meditation

I found my old mum’s mood ring today. My jewellery box is mostly full of stories and not worldly wealth. I like that. I am not interested in worldly wealth, nor ever I was and nor was himself. We were all about stories, learned from them, made our own, spun them out into other times, other lives, like frisbees. Catch if you want, if you can. I put on the ring, a little finger fit, and noticed the changes, from green to blue to black to purple to amber and that was just one morning. I thought some about what goes on inside my mind and heart, and paused to notice and reflect in the early morning light. To be honest I have eschewed any rings and for a very long time, even though I love rings, because, for me, they denoted a control over the self of me. They actually itched and had to go. I remember being on a ferry back to the island, yonks ago, and an elevatory conversation between me and himself on the aft deck, and I flipped. I yanked off my wedding ring and tossed it overboard. A moment. Will you replace it? he asked. No, I said. I know I am married. I don’t need to show that. I never wore one again, but did stay married and for decades thereafter.

There’s a gap in my noise thing. I listen to Radio 2 and mostly love it. As the afternoon shifts into a difference, birds flying out, flying home to roost; as the tidal shifts and swifts, bringing in new seaweed, new fish flow, a change of the sea-mind, I listen to silence. Visitors may drive by, but mostly everything stops on the cusp of dinner plans, everyone showering, dressing up, timing departure for the table booking. I watch it, distractedly, as I make a new salad dressing with a load of inventive stuff. I also sense the tense of it all. I wish I could say I remember it, a family with young ones, but I don’t. In the days of running Tapselteerie, we went nowhere much. Five kids and debt will do that for you.

However, I did learn and that learning has held me up ever since. I notice everything. Everything. In the absence of television, no wifi, no mobile phones (none existed) there comes a deep need to find something beyond self, beyond the washing of plates, the providing of experiences for others. The Self demands a voice. I took myself on walks in the wild and at crazy times, and suddenly. I thank my reckless and colourful self for pushing me on, in the wrong boots, ill-equipped for the slam-dunk of west coast weather, in the silence and the shout of blast weather, among wild and growly cows, over lichen-slip rocks, over shell beaches, squishing through bladderwrack, kelp, sugar kelp, dabberloks, all wonderful as I sink into their gush of salty tannin. No nowadays visitor is going to like this. I love the connection. They will just angst about stain. I’m watching this happen, the distancing from the real, even as I know there are those who will listen in the silence, who will research, who do care about the beyond of worldly hoo-ha, the strive for monetary wealth, the need for ownership. the hunger for dominion. I know it.

I watched a young Osprey today, being hassled but gulls, all full voice. I saw it dip and flip across the sea-loch, giving no aggressive response. It thought me. There are times we just need to accept that the hecklers win, and we move on in silence. I look down at my mood ring. She’s green.

Last night we had a thunderstorm. Huge flashes of greenish light illuminated the darkness in my room turning the furniture into eerie monsters. The thunder didn’t bother with clapping. It roared like a god in a filthy temper. And the show went on, and on, and on. I could have been at a rock concert. Sleep gave in and curled up without me and I turned to my book for solace, two books actually, one on meditation, the other on Forgetting Self. Each time the lightning flashed I startled, counted, held my breath as the storm rolled around the Blue Mountains then deafened me with an explosion of thunder so as to make me ask myself what would happen if the sky really did fall down. I don’t remember when it grew calm again but by then it was already light and the day was rising into life.

Sipping strong coffee the storm thinks me. Not just the thunder and the lightning but my part in the performance. I was there. I heard it, saw it, thought about it, tossed and turned inside it, sighed at it and read to distract myself whilst it made its attention seeking journey across my night. I watched the way ordinary becomes extraordinary, the eerie furniture in greenish light, noticed how the flash-shadows menaced my thinking, felt the anticipation, acknowledged my insignificance beneath such life/death power. This its what Life does. That’s what I thought. Life lives on and Life is everything, everyone and everywhere. And I am not everything, nor everyone, nor everywhere. I am a small dot in a vast and endless tapestry of colour and form, shape and design, texture and flow. My world is piddling in this everywhere-ness, just a blip, just a dot and yet I can believe, in my arrogance, that my world is of tantamount importance. More important than yours, for instance, with a more considered layout and healthier stuff in my fridge; my Christmas tree is bigger and better decorated; my children more polite; my floors cleaner, my day more organised, my diary up to date and my appliances all charged.

What foolish nonsense is this! Even writing it down I smirk at such thinking and yet such thinking thinks me at times because in creating a warm wrap of ‘smug’ I feel safe in this everywhere and everyone world. Unless I decide to unthink the thinks. To change them.

I have used my time here in the African bush for much unthinking. With my piddling world many thousands of miles away it has been possible to look back, forward and at each moment and it has been a splendid journey. In ordinary life I/we tend to run through the trivia, listing it, dealing with it, sorting out the bits that don’t fit, dashing through the to-do list in order to arrive. Why is that? Is it because we feel we must get through everything in order to win a prize? Where is this prize anyway? I’ve never won it and that’s for sure. All I achieved was over-tiredness and a mouth full of scratchy nips. Did I seek pity from those I scratchy nipped? When I was too busy ‘Sorry, Thingy, I’m too busy to chat just now, got to dash’, to give of my time (so much more precious than yours by the way) and way too behind on the day’s to-do list to listen to your story down the phone line (I’ll call you back……yeah, right!) did I consider you for one single moment? I don’t think so. Although we say, particularly at Christmas, that we will give more time/of ourself to our family, friends, neighbours and strangers, we mostly unthink that once the gloom of January sets in. We get all emotional about change but once a year. Sounds ridiculous to me. How can anyone change but once a year? I’m changing every day, don’t know about you. I believe that life is change and the whole flipping point of being a dot on the tapestry of Life is to make a difference to the whole. Without the dot that is I, the dot that is you, this line would merge with that line. We dots are important, critical in fact, as long as we think beyond our piddlingness and pay attention to our dotting process. We could be a big dot. We might even be a scatter of dots, depending on how wide our loving arms can reach, on what kindnesses we proffer and how often we proffer them. Inconvenient? Absolutely. Interruptus? Of Coursicus. Infuriating? Oh yes. But, the inside feeling that comes from knowing we showed kindness, respect and affection to whoever disturbed our extremely valuable time will leave a glow inside that no outward success can ever bring.

And that is the Prize.