poetry

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Island Blog – A New Beginning

I started work today, at a new venture, or an establised venture, now in new hands, which means it’s new. btw. Moving into a new place, even if the venue, the stones and location are the same as they ever were, a newness is created. There are new ideas, changes, alterations, a personal stamp stamped. I always love new beginnings, have no problem with change, mostly speaking. We greeted, checked out the lay of the land, heard the ideas, decided to be dynamic. Let us go, I thought, as we did just that. I knew it before, the way it works, the flow and rhythm of what had been the been for yonks, shifting its gaze into a new sky. This, I said to myself, is a be. Not a been…… and I am in.

We worked, and hard, and busy, fixing, trixing, laughing, sharing, sticking, unsticking, wiping, washing, tide-fighting, tide-aligning, talking, finding out about each other, watching, checking. We are creating a new dynamic. There are wonderings, doubts, fickle-twiddles, stopstarts, upskittles, solutions flying in like birds through newly sequined window panes. Tables – juxtaposition, chairs too, wall hangings yet to be wall-hanged, or not, lights to be twisted this way, that, this something to be considered, this something else to be moved, or removed, all a considering, for now. It’s like a birthing, and I am at the business end. I have no idea what I am doing, beyond the obvious, the cleaning prep work and the beyond of the dance of mischief I will always bring to anything. However, there is no fun, nor mischief (interesting word if you. break it down……mis…..chief…….just saying) if there are no-ones to work with, to laugh with, through tricky stuff, when this isn’t working well and that isn’t working either.

We had fun today. My first day. I loved it. I’m as tired as the others, but so excited to be a part of this new beginning.

I thought I was all out of those, to be honest!

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Island Blog – To Evince the Singular

Here’s a Friday laugh for you, but, first, the backstory…….I love a backstory, me.

I have a small corn on my pointy finger, my DO NOT SPEAK TO ME THAT WAY EVER AGAIN, finger. My Go To Bed finger. My No Way finger. My I Love You finger. To be honest, this finger is exhausted with all the work I have required of it over many decades. However, it still works on the keyboard, over the ebony and ivory of my piano keys. It can also, still, stop a bus. It can still say I See You, without a single word. It can say Go! but only when required. It can also remind me, once turned, that I am seen, I am important, beautiful in my years, wrinkles and all, that I am still someone. It can also remind me of mistakes. Ok, that’s the backstory done.

In my dealing with said corn….(who on this goodly earth has ever had a corn on their pointy finger?) I read up the dealings with such an irritation. It hurts to sew, to knit, to push down a plug, to twist a cork. Sandpaper, I was advised. Well, blow that slow process. I need quick fix. I need to be well, to be able, to be fit in all areas, including the sticking out bits. So, I dashed (I did) up the stairs to locate my heel rasper. It’s a grater, in truth, big metal sharps in a rectangle with a. goodly handle. I rasped, and rasped and found relief as the endless layers of skin disappeared. It felt good. I can still point, after all. The remainder of the digit is still active and responsive. Until…….

I tried to log in to my laptop. Now, there’s a thing. It seems I have eradicated my fingerprint. Will the skin know how to grow back in the same sworls? Who knows? There is a chuckle in this, and I am chuckling. What will be, as I have always known, will be, and the best I can do is to discover new ways around every single blockade. I’m glad I learned this. I may, momentarily, be stuck with a gasp and a panic in my throat, but it never lasts. We are so much more inventive than we know. Our brain knows it too. It’s just longing for us to catch up.

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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 – Someone or No-One?

This is something I performed once. It begs a performance. There is rhythm, rap, and begs a reading out loud.

Wherever you grow, bloom strong and petal wide, don’t hide but spread your colour, blue is it, or red, or butter yellow, white? Be right with it, your colour, it is yours alone. Hold your own, make it known, alone, not lonely. Only you know your ground. It may be rocky, maybe rich and soft, a mountainside, a beach path, garden, grey street, river bank. Give thanks for wherever you find yourself. Hold out your petals, reach and reach up to the light, breathe right. Your breath is life, in joy or strife, breathe on. In shade or sun, you are the one.

Make a difference. Have fun and look around you. Who grows beside, or over there? Another soul with hopeful roots just pushing through in fear, perhaps, delicate heart, easily broken by careless feet or the lash of punishing rain-words, to die in silence. Cry out in anger, but stand your ground. For those who stand will remember the ones who fall. All of them.

And share your light, your bright, your coloured heart, still beating like a drum on the battlefield, and there, don’t yield, but glow with life and, tender-fingered, lift a drooping head. Warm a faltering body. Say ‘I am here, and I will not leave you’. Share your mystery, your very soul. Hide nothing, let nothing cold you, hold you fixed in ice or fear, as if the end is near.

Notice every season, but not too much. Touch another, lift, don’t drift, for Time moves on, fleeing like a thief in the assault of misbelief, no crime committed in the touch. Some of us long for touch, not much to ask, small task, withdrawn through fear and that worldly slime, the snake of self-doubt, out with you, damn spot, you are not the true voice, my choice, I touch.

Hold each blooming moment, roots in the earth, head in the sky. Let pain go by, toss it to the wind, the changeling wind with stories on her back. And, remember this. Never miss the chance to lead another to the dance. Show your light. Be curious, like Alice, and leave your smile among the trees for the bees to honey up and sweeten. Reflect the sun, the rain, the moon. And do it soon, because you know that a winter of the soul will come, and, for some, it is already here. No matter your ground, make it better for your being there, nourishing, flourishing, sharing, caring, thankfully placed just where you need to be to learn something. Let laughter fill your throat and let it fly out like birds or butterflies to smile a flagging soul up and out of sadness, and to spin their own bitter into glitter. A million rainbows lie within you. Let them show, because you know, no matter the chatter, that you have the power to choose.

Am I someone, or no-one?

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Island Blog – Birthday, Trees, Luck Dragon.

Today is Friday 13th December. I know you know that. For some, both the date and the day bring collywobbles. Such a lost word, and a good one. Moving on. It is memoric for me, for our family, because it is a birthday. This boy was born in a frickin snowstorm and in an old folks home on an island because that is what there was. He spent his first few days in Matron’s bottom drawer. He survived all of that and is now a spectacular man, husband, father, although I leave his family to qualify any of that.

As for us, the we in Africa, in the sunshine, far distant from the birthday man, from the minus degree thing that’s going on in the homeland, we moved easy. An early walk, barefoot and skimpy clad to the Indian Ocean, to watch the Luck Dragon/ big dog bound and bond with a load of other dogs and owners as the whapshuck of light-lit waves, the height of walls, pounded onto a slop sand beach. Boom, and boom as the cusp curved and smashed against shell and stone, rounding into gentle . Such is a massive ocean, whispered in, or blocked by the resolute rocks of centuries, and the ocean will respond, raunchy and irritable, banging against resistance, with an attitude I wish I had learned.

We did our own work for a while, a morning while. Let’s walk again. This time among trees. I get that, the need for trees, and not the scrub trees of the bush, bent into an apology, but the huge wide-spread oaks and fever trees and pines and others with fat trunks and an eye on the sky. It’s Friday and we just can go, permission given. And we do. We load up the Luck Dragon and we head for the trees. It’s a drive, traffic is a Friday thug, but we get there and we walk through the space and the silence and the water and the trees and we forget the traffic and the tension and the demands of life and we grow silent. We watch the Luck Dragon welcome every other dog, enchant everyone who sees his smile and his permanently wagging tail.

And we drive home, the echoes of our time under the trees, beside the water, within the peace, still holding us in stasis.

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Island Blog – Misty, Clarity, Beyond the Veil

Dark morning – yes, of course, with this nonsensical time change thing. I watched the clock dilemmas, worked them out, poor confused things, as light annihilated the dark, blinding it. There’s a misty thing going on across the sea-loch, a sort of translucent mesh hiding the pines, the backsides of hills, a strip, moving, lifting, expanding, thinning. A bit like a bridal veil. I never had one of those, but they are pretty. You can see eyes, a vague facial shape, the red of a smile, if there is one, and there usually is.

The mist has retained her veil control, all day. I walked in it, not through it, noticed how, what was clear before, is more of a shimmy, a sort-of, a possible. The autumn colours, fallen or yet branch-held, were bright, as the artist in me might have made them so, with a good gloss medium over oils. Nature does it without any of that tiddleypom.

This evening, the sky is pinkling strips, reaching down, very soft pink. Gone now, the mist, the veil. Now clarity. It thinks me.

From the bridal veil to clarity. Take this lightly. I am no misery guts about relationships, but what I have learned over long time, is that if we look for another to fill the big darkness within, we will always be disappointed. It is up to each one of us to find that hole-filler within our own forgiveness of the past, of self, of whatever damaged us. That clarity will show us more than the backside of anything or anyone, and we will stand strong as one who can see beyond the veil, as the person we really are.

We can play misty a whole lifetime, or we can be brave and stand up and say, No More. I have no frickin idea who I am, but I do know who I am not. A good beginning, I would suggest.

I love the mist, to walk through it, the touch of its fingertips on my skin, the gathering of it on leaf fall. I also love clarity. I can do both. Beyond that contusion, I can heal.

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Island Blog – Itchy Knickers, Mary, There is Life

I send my mind out into the world, and pull it back quickquick. The thinks, the sheer expanse before my mindal eyes, the troubles I can’t even spell, rise into a swirling fog. Maybe a good thing. I know about the corruption in governments and want to smack all of the leaders. Did your mummy not teach you anything? In the pull back, I focus on the immediate, on where I am, on who I am, on this very minute. Oh, that’s easy. Let me think. Ah, instead of sinking into my current bog, let me find another someone who might love to hear what I I think of them. Avoid superlatives, an early lesson from my English teacher. It hesitates me. Superlatives are basically lazy speke. Amazing. Wonderful. Excellent. The Best. And so many more. They’re like uncontrolled dribble to one who considers how much spit goes into intelligent consideration. A little at a time, that’s how. And those superlatives can apply to a packet of crisps. Just saying. Hallo, I begin, You are just short of amazing. Let me find the word (that is just short of amazing). Doesn’t work.

I think that navigating a world where language and street rules change so fast has never been easy for me. I’m the girl, now woman, in the wrong kit. I remember arriving to a poetry challenge at school, all elecuted up, strong voiced and in itchy knickers (uniform), wondering, as I did, how the hell all those other ‘gels’ managed to look part of the landscape. I saw many smirks and although it irked me, I longed for whatever bonding they had with a) their itchy knickers and b) their ability to be an easy dot in the pattern. I could see the connection. And then, there was me, all tumbelshift and awkward. Or that is how I felt. The fact that I was chosen for the poetry rendition, that I came away with the silver poetry cup, meant zip, at the time.

In this time, the autumn of my life, I kind of get it, mainly because if I don’t get it now, what hope do I have of ever understanding the point of me? A rhetorical question. Looking back to that super lost, itchy-knickered girl, I smile. I have found my people, here, on the island, for sure, and that has settled me, given me place and point, to a degree. Perhaps, as my lovely wise sister-in-law told me, it isn’t wrong to feel out of kilter, as she may have done. Rest in peace Mary.

Sometimes I scrabble for purchase, when I see others step out in confidence and the furies rise in judgement against me. Their eyes are wild and bright, their confidence evident and overwhelming, but I’m a daughter of the moon and the tide, I (whine) tell them. I continue, itchy knickers and all, I feel everything, sense so much, notice every tiny shift in this breaking world. I don’t know how to explain anything, have no shape nor map to guide me, but I feel it, see it, hear it, all of it.

I remember Mary saying to me, once, way back when she was vibrantly alive and wise as Merlin, that I would have been in danger when any girl or woman who sensed moon change, tidal shifts, changes in nature around them, people becoming irritable, a slip slide into anger, a rise in the river, was doomed if she spoke out, or was noticed noticing. I am thankful that, nowadays, writers write about those who can see the beyond, and anyone can btw. We just have too much noise and too little belief in our skills.

On the cusp of a flight to Africa, I watch the skies, the moontide, the chat in the clouds, the copper comment, the wild shapes. I see the raindrops held on branches, like showing off as the sinksun sequins and sparkles. I see the straggle of shrubs, climbers browning, the flood in my garage. I feel the rainwater, the hill rain under my bare feet, the chill of concrete. I feed the woodburner. There is life and I feel every moment.

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Island Blog – A Fallow Dear

All creatives have times when they just cannot be arsed to create. These times are extremely uncomfortable to say the least, or I find it so. All those words, in my case, or all those lonely tubes of paint and mediums, brushes upright and dry as my father’s wit, or that piece of craft work, so compelling, so exciting and for so long, now barely touched or looked at. It is as if something inside has died, and sometimes, that is exactly what has occurred. Something has, indeed, died, or someone, and that someone took all the colours and the buzz with them when they did. It could be bad news, or a health scare or even the builders in making noise and causing a long disruption and a load of mess. It could also be nothing much more than boredom, the realisation that life has turned grey and heavy and dull, and the result will be a new birthing, I know this, new ideas, new hope, new horizons.

I know, of course, that everything changes, this too shall pass, and all other platitudinal infuriations, but that doesn’t help in the discomfort of apathy and disconnection and sludge. Even a body feels too big for its boots, heavy and ungainly, and a mind slows to snail pace. It can be a dangerous time of self-examination, of criticism, doubts and other unhelpful bollix, but even striving to not-think requires just too much effort. Just rest, they say, take time out, be kind to yourself. My eyes roll. I don’t want to do any of those things. I want to wake exuberant and planning mischief, longing to set-to with whatever project I was working merrily on, not a few weeks ago. However, having gone through this fallow slump a gazillion times before in my long life, I know it will, eventually, pass. I also know that, although my conscious mind is cold porridge, my unconscious mind is still ticking away, garnering ideas, planning a resurgence, focussed and functional. I am just tired is all, bored is all, fed up and fed down. This period of drag has a purpose and, oh yes, I will understand just what that purpose is once the lights come on again, when all will be illuminated, revealed and understood. Or so I tell myself.

So what to do in the meantime, whilst I wait, miserably, to relocate my natural energy? In order to rest I need to feel good about myself, this self who is currently a pain in the backside. I wash the bathroom floor. Oh well done, what an achievement, not. I make soup that tastes like pond sludge, wash some clothes, even hand wash a jersey for goodness sake. Is there no end to my resilience and fortitude and determination? What a star I am! But, in fallow times, I don’t actually feel those words, no matter how much I speak them out, hear them spoken by another, and if I don’t ‘feel’ them they mean nothing. I am still failing. It thinks me.

We all have fallow times, all of us and it is important to recognise, acknowledge and allow such times, because to enter the swamp of inner judgement is always destructive. Besides, those judgements roll off the tongues of past critics, often from childhood or early youth. I can hear them now. J has too vivid an imagination, is moody, unpredictable, irresponsible, wears too much eye-liner, is a terrible show-off and so on. Although these judgements don’t affect me now, the negative theme stands strong, its accusing forefinger wagging right under my nose. If you hadn’t done that, or chosen this, or gone there, or allowed that to happen, you wouldn’t feel like this. It is your punishment for past sins, in fact not so very far in the past. I silence those voices as soon as they speak. They are not helpful. This is just a fallow time is all, not a punishment, not forever, not here to bring me down and keep me there. In fact, it is a dear thing, a helpmeet, because my body and mind are both damn tired and bored and fed up and grey. Next time, when I feel it coming, this shutdown beyond my control, I will take a long holiday in the sunshine.

Africa sounds like a plan.

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Island Blog – Cacoethes Scribendi

I believe many of us have this condition. It’s not like cancer or a chronic disease and doesn’t hurt the body much, but mostly, the brain, and we all have one of those. However, the urge to write can play havoc with every other part of a living soul, itchy fingers, running feet, sweats, chills and a strong desire to escape from a perfectly ordinary confabulatory experience because you just have to get this down; what she said, what his body language told you, how the atmosphere shifted from a warm fuzzy into an arctic abandonment. And, if you don’t get gone, or cannot, or if the whole being gone thing would turn everyone else there into statues, you will lose capture. I’ve been in that oh damnit to hell place many times before, but even if I followed my own advice and had a wee notebook concealed somewhere about my person, I doubt I would have pulled it out, because the invasion of an interrupta femina (allow me, latin scholars) pulling out her quill and slate would, I am sure, have had the same upsetting effect. This situation is rather constipating.

So, to be able to remember and to retain the lift and twist, the moments before and just after the ‘noticing’ is a giant skill. Not only do I want to remember the words, the way they swirled and ebbed, lapsed and spiked, but I also want to remember how the whole whatsit made me feel, and that is the part which slides away like mist, because there will have been a resolution, or a stop, or a happening, and all of those are as round as a full stop. How fickle is my mind, how easily does it move on to the next moment and the next? I believe distractions are my problem. Someone says something unrelevant to the time I just left, with all its vitally connected feelings and emotions, and it is as if I have let them all go, some forever.

I find the same with memories. I can vividly recall the events, according, I know, to my perception. I know who said what and to whom. I know how I felt about it, the rachet resulting from that human encounter, the lift, the slump, the delight, the fear, but the depth of these feelings have become splat over time, levelled like sand on a beach, flat, a straight line. It isn’t the truth at all because, back then, I was purple with rage, set to take somebody’s head off, my feet ready to run, to save, to murder. Well, maybe not that, but nearly. So, to relocate the feelings around a memory, even if that memory is minutes back or decades, is, as I have said, a giant skill. I could make it up, guessing here and there, and sound quite plausible, although I have an issue with those two words conjoining. You are either plausible or you’re not. There is no ‘quite’ about it. I find the same with pretty amazing, or slightly curious, or vaguely interested. Such placid nonsense. You are, or you aren’t. I digress.

As I write a bigger piece of work, I am going back into memories. I scribble over many of them, my pen helping me to dilute my astute; to cave in, untrusting of self, reminding myself that my brain may well have added, subtracted, divided and multiplied; that others will not (I absolutely know that) have seen this and that through my eyes, my experience, and here’s a thing for anyone who has the guts to write their story. Nobody knows how you felt when you saw what you saw. Nobody knows how you felt, and for so long, about your life. The thought of speaking that out, of owning it, of sharing it, is very scary. However, and nonetheless (can’t resist lovely words) if you don’t tell, if you don’t risk judgement or rejection, if you don’t step out into the unknown, how will anyone ever know how life has been for you? And, in this stiff upper lip bollix that thrives in this country, a country, I might remind you, which once owned half the world and is now feeling rather skinny and alone, we need brave voices to speak out, better, to write.

If you want to write, never think nobody cares, or wants to know. We need you to speak out. Begin.

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Island Blog – Barefoot and So Very Connected

Shadows are longer now. They surprise me, twisting my eyes towards them, when the sun gets behind this overgrown shrub or the line of my rake, or just me. I am, it seems, the giant. I reach all the way up to the big larch on the rockface, my neck and head lost in the skinning branches. I smile at the thought. Long gone are my days of hiding in trees, of scaling the scarp of an ancient trunk, scratched, bruised and, at times wishing I hadn’t bothered to begin. But the absolute joy of hoiking my butt onto a strong limb, into the hook of a tree mother’s arm, the inevitable wobble and correction and the determination to stay exactly there, completely lost to the eyes of predators, aka, adults or, later, visitors, even my children, is like a fizz in my blood. I like the memory, hold it, recognise it, know that it, once, was mine.

Although the Siskins, Goldfinch, Swallows and House Martins are gone, Robins have returned with a different song. Their Spring ‘Come to Me’ has changed, in timbre, in melody, in regularity. Timely, I guess, but what do they sing for so beautifully? Perhaps they sing for. Autumn, on the cusp of Winter. Perhaps it’s for the superb clarity, the reviresco of light, the copper,gold,fiery sunsets, the way the basalt sharps up, glitters with rain, sparkles with sun, moon, reflecting, as we all do in the autumn of our lives, a new and unexpected brilliance.

There is sudden sun and sudden rain, sudden cold and sudden warmth. The invasion of another seasons is always a fight. Think about it. Summer (so called) has lazed about for months, taking her place, sitting fatly upon her throne, throwing us, this year, a capulet of cloud sneezing and, somehow, she managed to throw into our mix, a. big dose of winter. I suspect, she, fatly lounging upon her throne in the Out Of Work Months, mixed up a laboratory of cold spite, made it work, cackled a lot and then brought her experiment down on our heads. Summer always had a love/hate relationship with the Winter King.

I watch chimney smoke across the sea-loch, early morning, as the stars are still stars and the cold is a thrisk of caught breath. The ground is sharp and fierce to my bare feet, a thrill and a real connection with the earth. It is a mystery to me, this sense of connection. I claim no understanding, and I don’t want to, because I love a mystery. I just know that I am always, ALWAYS uncomfortable in shoes and that my feet are happy bare. I cannot walk barefoot along pitted tracks now, any more than I could heist a larch trunk, nor heft my old butt into a mother curve, but that is ok. I could once, and that is enough.

The mice are coming in. I knew they would. The nights are cold now and they are no fools. Survival is everything. I won’t say I am okay about mouse droppings inside my pots and crockery kitchen cupboards but I honestly feel this is a problem that would arrive me a derisive snort from a woman who has no kitchen left because of the bombing. I sweep them away, wash anything I cook with, hope the wee sweet furry creatures don’t eat through the lagging of my water tank in the loft, and wish them well. I suspect I am fortunate to have met animal invasion on a regular basis in my young wife-life. It helps.

Rowan berries, wild sienna, catch my eyes. One here, heavy with fruit, a wide bloom of branches, over there, one skmming for space t’ween big-ass confers, doing her best. Hazels nut up, cones catch the sunset, way up there atop an ancient fir or spruce, and brambles wink blue-black in their tangle. This is Autumn. The rut will begin soon. I will hear the roar of stags echo across the sea-loch, plaintive, threatening, both. The crisp is coming in, no matter what, and it is beautiful. It is tough. It is upskittling, confusing, sudden, It is as it is. We, who live so very close to nature, are so ready for the tapselteerie of fickle weather changes, and we will adapt, and that is our human skill, if we so choose. I think, sometimes, no, often, of those who live in cities, in controlled (so called) environments, and wonder how they are coping with the strangeness of our new seasons.

I wake in the night sometimes. If the moon is loud, or if I hear swans beeping to each other as they fly over my island home, from the freezing arctic, heading south, I wake. I know why. I cannot miss one single chapter in this extraordinary life journey, even if inconvenient. I rise from bed, fling open the curtains, see the night, see the stars, search for swans, feel connected. So very connected.

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