of what i said, offers a lift. A lift from almost anything anyone has experienced. I know how the world tries to re-acclimatise anyone who doesn’t toe the line.

Find your way.

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Island Blog – Self Seeding

When I awaken at silly o’clock, my mind is full of thoughts. In no particular order, they step up to the microphone to tell me things and the critical thoughts are the pushiest. They invite me to revisit my choices and actions from the previous day/week/month/decade, taking care to highlight any such choices and actions that might have been done ‘better.’ I tell them they’re fools if they think (even with my magical powers) that I can turn back time. Other thoughts scatter, flitter, dip and dive about, thoughts on tonight’s meal for himself, whether I need more bird food, who’s trending on twitter, what Boris might say today. They’re like butterflies, these thoughts and pose me no threat. They simply require action.

However, I am disappointed to realise that after all these centuries of life on earth, most of us, if we’re honest, let the ‘could do better’ or, worse, ‘could have done it better’ thoughts take the stage. We actually listen, pay attention, greedy, it seems, to sink ourselves into a bog from which it is surprisingly hard to self-extricate. We don’t talk about these thoughts, not out loud, anyway, and certainly not to A N Other. It would be a confirmation of truth, would make the judgements real and we would run the risk of outside confirmation. So we do everything we can to shut them up, take them out, bury them. Ah…..bury them……well, that’s a mistake, I have discovered because, like seeds in the ground, they can rise into bloom after decades of darkness, alive and spreading. So how do we get rid of this propensity for self-judgement?

There are many ways to do this, and one of them is to let those critics speak out. I sit with mine, once I realise they won’t go away of their own volition. They are ancient voices, after all, rising from childhood, school, marriage, friendships, and they show the other side of my coin, the one that doesn’t really want to be seen. They can tell me I’m all kinds of horrible. I know the guidance that teaches me to feed the white dog, not the black one, to water the seeds of self-love, not those of anxiety, doubt, fear or judgement, but the actuality of each awakening, each morning, can confound me in a nanosecond if I have not watered the right seeds. It is a daily practice and not just for me. Understanding that, even with my magical powers, I cannot turn back time is understood at a logical level, not an emotional one. I know it is a true fact. Nobody can turn back time. Good, that’s that sorted! No it isn’t, because those critics from my long ago past made a scratch on my heart and that scratch is still there. I have to learn a way to accept those scratches, to remember that pain and to then allow them to heal rather than picking away at the scabs. I do this by recognising they are there; that they do not influence who I am now, beyond a whisper memory. I see you, I hear you, I tell them, but I no longer need you in my life. Thank you for reminding me that life was tough (as it is for everyone growing up) and I survived; more, I blossomed, rose like a spitfire into the sky, nurtured my family, loved with all of my scarred and battered heart and although I am nowhere near smug about who I have become, I can see she is rather wonderful and thoroughly deserving of all things good.

There will be someone reading this who knows exactly what I’m saying. We are all unique, spectacular beings doing our very best to live a good long life. We might remind ourselves of that and go water the seeds of self love.