judgement

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Island Blog – 3 Day Streaker

My blog tells me I am on a 3 day streak. After 14 years of writing blogs, this is a disappointment, and feels like a sort of criticism or judgement, as if not being ‘there’ once or twice or even thrice is a failure. Reminds me of childhood, of school when if I or my peers weren’t constantly ‘there’, failure was subtly suggested, the outfall inviting judgement. You found yourself in landfall, smelling bad and very unsure. I know enough, now, of the confusulation in such forums, in the anywheres of social media, to ignore such trite nonsense. But, and here’s an admission, it still sets me back a step. It seems that what others think or how others judge matters and possibly a bit too much. This thinks me. It does matter in all the right ways, but in the possibly wrong ways it, the mattering thing, can become confusive, and here, where all I deal with is my daily blog fight with grammar, spacing and comments or judgements, I do have to laugh at myself. Out there in the Out There, ordinary women are fighting for life, saving flooded homes, grieving at the loss of everything. I know this, we all know this, but it is too much to take in when something assaults a life, here, now. My irritata on a robotic comment, in the aforesaid light is embarrassing to be honest, but I don’t believe it should be denied, swiped away as nothingmuch because it matters to me in the right now of now and it has an effect.

And this is my point. I feel the judgement because of some ridonculous conclusion I came to. What brought me here? It should be a laugh, a coffee, a fix, a nothing. Ah……not nothing, oh no. Childhood and child experience is a raised head here. I see the rise, the face, my young face, and she is me some decades ago, no freedom of speech and no idea what to say, no idea who I was, no confidence, no voice beyond the one which got me into a big dose of trouble and more than once. Just a rebel, they said, she’ll calm down. I didn’t lose the rebel, but I did ‘calm down’, did learn to conform, to fit the space proffered and allowed. I birthed five children, I was mother of this number before I was 30. It was all I wanted, even though, I am sure, I was way less than the ideal mother. I was absent/still in the room. Disasters came daily, mostly out there in the ‘Out There’, man overboard, calls to search for a missing canoeist, a life possibly lost on the arse-side of Tiree or Gunna; or the woodburner going on fire, pipes burning, rattling, and guests panicking and me flapping everything down with the promise of scones, a warm fire and my competent husband who made everything better and with such inner confidence.

He saw me. He left me to deal with damn well everything a lot of the time, fixing, in a state of immediacy, always en pointe. Always. I’m not sure he was aware of the exhaustion, nor the legacy it left. I remember being told, in my childhood and often, to look after the Little Ones, my wee sisters. We might have been packing to go north for our summer holiday, or anywhere. Look after the Little Ones. It’s loud in my memoric ears. It’s what big sisters do, isn’t it? It’s what you do. But, not once, not ever, did either of my parents ask how that felt for me. A tip for parents nowadays. It’s often the older kids who get lost in the mist of whatever ‘disaster’ goes on in a family. The expectations weigh like tons and the older kid gets lonely, feels invisible. And ‘invisible lonely’ grows. It has a voice which won’t shutup.

On a good note, when I began this after recovering from the slap of judgement, I noticed that spacing went wild, twice here, thrice there, and letters jumbled, making interesting words now and then. I fixed it.

Still off-pissing for a 3 day streaker blog. I’m still here.

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Island Blog – Just Flying On

I did my own housework today. It’s so damn boring, my own housework, whereas I am like a woman on fire when it comes to someone else’s. I am can-do, let’s do this, even if the job appears magnifluent with horribleness. What is that all about? I ask myself this as I lug stuff for washing to the washing thing. No answer comes beyond the flip dash of swallows madly encouraging their second brood to fly, ffs. I feel for them, not that I ever knew resistance from my kids, as they almost went without a lookback. I pulled myself back to myself, as they say in SA, and grabbed a hoover, then a bucket and mop and sorted things that needed sorting. I like my home to be clean even if nobody ever sees most of it. This is about me and how I care about me, my personal standards.

Bring that back, roll it right back to the core. I have standards, yes, but just for myself. I feel no judgement when I meet others who don’t share what I choose to be my level pegs. It doesn’t annoy me. I cock my head at this. Really? Well, yes, probably, but I contain it. I have five grown children with five grown partners. I have met walls and fences. I have learned. What haveI learned? Acceptance, obviously. Was that easy? No. So How did it become the normal in those relationships? Did you remember yourself in these new dynamics? Not always, no, although once I got to know the partners, I found myself loving them and that was me being me. How did you do that? Asking questions without agenda, just interested in their life, their own thoughts, the she or he of she or he. And, I interrupt my questioner, of continuing that through the years. Instead of the easy homey conversations with primal children, elevation is required, I have found. To show interest and to ask about the partner of my beloved, the one, let’s be honest, who took that beloved out of the maternal/paternal sphere and into a new ellipsis.

I made chappit tatties just now. It’s a Scottish thing you might need to google. I also made a salad and all of the before was delivered on Friday, fresh island produce. I can smell the island on the lettuce, salty, safe, wholesome. I love the ground of this life, the wild, the silence and darkness at night, the safety, the community, the song and strength of it, the way we move to help each other, the way we can step in or fly out when it’s an urgence. The way we understand that the earth breathes, the sea breathes, the world is changing. We don’t know what to do next beyond the fact that we don’t have a clue.

In the now of now, we are flying on.

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Island Blog – Senses, the Truth and Repeat

The whiplash of waves against basalt rocks; the slamdunk of a ship’s bow against a punch of ocean; the pipe and caw from seabirds as they slew by; the whistle and moan of wind; the mourn of seals; the skidoosh of incoming dolphins, spray-swiped, bursting the waves wide open. We have heard, seen and felt them all, and more, and each of them overtake our thoughts, which, in my case is always a good thing. My bent toes are no big deal, my concern about not enough knickers, my doubts about olding life, all twist out of my hands like feather wisp. In this environment where everything is wild, the stupidity of human thoughts comes home with a thwack. It thinks me.

Even as we talk together we learn from each other. First impressions fade as layers of protection fall away. A voice speaks, the timbre now familiar, the words, the stories only just emerging as confidence grows as it can do in a small group and in a wild place. We risk our truth, the revelation of it, at least in part because once we say farewell to each other in a day or two, we will travel back into our insecurities, our doubts, our diminishing thoughts, albeit changed to some degree. And how did this change come about? It came because we were here altogether inside an experience, strangers at first, sharing the sounds of each other, feeling the sharp edges of another’s life, learning the musicality of another’s voice. We heard the sounds together, the whiplash of waves, the squeak of dolphins, the creak of a boat in a bumpy sea and we saw the glint of diamonds when she was calm and silky smooth. The lift and dip of sounds, of sights, of touch, the smells of wildflowers as we walk over island tracks, each foot absorbing old stories and the effect they all have upon us is a twosome. We notice and take them home with us, or we forget them and go back to our daily worries and concerns.

However, as our lives become more and more controlled and as we (or most of us) buy into that control, we do have choices if we decide to to notice the times we really connected with a moment, with a person and with how we feel about ourselves within that space; the way it can change us. Not for the the better of everyone else, but for the bettering of our own self, our own soul. It isn’t fuelled by comparison nor resistance and nor is it immediate. It grows slowly and gently, still respectful of others, still working away at life, but with a new rainbow inside, quiet, perfect, pulsing with colour. We are not one of a number and we are one of a number. We are not like her nor him, nor them. We are all unique and way more individually and independently valuable than the controllers would have us believe. They don’t like it, of course not. But we do.

So take each experience, lift it into your hands, notice every detail and keep it close. Shake it up like a snow globe and watch it until the last flake falls. Make it more real than all the marketing control, the fear driven rulings, the invisible pressure to be just one of a number. Say ‘I am unique, valuable, important just as I am.’ And say it every day, a zillion times till I sinks in and sticks. Nobody cares about bent toes nor any other hang-ups which mean damn all because the only person who cares is you. Anyone else, on seeing another anyone else looks for something way below the obvious. You look in the mirror, you scrutinise and judge your own geography, geology, physiology. All irrelevant. Someone else is looking for friendship, a welcome, the light in your eyes, the hint of a story that isn’t their own because their own is probably dull, in their opinion. Often it is only through another’s eyes that we see ourselves as we actually are.

And so we can learn from each other. We can stop our circular thoughts, cut the spiral, spin it off into the ether. All that judgement, those ridonculous negatives that float without ever grounding into truth. We can say ‘I am unique, valuable, important, just as I am.’

And repeat.

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Island Blog – A Fellow Human Being

I profess to being absolutely disinterested in any written rants, particularly on social media, although in my day I would have said by letter. I am almost as disinterested when standing a few feet away from a verbal rant. Now why is this? I have many thinks, but the one that sticks up like a pole in the desert is that this ranty person wasn’t listened to in childhood and the subsequent frustrational decades have taken root, like a tumour. Only one person can heal that deep wound.

A rant is a speech, really, and it goes on until the end. The ranter is fixed in his or her opinion, no matter any reasoning voice traversing the few feet. There is no solution, no turning, but only escalation if rebutted or at the suggestion of any level of understanding. It’s basically Don’t Bother. However, being completely in love with all people, I cannot just redact nor dismiss what someone is obviously in a right stooshie about. Conversational tactics are learned, usually as a result of noticing, observing through a singular and silent thought process. As I wander around the world, sorry, Island, reading books, hearing real life stories and really hearing them, eventually returning to the gentle tick tick of my wood burner munching old trees and the bashing crash of yet another night of an angry wind, I carry the arias of questions like a swirl of songbirds in my mind. (Way too long a sentence). I do wonder about my mind because it never rests, not even at night. It never did, so chances are we are stuck with each other at this late stage. I can wake amidships of the darkness, tossed and turned in some bajonkers seacrowd of sky-wipeout waves with a thought, an Aha, as if something wonderful happened whilst I sort of slept and I must needs grab my goonie and spiral down the stairs into the glorious pitch dark only wild places enjoy, and write it down. When dawn finally manages to push up the night, the heavyweight that she is, I read what I wrote and laugh out loud. It makes no sense at all and here’s why. This mind of mine, this extraordinary muscle, if that is what it is, has already moved on to another sphere and that means I got left behind. I remember this feeling as a young girl. A very high IQ is not necessarily helpful in life because unless it is gentled and respected and very carefully cared for, some ambitious parent will start pushing. Moving on……

I did digress there, I know. Back to where I began. Understanding people with different views to my own, with opinions and agonies and childhood wounds when in the shape of an adult is never easy. We like, we don’t like. We love, we hate. We want to be with this one but would run miles to avoid that one. Division. Exclusion. Judgement. Don’t like any of those. Saying Hallo and being open without bias, without sussing someone out from the way they present, isn’t easy. Our culture nowadays is so invasively critical, so knowledgeable on body language, on verbal dynamics, on fear and suspicion, thus not honest with ourselves, that we come to any new meet dressed in Kevlar.

I know we are fortunate here, despite the endless gales, because life is real. Rural places all over the two countries know what I mean. We learn to live with each other, even though, yes, we may tattle and maybe rant a bit, but so does any living creature who resides in a collective. Sparrows are a great example. If we want the end of war, we need to live that way. We know it even as we expect not to have to pay it forward ourselves. It takes one, two, consistently refusing to unfriend, to be open, welcoming in the spite of rejection, over and over and over again, listening to the angry, the ranters, those who are pinned to the wall of pain, just sharing time, gifting it, not as a fixer but as a fellow faltering human.

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Island Blog – Etymology and Widowology

My Thesaurus is tired. I can feel it as I lift it from the table, the pages all autumn now and threatening a fall from the Binding tree. Undoubtedly there will be a new and upgraded version by now, because words are being daily introduced into the world of etymology. I don’t know when I bought it, yonks ago. Being a wordographer, a lexicographer since I was about five and very full of myself and my ability to show-off my newest words, ones that never got past my dad, but flew completely over the head of everyone else, including my ma, home life was a bumpy road. Just imagine that, being that mother with this upstart of a child. Must have been difficult. My voice was too pure, my confidence too out there. Being encouraged, as I was, by good teachers left me in a lonely world because at home I was just too out there, too sure, too much of a show-off. I get it now, but it still leaves the stain of spilled childhood on the garments of my adulthood, and, of course, as a result, I grew less confident, more absorbed in self-doubt, the inner questioning about whether or not (probably not) I would ever ‘fit in’ and it all grew loud enough to confound. I had clear memories. No, ‘they’ said, just remembles, the false memories of something. In came the mubblefuddles, the anticipation of something, everything, going wrong. I remember the falter, the doubts, the strong feeling that, no matter how well I showed off, I was, actually, invisible. Teenage years were ghastly, although I do know there were times of fun and inclusion and I can hear, if I really listen, myself laughing, really laughing without having to look around a group for any judgement.

So much tacenda, so many things to be passed over in silence; as if in acceptance, which it wasn’t in the main. I remember embarrassment, humiliation, rejection, judgement. And, bless me for this, those voices still ring. This is learning, I tell myself. I am not my past, I tell myself. I am not the girl/woman they saw, no. She is mine. I see her. I like her, love her with all her wordingness, her need to be seen, loving her chance to ‘show off’ but never to put another down, never that. Just me being me. I don’t need to hold the floor over others, don’t need to be better than another, don’t need to win at games, to be the best. It just isn’t in me. I just want, always did, to be the weirdo wordo that I am and to be allowed.

Many years ago, whilst living in Glasgow, when I wasn’t just me, we went to a well-known fish restaurant in Leith. On the river and well-established, this place was always booked up. We sat for a pre-dinner drink at the bar. The waiting staff were young and beautiful and very professional. the lights twinkled inside and out there, shining up the river in twinkles as the dark came down. An older woman walked in, my age now, but not then. I watched her, sassy at 70 and colourful, not hiding her wrinkles, not trying to be anything but herself. ‘Usual table?’ one delicious young waiter asked, smiling wide and proffering his arm. She dipped her head, yes thank you. He waltzed her to a small round and elevated table still in the bar and with a lovely view of the twinkly river and all who wandered by. She was so collected, so herself. I noticed, on her olding finger, a golden wedding ring, loose but there. She ordered a large glass of red and some water. Her clothes were cloth and colour, long and swirling. She seemed to have no problem being alone, but I did pick up a something lonely. Couldn’t explain it at the time, know it now. We were called through to the restaurant after that and I didn’t see her again, nor ask about her, but I do remember thinking this. If I ever get to that place of aloneness, I want to be like her, with welcomes and flirtatiously beautiful waiting staff who recognise and welcome, with a small table to yourself and with a view of others walking by and with the twinkles of uplit water just over there.

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Island Blog – Moon Heavy Dreamer

I’m watching the sky today, just now, cloud capped, closed. I’m remembering the Snow Moon pushing them away with her bright breath over the past few nights. I woke with her, heavy across my bed, the loud of her a steady night voice, colour, timbre, the whole firking orchestra, around 2, 3, 4 am. Days gone by, nights gone by, as is always. There’s no holding them. I love the moon, the new and the full, because they make me uncomfortable in my jeans, in my life. There’s a holding, a containing I fight, as I always have, and yet, and yet, it thinks me different because, precisely because of this discomfort, I honestly don’t want it to change. If everything set simple, like a milk pudding in my life, then so would I. Disturbance is essential. Yes, it does upset me, feels me contained and restricted, sends me in a spin for easier jeans, thinks me that I am finally achieving what my mum always feared, an increase of bodily self. Funny how that still has a voice.

I know I have choices, always had, always will. However that knowledge is a truth, and not a feeling. It’s the feeling bit that confounds, surrounds, compromises a day, a night. Without the belief that I, or anyone, has a choice, the right to choose, we can be caught up in the twizzle of a twister, a disturbance we deny, allowing outside control. I think that life is a dance, and I think that being energetic, dynamic, is essential, to say no, to say yes, to move, to stay put, and so much more. Trouble is, that the old thinking gets tangled in our knicker elastic, halting movement. I remember it well, the confusion of it all. And, although I am hopeful that times have changed, see in so many ways that they have, I still notice a holding on from my generation of parents, and beyond. Such judgement, no allowance for flick or fancy. It saddens me. All people have choices, and, better, the opportunity to change a deeply rooted belief that says…….what you look like decides whether we approve of you, or not, how you speak, how you present yourself, your qualifications (on paper), your family background.

I get that so many slide down into the swamp of unbelief, and, that others rise up into shapes that don’t fit them at all. You can live a whole life, the only one you have, in that unfit shape. To a degree, I did that too, hoping for approval, for recognition, for acceptance. It worked pretty well. However, at this end of my life, widowed and in the evening time, I do hope that one day choices will be for everyone, for men, women, children, and all of those choices will be welcomed, discussed, guided and supported.

I may be a dreamer.

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Island Blog – A Fallow Dear

All creatives have times when they just cannot be arsed to create. These times are extremely uncomfortable to say the least, or I find it so. All those words, in my case, or all those lonely tubes of paint and mediums, brushes upright and dry as my father’s wit, or that piece of craft work, so compelling, so exciting and for so long, now barely touched or looked at. It is as if something inside has died, and sometimes, that is exactly what has occurred. Something has, indeed, died, or someone, and that someone took all the colours and the buzz with them when they did. It could be bad news, or a health scare or even the builders in making noise and causing a long disruption and a load of mess. It could also be nothing much more than boredom, the realisation that life has turned grey and heavy and dull, and the result will be a new birthing, I know this, new ideas, new hope, new horizons.

I know, of course, that everything changes, this too shall pass, and all other platitudinal infuriations, but that doesn’t help in the discomfort of apathy and disconnection and sludge. Even a body feels too big for its boots, heavy and ungainly, and a mind slows to snail pace. It can be a dangerous time of self-examination, of criticism, doubts and other unhelpful bollix, but even striving to not-think requires just too much effort. Just rest, they say, take time out, be kind to yourself. My eyes roll. I don’t want to do any of those things. I want to wake exuberant and planning mischief, longing to set-to with whatever project I was working merrily on, not a few weeks ago. However, having gone through this fallow slump a gazillion times before in my long life, I know it will, eventually, pass. I also know that, although my conscious mind is cold porridge, my unconscious mind is still ticking away, garnering ideas, planning a resurgence, focussed and functional. I am just tired is all, bored is all, fed up and fed down. This period of drag has a purpose and, oh yes, I will understand just what that purpose is once the lights come on again, when all will be illuminated, revealed and understood. Or so I tell myself.

So what to do in the meantime, whilst I wait, miserably, to relocate my natural energy? In order to rest I need to feel good about myself, this self who is currently a pain in the backside. I wash the bathroom floor. Oh well done, what an achievement, not. I make soup that tastes like pond sludge, wash some clothes, even hand wash a jersey for goodness sake. Is there no end to my resilience and fortitude and determination? What a star I am! But, in fallow times, I don’t actually feel those words, no matter how much I speak them out, hear them spoken by another, and if I don’t ‘feel’ them they mean nothing. I am still failing. It thinks me.

We all have fallow times, all of us and it is important to recognise, acknowledge and allow such times, because to enter the swamp of inner judgement is always destructive. Besides, those judgements roll off the tongues of past critics, often from childhood or early youth. I can hear them now. J has too vivid an imagination, is moody, unpredictable, irresponsible, wears too much eye-liner, is a terrible show-off and so on. Although these judgements don’t affect me now, the negative theme stands strong, its accusing forefinger wagging right under my nose. If you hadn’t done that, or chosen this, or gone there, or allowed that to happen, you wouldn’t feel like this. It is your punishment for past sins, in fact not so very far in the past. I silence those voices as soon as they speak. They are not helpful. This is just a fallow time is all, not a punishment, not forever, not here to bring me down and keep me there. In fact, it is a dear thing, a helpmeet, because my body and mind are both damn tired and bored and fed up and grey. Next time, when I feel it coming, this shutdown beyond my control, I will take a long holiday in the sunshine.

Africa sounds like a plan.

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Island Blog – Cut or Glue and Paste

I remember rejection. We all do. Could have been, and most likely was, in the teens. Teens, such a bright, light, upbeat word, which has flip all to do with the horrors it brings. I remember it before hormones and bodily changes assaulted my questionable equilibrium, however. When I allow my thinks to think me, I remember rejections most painful at primary school, when the ones I so wanted to accept me, sniggered and turned away along with all their sycophants, not that I knew that word back then, aged 11 and a bit tubby and a lot lost. I was imaginative, a newbie storyteller, a believer in fairies, in the otherness, in any and every possibility in other worlds, and bright. Re-read that as deluded, mental (…..) distracted, easily lead (what the hell does that mean?) unfocussed. Result…..needs more discipline.

Nice.

Thankfully, or so I am told, school teachers have more emotional intelligence nowadays. They, so I hear, are taught that 25 children in desks going way to the back of the room, are not numbers, not a collection, not lab rats. They are people, the future for all of us, the deciders within a complex world, one in more disarray than I ever was, even in my best moments. And yet, and yet, it seems the old ways still climb, still clime, to the top of the tree, where he or she wants to be along with the most number of cohorts or sycophants in order to gain medals . How completely off-pissing is that, and how desperately lonely it is to be down there on the ground as they all elevate! Later, much later in life, as the learning seeps into my skin, I recognise the pain in those heretofore beacons of light. I know, now, they needed to be reflected, wanted mirrors, adoration, because at home, they didn’t have that. Which is super sad. Sad more that it played out in venom and exclusion. Played out? There’s no ‘play’ in there.

When I meet, and I do, teens who don’t want to go shopping, sneak shots, wobble on ridonculous heels, talk boys or girls, play football, wear the latest fashion, compare biceps or snigger at old folks, (anyone over 30). I celebrate. They are those who are different. These teens might want to build online cities; they might want to climb Monroes; they may foster a talent and a longing to be a dancer, an hot air balloon pilot, a horse whisperer. They are moving out and beyond, they are questing, curious, keen to connect with the world right now, in the state she is, and, giving creedence to that interest and curiosity and the ken for learning, tells me our world has a lot of hope for their future and then. some. And yet, they face bullying by their peers because they don’t want to fit in. It is as it always was, I know that. Still bugs the hell out of me.

Thankfully, their parents (oh lucky them) are right there beside them, and, thankfully, again, with the inclusion of all sorts and every type of sexuality, colour, shape, size, and more, we may be coming into a new age of thinking, if and if again, the powers that be get with the way the world is blowing, going, showing. That may be a big ask. When something doesn’t have to go to committee#control, I reckon we might be free to be wholly human. Just saying.

Meanwhile, our teens are living in their world of judgement and, yes, committees And it means everything. The derision has taken lives. There is no changing this, for it is ancient as ancient. However, we can, all of us, be aware, be kind, be a listener, ask ourselves in, give support, be there. Where they were Cut

We can Glue and Paste.

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Island Blog – Who Will Stand?

Opinions are easy to form. They rise like birds, or bile, and the moment they are heard, they create an emotive reaction. The one who hears, the one to whom the compliment or invective is aimed, is immediately affected. A positive or uplifting opinion is voiced from a place of love, a negative one from fear and a lack of knowledge. ‘You shouldn’t do that, or say that’ is gifted, invariably, by another who has never done that, nor would ever do nor say that, because doing or saying ‘that’ carries a degree of personal risk, particularly if delivered in public. I would be judged, for sure, marginalised, criticised and rejected, and who wants to risk finding themselves in any of those uncomfortable states? Safer to stay quietly in crowd thinking.

It is very different if a judgement is proffered. Then the forum is mine, because everyone is fed up of delays, costs, the weather, tourists, noisy children, the limitations and demands of work, of family life, of rules, rules and restrictions. Now I have the crowd behind me, the mutterers, the ‘angries ‘. I can lift my voice in this scenario, I can go flipping wild with my fists and my body and my learned beliefs around caste, colour, sexuality, the government, Calmac and the state of the NHS. I have wings now. I can fly with this, lording over all of you mutterers down there, muttering. Danger alert.

Just saying.

Have you noticed that any negative judgement or criticism is invariably delivered in a whisper, or anonymously? This is Fear in action. Sometimes a name is named, but the personal risk is slight because taking the negative stance is our natural leaning as humans, and there are many ready to agree. And why is that, I wonder? How long have you got? To distil……..poor housing, no, disrespectful housing, overcrowding, lack of staff, old trains, planes, ferries, Covid, Brexit, wars abroad and encroaching, flimsy governments, corruption, domination, lack of respect, lack of respect for every single one of us. I get it. I really do, from my comfortable home on a beautiful island. But someone has to ‘voice up’, and there are many such someones out there, the brave, the courageous, the risk takers, the ones who understand that the only way forward is not through fear, but love.

I attended a women’s business conference once, many years back, in Glasgow. There were a lot of women there, and many good speakers. The attendees came from diverse backgrounds and varying levels of success (so called). High heels, perfume, smart suits abounded. We settled. Success, so called, shouted from the stage, women who commanded businesses, entrepreneurs, food chain giants, those who had noticed a gap in a market and who had dived right in. It was exciting, dynamic and, for me just a show. I was never going to be any of those hard-nosed focussed female leaders, even as I loved their stories. The last speaker talked of giving love out, or walking it out. A very different presentation, and, ahead of it’s time. She was ahead of her time. Because it was just after the first Afghan war, there were mothers, sisters, even grandmothers in the audience, and giving unconditional love caught like a knife in many throats. The crowd grumble rose into something scary, so I left, but I still got it. What I got, was that I, in my safe place, had no idea what these angry women were going through.

Hard to find love in such a place. I will not ever experience what another has experienced. I know that. It doesn’t stop me, however, because we need to stand, to speak out for renewal, for hope and for the true meaning of love. It isn’t only sexual, or even familial. Love is just allowing, accepting, non-judgemental, all inclusive, no matter colour, sexuality, choices, directions,space issues. None of those, none.

Perhaps it is a gentle allowance, even as that word sounds patronising. Eish (African word) I don’t know, but we must do something to bring Love back. In any form. Who will stand?

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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.