mind

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Island Blog – And it Did

When time stops for someone else, it also stops for me. If I don’t know them well, it stops for a little while, a gasp of shock, the ensuing ripples and thoughts and rememberings of the time we shared, upsetting my natural flow, and I understand and accept it. However, if it is someone much closer to home, this time-stopping thing courses like a virus through my mind and body. It’s as if my days are uppity wee shites, refusing to walk the way we have always heretofore companionably walked, through an ordinary routine, however dull, acceptable and, above all, recognised and known. I can wake without the day, out of kilter somehow, but not in a somehow I can re-jig nor whack into submission. It’s a stumbling, and it disorientates me enough to rise a roar in my mouth.

Because why? Hmmm, perhaps because all my thoughts seem to collude with the ‘stopping’, a timeline snipped like a ribbon, that fragile, when you think of it, the Big Scissors and the delicate ribbon. My thoughts, like all honest folk will admit to, are for myself. In the gone of someone, my own Gone thwacks me in the face. I can feel boundaried when I didn’t before. Of course, it isn’t about me, and why do I say that, because the me in this situation is definitely loud as a claxen? When any sadness comes, I battle with the elements therein. The reason, the why, the what, the what if, the how, the where. I am a strongly emotional woman. I am unable, nor do I want to be ‘able’ to take any loss as a ‘whatever’. I know those who can, and I find it odd, weird at times, that anyone can just shrug off anything that happens to someone else, to the over there of their lives, and just move on, light-foot, confident. Confident in what, I often wonder. In the immediate truth that nothing such as this will ever come their way? Or is it that their inner wiring is right and mine is faulty? Looking at that sentence, I know it’s not true. There is no Right. There is no Wrong. There is just a different wiring. It isn’t perspective, because I know about perspective. I lived with a long-term husband who never saw anything as I did, beyond the obvious mathematics of lambing, or the positioning of the massive Christmas tree. It was in the area of emotive intelligence that we found ourselves on different continents. I don’t say he didn’t feel emotional, because he did, but all that ‘mess’ was kept firmly under wraps and almost never turned into words of communication, whereas I could bleed noisily and copiously over the death of a lamb, a cat, a dog, a friend, even a notreallyfriend.

It wasn’t that I was a damn fool about death. Everything has a timeline, everyone dies, I knew and know that, and it doesn’t enfrighten me. I just might not be ready for that delicate ribbon to be cut, is all, because it comes on an ordinary Tuesday morning with the day mapped out and things ready and the linchpin working just grand on all four wheels of my wagon. Suddenly, out of nowhere, there’s a cut, a stop, a finite, and my hold on the hours ahead falters, hours and hours escaping my fingers like a jail breakout, and I am left here on my sturdy wagon, fingers splayed, mind blown, alone and thrown, suddenly pointless. Shopping for groceries, visiting friends, laughing gaily, all of those a stop, as if the curtain just came down, which it did.

And it did.

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Island Blog – The Rickle of Me

Well, well, well. Who’d have thought it? I wouldn’t, not never, the I who held each member of my family every time they faced something very scary, from first day of school, to delivering a first baby, through accident emergencies, breakdowns, woundings, emotional traumas and a close-knit dying. But I am here now, a rickle of things, as they were back then. Although I am not abandoned at all but beautifully supported by all whom I lifted up and encouraged down the years, I feel very alone. Distant support is not the same as holding hands with a real warm human being, one who cares, and a lot, one who will notice a daily change and respond, who will initiate and lead at times of complete flop, one who will just sit beside me, breathing, and I can hear that breathing as a reassurance. I don’t have that, nor could I in this time of my life, of their lives. I know the logic of it all, by rote, but it doesn’t address the emotional aspect. Maybe that sounds ungrateful, but, I assure you, I am very, very grateful for the support they bring. The shoring up of the walls against the storms, however, is my job, and I am so very tired and afraid.

I bought quorn mince. It’s ok. Rising, as usual, around 1 am, with, I confess, a big blue sigh, I made tea, lit my twinkly winkly lights and had a think. I had to rise, because the anxieties flood my mind on waking. There is no logic to any of the awful images, no history, no reality, but that doesn’t stem the flood of them. They are random, weird, unreal and poisonous. And, so, I rise, telling myself they are nothing to do with me, not mine, not helpful, not, not, a lot of nots going on as I pull on my warm dressing gown (ghastly thing, but cosy) and descend the winding staircase, rounding down into a pitch that might be the bowels of a mine. Well, it is mine, after all. There is one star and I look long at it, lovingly. I tell myself I am not mad, not that myself believes it, and that all will be well. A whole generation could birth, develop and die in the long hours before any light pushes up the dark, hefting it on shoulders strong and decisive. Off you go, Night. My turn now, and she, down there, can you see her in that ghastly, but cosy dressing gown, is in need of me.

At 0500 I prepare said mince. Loads of onion, garlic, tomatoes and quorn. I bring it to the boil, then simmer. For a very long time, until the colour turns towards purple, as if a whole bottle of port is in there sharing the simmering event, which it isn’t. I wonder if my neighbours can smell this at a time which will make no sense to them. I whizz up my Pond Juice, a concoction of spinach, celery, carrot, ginger and apple, divide it into Today and place Tomorrow in the fridge. It is still pitch out there and clouds have swallowed the star. I won’t let the fears in.

But, and let me admit it, they are constantly there. The internal fight is exhausting but I refuse to back down, to let them plant any flag on my ground. I am so very tired but, like a Jack-in-the-box, I keep bouncing up, even though my legs hurt, my costume hurts, my brain is mince (or quorn) and every choice faces a wall of Don’t Bother. I WILL bother. It wonders me. Is this what it was like, is like, for anyone facing any sort of war ‘against’ a force that threatens to overturn all that was normal, all that was, heretofore, taken for granted? I suspect so.

I leave the island on Wednesday 25th, for surgery on the 30th. I can feel the cancer now, as I never had before, as if it is rising up to meet my fingers. It isn’t a lump, more a small mass. Actually, that is an oxymoron, because it is either a mass (definition – a very big thing) or it isn’t. Let us go with mound. I like mounds. All across this beautiful West Coast land there are mounds, and a mound is about all I can manage these days #short term.

I might have a spot of bother with my right arm for a bit after surgery, but, as soon as I can, trust me, I will be diddling and a-fiddling about with words and dingles and thinks and rickles, and music and chuckles and and nonsense. However, I am not gone yet.

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Island Blog – A Doorway and a Sister

For three wonderful nights, I have slept well, nightmare free. I have no flipping idea why they come, the nightmares, although I do know that they only come in tough times, when my equilibrium decides to unequilibriate itself, tipping me into a sort of confusion, as if I had forgot who I am and which way is up. To be honest, I don’t spend much time a-wondering about this because ‘this’ just comes like that visitor you really hope never appears at your door, and we all have at least one of those. I just know it will pass like everything does, as long as my antenna are vigilant, strengthened, aware for what I may have missed heretofore because there will have been warning signs. For starters, it is no way possible that a mammoth can travel silently, even on tiptoe. Although I wasn’t around in those days when mammoths pounded over the earth, I am guessing that everyone heard them coming, even just the one. Must have been earth shaking. All that bulk and belly and weight could never just slip into a situation. Even an ‘it’ might have been heard a whole country away, thus giving plenty of warning. Oh, hear that? There’s a mammoth in Cumbria and heading our way so take cover! Simple.

So, I must listen for those big earth-gouging hooves, the pounding of them indicating both body density and danger. Ok, I’ve got that now. But once the damn thing is in the doorway, there is another thing for me to learn. First off, it can’t come through. Why not, You might ask. Because the doorway is human sized and a mammoth, weighing about 10 tons and 11 foot to shoulder height, never mind the body width and bulk plus hair and stuff picked up on the way all entangled and thoroughly woven in, is never getting through. It’s legs are four square and there’s a gap between the drop of its belly and my lino. An easy crawl if I can get past those tusks, which I can, easily, because there is no opportunity for a free swing of those great pointy things, not least because the door frame prevents any such free pointy swingery. I can see where I want to go, if I crouch down, the light coming in the picture window beyond the arse of this rufous beast, well, the swinging tail really, as the arse is massive. I just have to crawl beyond the tail of it, the tail of the nightmare-inducing eejit. How hard can that be? As long, and this is important, I do not clock eyes with the threat, pay no attention, nor give any level of import, to the growling (or whatever mammoths say when being their best at threatening) of the face, the teeth, the horns, I can find myself. I am more than a match for a stuck mammoth. It is only my mind playing tricks, that mind, well, bless it and all that, that only works on what it has already experienced. It has no way of thinking for itself. It might tell me I am no match for such a threat, that this threat is real, that I may as well submit, and I have done so many times over the years, hearing pre-recorded voices telling me I will never succeed, that I am not good enough, that I Told You So is all you’re going to hear today. But, the minute I employ my own intelligence and trust it, trust it, I see the stuck-ness of the mammoth. I see the light beyond its rufous arse, no, tail, I see who has the power here for I am in my right time, my right era, the Holocene era, not the Pleistocene epoch, and it’s Spring (apparently) and the mammoth is not. Perhaps that’s how it got stuck in my doorway. I push under and out and up, moving into the light of right now, of right Me.

When anyone mentions anything at all about anything mental, such as demon wrestling, nightmares, times when life appears as a mammoth in all doorways, folk don’t know what to say. There’s a stigma around anything of the mind. It is all in your mind, I’ve heard ever since I was 13. Well, yes, you’re right, although the way you say it sounds like a judgement instead of what it is, something to be cherished and nurtured and recognised, for it is real and the more you pretend to yourself that we, who do swingle t’ween your reality and the vast empires of our minds, are somehow in need of fixing, the more minds will become lost forever.

There are mammoths in a gazillion doorways but who will stop this rush of humanity towards gain and power, to even stop and notice we with supposed mental health issues? Perhaps just one (and one is more than enough) like my sister, a tiny bird of a woman with a huge personality, ditto heart and with the tenacity and courage of a terrier. She said ” I’ll shoo off the mammoth.” and, I believe she did.

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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 – To Break through Sunder

There can be times in a life when torpor sets in. Or so I am discovering. Perhaps it begins with a yawn one morning when noticing a floor needs sweeping or when what to eat for supper is of little interest. Noticing such a fledgling state of mind at this stage might bring on an internal slap, a ‘get up and get on with it’ admonition spoken out loud or in silence, the voice sharp, matronly, critical, judgmental even. But if, as in macrame, this torpor is permitted daily freedom to build one knot into a pattern, it soon becomes an accepted, if not acceptable, un-presence of mind. And before I know it, I am its obedient servant. Perhaps such times are allowed now and again. Too many of us (and too much) are driven by expectations, our own of ourselves or those of others or worse the ones we think others demand of us, most of which are imagined and therefore not real. However I am not one to just allow torpor nor stupor to dupe my mind, at least not once I notice what’s going on up there inside my skull. I sense the danger of ‘can’t be bothered’. It smells of metal and lemon pith. ‘What’s the point?’ is another one. This one smells of sleet and cold porridge and comes with a shivering wind. I can turn from both, berate this inner crazy and perform a task of beauty which may well be the preparation of a delicious but simple meal or the sweep of my mindful brush across the kitchen floor. It might be a gentle wander through the woods or just the opening of my ears to birdsong, my eyes to the brave tulips about to bloom, or perhaps my ears to the miraculous sound of my own breath, in and out, in and out.

I can’t always manage it of course. Who on earth can? Life is not always a daring, bold adventure but sometimes a battle to just get through the long hours of a single day. One day can awaken fresh and happy in an unexplainable way. The next doesn’t really want to wake at all, again for no obvious reason. I am learning to accept this conundrum knowing that the happy and unexplainable day, within which I felt light on my feet, full of energy and laughter at pretty much everything, is a gift and the other is a reminder to love myself no matter what, to be kind as I would to anyone else. To love oneself is, of course, is the hardest thing to do and not just for me. So much about loving self sounds like arrogance, self-importance, narcissism. And therein lies the problem, the reason a person might never even try to love the broken adult self, let alone accept the possibility, no, probability, that loving oneself can heal every wound, eventually.

And it is simple. Not easy, not at all, but simple. How simple it is to someone else, after all, without judgement, wanting only that they are warm, safe, secure, free and unconditionally loved. Yet we seem inept at best in gifting all of these to our own selves. My way of rising from the sunder of my past is to actively silence the inner judges, all perceived, imagined, long dead and of no use to me at all, not in my present life. I doubt they were ever of much use to me. To be reprimanded for a ‘crime’ at any point in my life came, after all, from outside of me, loudly, angrily, thence some punishment or other would ensue and I would survive it. It was done, over, behind me. Why on earth would I continue the punishment within and for years, perhaps? What lunacy! What lunacy indeed. Knowing this, seeing it now, I can laugh at the addles in my brain, the old wiring, the macrame knot pattern and with loving fingers, unpick the whole thing, bit by bit. I can notice the triggers that tug, no, yank, at the ties that bind me to my long ago and then I do something for myself. I might listen for the birdsong, step out barefoot onto night grass or even sweep the floor. Something, anything, that tells me I am here, I am important, a part of a very long and beautiful story, one that I can add to any time I like. I make mistakes, poor judgements and many failures and I know that I can wither at the perceived enormity of the mountain they make in my path, or I can laugh at the mountain, turn away and head in a whole new direction where the sky is wide open and the fragrant wildflowers tickle my bare legs as I walk.

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Island Blog – Me and the Monkey

There is something I am working on as I consider the human dynamic – the misbelief that our thoughts are in control. It is nonsense. Let’s say that one day I suddenly feel awful. I acknowledge that I feel awful and that’s fine so far because the awful carries a message and a question. However, it is very easy to stop at the message bit and to construct a belief below and around it, giving it space and power. If we don’t ask the question we are at the mercy of this awful. We might tell a friend thus reinforcing the construct, giving it an upper floor so it is harder to see the sun, and although it is okay to tell a friend it is not okay to build on the feeling. A good friend will listen, hug and assist in the deconstruction. The fixing bit is entirely up and down to you and to me. So what is the question? Well the one I ask, after recognising the awful is ‘What just happened to make me feel this way? Am I hungry, tired, bored, lonely? If one of these hits the spot then action is required. Eat something, take a nap, find something to do, call a friend, go for a walk, make soup, anything to apply salve to the perceived wound. What not to do is to build another level nor to project outside of self in a frantic attempt to not take responsibility. There are probably too many nots in that last sentence.

Our brains are just computers, completely devoid of emotion. First comes the thought, ‘I made a right cock-up of that thing’. Then follows the feeling, compounding and validating the thought. Third comes the action and that can be finger pointing at circumstance, weather, self etc etc or it can be approached mindfully in ways that don’t deny the feeling, rather saying hallo to it and asking ‘why are you here really and are you helpful or relevant to me right now; are you moving me on or holding me back; are you real at all or did I just stub my toe, feel the pain and sob out ancient grief?’ Oftentimes our thoughts leading to feelings are not helpful in the Now, unless, that is, we notice each one, particularly those that bring us down, say hallo and ask the question or questions.

It can be so easy to let the brain take control at times, but once we remember that the only person who controls my brain is me, I take back my power. It does mean inner work, I get that, and so many folk just aren’t prepared to innerly work, living out reactive lives whilst feeling generally miserable. I don’t want that. Well nobody wants that but it takes conscious thought and a lot of noticing to keep the brain under control. When something kicks the legs out from under me I can forget this, momentarily, but not for long because I am doing the inner work. I need to. Falling apart, not that I ever will, is not an option, but it’s more than that for me. I want a fulfilling and dynamic life at the mercy of nobody, of nothing. I have heard people talk of a difficult work mate or boss and how this person or that is responsible for their unhappiness. Although it does make me sad to hear of anyone being consistently unhappy, I know their state of mind has nothing to do with the difficulties around certain people. The real truth is that this person, through low self-esteem very probably formed in childhood, does actually have complete control if they but knew it, not over the difficult other but over the way they respond to that other. A bully won’t bully if he or she meets inner strength. A bully sees weakness and plays on it, and inner strength is silent and needs no words in order to be clearly heard. It’s not about fighting back which never works and all about not reacting. Easily said, I know, but it works every time.

Inside my head there are two voices, mine and the monkey’s. The monkey is always alert and ready for mischief. I must control the monkey, not by ignoring him but by treating him with respect and with a firm upper hand. Let’s say I think something. Then because of that think, one I believe to be the truth, I feel upset. Then with an ‘Aha!’ I recognise the monkey, stop everything, turn to him and we have a little chat. The monkey departs until the next opportunity for mind mischief arises and on some days I am quite worn out with monkey deflecting. This is inner work. I don’t know about you but my mind is never inactive, even when I sleep. The past rises up to bite my bum, the future looks scary and the present is raining and cold at times, at others a bright sunshine songster. It laughs me now that I understand that whoever we are right now in our lives is whoever we are and that whoever is a damn fine specimen of humanity.

Control your thoughts, control your life. T’is undeniably the truth. What a glorious chance for freedom and I want to be free. Don’t you?

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Island Blog – The Usual Route

As I walk today, the usual route that never stays usual, not even day to day, I am thinking. And noticing, and the noticing part shows me changes, little ones mostly, shifts in growth or movement from earth to sky, from tidal flow to a tree canopy painting a season. I have heard people say that they need to change their walk route, and I respect that, but it does wonder me. How much noticing are you doing my friend, because even if you walk through the same terrain every single day, you will always see something different. It can depend on your mood, on how you feel, on whether or not you carry anger or sadness or other pains; worries can flutter around your head like picky terns when you get too near a nest and they can hurt and hinder any other noticings . You can march on a fitness thingy, or be plugged into music with those nifty white ear pods. You can be aware of ouches in the body, sharps in the mind, bothered about wishing excess weight away, aware, too aware of your body.

I leave all that behind, but don’t get me wrong, it isn’t a natural state for me. Hell no. I had to do this marching, musical oblivion, too fat, too floppy, I hate you and the world thing for, well, too long, until some wise person suggested I ‘notice’. Notice, schmotice, I snapped. What do you mean? He explained and I listened, thinking this:- what I am living with, the me I am living with, is not working. I am not working. I am fighting against demons and doubts and hate and distraction and I am marching, marching, marching. To where? he asked. From what? he asked and I had no answers to either.

To free a mind, even if the body is imprisoned, is completely possible. No, it is probable, if the inner work is taken seriously. Now the word ‘seriously’ gives me shudders and always did. I had, have, no plans to be serious. Serious speaks to me of knuckling down to latin syntax or of playing goalie in a lacrosse match in temperatures that would freeze a seal. I want to be light about change, tender with transience, open without fear, fear of my own lack. Who teaches that we have to be everything in order to gain everything? T’is a lie, my friends, but the lie works because we all buy into it. If ‘They’ say this is how it is, then, by definition, most of us are failures. I digress, but with no apology.

Back to the walk. It is like slowing down time, walking and noticing. I don’t need to march. My keeping fit and my belief about keeping fit does not require my body to be something unnatural to me. I have met so many people who have lost stones only to put them right back on and thus to feel an even bigger failure. They worked on self control and denial when the real pain was deep inside their mind, their body memory. As was, is, my own. When a person understands that, the prison bars squeak a bit. They know what is coming if this noticing human begins to take in everything they see, slowly, gently and with respect for our beautiful world and they know their own rigidity and impermanence. They are but metal where we are blood and sinew, mind and soul, heart and transience.

All it takes is acknowledgement. A first walk, slow paced and with looking eyes.

‘To long to live in a state of perpetual contentment is, in truth, to accept a frozen life, one with no eyes on the future.’

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Island Blog – Twins and Laugh Lines

I wake this morning at 4 to one big golden star. Not in my head but outside my window. The morning smells fresh and cool and I say a big thank you that I live in this peaceful place. Nothing but bird squeaks and chirrups, for now. Later, happy walkers will happily walk by my gate and we will smile at each other as they move into the wild places. They will marvel at my ‘ordinary’, maybe talk about how lucky I am to have that view every single day. I rise and dress, make coffee, plan my hours. For some time now, I have allowed foreigners in to my head, those worries and fears that rumble and twist in my gut. Winter coming. Loneliness. Missing. And others. I realise we all have these. Different shapes, different rumblings and twists, yes, but we all have them and it is easy, as I have discovered, to allow these foreigners to take root, to settle in. But once this realisation lights up the attic of my chaotic head, I can see the old cobwebs, the dust, the decay and I know I must needs perform a clean-up. It laughs me, the state of things. I can do this. I am strong, protected and safe, if I decide to think that way. The foreigner dolls I have pulled towards me of late need a frock change, a jolly good scrub and bows tied into their hair. A dash of lipstick, perhaps.

There is not one of us who isn’t fearful right now. I have not been especially selected for racks of gloom and despondency. My circumstances may not be yours but you will have similar feelings. And that is somehow reassuring. Instead of focussing on little me and my ‘stuff’, I can stretch my mind, rearrange it, clean up the foreigners and turn them into friends. Every fear has a twin and that twin is the stronger by far. I cannot deny whatever fear because denying its existence merely pushes it to the back row where it will always find its way forward again. Fear is healthy, in balance. Fear warns us of danger and we need that fight or flight part of our brains for survival. However, in our current situation, fear can grow meat on its bones, flesh up, work out, strengthen unless we are duly diligent. Okay, so I do feel a perfectly understandable fear of being alone through a dark winter. Where is the twin? Hiding, undernourished and abandoned. Well that has to change. Hallo, I say to the scrawny twin. Come into the light, let me look at you. It moves towards me. Ah, now I see you, you poor thing. I am so sorry I have ignored you for this long. The twin smiles at me, wide and beamy and I can see the gifts it brings me and hear the gentle questions. What do you love? What do you have? What are you thankful for? Good questions indeed and I will busy myself considering them all, making a list and reading it back. I will add to it daily. I am thankful for the smell of this morning, for my faithful little dog, for my home, my family, friends and the happy walkers. For Tapselteerie wild places always open to me, for my garden, the flowers, the space in which I am safe. You will have a list too, the twin to all you don’t have and don’t love, but remember that each one of those also has a twin, one you might have been starving unconsciously.

We can live unconsciously. It is dead easy and the danger of such a way of being is that is creeps in like mould, silent and corrosive until we notice and take action. Sometimes, and I know this place well, the darkness can grow. Life feels chaotic, unpredictable, alarming and overwhelming. There is so much ‘don’t’ and doubt and confusion out there for all of us no matter where we live or what scary changes we may be facing. To remain absent from really living whatever life we currently live will only result in nothing changing. But the good and wonderful news is that we are wondrously strong creatures, inventive and powerful, way more than we may think. By making just a tiny change, such as deciding that this day I will look at all that I do have, all that I do love, and my eyes will hold that looking even as the fears niggle and chatter. I will drown out their voices for they are not helpful, not at all, not today.

And then, I will repeat this exercise the next time a morning rises. My inner talk will not be all about covid and fears and doubts. I will notice if this happens, if the words begin to spill out of my mouth and I will laugh and swallow them down. It takes practice, this practice, but you will be astonished at how quickly it begins to flow naturally. It’s as if my brain is bored of them too. After all, what do they bring but sadness and a downturned mouth. I want laugh lines, not wrinkles.

How about you?

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Island Blog – Second from the Right

I am very happy to have had my covid jag. It never crossed my mind for one minute to refuse it and I was astonished to hear that anyone would. However, that is not my business. My arm was mildly sore for a couple of days and I felt tired but otherwise escaped any side effects, not that I would have minded them. I have, after all, been given a small dose of a killer virus and my body has had to fight it, the busy little thing that it is. I said as much. Well done busy little body, still standing by me after all these decades and ready to leap into action in the face of assault, snipers posted at all vantage points, unlike me who would struggle to leap in anyone’s face these days. My walking is slower. Noticed. My rise from a chair and my return to it more considered. Turning my head quickly can send my eyeballs into disco mode and I hold the bannisters when ascending the stairs. I don’t know when this began and it doesn’t bother me even if I do sometimes remember, wistfully, the younger mountain goat in me, the one everyone begged to slow down, sit down, sit still, the one who was more girl gone than girl sitting.

I still feel a big fudgy today but without any discomfort. I can rest when I want now that all demands are silenced and the only demands around are those I make upon myself. Yesterday I made none at all but instead sat watching a TV series and drank cups of tea beside the fire. Outside is not worth looking at to be honest. Wind and more wind, gusts that make the windows flex most alarmingly and slanty rain that comes in great punches. It’s February, I remind myself, the month of slanty rain and wind punch and time travels so fast. It reminds me of other Februarys, stomping down to the steadings, early doors, in enough waterproofing to allow lift-off should a gust decide to punch. I am going to feed the calves, about 15 of them, with sliced swedes. I think about swedes. I know some very good looking ones with bodies and green eyes and big muscles but these are not on the menu today, more’s the pity, and I would hesitate on the slicing thing with them. These swedes are cold, round and hard-skinned and I have to feed the damn things through a hand-turning swede slicer. It takes ages and a lot of effort to raise enough for the babies who await breakfast. Eventually, and puffing like Thomas the Tank Engine, I fill the troughs and 15 heads are instantly lowered. Whilst they are distracted I move into the pen behind them to rake out yesterday’s muck and straw. I get too close and without even turning around one whacks me a belter on the knee with a hoof. I shoot backwards, airborne, or it feels like it, to land on my butt right in the middle of the muck pile sending it up and out, as if a bomb had just landed. I am that bomb. The muck flies out, turns back in and lands all over me, face, hands, waterproofs. I am livid and very sore. Struggling to my feet I resist, with great difficulty, the urge to stick a pitchfork tine into the arse of Second from the Right, who still doesn’t turn around. Once breakfast is done, I herd the calves out into the rain and wind for a merry day in a soggy field with no shelter and no grass. By the time I return to the farmhouse kitchen, all but my face is cleaned of muck and the turn ups of my too-big waterproof breeks hold enough water for at least 8 goldfish.

I am glad those days are done and glad that I lived them when I did. Younger, I bounced back more quickly. Of course there was no time for moaning or whining about a face covered in calf leavings, nor sympathy for my big fat red sore knee. I was the fool who got too close, remember? This is farming life. You have to keep moving, keep going, keep upright because if one goes down everyone loses. I loved that life and loathed it in equal measures. Even now as lambing time moves closer, I remember the thrill of being so vital to the day’s work, however hard it might have been. Being active as no matter of choice keeps a body fit and supple, a mind clear. It is different now, now that my activity levels are all down to me and there is a noticing required in my older days. Keep moving, keep finding something to make you bend, reach, walk, move, climb, lift or you just might seize and freeze into a shape of great inconvenience.

When I limp back down to bring the calves in later that same day, I stand at the gate rattling a bucket of cake (not our sort of cake) and I can feel a fire in my belly. As they file through the gate I clock Second from the Right and give her one hec of a thwack on her arse. She bucks and flips and turns to face me, snorting. Right back at you Missy, I say. Right back at you.

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Island Blog – Ma, Him and the Canyons of my Mind

Ok so yesterday was yesterday. In looking back I always ask myself, What do I learn from the day before? I am quite unable to just let it go without a considered and mindful consideration. It has come to me, puzzled me in its intensity and thus has a message. I won’t miss that message. Although the terrain through which I inched my snail-like hours swung between a tricky wade through old porridge, a vast empty desert that scalded my skin and burned my toes and an endless stretch of bog with pummets of strong grass and sinkholes to trip me, I knew I had something to learn, to understand.

It has only been 12 weeks since he abandoned me to me; since he fled the nest and left me with a thousand words in my mouth and as many questions. Although I can now choose white lights over those miles of coloured ones, choose where I put this chair or that little table, choose when I walk the dog and where I walk her without having to say where I am going, I find such a freedom both heady and terrifying. All those little things we said, like Look at that! or It’s our granddaughters birthday on Monday, or Shall we play scrabble? Maybe it was Do I feed the orange tree or shall I wait till next weekend? Now there is no him to say it to, even if, latterly, I got little response. The warm being that was there and not there was still there, was here. I remember my old ma saying to me when I furioused at her for his lack of interest in me ‘At least you know he is there.’ I didn’t get it. Dad had died a long time ago. But I get it now.

Today, this day, the day after porridge, desert, bog day, I feel an acceptance. I know that I spend a lot of time in the canyons of my mind, wandering like Alice sometimes and like a refugee on the run at others. I am looking for a new land, after all. I know it will be there one day and that this ‘wandering’ is very important. I will not stay fixed like one of those old Scottish stone markers still planted and dating back to the days of Rob Roy, my forebear. One says 25 miles to Oban. In a car it is half that. Walking the ups and downs, traversing the bogs and avoiding musket fire en route meant more miles on foot. It meant something once, a reassuring marker and guide but nowadays it is obsolete and I know this is important to ‘get’. Fears nowadays are not of musket fire, nor of sudden ambush from the reevers or royal soldiers, loyal to the king, but of the inner enemies that live inside a mind. I work to challenge my mind, to stop as I wander through its canyons and to notice, to notice. Birds of prey flying high means something is dead beneath. A song bird means trees and fruit are not so far away. A scampering rat means there is a predator around, something with a higher shelf life. Geese, swans and ducks mean water. Distant laughter means humans.

This may sound a bit weird but I have know since childhood that I live in many worlds. It compromised my dreams and confounded me as a young girl. Now, in my evening life, I get it. And in that knowing comes responsibility. I need to pay attention and to learn, even when I sometimes feel fed up with all these learning requirements. I never know what any day will bring but I have chosen to notice and to pay attention. Sometimes, when I meet someone and look into their eyes (not in a weird way) I can see they also live in many worlds. I also see that this world has managed to tame them and I am sad. My ma always said, after we chatted about the fact that I was born in Westmoreland which has now become North Yorkshire at some human’s whimsy hand, that I would have been burned at the stake had I lived in an earlier time. She didn’t really get me and no more did I, but latterly when we had time together she was open to my ‘nonsense’ in the fondest of ways.

So I walk on through the canyons. They do not meet my eyes as I look out of my window. They are not in the conversations I have with friends or passers-by. They are not in legal documents nor in the discussion about what grave stone we should erect for himself who fled the nest and left me to me. But, and this still astounds me, he ‘got’ me. It infuriated the bejabers out of him often when the worldly requirements were required, but he did say I was his spiritual guide and that I was the one he came to when, on rare occasions, he could speak of his own porridge, deserts and bogs. And sometimes he would walk the canyons with me.

I’ll rest with that.