instinct

I love the way they lift. Birds. It gasps me every time, the sudden sight of a life that can do that lift thing, all feathers and aerodynamics and who the eff cares, thing. I’m behind the wheel of my sassy mini, one, bless her, whose brake pads are skinnyrink. Not her fault, of course. It’s those tourists who have no clue about passing places, reversing, spacial awareness, nor a care in the world for the big ass drop on my side of the single track road. I digress. Back to the lift.

As I watch the Little Gull lift without any sign of a run-up, just an effortless rise from Terra Firma, I not only feel my own body lift, even from within the clutches of Matron of Seatbelts but I also sense a deep longing in me. To fly like that through a whole life, to lift from standing when something bothers or threatens, or just from boredom, must be truly wonderful. I watch the white and grey touch the sky, slide sideways, cutting a line, a definite line, then scooping up again, and around, and all of it in silence. It thinks me.

I can do that, I whisper to my home. I can live that way, just not exactly that way, being featherless and weighing a few stones more than that wee body of lift and slide. But, in my mind, my attitude, my chosen direction, I can. Yes, it is a damn pain in the arse being a thinker, I agree. These beautiful elevators, and the animals grounded, don’t think at all. They respond to instinct, our own fight or flight part of the brain. They just respond to an outside stimulus, and they are always on the alert for danger. That part must be exhausting, although, and this thinks me too, how many of us live that way, feeling so under the power of ‘someone else’ that their innate sense of independence and choice is quashed into mud? I suspect too many beautiful souls.

Every single morning, and through each day, I self-correct. The Terra Firma of my thinks, could sink me in that mud. I kid you not, and here’s another thing……those of us who really feel, Really Feel, for others, for the world, for our future, for our even now, for our self image, and that’s the biggest pull to ground, feel bloody everything, question everything, are consumed by everything. We need to remember our feathers, even if those around us just don’t get it. My advice? Don’t bother to explain. If you are a creative, recognised and acknowledged or not, know this…….you will find your place among others who recognise you, even if they never met you before. Trust in this, through all those awful lonely times, those dark places, those rejections and mockings and nightmares. I have no idea why I went there, but perhaps someone needed to hear the hope in my words.

Back to the lift and slide. In this ridonculous world of rules and behaviour parameters which seem to close in like jaws at times, there is, for the brave who just say, Enough, just once, and stick with it, a new flight. Yes, it will be tough, dangerous, all of that stuff, but who wants to live the one life under another’s control? I watched a big predator lift from the sea-loch, all 8 foot wings, big ass, confident, the queen of the sky. She rose up and up and frickin up until even a cloud gave in with a sigh and a divide, so intent was this big lady on full exposure. Then I saw the Little Gulls, wee smouts (look it up) in an immense sky, skinny wee things, intent on moving this big lady on and away. I heard them talking to each other, You go this way, You round on her, You tackle her, You deafen her with that dreadful squawk of yours, and so on. The Whitetail lifted, slid, lazy, like I’m in charge here. But the gulls, the small people, were having none of that shit. Persisting for a whole skyline, they moved her on. I’ve seen it many times, and have always wished that the ‘small people’ in business, in the world, could band together like Little Gulls, and not just in business. I think of a book I have with me always. Jonathan Livingstone Seagull, by Richard Bach, a slim book with fat wisdom. One gull decides things are not right. Just one.

Please never believe the shit inside your head. It isn’t you. It’s learned lies. You, too, can fly.

I can see it coming. The new shoots pushing through cold ground, like babies being born. One minute, safe, warm and dark, and suddenly thrust into the light, sharp, blinding. Flipped by the wind (or the midwife), smacked by the rain (ditto) and cold, so cold. It is understandable, the heartfelt desire to return to B4, but that option has been taken away for ever. Moving onto A1 is what Mother Nature insists we do, all growing things. If she is always moving on, then so must we. Instinct drives, timing is life or death. We must comply.

This, sadly, also goes for bodily hair. I think we women will all look like scarecrows with moustaches and caterpillar eyebrows by the end of this enforced lockdown. Unless we have a family member who can offer us smooth passage and who happens to own salon scissors. Ah…….there may not be many of those who inhabit such fortunacity. My word. But sticking to the subject, I wonder how we will grow through this time. The people I have talked to on Skype, messenger, WhatsApp and the Alexander Bell are all thinking we will grow better. I am with them on that. I know folk who have faced down death and returned to live a stronger, more focussed, more sensitive life, letting more unimportant stuff go and ferreting around for the things that really matter, but felt like ordinary and uninteresting. Before this. In a way we are all facing down death right now and it will teach us many things.

As I come down the stairs to see the moon face to face instead of letting her think that her sneak through the cracks in my curtains will ever be enough, I am thankful for the stairs holding up. There was a time when holding up caught a fever and wobbled a lot, requiring skilled assistance to de-wobble. I am thankful for my washing machine, car, ability to scrub the inside of those flaming mugs that will not let go of tea tannin, go for walks with my frocks always at odds with the capricious snatches of the west coast wind. I watch primroses push out more colour, a siskin or a goldfinch on the nicer seed feeder, the way my dwarf willow dances flamenco on the hilly back garden. I am thankful for the postmistress #suchacrazytitle delivering mail in her disposable gloves, smiling and joking with me through the window as I stand on the laundry basket from Nincompoo Laundry, Calcutta. I’m thankful for that too.

My finger nails have never been this clean. Neither has my husband. What I am learning in this time is what really matters, such as looking after him myself. I am cooking good food once more having absented myself from any meaningful connection with pots, pans, process and palavers. For what seems a long time I have served him one of his ready meals (good quality) from the microwave and then boiled myself pasta, added pesto and salad. One of my granddaughters was horrified, not about her grandfather’s ready meal thingy, but my pasta on repeat thingy. Granny… she admonished. This is not like you! But it was like me, back then. Now I am purposed up, my extra busy imagination coming up with all sorts of marvellousness just as I did when cooking for five hungry kids plus hangers on. There were always plenty of those, and nobody on this island ever sends anyone home without something in their bellies. It just isn’t done.

Now I am about to start finding out how to make face masks. This should be interesting. I wonder if I will be able to stick with the J Cloth plus ribbons rule? What…..no macrame flowers or beads and bobbles? Abso- flipping-lutely NOT. Rats. I am also knitting dog blankets for our dog. She is currently the lucky owner of 3 colourful/wool and easy wash blended reaches of bonkers colour. The easy wash part washes, well, easy. The wool part is obviously sulking and retreating into itself, so that a part of the blanket looks more like a ploughed field, but Poppy doesn’t seem bothered all that much. She just turns a few circles and flops down on the easy wash, resting her delightful black nose on the ploughed field, so she can see out all the better.

I am daily delighted by all the entrepreneurial posts on social media. People are doing things they probably always wanted to do, but didn’t consider their work to be of notable value. Now it definitely is and this is what the human race is all about. I remember, as you will, the oldies saying that what the world needs is a jolly good war. Although there is nothing jolly about any sort of war, they had a point, one that now makes sense to me. What they meant is that, during wartime, a family, a community, a village, a city, a country, the world has to pull together, as we are all now doing. How does it feel to you? I think it is marvellous partisan excellent quiddity. In fact, I am quite astir just thinking about how wonderful folk are. We are learning to care outside of our boxes and demonstrating that care in ways that fulfil and nourish the givers as much as it does the receivers. In short, we are finding a new currency.

Hats off to all of you doing whatever you are doing for others. I am just waiting for that balmy summer evening inside a city when all those musicians, isolated in their own homes, communicate with each other, fix on a song or a piece of music and open their windows to delight a whole street, to lift, just for a short while, the anxiety and the fear, turning them into birds and butterflies and telling us all that together, we will grow through this.