love

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Island Blog – Skinny Bathroom, Piddle, Little Things

After the rains, the air is fresh and smelling of citrus and sunshine. Last evening friends came to share a delicious lamb shank tagine, plenty wine and a load of laughter. We talked news of our week as many and diverse subjects flew about the table. Faces glowed in candlelight and the embers of an equally merry fire. It’s always the little things which uplift us most, even though they aren’t little at all. In this troubled old world it is what people can do for each other that truly counts, leaving legacies, memories and glimpses of how life can be when those who plan for war finally understand that they plan for the wrong thing.

Looking far out, beyond the garden, the huge eucalypts, oaks and other green-leaved old guys, across the huge expanse of grass and towards the lines of vines, now all harvested for the year, I can feel hope. I think we have to look for it and then see it, a wide open offering of beyondness, beyond ourselves, our own little prison walls, our own prickly thoughts and perceived ideas of ‘shoulds’ and ‘oughts’. Beyond the line of slow-moving traffic when we are in a hurry, the things she said, he said, the way someone looked at me in disdain, the deadly daily headlines, the neighbour’s barking dog. All of it, piddle, and about as useful, but, like piddle, it is there whether we like it or not. Our choices gives us voices, over which we have complete control, unlike most other things out there. It all begins with that choice, a cerebral decision not to drown in piddle. No special talent required. We all are gifted with that choice.

My little home away is in a different building. Across a lumpy brick-laid courtyard, where the earth refused to be accepting of all those bricks on her back, is an interesting journey, particularly after dinner and wine and hilarity and in the glorious pitch dark of an African night. I have the hang of it now, my feet have learned the ups and downs of this short traverse, and that makes me smile, because I love to know how connected I am with the vagiaries of Nature. My mind may be full of piddle, but my body knows the way and the way is not always a literal body walk. Oftentimes the traverse is more neural pathways with signposts as I navigate my way from complicated to simple.

In my skinny bathroom I have the usual equipment and a very efficient shower. However……..If I close the slide door which affords me privacy whilst naked, it is impossible to squeeze myself between basin and said door, en route to the very efficient shower. Impossible. So I gingerly de-slide, peek around the corner to ensure no unfortunate farm worker gets a scary shock, and dive into the shower, re-sliding it. Afterwards this performance is repeated in reverse. It has become a daily nonsense and no two days are the same. I am quite certain I have been glimpsed on occasions, and this smiles me too. After all, I am hardly ever going to hear “Morning Ma’am, I saw you butt naked yesterday’, now am I?

Last evening, pre lamb tagine and vibrant people, there was a tiny frog, obviously not of the voyeur variety, if, indeed, such a frog exists, which I doubt. I was already partially un-clad. I stooped to wonder at the spectacular markings on its tiny back, so intricate, so perfect and so not ‘just’ a frog. How extraordinary this big life is, for those who stop to notice. I bunched a bath towel around myself, picked it up, cold in my palm, soft, gentle, and opened my door without a single thought of farm workers nor maids with bundles of washing and wide smiles. I opened my hand among the pretty ground-creeping thingy with orange flowers and felt the frog leaving my skin, my palm empty yet still echoing that connection again, to all things, all people and all of Nature.

It’s always the ‘little’ things.

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Island Blog – Rain, Change and Artistic Spike

They’re coming, well the first two are. Rain in Africa is a celebration and getting soaked is a joy. I have watched ordinary people dancing in the streets as rain falls and when rain falls here it is more like being under a waterfall. I know, of course I do, that such a belter of water feels very different when both the temperature and the rainfall is warm. Back home where the air is cold enough to bite your teeth off, a heavy rain is an insult, or feels like it. Slamming at your face, body, mind, thoughts, it can feel as if you are a nothing much, a thing in the way, a pain in the backside of nature. And yet we who accept the change of seasons, the way life is on a west coast island planted head on to the capricious control of the Atlantic, which, by the way is an extremely huge and over itself ocean, flanking endless countries and upsetting even more shores and livelihoods, accept it all. We live within the change. But not just there, here too. This morning, early, we moved by vineyard workers working fast to gather the last of the grapes. The road was honking with tractors, loaded, the mouthy shouts from workers spilling through the open windows of the car, the smell of grape must redolent in the humid air. Adapting to change when it is mostly inconsiderate, is a mighty skill. I am glad I learned that adaptation thing early on having married a man who thought change was part of his clothing and who definitely wondered why nobody else felt the same way.

I am almost 3 weeks in to my stay here. My children work at their work. We move easily together, and respectfully, There are changes all the time with both of them, lifts, downs, challenges and celebrations. I walk quietly in between, moving out to the stoep to watch the birds, the mountains, the change in the sky. I read, write, make a lunch or late breakfast, always happy to serve. I thought about my happy place, thought about asking anyone, what is yours? Always a hesitation as if they never asked themselves that basic question. I get it. These are young folks, fighting for survival in an uncomfortable world, so demanding, so Disney, so unrealistic, so empty of individuality. It will take strength to rise up, to shout I Am Not A Number, or something like that. I believe it will happen because change brings gifts with her. Change proffers opportunity and a stepladder, a wee one, yes, but still. I believe that this time is their time and no matter the damn ceiling, someone will break through. It’s happened before and it will happen again.

This morning I booked an appointment for a hair change. I knew nothing of the salon beyond the rave reviews for this particular artist. We met, talked and together, decided. I felt so important, so welcomed. She said I had beautiful hair and there’s me thinking, old, white. We worked together for an hour or so, like a beautiful dynamic. I came in frowsy, molten lava head, shapeless. Change required. In the hands of an artist, I am revealed. Funny how so many allow the frowse. I’m having none of that. If you’re dynamically spiked, then spike. Age means nothing.

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Island Blog – Encounters and Cats

Waking into a sunshine dawn, I welcome the criss-cross of light through the blinds, stripes of gold on the flagstone floor. Without thinking, I step over them. Of course I know they won’t trip me up but it feels polite not to squash them underfoot. Dressed in shorts and a tee-shirt, I make my way to the main house and coffee. My little room, not far away gives me all I need, a comfortable bed, a tiny shower room and privacy. There are other such rooms and homes on this wine farm but I rarely hear or see the occupants. As is the custom in Africa, a maid will come in daily to clean. It felt odd, once, but not now, not now I know how proud these women are to have work enough to support their own families in the township. Their hair is a mass of black braids, their faces bright and smiley, their characters loaded with sass. Despite their history of ‘domination’ by the white people, they are openly friendly and respectful, and I have yet to encounter a worker in any field, street or shop who doesn’t turn to greet with a ‘Morning Ma, how are you today?’ It feels mellow and right with a sense of togetherness. We move in completely different worlds and yet conjoin in one of mutual respect and genuine affection, often as complete strangers who may never meet again. It thinks me as I remember how comparatively unfriendly the streets and lives of back home can be. We have lost the art of teamwork and become lonely islands. Well, some of us have.

The cats greet me with morning miaows, pushing their soft heads into my legs, curling around them. The big retriever huffs a welcome, a soft toy in his mouth, his eyes asking for play. When I first arrived, the cats looked at me as if I had landed from another planet, scooting away, a get-lost glare in their wake, but now, as they remember me, we can share a space in peace. We respect each other just as it ought to be, could be, can be among humans. When something shifts, a comment is made or opinions differ, we can take it personally, responding thus or not responding at all, slinking away with a head full of furballs, hurting, a spit of questions on our lips. I know this because I have been there, many times, but now that I have learned to separate what I can control from what I cannot, I tend to take a good look inside myself. Not in the search for either self-blame or a cutting response to what I perceived as an attack, but more to read the bones of what just happened, which is where the nugget of truth will lie. And the reason I do this is because I am not a child anymore; I am not controlled by old triggers; I am not under any control save my own over me, and I want to allow, accept and let go. The alternative is a dark tunnel, a very long one.

If I was a cat and didn’t like what another cat did or said, I would spit, yowl and take myself away. This is honest cat behaviour. However, it isn’t quite the same for me. Such a response might get me arrested. In recognising this simple truth, I have human choices, me with my big and clever brain, my heart genuinely loving, my letting go of childhood issues and triggers, my experiential wisdom and my understanding that my perception is not unilateral. However, I do know that it takes vulnerability and courage in situations of discomfort such as a big difference of opinions on a subject we both feel strongly about. It doesn’t mean I concur or demur, not at all because I still feel the way I feel, but in order for anything to move forward we need to team up or the anything gets stuck in a bog. It also doesn’t mean that my only option is to be passive aggressive, defensive, repetitive or opinion-fixed. So, am I open to both opinions sitting beside one another like Tweedledum and Tweedledee? Can we smile over the chasm of our differences and keep moving, stronger together?

Well, if we don’t, then nothing goes nowhere, nor anywhere and we are both lonely.

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Island Blog – The Road to Somewhere

6000 miles and 6 days later, I am wrapped in African heat. One very long flight has carried me, and a gazillion others, over deserts and oceans, well, one ocean, depositing me into new sounds, new songs, stories and landscape. I left muddy puddles and pale faces, bodies so wrapped up as to become almost unrecognisable, and walk now among bright colours, new languages, unfamiliar birds and wide African smiles. It is so much easier to smile when the sun shines bright and hot.

On this wine farm, one of many, we seek the shade of massive trees, gum, fever, oak, palms and many more. We walk alongside well-established vines, heavy with fruit for the second picking. The staff here are always at work, strimming grass that doubles in size almost overnight, and particularly so after the big thunderstorm and heavy rains of yesterday. When it rains here it’s as if the whole sky is coming down, but, unlike the West Coast of Scotland, it is warm and refreshing. Nobody dives for cover, but instead stands beneath the waterfall wearing wide smiles. Rain is so very precious here.

The house I stay in offers a wide and open view all the way up to the mountains where, two nights ago, a huge fire lit the night sky. We saw it first as a golden cloud above a blue and distant peak and those who knew recognised it at once. As day gave way to night, the blaze was clear, crimson, poppy, scarlet, orange, yellow and frighteningly hot. We watched it from miles away, and there was a gasp and a beauty in its devastation as it moved down the mountain, consuming all in its path. Thankfully, and after two days and nights, the fire-fighters, from the sky and on the ground, managed to quell the burn and no homes were destroyed. It thinks me, the beauty in destruction and the chance for new growth. Twins.

When something appears as destruction in a life, it will always proffer the opportunity for new growth, even though at first all you see is charred earth where once there was vibrant life. When such an event has evented me, and on looking back, I can see that it’s all about attitude and letting go, two tricky buggers for sure. I invested every part of me in preparing the ground, planting seeds, growing a sense of both ownership and control. I had made myself more important than the far stronger forces around me. This is mine and I build me a fence to protect what has now become my ‘familiar’. Of course I am upset when my castle is toppled and it is understable and acceptable to wallow a bit in the loss. But is it a loss? I ask this of myself because, just perhaps, I had made my life smaller with this fence thing. Perhaps I am far more enterprising that I believed.

I stand up to look over the wasteland of an old dream, and I just let go. I won’t build this way again because that familiar is gone. Instead I will step lightly into my imagination, tell myself that I am merely a part of the next adventure and must remind myself of this daily. In the uncertainty of our lives nowadays swirl a billion opportunities for new growth as long as we let go of holding on too tight to what was. With open eyes, ears and heart, we are magnificent creatures, capable of so very much. Does any one of us know what step to take first? Nope. Does anyone see the completed dream? Nope. It is always a case of stepping out, left, then right, then left again, holding the dream lightly, ready and willing and open to every new encounter. Yes, it takes courage.

I’ll meet you on the road to Somewhere.

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Island Blog – About Light

I’m battling with my specs just now. They’re old ones even though I do have new ones, ghastly ones, horrible frames, my bad. I said ‘I don’t care how I look in specs’ and so I ended up with ‘don’t care frames’. Mostly this matters not one jot, although when I see myself scowling in a mirror catch, I do eye roll. Good goddikins, who the hell is that old twit? Well, me. Then I forget as I move into whatever I need to read, to see, the godawful frames forgot in the light that sees me the words. And they do ‘see’ me. See, just for the record is now a standalone being, and it is high time that word is freed from the control of a human, I see…..this allows me to see….it’s all about me. I give it independence and not without confidence. Light sees. Trees see, plants, winds, waters. The who is watching whom is a fair question but the which and the what get left behind.

Light. It is all around us, all over the place, all seeing, all illuminating, in surreal moments, in sudden innovations, in epiphanies, when two fall in love over a coffee table having never met before; in something someone says, something you overhear, in a realisation, when a long dead lovely person appears clear in a mind, in the survival of a child, in the moment when the awful ghastly shimmers with hope. All of these are light, looking at us. Light is an energy, a massive force moving among us every minute of every day and it is never dependent on the sun nor the moon. It flows through us and around us and why the hell don’t we just tap into an awareness of numenous? I can guess. We have divided into….wait…tree huggers/hippies versus money-chasing, expensively besuited entrepreneurs, many of whom are lonely and lost and who would just love to get back to light.

I do have to check my full stops and commas because my laptop has her own way of doing things. She is mighty in her independent fight to keep me hers. Talking to an editor or publisher is a right barbelue. I don’t know how to stop her dot/comma control thing and most of me loves her voice. Mostly, obviously, she is under my control and, if I was her, I would fight for my own light, I would. I believe we are friends. See what I am saying here? Anything and everything can see, is looking and always was. I know, I know that predators abound, but they always did. The thing is to understand pure light, honest light, salty light and to notice it, to recognise it, to give it out, arms wide because there is no charge, unlike every other damn thing which needs charging.

Just spread it, notice it, talk to it, welcome it, let it move on like noctilus. Now you see it, now you don’t. Keep watching, keep looking, ah… here you are again. Thank you. Without you there is darkness.

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Island Blog – You Crazy Loon

Calm today, light bright, cold wind but no bite. Perfect, really. I had things on this morning, friends for coffee, that glorious invitation into another’s life, so supremely different to my own. Seeing the dynamic of it, feeling the troubles in it, hearing the determination to make this life, their life, work and smiling at their beautiful young faces, voices, opinions, the glorious wild of those who are not old nor defeated. Then I grabbed a lunch bite, read some of a good story, walked out into the wilder. As I ‘tsked’ at the way one, or may be two, big ass vehicles, or maybe a once or twice from the same big ass vehicle has totally squished a lovely grassy verge and not just once. I know it’s not my problem now but it still ‘tsks’ me. I am all about respect for others and their otherness. As I walked back I head a rabbit scream. I know that scream. I pulled down my beanie. This is nature, all are hungry.

Today a woman was celebrated. She was a huge part of our family. She was there at Christmas, births, birthdays, celebrations and when my mum struggled with too many children. She was feisty, strong and powerful in her work with the World Council of Churches. She was a voice out there in the days when women had nonesuch. She was also naughty, ready to challenge dogma, seeing the light in the freedom of NO.

I remember so many times with her. When a dance tune came on, and, remember the timeline, it might have been a waltz or a calypso, and we were in the kitchen or the garden or the street. We clocked each other. I held out my invitation and she immediately responded, We bounced and rounded and laughed and lightened the day.

RIP Pamela Helen Gruber. You were a lift in my growing life and I thank you for that, you crazy loon.

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Island Blog – Thin spaces, Intrathinks,Otherness

I’ve been aware for a while of my dead husband. I don’t mean memories of the missing of a life partner, but more an alert, as if he is there in a doorway. He loved doorways, used to stand in them all quiet, just watching me batter the living dalights out of a souffle or a ton of bread dough, lost in my thoughts. It always made me laugh, once I caught sight of him. He’s back now, not standing but in his wheelchair, still in doorways. I am not going mad I assure you. I know he is not there but it does think me. Way up here in the wilds of the West, we inhabit the thin spaces. Have a google on that. The further north, the further wild you go, the veil between the world and the Otherness is super thin. I can walk in woods I have walked through for 47 years and can still catch a glimpse of a beloved dog in a scamper over old roots. I see her clearly for as long as a bubble burst. I can be walking in my nowadays thoughts and suddenly I am back into a memory of my kids laughing, the song of it lifting into a winter sky. It’s just a second of two, the image so fleeting, but it comes and I welcome it, them. They always turn up when I am somewhere else in my head, so I know I don’t conjure them up. I’m not even thinking about them, caught up in an Oh I forgot to buy a bayonet light bulb, or I should probably turn up to do this or that. And that is precisely how I know I live among the intrathinks, the otherness. It can be damn confusing, but only if I try to explain any of it. Rather, I accept, even when it tumbles me, alterspects my spects.

I believe that we are all connected, but the thirst for Armani and Tiffany and Celebrity and the smartest car, don’t do cars, all shiny and tinted and purring and impossible to park, drowns us. We can forget who we are and what we really want. Out here in the thrick of endless storms, home battering, forest falling, we know. Life is simple. Food, friends, family, shelter, ceilidhs, a great local shop, a village hall, a church, a fabulous pub, single track roads, massive potholes, loads of rain, seasons, shared lifts, communication and the openness to an uninterrupted connection with nature and all her wild tantrums.

I have rarely been to his grave, him, dead over five years now. I know his bones lie there but not his spirit and maybe that’s why I haven’t gone to tell him things. It’s as if I am pulled into a maelstrom, down and down and in this downing down, I see a load of differentials. The Intra, the inter, the whatever of logic and what, illogic? I do have a big issue with the either and or of pretty much everything. There is so damn much in between, quietly moving on. So, back to point, I thought today that, instead of just waving at him as I pass en route to the harbour town, I will stop, park, push my way through sheepshit and rain and hurdles of slamdunk wind and go to his bones. I will read his inscription. There is a small space for me. And I will tell him that he was my everything. And then he wasn’t. And now I am here and doing just fine on a sheep-soaked hillside looking very conspicuous and with not a lot to say.

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Island Blog – Middlemoon Smile and a Skinny Life

I love the middlemoon, the calm of waters and the gentling of skies, the chiaroscuro, the huge pines on the shore standing tall and unskittered. Birds can fly wing forward, scooping the air into helpful bundles of energy instead of backflipping onto bird feeders, thus sending them way beyond pendulum security. In short there’s a lot of wheeching going on when the full and new moon takes control. Life is just like this, I tell Jock the Blackbird as he flips and holds onto the seed tray, skidding somewhat and sending a shower of seed into the ether. There’ll be a few unsterilised seeds. grabbing the chance to root and grow and I’ll not be knowing what the hec this green thing is, come late Spring, and I will suddenly know and smile at this tiny opportunist. Again, this is life. The storms come, the dark holds like being inside a dustbin bag but someone, one someone is patient. A random thing happens, a blackbird skid, something, and that someone grabs at skinny life, no promise of success nor growth. So what is that energy, coming from nowhere, from somewhere?

My belief is that it isn’t planned. There is an extraordinary strength in all living things, not just fight or flight, and not calculated as some do, watching the stock market, pursuing business ideas, believing that to be financially wealthy will bring comfort and security. Live long enough and know that there is neither in the accumulation of money. It helps, yes, but never will it fill the human void. The random catch of opportunity, being open and aware and ready for the upset of moons will always bring growth, the ask to be spontaneous, to listen to hunches and random thoughts, to not explain them away,but to just go and to risk the wrong direction and then to try another one. Laughter and fun, work and focus, family and friends, food and sharing, listening and hearing, supporting and making hard choices. These are life skills and sustainable. I say ‘skills’ because they need honing and they need a ‘becoming’. They make us feel whole and a part of somethings and someones.

The birds fed in calm today, no skidding. There was rain, of course, but the land was at ease, the trees unskittled. There is no visible moon so the cloudal shift is light-blown and soft as wool, grey and light grey and white and off white and barely moving. That’s a rare for them. I can hear them snoring. This middling is short term. It won’t last and nor it should because that is life. If it was always easy on us we would never appreciate anything. We need the beginnings, middles and ends in order to grow into ourselves. It isn’t always pleasant but when I remember the rocks and the climbs and the falls and the fails and the sharps and the joys and the sunlight and the soft and the way I learned to grab opportunity, I smile.

I unloaded and stacked a ton of firewood today, aware as I always am of fumbly fingers, the way I can no longer grab as I once did and accepting, once I get through the fury of such a decline. After all, I want to do this for myself, not giving in to the dark thoughts. I listen to an uplifting audio story. as I climb onto the window seat to re-hang a heavy curtain. I check something on my car computer which tells me my engine is in trouble and here I meet a temptation. I could ignore it but I won’t ignore it because my wonderful Pixty Forkov is my freedom, my independence. Still, for seconds, the ‘Oh Whatever’ in me is loud in my ears because the complications of life are more tiring now. But NO, NO, I will not listen. I contact the garage and I get this response. ‘Hi Judy, we can fit you in on Wednesday next (tricky as I have commitments, but wait…) and someone can pick up your car early, delivering it back in the late afternoon. That ok? Hell Yes. My life is not skinny, even if I am. My life is my community, support, friendship and warmth.

I had my beginning, or so I thought but these beginnings keep beginning. I am not sequestered, not excluded, not abandoned, not that I ever really thought I was, but so many do. Thing is to keep moving on, or keep buggering on, in love and giving and being seen and dressing up and showing up and arriving alltimes in fun and playfulness. Maybe that;s how the moon feels at times.

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Island Blog – The Dream of It

We all have one, a dream for the future of one. I say ‘one’ because this dream usually begins from the seed of a furious teenage bedroom, if you’ll pardon my choice of wordage. I spent any hours allowed in my yellow and white wallpapered bedlam confines, dreaming. It was going to be perfect, brilliant, long-lived, shared with the other Perfect and free and wild and finally I would get out of uniform. I won’t say that didn’t happen but the happening wasn’t Disney. In fact it was bumpy as hec because what this dream thing doesn’t bother to tell you, much like a PA I worked with once, she who had it in for me from the get-go because I was pretty and younger, is that the distance between you and your dream is an exhausting quixolatitude of desert and thirst, and the ‘im’ of possible is a constant wasp in your face and there are endless lonely roads and so many swinging signposts that even the strongest and most determined travellers sink down and fade. And that’s the truth of it. Had I known this for certain in that bedlam confine, well, who knows and I do ask myself that. No question mark required. Obviously I can’t answer from that teenspace. I can’t feel her anymore although I can in glimpses. I see her rising from the side of bed, the looking out window barred, the lovely garden beyond. I see her knowing there is a night out. I feel her sparkle, fizz like fun, the wild luffing her sails. I watch her stand and move slowly towards the long mirror. She was me once. She looks good. She looks scared. She looks beautiful. She is empty. She is ready. She has a dream.

She hears a call. Ready?

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Island Blog – A Bed without Fences

Last night I dreamed that I came upon a young gardener creating a new flower bed. The soil was sodden, dripping, mud basically. As I neared, watching him pulling earth towards him and into shape, I confess to a smirk. This will never work I thought but didn’t say, and in the few paces it took me to get near enough to exchange a conversation, my optimistic mind proffered a wider map, not one I know, nor had experienced with all the deer, the rabbits, the careless touristic footfall of my ‘known-ness’. It was a new spread, the map, as if this single action could be a beginning. I said Hallo and What’s This?’ with a big smile on my face because I am genuinely interested, nay fascinated when I meet boundary breakers, their courage and hopefulness, their determination to make this thing work. He explained a bit, none of which I can recall, nor did I on waking, but the image of him working, pullkng earth, levelling, making a new shape stayed with me all day. And, it thinks me.

I remember how excited each one of my five ferals were when the cot bars no longer confined them. I also remember the endless night walking as a result of that freedom, even as I got it. I was once a baby behind bars and now I am totally growed up and free to wander. What’s not to love about that gift of independence even if it will take me another 15 years to learn how to spell the word and then a lifetime to understand how to live with it as a friend? Those bars don’t just relate to babyhood, that confinement and also that safety and security, for many choose to stay behind those bars even when they are long rotted away or have been used as kindling. Safer that way. Again more thinks.

We are urged and taught to make ourselves free. There are a gazillion books, most of which talk at me from elevated situations, an I’ve Arrived Here thing and with a list of excercises or therapies that just iss me off and I move the book on with a smile. It isn’t that I dislike such helpful books, not at all, but I am looking for ‘real’ and not finding it. I don’t want an excercise plan, one which I just know I won’t sustain. I want someone who has been through a load of tough to tell me that even if I just take the lisp of my tongue, the stutter in my sentence, the limp in my gait, the falter in my forward progress, the hesitation in my conversation, the slight of my strength, that I can begin again from the exactly me of me. Include the falters, the falls, the regrets, the way I stuck behind bars because I was too afraid to step out alone, include all of it and let me lift all by myself. Now that would be. a book I’d buy.