perspective

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Island Blog – A Stopping

The day begins. I rise, dress, and head for a what I believe will be an ordinary day. I’m thinking about myself, the what-I-will do, my plans, my things, me, me, me. We all do it, and it takes something outside of ourselves to shock, to shake us into the outside of our fixation on self. It’s a very big world out there, a load of people, situations, circumstances, troubles we will never experience. We forget in the fuss about clothing dropped on the floor, the loo seat left up, the greasy fingerprints on furniture, the abandoned sweet wrappers, pizza boxes not emptied, not cleared, and I could go on for a whole year on that stuff. I was there, I remember it all.

And then something happens, news comes in. Suddenly we are twisted and twizzled into a spin, one that sends our eyes open wide at first, and then into a crazy spiral. As suddenly, the whole shit about clothes on floors, careless loo seat attention and abandoned wrappers become a nothing. Just like that. Because this news is so big as to automatically and perspectively diminish the things which, moments before, sent us into a snort of fury as if they were our only vision of our lives, we stop. What we were doing, or about to do, birls in our minds, and away into the mist, the rain. We cannot see them anymore.

Death is part of life, obviously. We all have to do both. It’s ok, sort of, for an old and beloved to leave the world, even though he or she leaves a big and wide grieving family. The dying in this case of a mum of many, grandmother of gazillions, was expected, and she was well into her 90’s. Still, the loss…….

This is going to sound weird, but I like to be reminded out of my own small agenda. I don’t like the news, don’t like the fallout of a big family home, one I remember, all sparkle and can-do, all fixed and sure, all young out there, naughty, finding their way, moving out, moving on, loving and loyal.

RIP Mary. I will remember your smile and those twinkles in your eyes, always.

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Island Blog – Remote Control and Smartarse

I set off, car packed, morning bright with a few clouds that didn’t seem to know quite where to go, a sort of fluffy ‘what’s next?’ thing going on between cumulus and cirrus. I left them to their dilemma and headed for the ferry, nothing but sheep on the road, and radio two my upbeat companion. I had thought of everything, chosen what to take most carefully, organised this and sorted that and I was feeling cocky, or henny, in my case. The usual anxiety around travel was noticeably absent, and I was. surprised at that, wondering if it would arise and catastrophise me. Nothing. Just excitement and anticipation of an open road adventure. Early I was, of course, and took my place with the other Earlies in Lane One. The sea was a blue pancake with a couple of sailors already canvassed up to catch the little breeze. Waiting is no problem for me. I have learned how to wait like a pro and over decades of husband, children, guests, oldies, dodgy vehicles and stubborn animals. Noticing a friend pull up in the car behind, I got out to chat, share news, have a laugh. See you on the boat, I chirruped, bright as a wren, as the ticketmaster appeared to point his pinger thing at our QR codes, whatever the hell that means. Loading now, and I strap up, push the start button. Nothing. Again. Nothing. On my screen it says I must hold up the start button to release the steering wheel. This has happened before, and, come to think of it, quite a lot, lately. I obey and I pray, as Miss Pixty makes no sound, like she dead. I tell the behind me cars to pass me by, feeling very spiritually damp, and continue pushing buttons and praying as I watch all the cars load onto the boat, even the standbys. I am doomed. I also look ridiculous, well, we do, me and Miss P, alone in this vast empty space, and the ferry pulls out on time. My heart is in my boots. I have a meet with my son first, then a journey to other family and from what I could remember, this space on any boat was the only one today.

I and me need a word. One of us is panicking, the other smartarse, smartarsing. All shall be well, she says, calm as you like, to heart thumping me now flicking through the mini manual for a solution. My brain is on over-rush. Who do I call to sort my car? The AA on the island is actually far enough away to be extra terrestrial, many hours between us, and that’s only if the good man is free to come. The screen tells me my remote control needs a new battery. I have a remote control? Calming, and with the gentle guidance of the extremely handsome ticketmaster, I read that, if I hold the remote control (the key, for goodness sake) against the steering column whilst pushing the start button up, a message will go to Mini HQ and they will ignite my engine. Good flipping lord. Where is Mini HQ btw? I obey, the engine starts and I swear Miss P chuckles, a sort of throaty giggle. I’ll talk to you later, I say. About what, says the ticketmaster who looks about 19 and of the caring sort. Ah, not you, my car. O…K… he grins, adding, I’ll change your ticket for the next boat, due about an hour. I relax and pull forward to the top of Lane One, a huge smile on my face.

And, I congratulate myself. I did not panic. I found help, found a way, called my kids, felt no rise of anxiety, nothing more than oh bugger and that one is always sortable, all swash and buckle, like being threatened with a plastic sword. All, is, I concede to the smartarse, well. It thinks me.

I know I have been working a lot on perspective of late, just thinking about thoughts, the emotions they arise, the knee-jerks of old. I wanted change, hence the work. At each and any rise of anxiety, I notice it, and we have a chat. Thing is, if given clearance to develop, a little nothing much can grow into a monster, blocking out the light, the way forward invisible. It also brings indigestion, wobbly legs, a reminder of personal past failures and a sense of being quite pathetic and a mega wimp. It also brings in the ‘shoulds’. I should be able to do this, sort this, get over this, work this out, get through this, overcome this, change this, all followed by a slump of the shoulders and the turn into defeat and punishment. Well to hell with that damn nonsense! I know who I am, and so does the delightful ticketmaster, #bonkers. I have lived through many real and many imagined disasters and, on reflection, was good in a crisis, despite the fact that all my organs changed places for a few moments, unbalancing me somewhat. Missing one ferry, meeting kindness and support, my travel plans altered for an hour or two – absolutely not a disaster. Perspective is everything at such times. What ifs get blown away, adventure beckons. And, if I am honest, I feel proud of myself. I can do this, whatever the ‘this’ is, not only with my innate strength, both mental and physical (that’s the work), but more, with humour and curiosity.

The journey was a doddle. Roads were clear, sun shone merrily, having banished the dithering of both cirrus and cumulus, and I arrived safely. Yes I had to do the remote-to-steering colum thing, a few times, and yes, my heart did flutter each time, but we got here, to a family welcome. Then, my little granddaughter googled something, told me I needed a new battery, found one and all is well.

Smartarse is right, again.

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Island Blog – Nature and Form

I felt overwhelmed yesterday. Stuff came in, calls and wotwot, like a collision. I am not good at that, this, it. I confound at dawn, no, earlier, because the beloved old frickin dog wakes me at o400 when I am finally asleep, btw. She means no ill. I know this, deal with the rag of this, and she still rises me with a smile as she squeaks and dances around my sleeping form.

Form. We all love this. It has a geometric shape, can solve an equation, can create a whole frickin building. I love form too. But today had no form, nothing form about it. My overwhelm took over. it was a spread across a peat bog. All those acres of apparent nothing. Generally speaking, I love the nothing, the gasp of cold air, walking out there into the sparkle of ice.

It thinks me. I take me and the dancing squeaker out for a walk, feel the cold hit my face like an energising gift, stopped to hear the thrust of an incoming tide and looked up at the skinny branches cutting the sky. I watched my little dog bounce through the ice-crisped leaves, saw he pick up a stick, long as a fence post and a definite threat to my legs when she scoots into the lead. I chuckled and felt the expulsion of air blast out all the overwhelm. Among the beauty of nature, things simplify. Fallen bracken stalks create a twinkling mound beside the track, all covered in ice and flashing in the sunlight as I move onwards. Ghost trees stand like sentries either side of me, and through the evergreen pines, the sky is a cerulean blue. Tiny clouds, miles above me, look like they’re painted on with a wide and wet brush. Ahead, snow clouds puff up behind the hills, a sort of ariel bonfire, ice white, sun-tipped. Will it snow, I wonder?

I meet nobody at all. Cutting through the woods, I look to the beyond. It seems to go on forever, and however hard I stare at it, this beyond, I will never get to the end of it. I realise that I have been staring at the ground too much, scurrying like a frightened mouse through my small concerns, and allowing them to create my state of mind. I watch a sea eagle slide through the sky, wings wide, slow and easy, and decide I need to get myself up there, to let my small concerns remain on a page or in. my diary, small they are, very small, and I am at liberty to alter or change any or all of them. I am unsure driving in icy conditions so, once I am home again and have rebooted the fire, I call to organise new appointments for a hair cut, an MOT, a shingles jag appointment. I settle to some sewing, eat lunch, switch off the phone and go upstairs for an hour to rest. Perhaps I will sleep a little. The walk into the wilds has given me form perspective, as it always does. Always.

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Island Blog – An Overwhelm in Perspective

When an overwhelm crashes in like a tsunami, I notice a shutdown in me. I didn’t expect it, to be honest. I believed I would ride the wave of it with my upbeat and positive attitude to life in general, but I had not considered that a threat to my own little life would feel so, well, overwhelming. The walls closed in, that’s what happened, gradually, once the reality of a cancer threat grew horns and fangs and claws. I still thought I was stronger than any monster, but that is not the truth. I battle with thoughts I don’t want to develop. I win, minute by minute, and it is exhausting. Knocked down, get up again, knock down again, get up. I need all my compromised reserves of energy to simply answer questions or to decide on the simplest of choices. This doesn’t feel like me at all, but I am not me, not the me I was just weeks ago. Did I fall off a cliff, or into a new world full of aliens and dangers unknown? Too quick, too quick for me to gather up my sense of humour, my ability to find my way out of any maze, my self belief, confidence, identity. They look down on me, or over at me, across the divide of space, of water, of air. I call to them, but they are also afraid, unsure of our connection. I am still me, I whisper, but their heads shake, No, you are not. We don’t recognise you down there, over there, a tapselteerie of bones and muddled thoughts.

In and among my children, my family, I feel strangely disconnected. I feel watched. Of course I am watched. I would be watching any one of them in my position. What to say, how to encourage, how to keep momentum going, how to bring forth distractions, how to kill time in the Wait Zone. It is tough for them, too. Am I hungry? I don’t know. Do you fancy going sailing, out for coffee, into the woods for a walk, or, perhaps to a game of Ludo? I don’t know. Is it Monday, Tuesday, Ash Wednesday or Christmas Eve? I don’t know. All I know is that I have to keep my phone charged, on LOUD, and with me at all times in case of a call from the consultant or the breast cancer nurse. I fight, really fight, against the constant rise of disaster thoughts, day by day, hour by hour. I write something down, then score it out. Foolish thoughts, pointless thoughts. What do you see in your future? someone asks me. I almost hoot with laughter, or I would if I could locate my funny bone. I don’t know. Imagine! they urge, meaning well. I poke about in what I know to be a very vivid imagination. It’s hiding, hibernating, on hold, something like that. The effort involved in such a thought process is way too much. I just want to float.

On a cloud. I dreamed, not so long ago, that I was walking in a wilderness, through unknown territory. I often find myself there in dreams. Tumbleweeds tumble by me, dust and sand fly around my ears and face, rocks thrust up wherever I look, but I am not afraid. Somehow I know I must keep walking, keep aware, not for dangers but for opportunities. I walk and walk until, ahead of me, I notice an area of smokey white fluff on the ground. Nearer I come, and nearer, until I recognise a landed cloud. Bizarre, yes, but not in this land. I walk around it, touch its chill, my fingers floating right through until they disappear completely. Barefoot (always) I nudge it with my toes. It lifts ever so slightly at the edge. More solid than my fingers think. Gingerly, I step onto it, moving into the middle. It holds me, easily. Then, a few moments later, and once we have got to accept each other, the cloud begins to lift. Slowly, gently, steadily, no rocking nor threat to unbalance me. Higher and higher we float, until the tumbleweeds look like dust balls, the rocks like pin pricks in a wide open desert. There is no sand in my face, no land to trip me up, no big rocks to halt my traverse. In short, there is a new perspective.

Then I awaken and think. There is what I can see. There is much more I cannot see. And then, there is that place in between where I get to choose how I see what I see, and what I see are my self belief, my confidence and my identity on that cliff edge, right in my flight path. It is easy to grab them as we float by, and I do. Then we all go down to breakfast.

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Island Blog – About Packing

I’m packing, unpacking, packing, unpacking. What is this insecurity when it comes to packing? I know #sensiblehead that I always travel light, cannot be lugging a heavy suitcase, just will not. All I need for this trip are the basics, but which of the basics should I take? What ‘frock’ mood will I be in? Will I feel chilly away from home pre hospital consultation, thus requiring a warm jumper, and which warm jumper? Needless to say this is a ridiculous load of valdaree. My sister will lend. I am away for a few days, not for months. The space between consultation, and whatever surgery is agreed upon, is likely to be weeks, if not months. I can borrow a warm jumper. It thinks me. When I pack for Africa, I barely bother about what to take. This, I decide, is because I am going to a wonderful hot place and for a holiday. Perhaps that’s it, the nail hit on the head. My insecurity may well be more related to the reason for this island parting than it is to the articles of clothing I eventually decide to put into my small suitcase. I decide to walk.

Nature has a way about her, a sort of head clearing re-jig into perspective. She laughs at me, or the trees do as they sway and dance in this big wind. It’s from the South East, I think, and yet warm. The heavy rains of the morning have lowered the boughs and I need to duck my way along the narrow track. I listen to the swish of movement, tut as I notice some fool has hacked off a living branch that bows overhead. Not, obviously, over their head. Hack it off! Why? Just bend your knees and do your body a big favour instead. That’s what I say. The whole shape of this beautiful beech tree is now out of shape, those flowing limbs, the skirt of her frock, perfectly formed like a brilliant green ball gown, now damaged. I harrumph. She, however, still dances on to the melody of the wind and it thinks me, again.

The fairy woods are quiet in between the showers, and the woodland floor, a carpet of needles and fallen leaves, is almost dry, such is the protection of the canopy. Three oak seedlings nestle at the foot of a huge fir tree, over two hundred years of huge fir tree, its girth one I am happy not to have myself. I doubt the oaks will grow much, not in that shade, not without some life-giving light. I look up through the boughs to see speckles of sky, a bit of blue, yes, but mostly careening clouds that don’t stay long enough to give me their shape. The oaks will have passed through a Jay. I didn’t know that until I did. A Jay will bury an acorn in a safe place, aka, in the lap of a huge fir tree, and inside the fairy woods, and then forget where it hid said acorn. Thus, the acorn grows in quite the wrong place. I decide that I am allowing the insecurity in me to grow in quite the wrong place. I move it to the light on the other side of the woods and watch it whipped away by the wind.

All the trees are waving, shedding leaves already, for Autumn begins early on the island. I crush sycamore leaves underfoot and think of seasons, how they keep coming, and going, allowing each other to take the stage, sometimes after strong resistance. Winter is the best at resistance, the grumpy sh*t, holding tight with an icy grip, thwacking us with the blast of a wind that obviously got expelled for bad behaviour and which now sells its strength to the highest bidder, like a vigilante. But we are not there yet and Winter is asleep so don’t make a noise in case you stir it from slumber. For now, it is tempest and calm, suddenly hot and suddenly cold, soaking wet or burning dry, an island usual. And there is something so real about it, the changes we humans need to adapt to, and quickquick, because our world is changing faster than many of us are prepared to accept. Turbulence is to be expected.

Makes me feel a whole lot better about packing.

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Island Blog – Taradiddle Tapselteerie

I like an oppositional perspective on life and deem it apposite in this instance. I also love words and playing with them, using them here and there like stepping stones, no, more like hopscotch. I realise I might leave a reader behind, baffled, bored, thinking me an arrogant wordy nerd. I bow to this. But my love of words knows no bounds even if I have to dictionary a whole lot of them. They come into my head just like that. Just like Taraddidle and Tapselteerie and then I must needs ruffle through everything up to the T pages to find their meaning. Why did, do, they come to me, all random and naked of meaning? I believe I hear the music in them, the beat, and not the memory of English Language A level, which I never took because I was unceremoniously expelled prior to the exam.

The whole oppositional perspective on life thingy is easier to explain, I think, even if redemption is not necessarily in sight. And here it is. I am not a balanced type of woman, nor was I, even as a girl. I am either on the ceiling or deep underground. It is exhausting, but, nonetheless, it is me, it is I, I am me and I am I, and if I could just get myself clear on that I just might find a home. And suddenly this knowledge laughs me because it tells me something important. I am already home and this home is me. I can make it just as I choose. I can high fence it or let everyone in. I can pepper my garden with wildflowers or let it all die. I can paint the stucco, decorate the garden furniture, even sass up the wheelie bins, or I can not bother all. The choice is mine alone, me and I.

Distilling this down to that moment when the fierce bubbling calms to a reduction, I see something. I see the imbalance of life and not just my own. I know for certain that many others present as ‘fine’ when they are anything but I get it, for who wants to invite delving questions demanding answers we don’t want to give? And it is……oh, hold, the cliche words rise in me, the ‘it’s okay not to be okay’ for which I immediately apologise. So what words do we need when we need them? Well, probably none. We are up, we are down. It’s not a good thing to pretend we are balanced when we are not but if we keep it all in it does us no service.

To acknowledge Taraddidle and Tapselteerie has worked for me. I feel the beat of them, hear their music. It’s my ladder up when the snake takes me down because I am not one, not the other, but both.

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Island Blog 58 – Through a Glass

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You know you’ve got it right when you leave someone feeling better than they did before you came.  I hope I can do that for another but I know for sure someone can do it for me, and not by trying to. It’s all about your heart being right.  I have spent some time observing and reflecting on this and know for certain that if a person is the same on the inside as they are on the outside, then there is no fog of confusion around them.  Let’s bring this into focus…. If I wake in a frightful grump and want to bash anyone who gets up my nose, then let me be honest about it.  Let me not answer, when I hear the nervous question from a shadowy corner of the terrified room, ‘FINE!’ to their ‘What’s wrong?’  thus creating a gale force wind in a confined space and sending everyone to the Fire Exit doors on winged feet. Everyone loses this way.  I who breathed fire am now extinguishing the blaze with copious salty tears and they are outside in the fresh air wondering what needs doing in the garden for the rest of the day, and still none of us knows what’s wrong.   If I had the courage to admit my failing, which is how I really see it, and to pre-empt the ‘what’s wrong’ question (one I deeply hate) by stepping up and telling it out, I would probably have been off on a lunch date by now.  Instead, I can hardly move in the kitchen for elephants and you, who were blasted forcibly outside, are now whistling tunelessly in a most irritating manner, one which will eventually make the whole thing your fault entirely. When someone comes to stay or just to play, they bring good intentions, as a rule, but they also wear their own lives about them, their own troubles and concerns, and if they have never learned to address them in private, to shake hands with each one and listen to what it has to say, these troubles and insecurities will spill out from the darkness and into the room at the most inconvenient times.  If a couple visit and he doesn’t like the way she corrects him, and this happens, her anger will rise and surprise us all.  Now she appears domineering and rude and he is upset and nobody wants to hear the end of the story which by now is quite forgotten.  The root of this lies in childhood, as it always does, and she thinks she has grown up and left childish things in the way back when.  If, however,  she took the steps to walk back in time, to find and recognise, admit to and release the way she felt when she was publicly ‘corrected’ (thus inferring she was a silly twit) it would never ever rise again. We are human and deliciously so.  We are awkward and clumsy in our loving, but life is not something that happens to us.  We happen to Life and therein we have considerable levels of control.  We know who we want to be, to whom we aspire.  We are all basically good people, kind generous-hearted people, but we are much mistaken if we think we can float through and be accepted warts and all.  If raising children requires the employment of intelligent energy and dynamic thinking, and if our jobs require the same to a different degree, do we not realise that our own self demands no less?   The wonderful thing about the inside and the outside of each one of us, is that when there is a mis-match, everyone can see it.  Whatever we might say, it’s who we are that speaks louder and with greater clarity. If we have done the inner work, really paid attention to our own face in the mirror instead of hardly bothering to look and expecting others to allow it, we won’t have to think about what to say next.   ‘Whatever is in your heart –  that is what will spill over.’ In my childhood, there was a woman who made out she was something she was not.  She made my mother feel frumpy and old-fashioned which could not have been further from the truth. Don’t mind her, my granny said.  She’s all fur coat and no knickers.’

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Island Blog 45 – Small Giants

Island Blog 45I am an old fashioned sort of girl.

Big statement that.  Sounds like it defines me, but don’t stop there if you please.  I can be new fashioned in many ways when it suits me.

The thing about Big Statements is that they can confuse.  For instance, if I were to say ‘That man over there is an irascible old bore’  and you didn’t know anything about him, you could think that being irascible, old and boring is the sum of the man.

Which it most definitely is not.

Nobody is that simply wired.

I love language, the rise and fall of a phrase, especially, in the way my dad used to deliver them for maximum impact.  He used short words now and again, when he was playing the irascible old bore and the tonic water wasn’t cold enough, but in the main, he made language sing and he taught me well how to communicate.  This is not to say that in order to communicate we need to be graduates in English, or Scottish, or any other language, for that matter.  Words in the wrong mouths however cleverly phrased and delivered, can be as welcome as a fire in a paper factory, and as destructive.

In the world of technology, this new crazy fast non-human way of communicating, I find the old fashioned girl in me lurching into the foreground.  I know it is the new way to tell out our latest product, opinion, story, but it is not the only way.  We do not need to drown our voices in an ocean of electronics.  Deep inside every one of us, is the need for human contact, for the soothing velvet sound of a loving voice, for the kindly helpful efficiency of a stranger on the other end of a telephone.

No electronic recorded voice can do that for us.  We need voice to voice in order to reach a new place together.  Yes, a recording can guide us through a button-pushing and monotonous process as we plod our way to submitting our white meter reading for the quarter, but oh what joy it is, what heart-lifting warmth fills us when a real person says those loving human words ‘Mary speaking, How may I help you?’  I can almost hear the angels in the background, as she pauses for my reply.

I remember meeting my first robot.  She (was it?) answered with tick-tack words and no music to her phrasing.  I thought, this’ll never catch on.

So, Big Statement.  I am an old fashioned girl in the world of Communication.

I can also dance you off the floor when the DJ racks up the beat, and I can weep when Piglet gets blown off his feet in the Hundred Acre Wood.