possible

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Island Blog Clouds and Colour In

I watch Clouds. They’re like television for me, so much big ass sky out there. Below, a sealoch, reflecting. Clouds in the saltwater flatwater, trees and homes too, otters, fish, sometimes kayaks, canoes, people spinning over they know not what. The clouds bump each other, argue, lift above and change shape, give in and dissolve, or are pushed into nothingness, wind-altered, dismissed. Like us down here. There is music in the sky, melody, dissonance, discordance, and dance. Same below, changing moment by moment. It thinks me.

Down here, we have to walk in boots. We are grounded and sometimes stilled and stopped. We don’t have cloud privilege. I know that clouds are moisture and not there and all that weatherly wotwot, but from down here they have substance. And, when the landing you inhabit feels like a place you would rather not be, the chance of a lift into the sky is not so weird. Thankful am I for my imagination, for my belief in the extraordinary, in the impossibility of possible, in the chance, the random, the wild connection with all that not one single one of us can ever explain, nor define. However, and nonetheless, I, like everyone else, am damn well stuck here, and in boots. And when the knocks knock, it hurts.

We are taught, and I am thankful for that taughting, that there is a way beyond loneliness, rejection and self-recrimination. More, a swipelift on and up into the wild and the fun and the adventure. I believe it. I also know that, without such guidance, I could have fallen off my perch.

I walk under clouds, as you do. We know that things ethereal are changing. It will affect us, the grey, the wet, the cold. I bought red boots today. Colour in. Colour in.

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Island Blog – All Things Possible

It’s the day today, the second anniversary of being dead, for him. I felt it looming for some time now, for days, weeks, even a month or two, like exam results. No matter how quickquick I was to brush away the bluebottles, they kept buzzing. I am not sentimental, I said. Firmly. I do not recognise dead anniversaries. Birthdays, yes. I always remember the loved dead because birthdays are happy days even if my father-in-law would be a walking fossil by now. I remember him upright and gentle, a gentleman, a man of few words but with a million of them behind his eyes and his silence. I see them, the dead who matter to me, in their smile state. Those times of throw back laughter and shared jokes, of kindnesses and all of them around my table, sharing turkey or cake. Their date with death was just for them, not for me, even if I was there when they slipped off into light, reconnections and peace.

But this day is a bit closer to home, both in time and relationship. He was my husband, my life partner, my Captain Impossible. He wasn’t always impossible but the impossibles began to show early on in our shared life. My own too, I have no doubt but we can never see our own impossibles now can we? I think back but cannot point my bent old poking digit to an exact date nor time. I just know the confusion began when I still had the right amount of hair in the right places, my limbs plump and strong, my mind agile and fleet as a deer. Perhaps he saw it too but he would never be drawn on such an Alice wander into the complex labyrinth of emotions. He did logic. He wandered one way, I another and we met now and then at a water hole. This is how it is and, I am discovering, for everyone, or almost everyone.

I didn’t go to the grave. He isn’t there, anyway and the very thought of leaving flowers is anathema to me. They would die, gasping for water and I won’t be the perp of that. Instead I went out to lunch with a friend, conscious of the time, the dying time, the very last breath issued through half smiling lips. It was important for me to inhabit the now of my life. That’s what I felt, even if the now is lonely and scary and confusing. I ask Myself (wait for it) what I remember feeling when Captain Impossible was here beside me, well, at the odd water hole, and she (yes) snorts and reminds me in a louder voice than is entirely necessary, that I also felt lonely, scared and confused when he lived and breathed. I sigh. She is right, but somehow this feels worse. Worse than what? she is rolling her eyes now. I wish you could see her all punchy and dynamic and in ridiculous heels. He is, sorry was, here and now he is not. But you are here, free, strong, able and mobile, almost straight, bar the bent old poking digit, and there are days ahead, rooms ahead, times ahead, your head ahead. I nod said head. She is right again.

So, after my stripping down and lifting up (how does she do that?) I move into the sunshine evening of the day I didn’t want to remember but did anyway. It is passing. and will be gone tomorrow. Tomorrow there will be music and cake and I don’t care if it rains or not because I will walk and watch the ebb or flood of a new tide, see the geese straggle-strong pump their wings above the sea-loch, watch the sparrow chatterboxes on my fence, wave at passing visitors, read good prose and remind myself of the man who stole my heart, my life, my everything and who is now, no doubt, steering heaven into a new orbit.

My nearly daughter stopped for a fence chinwag. I made some joke about my not being chosen by Jesus for a sunbeam yet. She said ‘I bet Popz is telling Him No, not yet, good heavens lord, not yet! She was enough trouble in life. Give me a break…..” She is probably right.

So this is for you today, you, Husband, Dad, Grandad, Popz, Fairbs, Richard. Captain Impossible who made all things Possible.

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Island Blog – Keep Your Dreams

In these times, it is easy but not comfortable, to begin to believe that the dreams we had before this enemy came among us are right now diffusing in the winds of change. They are not. We need, more than ever to catch them and to hold them close. What any of us wanted to achieve, those lifts of magic in our hearts, from heading up a corporation to being better at being who we are have never had such gravitas, such depth, such height, such a chance.

As I plant seeds, in the dark of the compost and soil and la la mix to make it as perfect as possible, I consider the dark. Seeds don’t need light to germinate. They just need time and patience. Once the shoots appear, things change, as we must, if we are the one who cares for this precious new life. And that goes for dreams too. We may be fedded up with the whole waiting game, we may lose faith, we may trouble ourselves with fears and doubts, but if we can just hold tight to those dreams of new life, breathe, walk, notice EVERYTHING around us, the cycle of life, Mother Nature’s gift to us, year on, and, if we are careful, year on again ad infinitum, carrying our dream like the most precious possession we could ever, will ever, own, then our future will rise and flourish and flower and give delight to so very many others.

Let’s do it.

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Island Blog – Steer Your Heart

As we move into Easter, the weirdest yet, without family around the table, perhaps even without eggs, we are having to be inventive. I think that is one of my favourite words, perhaps because I have been re-inventing myself all my life. I like this, no I don’t, I like her/him, no I don’t, I want to be an air hostess/intrepid explorer/dancer/aid worker………no, maybe not. Perhaps we are all like that as new fizz comes into our mental veins on hearing of someone else doing any of the above, until the morning comes and with it an abundance of realism, dammit. I often think morning has a lot to answer for. By the afternoon, anything is possible, I am possible, what I long to do is possible and I can go to bed with the absolute certainty that I will awaken to a dawn never known previously, one that affirms my breakout plans. It hasn’t happened yet.

Today is Good Friday, or Easter Friday if you don’t buy into the Good bit. Either way, it is a time we look forward to, as we do Christmas and Birthdays. Our own, anyway. But this year we can look until our eyeballs fall out but we won’t see what we want, what we have always known. First time ever for my generation and below. The Aboves knew it of course. War was woven into their memories, as this one will be for us. Everything this Easter must be done remotely, or from a distance. And it matters. Regardless of how inventive (there I go again) any of us are, it still hurts. There’s a slump in it as if life is lying doggo and we have no idea how or when it will wake up again with a Ta-da! We are moving along, going through the days, hope alternating with despair, bright and beamish one minute and sad as Eeeyore the next. It’s normal, its acceptable, more, it’s human. We long, we love, we care and without touch it feels like homesickness. Nostomania. Our instant leap to logic creates a pedagogue. This teacher is one of those I longed to flick cold chewing gum at, without being caught. Telling ourselves we must only think of the positive can send us captious. We might criticise others for walking twice a day, or those who shop every day and we know they do because they live upwind of us and the shop is downwind. We must take care we don’t let that thinking be our guide. Each one of us is required to make our own choices, our own decisions at this time. I remember, weeks ago, people saying to me….We will wait for the official decision on this, or that, whilst I had decided to release the carers and lockdown. Waiting never suited me.

So, I say, people, steer your own heart. It will guide you right, always. I notice some visitors have come to the island. I have a few opinions on that, not least because they may extend this time of lockdown just by travelling here. However, I won’t let myself become the judge. Instead, I will continue to make my own decisions, listening to my own heart, my best friend. As, I am sure, will you. There is no room for dithering these days, nor waiting for the official ruling, nor, even, asking someone else their opinion. After all, we all know at our deepest level, what we need to do to survive and to make sure our loved ones do too.

Happy Easter my friends. I wish you serendipities by the score. No matter what is to come, we may be broken, but we are not beaten. We are strong, intelligent, wise, loving, emotional, caring humans. I salute you all.