light

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Island Blog – Cloud Shunt

I’m watching them. The big cumulous rising behind the Blue Ben, across the loch, wherein the tidal flow is one hell of a sassy. Must be a new moon a’coming or some other disturbance in the multi confusional vortex. It’s something, anyway, enough to strange the skies, upset the clouds and cause a load of upturned eyes in places like this one, glorious in its lack of fumes, and the noise of people, who, in my observation, would much rather not be under the control of the perceived rigidities of a worldly expectation, domination. Back to the clouds.

The cumulous were big puffs, highlifting, and like candyfloss but super white. No sunset yet to paprika their tips. Perfect virgin snow. I looked away,but for a few moments, to bring in wood, answer a call, light a candle, moments. When I looked again, there was a straggle,a shunt, I could see it, almost feel it, a slide of grey, like a teachers line through dodgy text in a presented essay. I watched the grey move, split, absorb the ice cream clouds, divide, consume.

Now, the hills are flamingo tipped, the sea-loch pinking, the sky above already bored with the artist. It will darken soon.

Obviously, things change. Sometimes too quick.

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Island Blog – Quick Light, Quick Dark

When I write a blog about stuff and things and thoughts and whatevers, I am cautious. Oh, yes, I do boundary swipe, shift wordings, alter the cations of things, I am guilty of all of those so called crimes. However, as the languages around us change, challenge, and then become a part of of what we say out there on the street, in the grocery shop, between ourselves, I adapt. Sentences morph into new creatures, verbs become nouns, adverbs and adjectives (still well over employed) sprite their unspelling into sentences, or comments. T’is the way of now, and we had better get the hang of the new hang, or we just might end up without a single visitor. Just saying.

That aforeness is nothing to do with my theme. However, it might be. This is about a friend. My age, my friend from the age of 7 or thereabouts. Reluctant boots tapping up the metal steps and onto the school bus together, pulling back as the driver moved off too quick, steadying, moving to the back, or near as dammit, every single day. Fixing school packs, settling into gammy seats, talking, looking out, facing the day ahead, and then the coming home. We all had trouble in our hearts. She was a good student. I wasn’t. But we still stuck together. I met disapproval everywhere. She never did, but I knew and still know that she was as wild as I, but could control her wild, her language, her longing for freedom. I never asked her about that. We grew apart, over choices, over timelines, over hundreds of miles, but the connection doesn’t bother with any of that shit.

And now she has gone dark. I’m watching her. You went into the quick dark my darling. There is quick light awaiting you. If that is your choice.

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Island Blog – Someone or No-One?

This is something I performed once. It begs a performance. There is rhythm, rap, and begs a reading out loud.

Wherever you grow, bloom strong and petal wide, don’t hide but spread your colour, blue is it, or red, or butter yellow, white? Be right with it, your colour, it is yours alone. Hold your own, make it known, alone, not lonely. Only you know your ground. It may be rocky, maybe rich and soft, a mountainside, a beach path, garden, grey street, river bank. Give thanks for wherever you find yourself. Hold out your petals, reach and reach up to the light, breathe right. Your breath is life, in joy or strife, breathe on. In shade or sun, you are the one.

Make a difference. Have fun and look around you. Who grows beside, or over there? Another soul with hopeful roots just pushing through in fear, perhaps, delicate heart, easily broken by careless feet or the lash of punishing rain-words, to die in silence. Cry out in anger, but stand your ground. For those who stand will remember the ones who fall. All of them.

And share your light, your bright, your coloured heart, still beating like a drum on the battlefield, and there, don’t yield, but glow with life and, tender-fingered, lift a drooping head. Warm a faltering body. Say ‘I am here, and I will not leave you’. Share your mystery, your very soul. Hide nothing, let nothing cold you, hold you fixed in ice or fear, as if the end is near.

Notice every season, but not too much. Touch another, lift, don’t drift, for Time moves on, fleeing like a thief in the assault of misbelief, no crime committed in the touch. Some of us long for touch, not much to ask, small task, withdrawn through fear and that worldly slime, the snake of self-doubt, out with you, damn spot, you are not the true voice, my choice, I touch.

Hold each blooming moment, roots in the earth, head in the sky. Let pain go by, toss it to the wind, the changeling wind with stories on her back. And, remember this. Never miss the chance to lead another to the dance. Show your light. Be curious, like Alice, and leave your smile among the trees for the bees to honey up and sweeten. Reflect the sun, the rain, the moon. And do it soon, because you know that a winter of the soul will come, and, for some, it is already here. No matter your ground, make it better for your being there, nourishing, flourishing, sharing, caring, thankfully placed just where you need to be to learn something. Let laughter fill your throat and let it fly out like birds or butterflies to smile a flagging soul up and out of sadness, and to spin their own bitter into glitter. A million rainbows lie within you. Let them show, because you know, no matter the chatter, that you have the power to choose.

Am I someone, or no-one?

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Island Blog – The Light

I have to see it. Light. In the dark days, I switch it on. I scurry among the mice in my cupboard under the stairs, to pull out twinkly winkly skeins of golden light. I weave the wires around pretty much everything that stands still long enough to allow this weaving frenzy. I plug in. To heck with batteries which tend to last about five minutes in the tall tell of time, dimming so fast as to become an apology. Light needs not such apology. Light is bright, she is sunlight, moonlight, starlight, and if I need to play pretend inside my home with a plug and a switch, then I will. Locals tell me that, when they walk by in the slipslide of a winter’s day as it moves into night, when the Winter King grabs tight hold of our earth and spikes ice into souls and water bodies, into nights and days, just loving the hold he has on us, and for months, the lights in my home spread like warmth and hope as they pass by.

I seek it, Light. The first dawn lift, lifts me out of bed as if someone had shot me from from a gun. I cannot remain inside those cosy covers for a minute longer. I must arise to say hallo to the newing light, the illumination of a garden, a life that still breathes, still lives itself. As the day slides off her perch, in the darkling time, I see others draw the curtains with a swish, turning in. I cannot do that. As long as there is light out there, I do no swishing. It is as if I am some strange creature, even I don’t know. I don’t say anything, of course not, as the dark comes in too soon with that swish, but I feel it ripple through me. I am all confused and suddenly required to conform. Well, I know that conform thing and who doesn’t? Parents, teachers, partners and so on. But I can feel a turmoil inside. I want to watch that light until it is entirely and completely gone. I have no interest in cutting it off. I’m probably weird, but I feel it, so strong, so sharp.

Once the natural light sink has sunk, I am woohoo about twinkly winkly lights and switches. The flames of my fire uplift me. I watch the flames, the way they wiggle and lift, the way the blue meets the red. I see it all. I could watch a fire for hours, the light and bright of it. I see a new moon, the ice blonde of her back curve, the slide of a plane heading somewhere, first white light, tampering into a catch of pink sundrift . And still the curtains are open. It thinks me.

If we really study light, out there, inside ourselves, in the eyes of a stranger, the power of light just might catch you too. Watch it, notice it, find it, hold it, don’t let it die. Light is life. Could be a new understanding, a new choice, a new direction. All exposed by light. Have a couple of thinks about it.

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Island Blog – Travelling in Light

Last full day, today, under an African sun, and, although I am (always) sad to leave this beautiful country, I am ready to fly back through space and time, to land in my own country, my own life. Visits to Africa heal me, help me move forward in renewed hope, and also allow me, by some magic, to let go of whatever gave me ants in my pants during the year before. This time, I had some tough shit to go through, the legacy of which rippled on through my body and affected my mind in ways that surprised me. I was, I thought, quite in order with myself. Then, when I fell very ill, and cancer was discovered, I still felt in order with myself. I am strong, a warrior, I can overcome this, or so I thought, and, to a high degree and with the assistance of an excellent surgeon and tremendous medical support and expertise, I did, or we did. But the body holds the score, as we all know, so that, even when a mind is made up to survive and thence to thrive, the body lags behind. In turn, this lagging thing affects a mind, so that, although I had moved on, I was constantly reminded of a new frailty. And a new strength. It was confusing, as if a fight was on between body and mind. No matter how clear I was on my decision to move on after such a trauma, I was often reminded that a new compromise was required.

This visit, around family, under sun, inside adventures and conversations, I rise. Not by mental force alone, but with a gentling of body and mind, as if they now move together and as one. I said I knew myself before, but was still aware of anxieties and hesitations around my new limits. Now, I work with those limitations as if they aren’t limitations at all, but just who I am now. And I have learned from this change, this rather strange pretence that I can force a collusion between mind and body, regardless of trauma, as if it was nothing much and blow it away on the winds. That doesn’t work, I know it now, even if that determination has held me up and bright in 2024. What I needed was time to heal and the patience to accept that truth, to walk with it, open and humble, until all of me finally got together again.

We have had many wonderful adventures, all the while sharing ideas and jokes, plans and observations. We have watched the wild Atlantic and swum in the warm Indian Ocean. We have seen humpbacks breach, dolphins burst the waves wide open, colourful birds flying overhead; we have dined and wined and picnicked and walked through Fynbos, Fleis, and across miles of white sand ,peppered with an array of spectacular shells I never see back home. We have seen the sun set the ocean on fire, stayed with friends who live between mountains so high as to disappear into cloud. We have wandered among shops in Capetown, laughed at the terrible driving whenever it rains, and stood in awed silence beneath the upside down stars. And all the while, I could feel the gentle hand of a natural healing.

I know I fly back into winter, but there will always be a winter. I know I don’t have enough warm clothing. I know I will have to drive back to the ferry through tricky weather and that the ferry may not sail through gale force winds. I also know my wee home awaits me, the wood burner, the candles, my friends, my community. I return as me, but renewed, re-jigged, at peace with my life, because I have travelled in light, one that is strong and sustainable, one that tells me who I am, and who I am is just fine with me.

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Island Blog – Misty, Clarity, Beyond the Veil

Dark morning – yes, of course, with this nonsensical time change thing. I watched the clock dilemmas, worked them out, poor confused things, as light annihilated the dark, blinding it. There’s a misty thing going on across the sea-loch, a sort of translucent mesh hiding the pines, the backsides of hills, a strip, moving, lifting, expanding, thinning. A bit like a bridal veil. I never had one of those, but they are pretty. You can see eyes, a vague facial shape, the red of a smile, if there is one, and there usually is.

The mist has retained her veil control, all day. I walked in it, not through it, noticed how, what was clear before, is more of a shimmy, a sort-of, a possible. The autumn colours, fallen or yet branch-held, were bright, as the artist in me might have made them so, with a good gloss medium over oils. Nature does it without any of that tiddleypom.

This evening, the sky is pinkling strips, reaching down, very soft pink. Gone now, the mist, the veil. Now clarity. It thinks me.

From the bridal veil to clarity. Take this lightly. I am no misery guts about relationships, but what I have learned over long time, is that if we look for another to fill the big darkness within, we will always be disappointed. It is up to each one of us to find that hole-filler within our own forgiveness of the past, of self, of whatever damaged us. That clarity will show us more than the backside of anything or anyone, and we will stand strong as one who can see beyond the veil, as the person we really are.

We can play misty a whole lifetime, or we can be brave and stand up and say, No More. I have no frickin idea who I am, but I do know who I am not. A good beginning, I would suggest.

I love the mist, to walk through it, the touch of its fingertips on my skin, the gathering of it on leaf fall. I also love clarity. I can do both. Beyond that contusion, I can heal.

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Island Blog – Diversology, Variogram and Stick with me on this and I believe in You

I love wordish, the play on words, the flux I create as I challenge old meanings, long laid down and probably long dead, but still with blow, like bubbles when you slide below the surface and lift breath after someone has gifted you a bath experience. In your blow, you create a new map. It may not last for long, but, just for that moment, as you watch the dynamic shift and slip away, you see something new.

I find words, they come to me like darts, random, and, it seems they feel arrogant enough not to explain, so I have to Dictionary them. And, I am finding, having invented at least two words, once challenged by a magazine editor, and which are now confident within the restrictions of the Oxford or the Collins, that definitions limit. Language is an endless shift, and that, for me, is how it must be.

So, these words, Diversology – understanding diversity, inclusion and equity in the classroom. I, and my peers would have loved that light in our day. We are the survivors of none of that, back in the days of England ruling half the damn world, and not very kindly.

Variogram, another word that came to me. Broken down into my simple speke made me thinkalot. ‘In spatial statistics the theoretical variogram, denoted, is a function describing the degree of spatial dependence of a spatial random field or stochastic process.’ I am engaged, big time, with the word spatial, and it is mentioned twice, as if space from another actually has a name. We all need space and it is not a given, I have learned over decades. A singular soul has to demand it.

Stochastic. How weird am I! This is my favourite and you may see why because there is a freedom here, and the stand tall of every one of us, the broken, the lost, the abused, the confused, deserves recognition, however wild, according to the dictionnaires of our life.

‘Stochastic – having a random probability distribution or pattern that may be analysed statistically…..’ aka following old patterns, old controls. (read on)

‘……but may not be predicted precisely. ‘Hallelujah! We can all rise from the old, the old ways, the old words, the old meanings. We can. We just have to have that tiny bubble lift of courage, that one glimpse of our own map, to step up and out, a heart beating like a flutterby, feet unsure, fear like a huge overwave, and say No. Or Yes.

Even as I write this, I feel the sharps of this writing privilege. I know it isn’t easy, in fact it may feel impossible, at first, but I do know some of you, many, have recognised that your one life is not ok and who have said this No, Yes, thing.

So, I would say, on this lovely summer’s evening, in my long life, if I could take away the struggle for you, I would. But I cannot. Maybe all I can do is say, hey, hallo you. I believe in you, even if you don’t.

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Island Blog – Upright

Although I am loving these crisp cold days, the starry starry nights and that skinny moon, I find myself seeking for light, almost starved of it, and when there are many darkling weeks yet to come. I feast on the tiny upshoots of snowdrops, daffodils and tulips, down on my hunkers and peering like a mole. This morning I was almost upturned as I cautiously moved like a russian dancer, keeping my body solidly above my feets in the sure knowledge that, at my age and alone, I could crash to my arse and not be noticed for days.  I thinked about that. Tomorrow morning I would be softly iced, like a carrot cake, sparkles on my eyelashes and lips, my fingers gnarled white and probably sticking out rudely, knowing me. By the next day, there would be crows, oh that’s it, they’d find me then, but let’s not go there. This is not the right direction. I fed the birds, from my really upright position, schmoozing them so that the daft Jackbird hopped and peeped at me from afar, and his potential missus, brazen and capered with white (an anomaly) shouted at him and came close. She’s no fool that one, and if I can possible save her from Madam Sparrowhawk, I will, although my pounce has never been that accurate, that fast. A robin dunts and dips almost in touching distance, but I make no eye contact, just keep my voice low and musical, soft as a doughnut and as jammy, because I love this engagement of a slippery morning. 

Birds fed and feeding, I watch them twist and spin, the lift and dance of them all entrancing me, so fragile and light. I remember feeling this for myself, sans flight, obviously, feeling as if I could flip any flop and jump any boundary. Perhaps this is how it is when oldness takes over, but I never saw it coming, not ever. And, now, it is here, the wobble and ungait of gait, an unsureness of the space t’ween earth and heaven, and then how to fill it with my spirit as my body becomes my prison. What? No! Bollix to that load of shite, no, no way. What drivel, shrivel, bevel up you old twit and point these thoughts to the recycling bin which, to our villageing delight has finally been collected after weeks of yet another lorry breakdown.

Today I confess I was victim (loathe that word, will NOT be one) to vapid thinks. I resurrected myself, threw up a prayer or two and made ready for the wotwot that comes after I have dripped myself into a cone of tumbeltwist, someone, me, who absolutely WILL spiral out from less than queenly thinks and up, up, up, into the stratosphere, the thinkosphere, the absolute, the wild, the impossible. I’m ready, boots on, earth beneath their tread. Upright.

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Island Blog – Feral Contours

That’s an oxymoron, by the way you academic goonies, but you know I like to play with words and to challenge boundaries. In my contoured life, I was as feral as possible, and deliberately. However, I’m talking about snow just now, not the blanket covering thing that you may know as snow, but the white stuff that drives in on the back of a blustering wind, only to whisper itself into corners and crevices, and then, to melt. I watch the hillsides on the other side of the tidal loch, as the waters barrel in and out, capped today with ruffles of white water, like a line of choir girls in a hurry. Gulls float backwards, the wee birds twink and startle above the feeders and even Madam Sparrowhawk missed today, her skirts flipping about white, feathers in somewhat of a disarray as she sulked atop my berberis. Although I know she needs to eat, I won’t make it easy for her, not with all these miles and miles wide open to her, for she is a she, the fastest bird of prey and horribly accurate. I have watched her close her wings at 80mph to get through a wire fence, then to fill out once again, to flip and level and to grab Jock. Jock is the name of all male blackbirds. I notice that the girls are far quicker to juke away. Much like women.

Back to the snow. It came suddenly and making a hoor of a noise. Actually, it was the wind, the shout and slam of it, suddenly elated with a thousand snowflakes on its back, and laughing at the slamming thing it achieved against all windows and doors. I am sure we were collectively startled, even though a cloudreader would have known what was about to come, the whole flinging aboot of wheelie bins, the tattering of bird feathers, the resigned bend of the big ass pines on the shore below me. I watch the way the snow has stayed. Over the sealoch is the cold place, little sun for months and a frozen promise when, over here, we melt. It isn’t resignation, but just a good choice of position. I can do Dark, but I need light, particularly natural light. I have gone from my home, all wet and leaking and light, to a friend for coffee across the water, and crunched my inappropriate shoes over solid ice. T’is bizarre. 

I look over by, as they say here, and see the snow has painted a new picture. It was just a few hills yesterday, with empty land after felling. Larches still stand, now ghost trees, elevations, dips, wrinkles, brown and more brown plus boulders which sometimes catch a wink from the low sun and rise into a glister of beauty for just a moment. But now there is snowvelt. There is a new land over there, the ridges crisp and with a curious turn this way and that. The forestry lines are ruler straight, pulling up into the bumpy clouds, all shades of grey and quite unsure, it seems, of what to do next or where to go. I see faces in the light touch of the snow painter, here an old man puffing out his last breath, there a child running out to sea, chasing a ball. In one place the snowland is thicker. Why? It wonders me, until I see the stand of evergreens. I think of who might have planted them and why. Stories abound when we are curious and I am always thus. 

We all have to live within contours, some of us more than others, when our sky is grey and our light lightweight. We can think sink or we can rise like a surprise. We can speak out, even as we are hoping our bladder won’t let us down. We can. We are naturally feral. It isn’t any easier for a so called privileged person to find a voice, to speak the truth, to point out the cutaway contours, to definate the self, to see the old man dying, the child chasing a ball out to sea. 

A new year lies ahead. Sounds good at first until the old stuff kicks in. Don’t let it, if it isn’t what you want. Be brave enough to see, to acknowledge and to act. Create new contours, feral, of course.

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Island Blog – Ouches

Ouches. I’m unsure there is a plural for an Ouch, but it can so feel like there is, or are, at times when one just doesn’t cut it. Well, it does ‘cut it’ but in multiple directions, like fissures. Too many esses in that word methinks. Backing to the point……

This morning he left, my big African son. He came to be with me after surgery and stayed just over two weeks of big son in doorways, that smile as wide as a continent, those big warm arms, that massive heart, that love in his eyes. We are so easy together. He worked with his coaching clients, stacked my load of wood, repaired a collapso chairo, went through the Spider Darkness of the dodgy understair cupboard, which, back in the yore of yore was a corridor, and they are always dodgy. I remember, as a little boots, on my tricycle, scooting a corridor in a big house/boy’s school and it was miles, and there were rats (yes, there were) and I was there pinging away on my bell and heading for Cook in the huge steamy kitchen with her buns and her smiles and her bosomy welcome. I pedalled like a dingblast. You never saw such footwork. It was darkling, old place, old lighting, possible rat attack, always a thingy. Parents were well into gins and fizz and nonsense and there was me, or I, on my tricycle. I was a brave one, even then, or was I just after Cook’s buns. They were spectacular, but you decide.

He left in the beginning. Morning was pushing Night away with her flaming torch, the sky flipping fire. I was in ma goonie and with coffee to hand. I am fine with this, I can do this, I can let him go off and up into his own life, I said to myself and she, as usual, did this folded arms thing and smirked. And, the daylight was light enough for me. I cleared old clothes, tidied the Spider Darkness and found a few things I had thought swallowed up by the Mouthie past. That chattering reminder of all we failed at, didn’t say, did say, wish we had done, wish we hadn’t done.

But as light concedes to dark, day to night, I miss him, our sundowners, flicking on the twinkly winkly lights, the jacking up of the wood burner, the shared tunes, the dances. And we did it all. And I am so thankful. Although there are many ouches, there is a fricken wealth of memories and I have them all, right here beside me, inside my heart. I can go there any time I feel an ouch.

As I walked today, knowing I would return to the alone of my life, I looked up at the leaves still falling from the beech trees, the caper of their float down, like dancers, a capricious play with the breeze, and I thought, there is so much pain in our broken world, and so much beauty, in loss, in struggle, in play, in dance, in moments shared, even in the ouches. We grow from all of it, even the shit of of it. Have a wonderful weekend. I will. There will be ouches. There always are.