mental

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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 – Fanacadoo

Do you ever arrive of a morning having travelled into weird worlds all night long? Or so it seems. All impossible things, unlikely people, extraordinary happenings happen inside the hours of sleep, none of which would survive five minutes in earthly mode. Beyond the borders of ‘possible’ lie these worlds, a convolution of stories read, tales told across a table, films seen, random encounters, daydreams, worries, fears, doubts and delusions of grandeur. I can fly. Sure you can. I can save the world, blow it up, murder (in a good way) stand watching a happening without moving into action, put out a forest fire all alone, win a house in Malibou, all possible in the depths of night, when my mind, which was programmed to sleep, chooses her own adventure series and plays it out all the way through.

Of course, I barely remember a sequence of plausible, believable events, oh no, but just patchy catches of the whole fanacadoo. As I lift from bed and move into the day, the images scatter, fractal, smokey, spiralling into the bedroom only to skinny through the gaps, as if they never were at all. Could this nocturnal experience be a helpful clearing of a cluttered mind, I ask myself? Or, was that unpleasant image, still inside my head despite my attempts to turn it scattered, fractal, smokey and spiralling off to skinny through the gaps, some sort of prophesy or warning? Over the years, I have learned to decide for myself the answer to those two questions. I say that I am not at the mercy of either of them, horns as they are of a dilemma, a waste of daylight to finger through such confusion with no chance of an Aha moment. I decide that my subconscious mind is a superior being and not in my control as I might like. If it can produce unbelievable scenarios in such brilliant technicolour, structured on nothing I have encountered, nor ever will, then it is at work on my behalf. Although I know that, at times, my own piddling worries and concerns can leak into my dreams, the costumes and scenarios fantastical, I trust there is a point to it all and not one my tug-boot daylight person is ever supposed to understand.

How freeing it is to address the night larks thus! I can dress and prepare for my day, knowing that a deal of fanacadoo has been addressed and processed. None of it is my business. It’s as if an inner counsellor has beavered away as I fitfully slept, lost in the story of the night. She has tidied up my mental loft. It is done. My remit is only to allow, accept and move on into the ordinary. But, with different eyes. This is important. If I can fly, save the world, turn into a mermaid, murder (in a good way) or even stand rooted and impotent in the face of something horrible, then I am delighted all this gets sorted in the safety of my bedroom. What I will never do again, having done it for many years, is to believe I am a bad person at heart, that, by dreaming this way I am showing my true colours. I refuse to accept this. I know who I am and how I will be around all other people, so that, even if it might be fun to turn into a mermaid, or to save the world single-handed, I do not relate to the backside of those (im)possibilities. My subconscious was simply filtering out, clearing away, processing and settling the who of me, the how and the what of this small human woman. I have a very vivid imagination, that’s all, and it is the work of the night counsellor to level my balance once again so that I can rise from it all with a chuckle, forget it all by elevenses and, most of all, know for certain that all is well, I am safe, my mental attic is swept and clear. This doesn’t deny the night stories, oh no, but it does put them in perspective, and one more thing………instead of moving into the day saying I didn’t sleep well, I say, instead, and mostly to the dog, What larks Pip, what adventures I had last night! She may look at me blankly, having curled into a slumbering danish, fast sleeping till a yawn at dawn, but I know how it was and I was there, I saw them all, even as those midnight images slip away like the steam from my coffee..

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Island Blog – Go Widdershins

Today I walk widdershins. I decide this last minute at the place where two tracks meet. Normally I veer left but not this day. It thinks me, this differential, this random and spontaneous refusal to stick to the ‘norm’, this comfortable, this mindless unthinking. Since when did I get stuck in the bog of ‘norm’? For a while, obviously because my whole body argues with my decision and my brain is in uproar as if I had turned up to a Monday evening meet of the WRI stark naked, toting a half full bottle of merlot and waving a poster that reads FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION FOR WOMEN! It thinks me, a lot, this differentia thingy. Accordion to mathematics, the word differential ‘relates to the infinitesimal differences or derivatives of functions’. Hmmm. So when I decide to walk widdershins just to experience, at a physical and mental level, the chaos that ensues when I abandon the norm, what I am actually doing is to challenge the derivatives of functions. Well Yip and Pee to that!

I know, I know, all I actually did, despite my rocket scoot into fantasy, was to walk the other way around the Tapselteerie track, but this is not the point. The point is that this day a differentia stopped my unthinking. Something outside of me posed a challenge, threw down the gauntlet of years and sent a dart into my mindlessness. I recall the moment. Go the other way around, Differentia said.

But I normally go this way. (whine).

Eye roll from D.

Ok, I will. (whatever)

Now I am not saying that I met a family of giraffes or anything like that but going widdershins is something I would highly recommend because, and I realise this in my own life, we can get horribly caught up in what we ‘normally’ do, eat, the places we meet, the timing for Sunday dinner, the food we eat at Christmas, the people we have over, the iron fold of pillow cases, the day I phone Mother. A million things we ‘normally’ do.

Quit ‘normally’. I say that with confidence because this adherence to such limited parameters confine us in creeping-up ways that create resistance to change and, as we know, the only thing that never changes is change itself. It is entirely human to fall into the comfortable prisonal run of dull predictability until the day or the moment we realise where we are. A hamster on a wheel. This is also entirely human, we all do it. It isn’t that she or he over there was just born brave. We all are, but life can tamp us down too often and over toolong time that we doubt we have the wherewithal to go widdershins to what is expected of us, our ‘duty’, the glass ceiling and more and we lose confidence in pretty much everything about ourselves. I get that. But the beginning of a lift into a new relationship with self begins with just going widdershins on one singular thing. Could be ‘nothing much’ to anyone else but it may well be a significant stepping stone on the path to finding who you are, really, the core you, the runbone you, the person you fear most because, well, you’ve heard too much criticism over toolong. Step out my friend. You won’t regret it, I promise you.

But, best not go to the Monday meet of the WRI stark naked, toting a half empty bottle of merlot and waving a banner. I doubt it would end well.

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Island Blog – Enough for me

I’ve been thinking. Thinking can be quite a full time job I find, have found. Sometimes it can be destructive, sometimes instructive, sometimes pointless, sometimes pointful. Because a gazillion thoughts crowd our minds from the minute we wake up and all the way up to whenever we manage to fall asleep, we must learn how to handle them. It’s like all your children, plus their friends and their friends friends and cousins are all around you shouting demands at the same moment. Their little fingers pluck at your clothes, their voices screech like jays and you, only you can sort out this mess. You rear back, try to find some place of quiet in which to find a solution, or many solutions, often without success. But you can actively get away from all those children by leaving the room and closing the door, running upstairs to lock yourself in the loo whilst you unwind the mental tangle, calming it into a good idea, a distraction, where with thoughts you cannot. You have to manage them internally and there is no upstairs loo available.

In times of long moments which can feel like hours, thoughts cluster, conjoin, form fat shapes like dumplings, weighing heavy and so amalgamated that it is nigh on impossible to sort the wheat from the chaff. They dumple in my head, that’s what they do. What was it, that last fleeting thought? I don’t know, don’t recognise it, not as it is in this state of dumple. Who would? So what to do? I am pulling on my mental boots as I acknowledge the complete irreverence and lack of respect from these thoughts. How dare they assault me this way, tell me, or infer, that I am less than I might be, have failed too many times in the past and HaHa you can do nothing about that now you fool! I swipe them away like bluebottles. I’m going out, I tell them. Without you. I slam the door, truss the dog and begin to walk.

Immediately I am aware of stepping into the real world, my spiralling thoughts silenced. Now I am looking with my eyes facing out and not in. Left behind is the familiar, the four stone walls, the paintings, the photographs, the dust on the floor and the to-do list. I am alone but not alone, a body moving into a world not under my control, the random chaos of pure Nature. It isn’t random at all, nor chaotic but to me with my stays tightened in a back-home mode, my memories contorted into a twist of nonsense and untruth, this outside world seems just that. Birds flitter back and forth, butterflies butterfly and windshift troubles early greening limbs. Bumble bees claim the soundbite, hesitate me beneath willow catkins and I stand to watch their fat little bodies claim the sweet. Yellow, white, with round arses and pointy ones, tiny miner bees, even bluebottles tap the nectar. Percussion, timpani, glorious. Two paces beyond the willow and I hear nothing at all. Their sound is just for them and not for me but I hear it and it fills my head with hope. Life will always want to live.

Further, and I stop to welcome wee wind battered primroses, their butter faces reaching for a sun they will not meet this day. Star moss leaps out from stand-water, even from the crook of a tree where limbs have split for their own reasons and who have now offered a place of safety for some other leap for life. The wind today is kinder. The iceslice punch softened. I duck beneath a larch bough, heavy now with spindle green and with the hope that no unthinking walker will cut it back as I have seen before, as if this limb didn’t own its space and as if folk have forgotten how to duck. The latter I decide. Humans are so very arrogant and so very mistaken in their arrogance. Just saying.

I return soaked and thankful to my outer clothing and my boots. But more, I return changed. As I tentatively open the door to my four stone walls, I hear nothing. No thoughts loud my thinking. I am zinging on what I have just walked through and which welcomed me. Life will always want to live.

And that is more than enough for me.