life

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Island Blog – You lifted me Sister

I’m watching the last blooms of my beautiful roses bounce and jounce in the wind, spattered with soft rain, the kind we get here, the familiar, the soft touch of it on windows, the joy of it on my face. We do get the torrential, we do, that cloudal punch which drowns little skinny rivulets, turmoiling them into spate and even into threat. Roads flood, bridges laughing, saying, Well, you get on with it in your big cars and even bigger attitudes! We islanders have lived with this rise and fall of the rain in our lives for centuries. Not me. I am not a borner, not a real Muilleach, but I have learned and loved the ways of survival for over four decades, and I want to live nowhere else. There is an extraordinary to this life, the way humour lifts any circumstance into laughter and a conjoining, usually into music and the pub. I consider this. How many millions of disasters were diluted with laughter and whisky and warmth and comradeship, and a march out to sort the out out? A sunken beast in a bog, a lost dog, sheep, heifer? And all in the twist of a dark and spiralling wind, the Atlantic rising like a frickin menace, spitting, turmoiling, interrupting a meal, an arrest in the shape of the day, the child out there somewhere, where is she? the goats in a twist, the hens freaking out, the milk cow needing a bring in. The whole thing of the thing. Familiar, yes, but there’s this. It might not come. It always does. We know this even as we hope it won’t.

I was there today. Not as the above, although I could wish that back, that need of me to be there, to help with a sunken beast, or goats in a twist, or even hens freaking out, or children who were somewhere. I was. The lonely got me. And here’s a thing about this lonely, and, i guess about me too. I present every single day as ready, prepared. That’s because it matters to me, for me. I plan my day, I mindfully plot my walk through the hours. I make choices. I nourish myself. I walk in the wild, on Tapselteerie, hoping I might meet visitors with whom I will connect, asking them this and that, only because I want them to ask about me. Some do. Most don’t.

The Lonely is a powerful thing. Actually, I don’t think it’s a thing. A thing is a thing, like a jewellry box or a piece of furniture, and the Lonely is more like a living creature, with face, voice, presence.

You called me today, Lu. You lifted me, you laughed me, Thank you wee sister.

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Island Blog – It’s a Choice

Yesterday torrential rain, the burns roiling brown and spit, lifting almost to the tipping spot, yet not. Driving back from work I saw it, the inching up and the not yet thing. I would have paused awhile, just to watch the boil and fold, the coming back to the confines of the channel, the space allowed if it hadn’t been for this big eejit in a four wheel drive who was pushing me back. ‘You reverse around three corners and uphill in your wee mini because I don’t do reverse, nor corners, and definitely not uphill’ was said without words, but through the big shiny fist of that face with a bespoke registration. I did chuckle. That beast could have run me over and not noticed more than a wee lift and a wee backdownagain. As I did the easy peasy reverse thing, swinging sassy-ass up and around a couple of times with a smile on my face because there always is one, I thought only this. I am happy to be who I am and you obviously are not. It reminds me, this modem of thinks, the one without anger or judgement, the natural me in the me of things. Sometimes I share this with others who do rage, do stand against, do challenge. I am not weak. I just don’t want a fight. However, and here’s a sassy-ass thing. If I meet one of those big-ass craturs which has momentarily passed a big sweep of pull-in, I just might hold.

Today big sunshine beginning with birds and pinky light fingering across the hills. Not to upset the shepherds, but the world was seriously pink. Everything pinked, the hills, the sea-loch, the garden, and the pinkers began in the cloud lift and shift. As I drew back the blackout curtains, I laughed, I did. Pink was sucking all the other colours into her maw, and swallowing. It was her dawning. It thought me. Dawn doesn’t last, no matter the wow of pinking. It evolves into the day, the day swiping it into memory. Then, despite a day’s hold on the hours, day also defers, eventually, to the bite of night. Like life, like moments in life. Not everything holds, not people, not memories. I can lose them all. And that brings in a think. What is important enough to keep a hold of? And, more important, do I notice enough to make that choice?

Back to the spin back skinny road stand-off. It’s taken me decades to notice my response to a perceived threat in a conversation, on a skinny road, in my aging, my lonely times. It’s like climbing the wires of music score, so easy on a page, so not in reality, when you doubt your voice, your place, your pretty much everything. I have learned this. Laugh at yourself. That’s what I’ve taught myself, in any situation, in the need to be valued, acknowledged, valued, respected, heard, seen. Just see it light, like a passing dawn, like the person who didn’t wave nor smile, the fact that your warming stove isn’t working, that the crazy rain is flooding your garage, that there are mice in your frying pan cupboard and inside your walls, that dark days are coming, the Winter King in the wings, all of that, and more. I’m not saying I don’t take action on all unexpected tributaries, and warm mother stoves who, after decades of faithfulness, now decide to choke, because I do, but it’s not about action. It’s about how it infects a mind. And, I decide, no matter the choke-hold of my life, the constraints, limitations, confrontations, the losts and the founds, I will always laugh at myself.

It’s a choice.

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Island Blog – Convexity

My fingers are twiddling, flexing above the keyboard, readying themselves. Most of the time, and this is the truth, they do the work, have done for years. I can think something, choose a starting gun, and in they come. I know it’s a gift and I am thankful for that gift, that infuriating nudge when the trudge is mudding me.

So, (when did starting a sentence with ‘so’ become a grammatical ok? ) Hallo Dad. Actually I so value his tuition. I wouldn’t be the me of me without his influence. I realise I am diluting myself into waspitude, too much crititude, and it cringes me until my spider fingers flex and fly. I will regather myself, as the sun, so absent today, has suddenly arrived like Lady Gaga singing feisty as the tide withdraws and the sea-loch stills and there is comment in the wondering water.

A new friend, met in the pub today. We arranged to meet at 3.30 but I was ready for earlier. I arrived and she was there, a woman who clocked me, as I clocked her on first meet. From another continent, another generation, but a welcome nonetheless. Taking this off ground, I would say we collided without damage. So random.

And then another came in, dropped his backpack, pulled out a stool. Hey you, I said, and from then conversation grew between strangers. I learned bits about family history, about the art world, about mother love, about the knife attack of trouble, about rising from trauma, about rewinding a neck for all-around looking, about the unexpected thrusting of pain like a dagger in the gut, about gentle landings, about acceptance, about moving on, about recognition of what i can do in the this of that, about sort of letting go. On on bar stool in one hour.

I know about convex. Never knew there was an upward curve. From limitation to elevation. Like today on that bar stool. I arrived curve down, left curve up.

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Island Blog – I Love This

When my life get’s tricky, bad news, no news, the lonely, the what now, the what if of it all, the olding with all its tired and broken bits, the hurtings, the way my fingers gnarl and bend without my permission, I think this thing and get that think to roll through me, to take over from toes up until it lifts my mouth into a real smile, one which reaches my eyes……..

I love my home, black coffee, red wine and a wave from a passing stranger. I love the sound of giggles from a child, the feel of a dog’s wet nose against my fingers. I love sudden encounters, shared smiles, the warm voice of a friend telling me without words that I can do this living on thing. I love the birds at my feeders, the finches, gold, green, ‘common’ not in the way I learned that word from my old ma……’common’ was basically ‘trash’…….the sparrows, blackbirds, starlings, robins, the way they fly in, watching for skyborn attack, dense aflutter, then scattering, grabbing a morsel and gone into the wind. I love that when I need help I can ask for it and not feel needy. I love tweaking my geraniums, the warmth underfoot of my heated sunroom. I love doorways and windows, my faithful car, my work, my gift of writing, my ancestors, seamen and women, out here in the wilding islands, the way they handed down such inner strength to me.

I love noisy pubs, scampi and chips, Atlantic salt on my face, the bite of winter and my ability to light a good fire. I love to welcome. I love cosy. I love sharing. I love gaps in conversation, the wait, the light and the chance in that wait. I love random smiles in unexpected places. I love boots that lace well, soles that grip. I love the West Coasters, the Island folk for their humour, their strength, their ability to turn any talk of trouble into opportunity and then take action. I love my laptop, the way she works with me, the lightness of her body, the way she can go quiet for two days when I fly to Africa and never give me grief. I love my children and theirs even if I only see them now and again. I love my sisters, my brother, my memories, my lifestory.

Then, as I turn back to the tricky, which has visibly diminished, I say (and I do out loud) I say, Hey, I see you.

I also see this.

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Island Blog – Getting the Jump

Back from a busy work day, and I put on tunes, feed the birds, watch their flitter flow, the incoming of friendly. I check the something arrivals, boxes in my garage, stuff for me, for my kids who now own the houses we built, and there’s a big something in that. It was what we built, the me and the him, way back, and we sold, we had to. They decided to pull it back to the family. Even if none of them live here, even if I don’t like buy to let, somehow it feels ok because these ‘kids’ grew up here, played here, pissed everyone off here, built here and damaged here, knew it like blood. All the fun here, the wild crazy nights filled with music and fire and dreams and plans. So many youngsters came, so very many. I would come down for coffee and find a gazillion strangers stretched over dog beds, window seats, over carpeted floors, in doorways. Fuzzled, rising, discombobulated, apologetic, looking like shit, they appeared and. I was there, frying bacon,sausages, more, welcoming. They weren’t my babies, but they were that morning, and they so needed a mama without judgement. I was she, I know I was.

I remember them. They have lifted, morphed into whatever shape they chose, or didn’t. At times I see their faces. There were so very many over the ‘kid’ years, over the sealife years, so many. And I know they remember, because me and him proffered a welcome, loved a party, celebrated young people who had no idea when they’d get the jump on the old ploughed furrows or shift and squift a jinx to the left or right of parental restricts.

I honour you all, you brilliant men and women, and I thank you for the best fun days and nights.

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Island Blog – Sleeping with Myself

And Living.

In my head, there are people I want to save. I cannot. For those in my family, immediate or a bit out there. I still care. If they suffer, I feel it. But I am impotent in the streams and reams of their lives, the high rise troubles, the ways they will work their way towards a sorting of sorts. Mostly, all I can do is to send messages of support (god I hate that word). There are many words I hate now I know about ‘support’ about ‘caring’ about the nascence of new words to describe old things, and about the okay of this splendorous birthing, on paper, in the mouths of deliverers. I know it follows a remit, a new presentation, but it laughs me now. So very trite, and so not enough, and it has followers. They’re all over Facebook and all the other social mediacs, up and down lifters.

Where are we on all this?

I’ll tell you where I am. On the ground, in the grit, watching the sparrows feed, watching the fliptalk of clouds bashing, the tide high as a sassy woman rising to speak, or sing in a bar, when she hasn’t been invited, the night coming, the wind feisty as a loud 2 year old and no taxis home. That’s me on the outside. Inside I hold my family in my gut, my whole body. I can feel them in my limbs, my fingers, my toes, my everywhere. You have pain, you are waiting, you are shrunk, closed, lifting, falling.

I sleep alone, but I don’t. My bed is my own, warm, safe, mine. And in the soft and gloriously uninterrupted dark of the night, in they come. My beloveds. They wake me. I can hear curlews, oystercatchers, always up too late, or too early. I turn for the light. There’s none. I turn back to the recognition of ‘not enough sleep’. and then I think this……you came to me in this moment, woke me and I thank you for that. Let’s meet here. Of course, it’s only me, but maybe not, maybe we just connected, you in your awful pain and me opening that door on connection.

Maybe.

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Island Blog – The Dancing

They used to say that here, way back in the day, as a question. ‘Are you going to the dancing?’ possibly without a ‘g’ at the end. There were many dances here, fiddles playing, easily once a month and just for the fun of it. When I think about those times, no television, no mobiles nor computers and when Wifi meant the wife, the food provider and the marching ferocious woman storming the pub, intent on the removal of her husband. I saw it often, laughed as he, the Big Provider was dragged out and pushed into the fishbox at the arse of a tractor, whilst she, the Wifi, carted him home for a dry out, till the next time he managed to escape. And he would, and did, many many times over, always with the same result. I recall one evening in the pub when someone came in saying, She’s on her way and I watched him falter, this Big Provider. Never underestimate a determinedly powerful woman. Those days are gone, as have all those spicy, fun, naughty, brilliant characters and we have no regular dances these days because the whole frickin world has chosen to stay home, to watch screens, to scroll nonsense, and, worse, to believe it’s all true. To feel ok about not interacting with other humans. There’s no longevity in that state. Evidence proves that, the escalation of mental troubles and so on and so on.

To the dance. We don’t have them here as we once did. I’ve already said that, so I think wide, not forward, not back, but wide. If we were taught, really taught to think wide, I believe we would evolve from this cocoon state, one which our teens are thinking means ‘butterfly’ at the end, but which means nothing of the sort, into a determined breakout. Punch the walls. Don’t accept the dark. You know who and how you want to be, but you/we all have been duped. The way forward is community, other people, a conjoining in something, anything, because, and this is fact, AI can be very helpful, but it has no heart, no mind, no touch, no cuddles, isn’t there when you slip in the rain, can’t help you lift wood in for the fire, won’t hold you when you cry, make tea for you, sit with you in the dark hours when you cannot sleep and which will reach out, a genuine care in its eyes, and say ‘I am here for you.’

Nor can it partner you in a tango. Just saying.

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Island Blog – Looking for Corners

Thank you Franz.

I’m watching a lour of grey clouds, rain fingers pointing down, loaded with rain. The sea-loch is doing her thing, at the mercy of the bothersome moon, which, to my astonishment can morph from a frickin upsetting orb, beautiful, yes, interrupting a million sleeps, that too, into a finger slice, almost overnight. I would like to know how she does that. The full tide is still in Springs. Neaps will come tomorrow. You can Google that.

These louring rain-soaked clouds with pointy fingers are travelling. I see them move across the wide sky. I see the fingers, I do, and it thinks me of those who face tricky situations, as if life is pointing at them. You. Oh, that can be a good thing. You might have won an award, been chosen, but that’s fleeting. It can be a tougher thing. I know those in that tougher thing thing. They are suddenly way north of familiar, and unsure of footing, no knowledge of the landscape, searching for corners, because corners proffer a quick turn, and in a different direction.

However, life isn’t a box, nor a bloody duvet cover. It’s linear. We think we’re moving on quite the thing, and something happens. It spirals us. We never saw it coming. We were just doing our thing, watering gardens, shopping, choosing dinner, sorting diaries, planning, and BOOM! The fallout is well named. It is a fall and an ‘out’ because after the shock has turned into clouds and rain, the last thing we need is anyone with their head on one side being lovely and spouting platitudes because they haven’t learned to think beyond them.

I’m going south of the familiar for them. And you never know what you might discover in corners.

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Island Blog – Look like Ballet

Another busy week in the Best Cafe Ever, and it isn’t just me who says this. In between the days, family stuff, although ‘stuff’ is the wrong word come to think of it. In other’s lives, there are happenings, not great ones, in fact not great at all, but wait. See that ‘wait’ word? Always bugged me. What is immediate and all consuming spirals a mind, every time. The encouragement to wait is, from my experience, very Buddha, and I like it, just don’t always know how to buy into it. The urge to run, to travel, to support, is strong, very strong. But……wait. It thinks me. As I’m faffing about with thinks, all blind in the clouds of it all, I do get it. There is a time to go and a time to not go, although not going sits like a burr under my arse. Ah, bless the olding times. We seem to get better at knee jerk, even if we can knee jerk like the best when required. So I feed the birds, tend the plants, scoot off to to the Washeroo and work, notice my thinks, notice how my team mates are dealing with their own lives, retain a strong hold on the present whilst sending prayers and great visuals to those who can do with them, big time.

I am open, wide open, and I know it. It has taken many decades to arrive at this point. I believe in equality, in inclusivity, in compassion, kindness, friendship, in action. And the last is important to me. It is wonderful to spout the prior beliefs, but without action, they’re just pointless words. Would I stand against injustice, my voice clear? Would I move forward, or against, something or someone who didn’t? Do I remember old Sally’s needs as she pines for her long dead husband, her dog, her cat, her rabbit? Am I so busy with my own agenda that it’s as if these ‘poor’ people are as of nothing? Or have I trained my mind to be aware, way beyond my own thixotropic ‘stuff’? As I notice something that bothers me, in any situation, do I shake my head and continue my dash for last minute food and the bus, or the train, or the whatever that consumes my thinking? Do I?

Back home from work and a pecan coriander pesto to make. A shower to be had. A list for tomorrow to be made. A twisty cloud sky to watch. From full moon, the half moon is sudden. In the full, there is turbulence, big winds, huge tides, a load of show-off in my opinion, not to mention all those who get no sleep while this showing off is going on. Talking to my African son, suddenly, and jerkily, a red deer hind and her very young calf walked by my window, all unsure, alert, their skins healthy and their legs long and strong. They looked at me, I looked at them. Go safe you beauties. Go safe. You look like ballet.

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Island Blog – Lucky

What is Luck, beyond being a word oft wrongly understood? In my ancient thesaurus, the word has many and diverse meanings. These days I meet those who consider ‘luck’ to be a chance happenstance, a random beneficence and they have reason to fix on that belief. However, in my study of words and wordage, I discover more. ‘Luck’ can mean opportunity, a new chance to shift something, to make it anew. Well, not anew, because there’s nought new in this world apparently, although I disagree with that too. What the writer meant was that all humans are humans, after all and after all, as if we are all either robots or born from the same womb.

So, when I say I feel lucky, I can just hear the triproad of rocks in my path with all this analytical tiddleypom, all rising into mountains only they can see. My through road is clear. I feel lucky. I can see. I can freely walk around a rip-tidal Atlantic coastline any time I want. I can smell the sea, watch her stories rush in, pull out, rush in again, and I catch some of them. I can see a hover of gulls, hear their screeching, watch the lift and luff of their agile wings. I can taste the clean rain on my tongue, feel its healing on my skin. I can walk. I have wonderful caring friends. None of my children died, nor theirs. I can buy the food I want to buy. I can travel. I live in my own home with a view (I will never say ‘to die for’) that others envy. I live in a warm encompassing community. I belong. I have shoes and boots, warm clothing, a comfortable home. I am not belittled, marginalised, racially attacked, afraid of any walk on the streets. I have not lost my voice.

So many right now have none of this. It disgusts me.