inspiration

by

Island Blog – Light in the Dark

I love the dark, the way my eyes adjust, the way I can see something of the way ahead. I love the way it prevents forward motion through the fear of it, and the way I can feel that fear whilst the my of self says, stop, stand still, look and see, and I do. I suddenly do. A terrain of black grows light just because I bring the light. Fear still lurks like a smirk but I can allow its companionship. It’s just a kiddle, a scurry, a nobody much. I can step out into the island dark, unpolluted, only stars doing their twinkly winkly thing, no threat, and pull out annuals which have, heretofore, hidden wee tulip hopefuls, their green thrust a whoop in my discoveration. Hallo you, beautiful you, wonderful powerful you, so strong, so bloody determined. You inspire me.

In my life there have been one or two whose recognition of who I am brought light to my eyes, my heart, lifting my step, giving me self-belief. I was walking in the dark, so much dark, the unfriendly kind, and then someone came, someone said something, didn’t judge, correct, didn’t try to fit me into a shape I could never fill, but oh my I was trying so hard to do that. It was like being a size 16 and being in a fitting room with a 12, longing for it to fit. But this person, this person saw me. She saw me. She didn’t do the parent thing. I wasn’t a number of many. I wasn’t an outsider. I wasn’t too loud, a showoff, an embarrassment, a girl to be kept away from gatherings of others in order to avoid the upskittle of bone china coffee cups with her quick wit and the flicksnap of her dance shoes. Nothing predictable about her, about me. Eye roll.

I think this has learned me that darkness is actually see-through. Even at an early age, there is cognition, even if the early-ager doesn’t know how to work the whole thing out. I remember well the moment when a woman, my mother’s age, said to me, stopped me with her hand on mine and looked me full bore, her eyes stars. ”You need to be who you are. I curled away, all broken and lost and 16. You are talented, beautiful, gifted, even. Take that. Own it.” I didn’t know her. I don’t remember her name, but she shifted some blockage in me and for the first time I found the light in my dark.

Right now, and for my own reasons, I want to raise a glass, a light, a life-changing Thank you to all of those who notice, care, speak out and recognise all of we who feel they are worth notalot unless they fit the shape required. You have given us the courage to step out, step up, move forward, and to pass it forward to the next darkling we find.

by

Island Blog – To Evince the Singular

Here’s a Friday laugh for you, but, first, the backstory…….I love a backstory, me.

I have a small corn on my pointy finger, my DO NOT SPEAK TO ME THAT WAY EVER AGAIN, finger. My Go To Bed finger. My No Way finger. My I Love You finger. To be honest, this finger is exhausted with all the work I have required of it over many decades. However, it still works on the keyboard, over the ebony and ivory of my piano keys. It can also, still, stop a bus. It can still say I See You, without a single word. It can say Go! but only when required. It can also remind me, once turned, that I am seen, I am important, beautiful in my years, wrinkles and all, that I am still someone. It can also remind me of mistakes. Ok, that’s the backstory done.

In my dealing with said corn….(who on this goodly earth has ever had a corn on their pointy finger?) I read up the dealings with such an irritation. It hurts to sew, to knit, to push down a plug, to twist a cork. Sandpaper, I was advised. Well, blow that slow process. I need quick fix. I need to be well, to be able, to be fit in all areas, including the sticking out bits. So, I dashed (I did) up the stairs to locate my heel rasper. It’s a grater, in truth, big metal sharps in a rectangle with a. goodly handle. I rasped, and rasped and found relief as the endless layers of skin disappeared. It felt good. I can still point, after all. The remainder of the digit is still active and responsive. Until…….

I tried to log in to my laptop. Now, there’s a thing. It seems I have eradicated my fingerprint. Will the skin know how to grow back in the same sworls? Who knows? There is a chuckle in this, and I am chuckling. What will be, as I have always known, will be, and the best I can do is to discover new ways around every single blockade. I’m glad I learned this. I may, momentarily, be stuck with a gasp and a panic in my throat, but it never lasts. We are so much more inventive than we know. Our brain knows it too. It’s just longing for us to catch up.

by

Island Blog – Inspiradiation and a Zap Map

Many things inspire me, people too. Something said out loud or communicated through eyes, and in silence, but received, nonetheless. Moments, sounds, lyrics, intuitions, experiences, and many more besides. If I catch these inspirations, like butterflies in a net, they all hold a beauty and intensity, a teaching. But, only if I catch them. I know how it is to barge on through doorways and over sills or along pathways with only a to-do list. Chased by Time, and always just this side of utterly exhausted, it is easy to miss much. When focus is on the familiar, the to-do list, the endless corridors leading to yet another bloody doorway that opens on to more tasks only I can complete, intuition and the chance of inspiration getting so much as a look-in, is unlikely at best. Not now, however, now that I am old and alone and when I have endless time to catch butterflies in the net of my mind. Beautiful things, butterflies, although sometimes I might catch an earwig or a toad, so broad is my sweep. But those critters also bring opportunities for reflection. Perhaps that throwaway comment or that too-quick turn-away upset someone, and this earwig or this toad also have something for me to take in and to consider.  Not all catchings are pleasant, at first. Of course, the key with anything I catch is to eventually release it, be it the beautiful butterfly of epiphany, or the unattractive and dully coloured body of a uncomfortable realisation. One which demands humble action. 

Soon, I am offski to the cancer clinic for a ‘planning CT scan’, where the professionals will create their Zap Map. Through the wonders of technology, they will see precisely where to point the radiotherapeutic laser, ensuring, so they tell me, that all trace of cancer, if any is lurking, will be zapped unto death. Five days is all, and not even the whole of those five days, but a few minutes. Although unpleasant reactions can list bigly horrors, not one of them will affect me, because nothing ever has before. I am blest with ridonculous health, and a big inspiration net, always to hand. I will pay attention to everything and everyone, sweeping a wide catchment area wherever I go. Across the road, in a bus queue, in the hospital amongst others being zapped, the nurses, the doctors. Inside the hotel, the lift, on the stairs, through a window, along the street, butterflies abound. I just know it. And I will return, as I always do, humbled at what I see. A homeless girl, a weary bus driver, someone I meet in a doorway, a harrassed business man in a big rush, a fraught mother weighed down by a cling of children. I will hear sounds I never hear in this wild place. The chatter of a train on the tracks, a colourful hue of voices in languages I cannot speak, the cut of someone’s jib, the smell of exhaust fumes, of perfume, takeaway food and so on. And I will sweep it all in, catch it in my net.

Even the radiation will inspire me, for I am always curious like Alice, eager to learn, not facts but what is really means to be human, to be wonderful, lost, broken, keen, kind, and an integral part of all those ties, colours and stories that bind us together.  

by

Island Blog – upper, Lower case

I love to mess with the way things ‘should’ be. Accordion to whom, is what I want to ask? Although I do recall, clearly, the easy hours of English Literature at A level, the rule book the size of a small country and berating my errors like a crowd of elders blocking any off roading. It isn’t that I don’t respect the construction of a good sentence. I absolutely do. In fact, I am the very first to throw a badly written book out the window. However, the essence of good writing is not a perfection of grammar. But, wait. This may not reflect my own truth. As a student of the language, of the best way to construct a sentence with noun and verb, avoiding adjectives, adverbs and other ads and coming into land on the line to say something remarkable, I appreciate that the only time anyone can play with a structure is when they know it very well. Perhaps this is why, when I read bad spelling in an official piece of writing, I cringe and throw. There is no excuse, these days with every help available online. Grammar check, spell check, information check, all is there. It is a case of not bothering and not bothering is, well, cringe and throw.

But, and this is key, the person who dreams about writing a book, essay, short story or children’s book, should never ever and ever again bother with whether or not they have a diploma in the complete labyrinth of English language, and it is. A labryinth. You can get lost in it for weeks and nobody is looking for you. You have to get up, dust off and keep going with your eyes crossed. and your brain a bucket of worms. It is important, nonetheless, to gain understanding of how language works and this is why. We have softened the borders of our language and let in some ghastlies. We have allowed in the complete change of a single word’s meaning, losing, on the way, a g or an h and this does matter, not necessarily to hold on to the old, onto what was, but just to know it was there, once, a part of the scaffold that lifted a writer higher. We, the Brits, are still celebrated world wide for our writing, our films, plays and tv series. We are strong with our understanding of our language, and its structure. And sometimes that confines us, especially if we did not do ‘well’ at English in school or have been ridiculed and mocked for our ‘wrong’ use of words in a sentence.

Bin all of that. We need writers and not just those who have gained degrees or diplomas and (often) done little with that stored knowledge. We need enthusiastic passionate writers who don’t even believe they are writers. The works, the classics, the honoured novelists, I revere and respect. But, people, these times are new. We are living in a conundrum (look that up!). An anomaly, a confusion, a splitting of the ways, a confoundment on boundaries and with a big hole in that wall which offers an opening into something new and scary. If you have that drive, do not die with your song still in you. Do not accommodate old rules, confinements, mockings or perceived prison bars. Fly. Do it. Write. The experiences each one of us have tucked under our belts over this past year are fuel for Talk, for Story, for Ideas that break boundaries of space, time and language.

Come on people. I know there are many out there and I will tell you why. We have so very much to say now. We have gone through loss, grief and struggle, pain, abandonment, sleepless nights, eating up, eating down, evasion, confusion, anxiety and identity crises. In the old days (I remember them) we knew who we were, where and when we met. We collided, avoided or we came together. We knew parameters and levels and the land on which we stood. We knew the way forward and the way back. This all came from the ‘elders’. They spoke and we believed, well, not me, but I went with it anyway because there was no other direction on offer. Now we are spinning like tops. Circling each other, unsure. And it is a writer’s perfect space. Use it. Talk about it, write about it. Let the pain rise and the sky fall. Let the anger out and watch it turn into rocket boosters. Let it out. ‘out’. because it if doesn’t ‘out’ we, as dynamically creative individuals, will just join the ranks of those with mental health issues who have gone beyond inspiration, inventive creativity and a Sunday dinner with pavlova instead of tinned custard; those who will bury this year of troubles and sink down into a permanent Lower case.

Just saying.

by

Island Blog 21 – To Travel Hopefully

Island Blog 21

As the outside shoots past my grubby window, I take in my fellow travellers.  I know where I’m going, of course, and they are going somewhere too, somewhere that requires them to pack a sandwich and a bottle of mineral water, pick up their book or kindle, their music machine and their mobile phone, just as I did first thing this morning.

I unpack my picnic and sigh quietly (I am in the quiet coach) at the squash of bread and lettuce and crumbly cheese, all gloopy now with the mayonnaise smearing up the window of my cleverly designed sandwich bag with a seal-again top, which I can never seal again, by the way.  You have to match the tram lines or it just won’t seal and it always ‘just won’t seal’ under my fingers.  I could put my specs on, but decide, instead, as I am too hungry, that I won’t bother.  I’ll just post it into my mouth in fingerfuls and chew it…..quietly.

The woman across the way from me is texting.  She has been texting for 40 minutes now and her buttons must be quite worn out.  Her keypad pings with each letter and she obviously can’t spell because, every so often, I hear her puffs of exasperation escape into the warm air of Coach B.  The man behind me has a dry cough, and I feel the punch of each one hit my shoulder as if he is firing peppercorns between the seats.  I shift a little, although I don’t want him to think me rude.

And then there are the whispering people, who hardly move for fear of breaking the rule of silence.

Where are they going? I begin to wonder.  Are they going to or from?  Is one of them running away, or running towards something or someone, and is there hope in their hearts or the foetid drudge puddle of exhausted defeat?

Do they love and are they loved?  Do they sing or write or make the best parsnip soup in the village?  Do they have regrets?

I like to answer some of my questions myself, for I could never speak them out into the polite air of the quiet coach.  I pretend the man with the cough has finally walked out on his over-bearing wife, having told her the thing or two he’s been wanting to tell her for years.  That’s why he has a cough now.  His vocal chords are astonished.

I continue this reverie, developing it to such a degree of joy and happiness on his behalf, that it’s all I can do not to swing round and congratulate him.  Instead, when its my turn to leave, I flash him my widest smile and alight, minding the gap.

by

Island Blog 11 – Speed it up

Blog 11 (V2)

Today despite the fabulous blue cold outside, I felt like a big fat lump.  I’m none of those things, but I can still feel each one of them.  It’s like gravity is pointing her finger at me and lowering everything a tone or two.  I couldn’t find the right key to sing out my day, although I did, of course, make the effort.  This lunchtime, after coffee and a small, very small, slice of lemon torte, ho hum, my gorgeous daughter-in-law and I popped into the hairdresser next door.  I am ‘going’ grey which is pants in my opinion.  Not the grey bit, but the ‘going’ bit.  Why does everything take so long??

So, let’s pump up the pace and get this dinky little hair stylist to make it happen, to speed up the ageing process, at least, on my head.  I sat there, trying to read the magazine text, but having left my specs at home, I was only able to see the models and you can imagine what that did for the ‘big fat lump’ syndrome. Every time I glanced up at ‘Ageing Mirror Face’ my head was just a little blu-er, but, you know, I didn’t care.  You know that place where you are too sorry for yourself to care what happens next, as long as it isn’t more of what came before?  Well, I was there.

An hour later, after an ash tone over completely bleached hair, I am looking like a silver star. As I walk back home, through the blue cold, turning gently and quietly to darkness, there is a bounce in my step and I smile to myself.

How extraordinary is this ordinary day!