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Island Blog – Palimpsest, Ingress and Egress

I watched ospreys today, fishing in the sea-loch on a slack tide. To be honest, I didn’t see them actually fishing, too many bent-back hazels in the way, but I did hear the shrieks, warning shrieks, a rasping ‘bugger off’ I hadn’t heard before. The gulls were wheeling, all high-pitched and taking up all the air, filling it with the squeals of schoolgirls on a home bus. My alert alerted. Damn hazels, always in the way of seeing clear, even when naked. Now that’s a talent, I thought. The chaos continued as I moved on up the track, my eyeballs almost falling out with all the futile looking. I knew there was trouble down there, somewhere. then I saw the lift of huge wings, the power of that 8/9 foot flapation, three of them with gulls like midges pursuing them. Gulls don’t even fish, I said out loud as I almost fell off a rock, my eyes, still fixed, now rolling. Creatures just don’t get it, do they, although they do. These huge birds, birds of prey are floating about like cruise ships in the skinny waters of a tidal flow and the little boats just don’t want them here. They win in the end. Amidst a great diatribe of birdswear words, the ospreys lift and slide away, cutting through the sky, hardly flapping.

I would like to hardly flap. I walked on, could feel my heart rise into a rap sort of beat as I re-met the ordinary. It thinks me. We get these bajonkers lifts, insights into otherness, and in the during of it, we shock solid. Then, when the gasp is done and the spin is over, there we are on the same track, in the same place, as if we never just visited Narnia. It’s a gift. Unwrapped it goes on forever like Pass the Parcel, when the size of the thing makes all eyes sparkle with anticipation until, at the very last a very small dinosaur, or car, or lip salve appears. Is it a disappointment? Yes, sometimes. It’s life and a learning. Tough but real. What is learned then is vital.

Our own tidelines are written over many, many tides, some when we were just learning and later when we are most vulnerable because of that learning. Thinks. Do gulls just harry, parry with and infuriate other birds just because they have beaks enough and don’t quite remember why they have them all, or are they just bullies? I stop myself there because I can’t believe anything or anyone is just just. I know the palimpsest of old, and I also know the truth of such a laid out truth, that it is constantly rubbed out and amended. And that’s a good thing. The ingress of old thinking, the restrictions, particularly for women but in no way exclusively, seeps like damp over a gazillion decades. But, and there is definitely a but here, we all have the power to egress, to say NO and then to take action.

Those big birds chose to lift, knew their power, held their voice, just lifted. I recommend it, no matter the gulls, the bullies, the ingress, the old rules.

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Island Blog – Under Shouty Clouds

I watch visitors wander by, walking into the Tapselteerie magic, or just heading for their rental for a week or two. They seem happy, wave to me, or, more correctly, I wave to them and they respond. Not all do, heads down, even though I know from my goldfish bowl, that they have clocked me. It wonders me, even as I absolutely know the head down, don’t make eye contact thing of not just Englandshire, but of many big places wherein people have forgotten their place, their identity within a dynamic that actually needs independenties. I’m amazed I was ‘allowed’ to create that one. What I am saying here is that we have become a smudge, a number and why the hec are we doing that when who we are is fire and water, sky, smoke, wild, intelligent, vocal, skilled, powerful? I get ‘polite’, no gawping, all that, but it does sadden me somewhat. These visitors, many of them, have never witnessed the wide sky, the lack of intrusive noise, the call of owls at night, the black sky when the sun has blown out, the stars. There is no threat here beyond inner fear, and that’s a whole different thing. I won’t even go there.

The clouds are shouty today. A collusion of confluence, a bumping which may have upset the ears of the upper eschalons. We can’t hear it in the down below of down below. It just manifests in a bout of tooth grinding, or of over-the-top outrage in a car queue, or ditto in the wrong sandwich for lunch, or of someone arriving late for a meeting, so hefty are the pressures of down below. It thinks me. If we could, if we just could, for one day, decide that the pressure is pressure? That’s all. And, then, detach. Who am I? Who do I want to be? Any response will be inchoate, unformed, but I know that beginning. I remember asking this, mid five kids, mid Tapselteerie, sunk, or so I thought, beneath the pressure of many clouds. I want to be someone different, to see things differently, to go beyond the limitations perceived and learned from before.

We might see ‘finite’. We don’t need to. More and more we subverse our own story. I know I write this beyond the wild of influence, watching more those who become a smudge, and wanting to remind them of the rebels who changed so much, eventually. We need them now. Not drunk nor drugged, not hiding away, but here. Right here, under shouty clouds.

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Island Blog – Even When

There are times, I confess, when I am not proud of people. We islanders know it’s coming, the influx of visitors, and that those folk who arrive bringing all their issues with them do not represent the whole of island-hopping mankind, but the few can spoil it for the many. Since expected accommodation standards have elevated to 5 star, no matter what cottage nor house a visitor might pay for, at equally elevated prices, the reality of skinny single track roads, the paucity of supermarkets. the angst that arrives within each big-ass four-wheel drive, complete with bike racks, canoes atop, arrives too. I meet you on my drive to the harbour town, through the glen, through any glen, peppered with cattle and calves, with sheep and lambs, with cyclists, and I do shake my head. I’m thankful for Radio Two to calm me with tunes as you, the few, continue until we are both stuck in a hard place. No, not a hard place, a skinny, blobby, fall-off-the-edge,soggy place when your wide passing place is just a wee scoot behind that big black ass of yours. Oh, but you can’t reverse. I forgot. Let me shimmy and jimmy my way around two corners and let me wave with a smile. But do you return the wave?

We work here. We also need you, to fluff up our economy, to buy our builders, plumbers, sparkies, cleaners, servers, cafe and restaurant owners, hoteliers, guest houses, yes, we need you. Our winters are way longer than yours. When you are back in the hopeful warmth of your earning and your sweetly safe home, in a city, all without friendship and community, after you have complained of one dirty pot in the house you enjoyed big time for a week and left in a 6 hour mess, after you demanded space and questioned a slightly dodgy entrance, a slight wobble in a decking, spare a thought for the work we put in to make sure that you have a wonderful holiday next time winter goes. Because we do care, we absolutely do. We just ask respect for that about which you have no clue. We will always do our best. even when you are careless.

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Island Blog – Passerine Birds

They’re here now, the passerines, lifting and lighting up bird feeders, trees, shrubs and gardens. Each morning begins a new bud, a slight of colour, pink, yellow, green, buds bursting like pregnant women into new life. A bird lands, the stem bounces, a confluence of energy, just for a moment, but it is enough. Connection is an imprint made, the duplicity fixed in time. Up there, in the wild sky, whether cloud brown with incoming rain, or cloud white as puffballs against a still slightly icy blue, whooper swans seek rest on their way south, or is it north; various geese honk by, all hoot and panic and in perfect formation; thrushes sing from the tippy top of any tall tree, talking a load of shite, all sqeaks and burps and farts as if one bird makes a whole orchestra.

We wake earlier. Afternoons are actually afternoons, instead of a snippet which goes rudely dark over a cup of tea and a biscuit. It is, as everything is, just a passerine thing, for changes come, unbidden, unbound, just as life should be, if we understand change in that way, in the only way to be honest. I’ve lived long enough to know that this is how it is, no matter how much we may attempt a singular annihilation of such a limitation. Acceptance is all. And that means what? Living every day, yes, as if it is your last. Yes, indeed. But that may be too much. I remember laughing my head off at such crap, once, when I was 30/40 and sinking under the weight of business demands, of children’s needs, of a husband who tried to be what I needed, but didn’t really get it, of collies needing feeding, of muddy feet, of guests, of phone calls asking me to be sure of the best day to see whales in the wild and in good weather. Of so very much more.

I’m thinking of Lizzie. Her funeral soon. How can this be? She, already 72, but only just before me. I am alive for mine, and it feels wrong somehow. I don’t make sense of that, nor try to. I am all about living life each day. You know that. There’s a however and a but in that, neither of which I can explain. She has been in my dreams, her naughty smile. Although I was the one who took the fall as a teen, the instigator, the trouble maker, I must tell you that Lizzie was right beside me. Yes, I was mouthy, a leader, but no leader is worth anything without a Second. Lizzie was calm to my lunacy. She was so gentle beside my absolute fury at absolutely everything and everyone. I wonder at her commitment to me. Most friends ran away and judged. Ditto their parents. My poor mother. I do, now, recognise that.

Now she is gone, sharp and sudden, sort of. A shock indeed. A Passerine Bird of multi colours incorporating musical brilliance, people skills which gathered in choirs and friends and moments and times. We didn’t connect a lot once I left Englandshire for the Island, but she is still in my dreams. How extraordinary to have that impact on someone. Like the passerine bird on the branch of a budding shrub. She bends me, we bounce a bit together, and, then, she is gone.

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Island Blog – Susurration, Perhaps

Outland, Outsea, this unpredictable giant of salt water, gluttoning on random rivers, streams and a million other acolyte trickles of water, bursting from deep, deep within the belly of earth, all desperate to conjoin with the Outsea, the glorious escape from endless confinement. They cannot resist the ancient call, no matter how Man levels and compromises, poisons and redirects them for new housing, for a wrong forestation. No matter the poles thrust deep, no matter the planting of invasive species just because nobody educated us in time. These bodies of water will find a way, however patient they might need to be.

I watch it all through a reach of glass. Gannets slipside a wind I cannot feel, sitting here behind a double shot cappuccino with chocolate sprinkles. I cannot sense the slant and shift as they rise and float so close to an unforgiving granite cliff. Below I notice seaweed flopped over the stony rocktops like mermaid hair. When the tide rolls back in a great big yawn, the patient weed will lift again and float away, always on the move, a survivor in a deeply awkward life. And then cometh another storm, or the oceanic and angry response to the way we humans are making life very difficult for the flow of water, and that weed will look like a victim as it is blattered onto rocks by the fist of gravity and into new places. But don’t be deceived.

Ice white spume froths around the rocks, falling away, back into the green. Under-sea blow sends shadow pulses then takes them away. Catspaws echo each puff of wind, a feisty wind, footsteps. Gulls crowd on a spit of rock, a jagged tooth. They look like jewels from here. A shag stands sentinel right on the end, sea-facing, wings out like a black angel. None of these know I am here, high up on the cliff. watching the wind taunt the water willow, the scraggy grasses, watching the long reach of every wave push across the sand; watching each one retreat, return, repeat. Across the poppling water, the Outlands are clear, striations on their rocky faces. I can count them and see a peppering of cottages, a mast or two, a ship hugging the far shore. The gulls weave a sky web, the gannets dive, the shag stands dark sentry, and up here, behind the double shot cappuccino and that reach of glass, I can hear nothing. Susurration. perhaps.

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Island Blog – Hallo You

I’m watching high-flying gulls cant in the wind. The gusts are punching down here, pushing over open-mouthed wheelies or sending them into a scuttle down the track. Trees bow and bend, whipping around as if to protect themselves as they feint and duck as best they can. Unlike gulls, eagles, anybirds, they, like us, are somewhat pinned to the earth. It thinks me, as I look up at the majesty of soaring. Even the clouds look bonkers, scudding like ducks, splitting from cumulus into wisps of rejection, only to disappear into the white light. What thinks me is this. How strong we are. How tough, how resilient, and how we can rise from any threat to our lives. Even loss. Even bereavement. Even the darkest of times.

This is one of those times for those I know.

I know we aren’t birds, we can’t fly, we can’t lift nor dynamically rise as if not caring a jot, nor would that ever be a human thing. We are grounded, thus we care. We are rooted, thus we care. Enter confusion. Sorry….Confusion. Someone precious was just there, weren’t they? Wasn’t she? Well, hell yes, all loud and bubbling over with music and energy and fabulous clothes and a feisty mouth and the look of a pixie with mischief on her mind. And, now, she has lifted away. I doubt she is flying with gulls, although she may be, but she is definitely a flyer. Where might she be? Over forest, mountain cold, desert hot, or skimming down an ordinary street somewhere, juking, diving, canting, lifting? She leaves so much love down here, a rising warmth to lift her into the whatever. I don’t know what I believe about the next bit, but the big shut-off idea does nothing for me. I’m a hoper. And, as the sun pushes the damn wind away, for now, shining my windows into a murky embarrassment, I smile.

Hallo you, darling you.

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Island Blog – To Be a Lighthouse

I love them. Lighthouses. My something grandfather was Keeper of the Lights around the Inner Hebrides and I didn’t know that until recently. I think of him and my something grandmother, living on Tiree, setting out with supplies and jokes, encouragement and connectivity, bringing food and light and weapons and seeds for the growing, books for the learning, candles for storm lights, patches for waterproofs, new wellies, whisky, tea, and more. In the days when people peopled the stone cylinders of hope and light, where all furniture had to have a rounded back, like old women, and the long days and nights felt like forever, the boat delivery was a glorious landing. In the between it was only us, only me, with my carrot seeds, my tangled beard, for it was a job for men, of course, being the stronger sex, the men who could cope with weeks of storm-blasted isolation, whereas women could never have managed such a thing. Women, who were never asked, might have loved such, and managed just fine had they ever had the chance. A personal trainer, less corsets, less parental control and muscle building excercises, would have proffered the actual chance to show how strong they could be, and which just might have upset the abacus, in a good way.

I hope I have been a lighthouse to my children, and not a boss. All I wanted was to be a light for their own chosen journeys. I want to save turtles on Zakynthos. Goodness! Ok. I want to go to a shaman centre in the Eastern Province of China. Goodness! Ok. I want to move to South Africa. Goodness! Ok. Just three of many. Other parents may have heard, I am gay, trans, I want to be known with another name. I want my baby, even if I am 15. I want to join the circus, I want to be a policeman, a trumpeter, a dancer, a market trader. I get the parental questions, of course I do. But, but, what about your degree in law, politics, medicine? We paid for it, it cost us! This was never our case, but I hear the disappointment. I honestly don’t think their dad, nor I ,ever felt that. This life is tough and tougher for the children of privilege. Expectations can stop easy breathing, so heavy, so limiting. I sincerely and fiercely believe that all those historical corsets have been burned on a bonfire, a red sunset preparing the dark for a sky-thrall, a gasp of freedom in that soft breeze.

To be a parent who really wants to be a lighthouse, who can say, when confounded by a stuttered revelation from a young thing, one who, and I quote, has no idea about life at all, is challenging. There will be sleepless nights and worrying days because we seem to think, wrongly, that we can control our children. Weren’t we children once, with dreams beyonding us from the corsetry of parents? Yes, we were. And what did we want? Acceptance, wisdom, help and a lighthouse.

Be a lighthouse.

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Island Blog – Paucity, Abundance, the Tallyman

It has now been just over four weeks since radiotherapy. Feels like four months, at times, so damn tired am I, and being tired is one hell of a pain in the aspidistra. If, when, I allow myself to indulge in self pity I wander into a day of paucity thinking. Not my thing at all. I don’t do paucity nor any other city, for that matter. I am an abundance thinker, dance being right up there for me. I have danced through apocalyptical landscapes over the years, moving purposefully along and crunching paucity underfoot, en route to heaven knew where, anywhere but there. I believed, and still believe, that moving onwards takes me to the beyond of, not only my skinny et collapso thinking, but also of the barren scape within which I appeared to be currently stuck. This tactic has worked well and still does. But the biggest bore seems to have roosted in my eaves. Tiredness, all day, and not just that neither, or is it either(?) for feeling consistently weary is not cheery, and although I have been told, oftentimes, to be patient, I am an impatient by nature.

Rising from another patchy night, I wheech myself out of bed, physically able still, and I command paucity to get-to-hec as I gather my abundance into a warm dressing gown as I descend the stairs for coffee and, hopefully, dawn. I know that dawn, bless her, will always come, eventually. As I sip the hot strong brew, black, no sugar, I call in the tallyman. Take a seat, I say, let’s count blessings, which we do, as I write them all down. I had breast cancer, which was discovered quite by chance; I had excellent surgery to remove the blight; I have been fully supported by the NHS, family, friends and others who know what cancer feels like, the shock of it, the concerns around it and the recovery therefrom; I live in the most beautiful place, on an island, alone and independent; I am loved by many; I can write, used to sing, can dance (a bit) and have full use of all my important extras; I have life, love life, live life. Now I need more coffee.

By the time dawn has risen with the birds and their glorious singing, my mind is full of abundance, the whining of paucity barely audible. Yes I am tired, yes I am impatient, yes I have lost a considerable portion of self-confidence, yes I am lonely at times, and scared of life, but who isn’t once over the cusp of 70? In other words, let these words float out into the big wide sky, to dissipate like steam. I say that out loud. Then I hear the door open and turn around. The tallyman winks at me as we both watch abundance holding it open for paucity to slink through. The door closes quietly and we all watch the slinker trudge down to the shore, and then disappear.

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Island Blog – The Bog and Lifting

Mostly, I am coloured up and cheerful as a chipmunk. Then comes a day when it is even a pain in the arse to get dressed. I don’t like these days, and they know it, because I can hear them grumbling and muttering each time I push myself on and up. And I do. I think it’s because I know about being in the bowels of a depression and how vicious and controlling it is. Thankfully this time is way back in my past, but the body holds the score and we both remember the control of it, the way invisible octopus arms smothered me, held me down and down some more until I forgot who I was, and why I was. The scars are there somewhere and when the past puts its finger on the trigger, I tense, I remember, and my inner fighter rises, stronger now, powerful, even if I am not. She will protect me but only because I call her up from sleep, and that is the key.

When someone has known the ghastly of a mental bog, the knowing never goes away. But, once lifted from said bog, something rises as a teacher. Do you want to learn, survive, bloom again? If, as in my case, the answer is yes-but, then out comes the sunshine of hope. Yes…..But….? Indeed. The but bit is important because you are up there, Oh Teacher and I am slimy and hopeless and full of self-hatred and remorse. How on earth will those beliefs change? Ah, says the Teacher. Just follow me. And I did, and I learned and I was a keen student. I remember faking cheerful, faking ‘sorted’ because in my day, depression was something to be ashamed of, something imagined. ‘This is all in her head’ they said, and they were right, but the dismissive way it was whispered in corridors, was not right at all. As if I had manufactured these days of darkness and fear, just for attention.

I am not depressed now. I have learned much over the years, discovered many wonderful inroads into intelligent and compassionate support, walked them, learned the routes to feeling worthwhile, important, valued. T’is a goodly map. I also know, and believe in, the tactics for arising from the bog. I understand that the bog is still there, but I have found footholds. I know where the Pull Grass grows, that which I can grab a hold of, should I slide down. I have learned the weather patterns around a possible slide, and to avoid going out at such times. And, avoidance tactics are pivotal. On days such as this, when I can’t be arsed et wotwot, I am careful to do exactly what I want to do. I may cancel a meeting if it insecures me. I may decide to stay behind my four stone walls, light a fire, read or listen to an audio book. After all, who is judging me for my hiding, my declining, my indulgence? Only me. The critics of my past are long dead, all of them, parents, teachers, husband, so those voices are just dust in the wind. I know this now.

But, when such days wake me, confabulate me, I cannot dismiss them. A day is a day, after all, hours of it. But I can cock a snook at it, swish my sword, say I Am Important, I Have a Choice, and, most importantly, I Am Me (and that’s just dandy). I may not do this or that, those things my imaginary ‘yous’ keep banging on about, and, even if it feels odd at first, the more I do this, the bigger I grow and the further I walk from that damn bog. And my judges.