mindfulness

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Island Blog – You lifted me Sister

I’m watching the last blooms of my beautiful roses bounce and jounce in the wind, spattered with soft rain, the kind we get here, the familiar, the soft touch of it on windows, the joy of it on my face. We do get the torrential, we do, that cloudal punch which drowns little skinny rivulets, turmoiling them into spate and even into threat. Roads flood, bridges laughing, saying, Well, you get on with it in your big cars and even bigger attitudes! We islanders have lived with this rise and fall of the rain in our lives for centuries. Not me. I am not a borner, not a real Muilleach, but I have learned and loved the ways of survival for over four decades, and I want to live nowhere else. There is an extraordinary to this life, the way humour lifts any circumstance into laughter and a conjoining, usually into music and the pub. I consider this. How many millions of disasters were diluted with laughter and whisky and warmth and comradeship, and a march out to sort the out out? A sunken beast in a bog, a lost dog, sheep, heifer? And all in the twist of a dark and spiralling wind, the Atlantic rising like a frickin menace, spitting, turmoiling, interrupting a meal, an arrest in the shape of the day, the child out there somewhere, where is she? the goats in a twist, the hens freaking out, the milk cow needing a bring in. The whole thing of the thing. Familiar, yes, but there’s this. It might not come. It always does. We know this even as we hope it won’t.

I was there today. Not as the above, although I could wish that back, that need of me to be there, to help with a sunken beast, or goats in a twist, or even hens freaking out, or children who were somewhere. I was. The lonely got me. And here’s a thing about this lonely, and, i guess about me too. I present every single day as ready, prepared. That’s because it matters to me, for me. I plan my day, I mindfully plot my walk through the hours. I make choices. I nourish myself. I walk in the wild, on Tapselteerie, hoping I might meet visitors with whom I will connect, asking them this and that, only because I want them to ask about me. Some do. Most don’t.

The Lonely is a powerful thing. Actually, I don’t think it’s a thing. A thing is a thing, like a jewellry box or a piece of furniture, and the Lonely is more like a living creature, with face, voice, presence.

You called me today, Lu. You lifted me, you laughed me, Thank you wee sister.

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Island Blog – Travelling in Light

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

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

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

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

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Island Blog – Chaste with Cheese

This morning I heard a different goose sound. It wasn’t the scrabble babble of greylags, all talking over each other and yet still managing to fly in formation, the ones who are here every year to breed. No, this was two geese making what sounded like gentle conversation; one waiting for the other to finish before responding. It leapt me out of bed in what once was a trice and now takes a bit longer so that my limbs can catch up with the trice thing. I saw them. A pair of geese from the Branta genre, black geese, Canada geese as far as I could tell. I have never seen them before here and it thrilled me to my toes. I watched them swim together through my binoculars and verified my sighting. How completely wonderful that they have chosen to come, just when we are all wondering how on this good earth we are going to manage with in-housing, not to mention those of us who might have chosen option B, had we had the choice. I’m sure you have seen that YouTube funny. If not, take a peek. But, option B or option A aside, there is life growing on outside our windows, unaware of our collective need to see life in the face of death.

Meanwhile, her indoors is making cauliflower cheese. I am aware that at some point, cheese, along with other important will run out somewhere. It might be here, so I am chaste with cheese, flavouring the sauce with chopped spring onions, red pepper and coriander before adding about half the cheese I would have lobbed in during times of abundance. I am chaste with loo paper too and that won’t surprise you. Someone, somewhere has bought up the lot and good luck to them and their associated familial bottoms. We have a saying in the north. If you run out of loo paper, just grab a handy scotsman. I thought that was a rather unpleasant idea on first hearing it, even if I did laugh so as not to look stupid, until I realised it meant the newspaper, which, on reflection, sounds equally as unpleasant. Let us hope it won’t come to that. I don’t really fancy finding editorial print on my bahookie.

Along with being chaste around everything, I find I am cleaning more things and more often than I ever have in my life. I don’t think I ever scrubbed the latch on the front gate, nor the door handles and knobs, light switches and taps. I would have given them a cursory wipe whilst cleaning the room, but not like this. I count 67 hand washes a day, and that doesn’t include washing up or squishing soft suds through a woolly. At first it felt very odd and quite tired me out, but now it’s a habit. Washing himself, however, is not quite so straightforward. I tell him, You need to wash your hands. I washed them on Wednesday, he said, his feathers somewhat ruffled.

Being profligate is not something we can be any more and that is no bad thing. I had no idea I was so tally ho with pretty much everything from cheese to loo paper…..until now. Now I could sit with my old ma and agree on half a tomato each without rolling my eyes once. I get it. And, I think, I hope, that it will become the norm not to waste as much as we all did before. It isn’t being parsimonious, more respectful of whatever we handle, cook, use in our daily lives. It might mean we learn how to repair things like paddling pools and socks and broken wings and in this learning we will honour what we need instead of grabbing what we want without a backwards glance. Perhaps we will become kinder to each other, more ready to keep in regular contact, less fond of staying late at work in order to gain an A+, whilst a grudging E- awaits us at home.

And Mother Nature is smiling wide. Because we are not tramping down the grasslands, wild flowers can grow, bees can visit, birds can nest and the whole glorious circle of what life should and could be, is turning us into mindful humans. Let us find the fun in-house, around our children, through contact with friends and family and let our minds be wide open. One day, when we can open our doors without having to scrub someone else off the handles, when we can walk out free once more, let us take what we have learned, and are still to learn, out into a brave new world.

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Island Blog 113 Secrets and Mindfulness (plus donkey)

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Inside us lies a world of secrets.  Secrets we share with one or two trusted people, and secrets we never ever tell a soul.  There are secrets we won’t even share with ourselves.

I am learning the wonders of Mindfulness.  What it asks of me, this Mindfulness thingy is that I pause long enough to notice my responses to any stimulation, any event, any person, any words aimed at me, and so on.  For instance, if you say to me something like ‘ I wish you wouldn’t always kick my donkey when you walk through his field’ I might respond angrily, especially if it wisnae me in the first place, but just some woman who bought the same red jacket last Autumn. If I did kick the donkey, then I might respond defensively, maintaining that the donkey is bad tempered and sly, watching out for me crossing his field and making sure he whaps my shin when you’re not looking.

In both these cases I am holding a secret.  The first one will be that I think you are a stupid smug donkey-owner and I never liked, nor trusted you one tiny bit.  You are a gossip and probably spreading no end of rumours about me down at the shop.  I don’t tell you this, of course but hold this secret within my soft interior, a secret that rises like bile in my gut every time I have the misfortune to meet you in the road.

The second one could be that I do sneak about kicking donkeys, even if they do mind their own business and are astonished any time my boot makes contact.

I appreciate that the above example is a tad silly, and I would also like to state, for the record, that I have never kicked anyone’s donkey, even though anyone’s donkey most certainly has kicked me. But that’s another blog, another time.

My thoughts, my private thoughts are my secrets.  I like them, but there are times when I must allow them to fly away because holding onto them will harm me.

Anger and resentment for example will make me ill, or, at the very least, bring me lower back pain and plooks. Oh I know, absolutely know that people who say anger is a bad thing have never been angry enough.  Fear of anger, my own or just anger in general gives the powerful emotion very bad press, and quite wrongly so. Anger is an energy, creating adrenalin and heightened strength, and, mindfully employed, can achieve remarkable good things – lashing out with sharpened weaponry not being one of them. If I can accept and be thankful for this surge of anger and think about why I felt it so strongly when all you did was break my favourite coffee mug, I will eventually be able to understand the root of it all.  In the current climate, someone will probably tell me it’s all my mother’s fault, but I must look beyond her.  Although she is a convenient soft landing for the punch of blame, she won’t be the whole reason I can promise you that.

My over response to unkind words, or of being abandoned, rejected, accused or blamed will have its roots in childhood. Could be at home, at school, anywhere in the playround of youth.  Often, the lineage of those roots is untraceable back to source.  So what?  Mindfully I can accept this and move on, but not move on and hold onto them.  I must move on and let them go.  I don’t need them, they weigh me down and make me secretly kick donkeys and over-react to broken mugs.  I know I don’t like unkind words, but I also know that you may not have meant them they way I heard them.  I know I don’t like the accusing gossip in you, but you very probably don’t like much in me either and, as we don’t have to meet, let’s not. I don’t want to be rejected or dissed or ignored or abandoned, but life is going to throw all of them my way at some point.  If I am mindful of my response to any of these as they cross my path, I am going to hear my own secrets.  Instead of pretending that it is all ok and that I don’t hurt at all, I will be able to honestly allow anger to rise against the pain and deal with it all by myself.  I won’t need to snap at anyone, or kick a donkey.  Then, when you break my replacement, replacement, replacement coffee cup I will be able to say (and mean it) that it doesn’t matter one jot because it’s only a cup, and can be replaced (providing there are any left), whereas you are irreplaceable.