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Island Blog – Remember

I’m fingering through my ancient Thesaurus to find a different, a more appropriate for this ‘remember’, and also laughing,hand to mouth as I see more of this agist tome. Once-this-was-it, but such definitions have no place in the today of today. However this book is my friend, falling apart, yes but one which has seen me through every angsty write. The pages are coffee coloured, the seams twitching to release any page. It’s a right combobble to keep this book together. It learns me, and also divides me big time from the awfulness of what was once acceptable. Moving on.

My search is for the word, Remember. Interesting that, in this old book, the page takes me to, and in order, Sage, Fool, Sanity, Insanity,Madman, and then Memory. We were of our time, not that I concur with most of the sequence. What looks likes no was a judgement in those days, but has no place in the now. Back to my point. I am not sentimental about deaths, but I find myself remembering my dad today, his would-be birthday tomorrow. I’m listening to fingers on jazz pianos, hearing his, as we did all through childhood. We learned the 12 bar blues, we knew the up and down, the hesitation, the pull and thrust of pretty much everything jazz. Our dad dazzled everywhere he went, even through the war and for the troops who so needed our dad in the horrors of Burma, back then. I can see him, cigar in mouth, brandy or whisky beside, that smile, that invitation. Once he agreed to play, the room was his, and so were we.

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Island Blog – Catastrophise, Dramatise, Realise

I am altogether not sure about the z and s in the spellings of these words. It was always s in my day, a zillion yonks ago, and there’s a thing. Zillions were Millions back then and that was beyond most everyone even then. So I play with the ‘zee’ and the ‘ess’ for godsake. Language changes after all, and I don’t know what that means, not neither. Moving on……..I have been full of thinks these past quiet times, and not just thinks, although the thinks-thing is of value, in that it, the think, thinks me. I had the eyeball check, all ok in that nothing will heal my left eyeball. My right is right as right. I was always right oriented, not that I need to be right, but my right side is my strength. Writing or any other thing, I do with my right. But I need my left, to educate me. So, my leftie is a tad compromised? We can deal with this, the two of us. And there’s the thing, again.

The clouds louer, growl, hover, push down, closing the sky. That sounds so like a sentence, but it is nothing of the sort. We know clouds out here, in the hawk spit of a volcanic finality, where it landed, where we live. It rains and loud, like a growing out of all sound, even the meen of a liquidiser, conversation stalled, loud, that loud. The Western isles clouds move like queens out on the raz. They come with punch and independence and consequence. I have known these trixy clouds for decades. We have had many conversations. They have guided me through lambing, sailing, hanging out the washing, choosing time to walk, to lead the horses, the bull, the milk cow to a field, or out of it. A keek at them clouds, and a wee question, sometimes a negotiation, and we have worked our way through the days.

I know that weather has changed, but for those of us who knew this was coming, it is no surprise. I know I have the benefit of longtime association with clouds, and intuition around weather patterns, but anyone can learn this. I am no scientist, no clever student. I just know that we can catastrophise and dramatise. We can hide, pretend it isn’t happening, but it is. And, happily we can realise and research and be aware as much as possible. And life is so beautiful. I hear at times, those who hold on to what was, the summers we knew, the way fungi should not be rising just now, what happened? That pointless question.

We can catastrophise, dramatise, or realise, and get going with how it is, how things are. It is a beautiful understanding, and an opening in the clouds, and more, an opportunity. Roses are fabulous this year, the sun blast sudden and as a real head turn, the random warmth like a mother, colours rise like fires in the grey, raindrops diamond, people laugh at the turn of it all. There is so much for the ones who notice, who engage.

Dont’ miss this. Realise.

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Island Blog – Diversology, Variogram and Stick with me on this and I believe in You

I love wordish, the play on words, the flux I create as I challenge old meanings, long laid down and probably long dead, but still with blow, like bubbles when you slide below the surface and lift breath after someone has gifted you a bath experience. In your blow, you create a new map. It may not last for long, but, just for that moment, as you watch the dynamic shift and slip away, you see something new.

I find words, they come to me like darts, random, and, it seems they feel arrogant enough not to explain, so I have to Dictionary them. And, I am finding, having invented at least two words, once challenged by a magazine editor, and which are now confident within the restrictions of the Oxford or the Collins, that definitions limit. Language is an endless shift, and that, for me, is how it must be.

So, these words, Diversology – understanding diversity, inclusion and equity in the classroom. I, and my peers would have loved that light in our day. We are the survivors of none of that, back in the days of England ruling half the damn world, and not very kindly.

Variogram, another word that came to me. Broken down into my simple speke made me thinkalot. ‘In spatial statistics the theoretical variogram, denoted, is a function describing the degree of spatial dependence of a spatial random field or stochastic process.’ I am engaged, big time, with the word spatial, and it is mentioned twice, as if space from another actually has a name. We all need space and it is not a given, I have learned over decades. A singular soul has to demand it.

Stochastic. How weird am I! This is my favourite and you may see why because there is a freedom here, and the stand tall of every one of us, the broken, the lost, the abused, the confused, deserves recognition, however wild, according to the dictionnaires of our life.

‘Stochastic – having a random probability distribution or pattern that may be analysed statistically…..’ aka following old patterns, old controls. (read on)

‘……but may not be predicted precisely. ‘Hallelujah! We can all rise from the old, the old ways, the old words, the old meanings. We can. We just have to have that tiny bubble lift of courage, that one glimpse of our own map, to step up and out, a heart beating like a flutterby, feet unsure, fear like a huge overwave, and say No. Or Yes.

Even as I write this, I feel the sharps of this writing privilege. I know it isn’t easy, in fact it may feel impossible, at first, but I do know some of you, many, have recognised that your one life is not ok and who have said this No, Yes, thing.

So, I would say, on this lovely summer’s evening, in my long life, if I could take away the struggle for you, I would. But I cannot. Maybe all I can do is say, hey, hallo you. I believe in you, even if you don’t.

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Island Blog – I Can Do This

I heard from the surgeon and all is gone, for now. No chemo, just radiotherapy in the new year. The three cancer buggers, all small, have been removed plus three lymph nodes, all of those free of cancer. A precautionary tale. My African son flew over to be with me for the aftermath, which wasn’t ‘math’ at all, and we were cavorted back to the island by my eldest. Prior to that I was with my sister who made me feel important and loved, as we went for pre op needlepoint and an information overload, well, for me, with my head tucked under my wings and my brain like spaghetti, but not for her.

Then, home, back to my beloved island. Not mine, of course, but this wild place homes me, grounds me, safes me. However, for over two weeks I was not alone. Africa was here, and the sharing, the kitchen dances inside his arms, loved me up. I don’t know how long it has been since I felt that warmth, enjoyed that spontaneity. In a loooooooong marriage, things get boring, disappointing and, although the light of love can spark, it is just now and then, or even just then.

So, he is gone. Back home now with his lovely wife and animals and into 35 degrees just like that. I spoke with him today. Too hot, he says. I cloak up to walk the four legs, blustering on, like Winnie the Pooh, beneath wind-creaked limbs, big enough to take out a whole mansion, the leaves flipping around my face, and with mud underfoot. And I snort at the ‘too hot’ thing.

I miss him. I miss hearing his footfall as he rises from sleep. I miss his voice, the sight of him filling a doorway, our shared laughter, the play of words between us over a scatter of candles. I miss the feeling of complete safety because he was here.

I am here. I am alone. It is winter. I am IT. And I can do this.

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Island Blog – Did You?

Love someone to the bitter end? I don’t mean death. There is an end in a relationship, one we really wan’t to ignore, wishing it away, and, yet not. We know our hearts. We know this. What we find wanting is courage, and, in my experience, it will lack, be wanting, unless just one bigger, more confident and older person, one we trust, has told us we have courage, and, more, that it is ours and that we can pull it up as a new employee. That was a long sentence, I know. However, according to my English language tutor, I am alowed this dance across the floor of regimental grammar, but only if there are well placed commas, hyphons, apostrophies, colons and semicolons and wotwot. Sounds like surgery.

So, did you? I did. When love breaks into shards of itself, at the time when we are placed in a home, placed in a role, sugged down in routine, money worries, debts, fears, routines, over many years, we may become a sludge of ourselves. We used to dance to Footloose, did we not, like yesterday? We grabbed chances, opportunities, we laughed loudly and wild. All this does not end in a Full Stop. No Way. Living life to the full is not only for the young, in fact, the young just do that living thing without many thinks, when the biggest chafe may be from parental jurisdiction. The next bit is supposed to set itself in place, which probably means this young person with Footloose dancing in their hearts has to ‘settle’. Hmmmm

I didn’t. I did try, honestly, but I am a wild card. It is not a comfortable persona. So, I loved him, until not. However, there was a strong historical build of companionship, and it worked. Much as I would have loved one of those big loves I see in my sisters, it wasn’t for me. And, there is a learning in that. My children (I can say that now without a reminder that they are ‘ours’, which, for me was a given) are strong, loving, kind, giving, astute, intelligent people. I have no idea how they burst from the turbulence of their parent’s breaks, but they did and I am so proud of them, just the surviving bit, never mind the rest.

So, are you at the bitter end? I’m saying nothing. You know your heart, Scary, yes, (another bloody comma) but this is the one life. Relationship, work, something. Could be neighbourhood (ridiculously long word btw) could be any connection that is fighting your heart. Courage. We don’t feel it, do we, nor know it for we don’t remember who taught it to us? In our childlife we watched compliance, obeisance, bowed shoulders, quiet voices, servitude. But we can change that, and not just for us, for our children and their children.

That’s a whole load of thinks. Happy Friday my friends.

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Island Blog – Ebb and Flow, Days of Minutes

This life without himself can feel like a loss even thought he was (often) a pain in the ass. As, I imagine, was I. The days are minutes to be filled, and I am advised thus:- to write my list of things I want to do in this new life when nobody ever asked that question in the old one. Not never. It begs the question. What do I want? Well, I don’t know. Can someone tell me please because I know that place, a place of ‘no I don’t agree’, of ‘seriously….what?’ of ‘okay then, if I have to.’ This is my comfort zone which btw has abandoned me. The peripheries of my world are blown like a bubble burst and the world beyond is one scary zero. I turn back. I oftentimes (love that word) do. But what I turn back to is a day of minutes and there are many, oh so very many. So, I don’t like this minute thing. I don’t like this nothing, nowhere, nobody thing. So what? Hmmmmm. So what.

I was once alone, for about five minutes having been expelled from school(s) and college and my first job. Sacked. I was, so they told me, a muttering disturbance, a rebel in the corridors of whispers. Had I been not me, I probably might have led a revolution but I was never that courageous and I laud the ones who did, who will do in times to come. I was taught to be a lady. Not to upheaval, not to upset, but nobody taught me the wisdom of being such a creature. It isn’t about being a doormat. No. Being one of those lady women is to be wise living with attitude. within structures, confines and male domination without aggression, without fight, without loss of self, but clever enough to get what this lady wants. I wish I had learned it from my mother’s milk but she had not the skills to help me there. I am learning them now.

So, I walk, run, dance, play within the minutes of days. No, it is more than that. I am loving the journey. Yes there are times I wring my ankle on memories, on moments, but I am still a dancer. I watch my bone-awkward fingers as I work my keyboard. I say, hallo, swollen joints, well done you. Just see what you have done, achieved over the minutes of days in your life. My toes, bent and bony, my body skinny and scarred. Hallo you all. Well flipping done.

And then, suddenly, as though my thinking has been heard and taken to heart, in comes the painter to redecorate the upstairs rooms, ridding them of short term history, the falls, the clutches at cupboard doors pre a fall, the rust, the grease smears, the smoke of an old pipe. All opened up in brilliant white, fresh, the promise of a new future, a new strength of days. Then comes the gardener, to cut my grass. I kept my grass long, my dandelions fierce for the bees and butterflies till now and he gets that. Now the bees and the butterflies are sucking from the bluebells so it doesn’t feel so bad to cut the heads off my favourite butter yellow sun-followers.

This is the flow. People come in. Someone leaves the table. Nobody else can take that seat, but the loving hands that reach out can somehow help the day of minutes into something else, something that has new life, that can move on into more days, more minutes and can, with their investment, change everything.

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Island Blog – Tribute

I always feel better after writing a blog. Is it, I ask myself, to offload, to teach, to preach, to, in other words, misuse my public forum? It’s a goodly question to ask myself. Once I have ferreted around in the cellars of myself, once I have come up feeling strong in my purpose, sure that it is not about me but about anyone else who may click with something I write, I write. This is one of those well-ferreted writes.

Today was troubled. The way it works for a full-time carer is this:- Day begins hopeful, trusting and light. Then one becomes two as the one in care descends the stairs, floating on metal poles and thanks to Major Tom, aka the chairlift. This is when the mode and mood of the day is proffered as IT. Now I have a choice and a decision to make. If the gloom descends with him, then I must attend to said gloom. I can resist it, but we all know resistance is futile. I can poke at it, ask questions, play bright, but I can hear my voice, in a slightly higher key, sounding sharp as badly cut tin. This won’t work. I lift my ass from my seat, round to the kitchen, make coffee, hot strong and black. Not enough. This gloom is following me, I can see it, smell it, feel its touch on my back. I swing about. Go Away! I hiss, but hissing works no better than resistance. I can feel it pulling at my skin, seeping in, changing me.

The day rolls slow. At 10 am I bake a cake, thinking, this will do it. It’s my usual flat pancake but with cherries which makes flat okay. Taste is everything, after all. We wander through the morning, him restless, moving moving moving all the time, the click and whir of the wheelchair setting my teeth on fire. Ears, I say, stop listening! I have always believed, and proved, that ears are obedient souls, if you organise them right. Pulling birdsong forward and pushing clicks whirs and other unpleasant noises back works well, for a while, but I must be vigilant. One relax and the click whirs are wild in my head whilst my teeth could burn down Rome, even from here. I read the affirmations on my kitchen wall. You can do this. I’m doing great. I believe in my dreams. This too shall pass. Those sorts of affirmations. Ya di ya I tell them today, but I don’t rip them down as I have in the past because that is resigning myself to the gloom. I cook, walk, feed birds, watch the clouds, berate Lady Moon for not showing me herself at 4 am and keep going, keep going, keep going.

It’s like holding up a bridge every single day. Just me (or just you). Mostly I can do this (so can you). Mostly. But it is exhausting, endless and with no end in sight. I have to be cheerful for two every single minute of every single day (so do you). I have to think ahead, plan, make sure the way is clear, be kind, laugh, smile, show up no matter how I feel or what I want. I could go a bit further for a walk. Easy. Not. I still could, but I don’t. On Gloom days I am fearful. What if he falls, gets more muddled about this or that, what if he just feels scared and needs me to hold that heavy bridge up?

This is caring. You who do it, already know. Outside of our lives are many who support us and show great compassion. We need it, oh boy we do, but they haven’t a scooby about what it’s like for us, minute by minute, day by endless day and I hope they never do. Holding up a bridge, alone, scared, ageing, tired, exhausted, doubting, weak and sleepless is something we have fallen in to. We won’t abandon our post but the ask is great.

I salute all of you who care enough to be caring. This is my tribute to you.

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Island Blog – Words and Showing Up

When I was a student, I learned how to write good English, to enunciate clearly and to employ slang or swearwords only in the playground or in whispery corridors. Now, still a student, still learning, I play with my words. Words are like music, they sound soft or harsh, harmonious or discordant, resonant of the very thing they describe. Onomatopoeiac. My dad would have a fit at some of my words. I think he considered loose language to be a sign of laziness, an unwillingness to search for and then to produce a word most fitting. He had a zillion words in his mouth and was never short of just the right one, bringing in a goodly measure of humour and exaggeration, just like a pro. Once, with his head inside the drinks fridge, he announced that ‘we are perilously low on lemonade’. He could spoof it anytime he chose. I think I get my passion for word invention from him, from Roald Dahl and from other great storytellers who lifted words up for scrutiny, oft times laying them down again, all tapsalteerie, just for effect.

To play with word assemblage is to dance with fairy feet over the rules of engagement. Words have double flipped over the generations. Some have been lost, new ones found and elevated to dictionary standing. Playing scrabble with me is never going to please a dictionary pedant. In fact, no dictionary pedant would even consider it. There is only one person I can play scrabble with and that’s my youngest son who has more crumjumbling words in his head than anyone else I know. The game invariably dissolves into hysterical laughter as one or other of us attempts to explain the meaning of whatever word we have just laid down on the board.

We are taught not to exaggerate, not to overstate with words and yet where’s the fun in rules like that? Sounds very beige to me and I love colour and lift, nonsense and musicality. Life is tough enough already. We do well to remember that having fun is good for our health. And, in that, I take courage and inspiration. Could be the lyrics of a song, a line snatched from Twitter, Facebook or Instagram; could be a flow of words from a passerby #therearelessofthosefornow; could be a crash landing in my own head whilst buttering a salmon steak. Could come from anywhere but if there is music in it, then it grabs my attention and I take a good look see.

This morning, around 5, the sun cast red across the sea-loch. A fingermist hovered over the still waters, tree reflections shimmying like dancers. The goddess of the breeze obviously thought it was her turn. Tickling the surface with her fingers, she lifted the runnels and rivulets into bubble swirls and sent them all on a trajectory for the wide open maw of the Atlantic Ocean. Gulls dipped, oystercatchers twillopped overhead in a cacophony of oystercatcher-ness, and one lone young whitetail soared like a big showoff almost level with Cirrus, although, of course, he was nowhere near those ice clouds. It just looked like it from down here, from stuck down me, gravitously cemented to Mother Earth with my neck a paperclip as I watch and watch till, with barely a wing beat, he slides 10 miles to the other side of my looking. A lift of light and the starlings arrive like a football crowd to the bird table. There have to be 15 of them, babies open-beaked and squeaking, parents madly gathering seed, feeding, gathering seed, feeding and on and on till Lady Night finally says Enough! Sleep!

I remember it well. And I am glad I do. I have known the times of overwhelming, my times of flight, high as Cirrus but not quite, my lifts, my joys, my swollen ankles, my sleepless nights, my troubled days, my moments of supreme peace, my ages of gloom. All of these colours, all of these states of being, these words are me, are you too. It is how and who we are. It bothers me (for about 3 seconds) that the greatest requirement in this life is to keep showing up, first, to keep learning, second, and to keep applying said showing up and said learning, ad infinitum for all eternity, forever and then some.

Easy Peasy.

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Island Blog – Snow Angels

This very day I set sail, winds permitting, for the mainland. Destination the French Alps. I travel with family, kiddies and adults and am away for a week. In theory I will don ski boots and give the slopes a chance to delight and excite me, but my last efforts at maintaining the vertical in such conditions warn me that I may not continue with my lessons. Back in the day when I was a tricky teenager I really hated ski lessons. In fact, I only had one and that was enough. I am a walker by nature, taking my time, gathering no speed and certainly not at the mercy of those long Turkish slippers. In walking, I control myself.

It thinks me. Although I am not interested in gathering unnecessary speed either grounded or in elevated position, such as on the back of a horse, or inside a car, or, even, on skis, I always like to give something my best shot before saying this is not for me. It is the same with anything I do in life. To say ‘this is not for me’ without experiential knowledge of that to which I say No, is just plain foolish. How can I possibly know from the outside of anything? Of course, there are many things in this life, in any life, to which saying No is just not an option. But there are ways around that too.

Say I am stuck in a job I dislike, that doesn’t float my boat. I may dread stepping into another day of this arduous drudgery, among these people who aren’t of my tribe, who don’t respect and value my work, and yet it seems I have no choice if the bread is to be earned. There are two ways to change how this goes. Either I tell myself that these people do not define me, that I know my work is of value and that I wholly respect myself, leading me to research new work and to give in my notice, or I take a good look at my perception of the situation and work on changing it. I know, from experience that this is entirely possible when giving in notice is a million miles from possible.

Snow is both cold and exciting. If I don’t continue with my lessons there is a vast array of alternative pleasures. I could walk over it, listening to the scrunch of it beneath my feet, look back on my footprints alongside all the others of those who have walked this way before me. I could consider their lives, their size and weight, their choice of boot. I could look up to where the mountains point into the sky, imagine the cold up there, wonder who climbed so high and how it might have changed their view on life. I could see the flowers in Springtime, now sleeping beneath their winter blanket, careless of the weight of human trudge. I could hear the laughter, ride on the chairlift, laugh and play with snowballs, breathe in the ice and feel it freeze my face. I could watch the skiers and marvel at their skill, my heart in my mouth as they hurtle down the breast of this huge majestic mountain. I could even see Hannibal and his elephants and wonder at his courage.

In ordinary times, as the West Coast rain rains and rains without ceasing, it is hard to imagine that in a few hours I will be in a very different landscape. I have my writing pad, my books, my waterproof kit and, most important of all, I have me. How this holiday goes for me is down to me, no matter how many others I may share it with. In order to really ‘see’ it all, I must clear my misperceptions and step out naked, obviously not literally or I may not get home at all, and be as a child, ready for any mystery to open out before me. It is no different at home, just much harder to believe in, but it is the key to life and I have proved it over and over again. The drudge is inside a mind, not out there, as is my definition of myself, my love and respect of self, my childlike sense of mystery ahead. And, although it could be hard to make a snow angel from rain, I will give it my best shot when I get home.

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Island Blog 64 – Square Rainbows

Island Blog 64

This morning I set off along the single track road from my little stone built home in warm sunshine.  My task today is to help paint the school shed in a small (but vital) island primary school.  The head teacher had already talked with me about what she would like the shed to look like, using as decoration, all the beach litter the children had collected since last summer.  Each time there is a high tide or a high wind, the beaches are covered with flotsam and jetsam, some of it intriguing, some disgusting.  Obviously the disgusting bits are appropriately disposed of, but the colourful bits of plastic and rope and twine, shells and bones,  and all those things careless folk toss overboard, all are gathered, cleaned and stored for the Grand Shed Occasion.

Which is now.  Well, the beginning of it is now.  It may take some time to assemble, not least because little children have attention spans extremely short but sweet and by the way, not one of them can stand still without fidgeting.

We walked them around the brown slatted shed, and asked them how they would like to see the end result.  We fed them the odd line as they began heading off into Disneyworld, just to reel them in a bit, but not too much.  We explained the deck chair stripe idea and the starburst of plastic milk bottle tops on one side; the butterflies and daisies on one end, to compliment the big tubs of wild flowers already established to encourage butterflies.  We said that once the stripes were finished, they could play with spatter paint, flicking brush loads (well, not LOADS) against the wall.  The boys arms were already flexing and they did have to question whether we really meant it.  Their mouths formed a WOW.

Throwing paint at the wall…..like THIS????

Can I use a gun?  asked one boy.

Er……I think brushes this time, we told him and there was a chorused ‘Awwwww’ with that sweep up at the tail of it, as if we just might say…….Ok then, why not?

We plan a sort of mural on the side nearest the road, to impress the tourists.  Deck chairs, they thought.  We could stick one on the wall!  chirruped one girl.

Not with PVA, I said, sorry, but you can paint one on.  I could hear my voice go all dinky winky but she was no fool, and lost interest immediately.  She decided, instead, to paint a square rainbow.

Excellent.

A pair of swallows chattered at me as I worked.  Birds on the wire with plans for nest building arrested.  Sorry I said, but I’ll be gone soon and there’s plenty of daylight left.  A pair of lapwings serenaded me from the seaward field,  and sparrows dived in and out from the eaves;  everyone so very busy.

It’s good to be busy, among little fidgets, in the sunshine with a salt wind blowing my heart around.

Oh, and a square rainbow about to appear.