rebellion

by

Island Blog – A Third Chance

Been absent from my desk a while. I chuckle at that, remembering my young days when that absent thing would have heralded a whole bucketload of shit, when the Rulers ruled and the whole western world was caught up in a Hyancinth Bucket capitulation to Appearances. Omg I am so damn thankful for the leaving of this, even if it just a beginning. The more young folk rebel, the happier I am. So many of the rules are ridiculous, as so many others are wonderful. It seems to me that Someone decided to take ‘ruling’ a stick or two beyond acceptable, and we cowed. Not now. Not now. Or so I hope.

However, this not now thing can bring in an overload of rejection. It has always been that way, over manifold times, when the initial reject becomes a loudy and damaging rebellion. I see it happen, and know, having lived this long, that, hopefully, the damage to those who don’t need it, don’t want it, flowers into a new and peaceful growth. I’m no fool. Just aware of this troubled world, the changes within her protective shell, and hopeful, always that.

I didn’t want to write all that, not at my outfirst. I. wanted to write about the week. past, the funeral of a young woman, too young. It thinks me, has thought me for a few days. It is said, and often, through the young pert lips of my young friends, and laughingly, that they never want to grow old. I suspect this young dead woman might have liked the idea, her daughter, ditto. But I get it. I said the same, and often, as I watched my oldings go through all the tests and shit that seems to come with olding. They, my folks, accepted, fought, smiled and left the planet, and it is sort of ok when the person you see heading off has no teeth and forgets to wash for days. But, but and but, before any of that stilling whacks the bejabers out of what everyone thought was ok, let me tell you a thing or two, now that I am in the Oldie Zone. Listen up.

I will dance you off the floor. I know I had cancer and might again. I know that every single day i have to crank myself upright (laughingly), that I can find friends to laugh with, that I adore tunes, and have a great playlist, that I so so want young folk to see that being ‘old’ is not what it once was, or sometimes is. Being old is a third chance at dance. Some never get there. Lucky me.

by

Island Blog – I Can Still Do This

I couldn’t get the whizzer bits out of the hand mixer today. I was making butter icing for my marvellous cake because, although it wasn’t dry at all, a slow cook cake with wild brambles (blackberries to you English) apple and slow gin reduced and quite marvellous, there is something I important. New verb for you. I look at something that thinks it Itself and I itch to challenge it, even if that challenge is only butter icing. So I do the whizzing bit and apart from filling my open cutlery drawer with icing sugar, all goes well. I slice Itself and it flops a bit. I hear myself saying things like Pull Yourself Together as I spread bramble jelly first and then, with at least 3 palette knives and a lot of swear words, there is the cutline, this challenge to the Itself of itself ness. Am I losing you?

Back to the point. After covering the kitchen with flicks of butter icing, after 3 bowls employed, all of whom were laughing with delight as I pulled them out of their usual unused darkness, I glanced at the before wash side of the draining board. Oh frickin dear or is it deer at this time of year……everything gloopy covered with butter icing and flicks and la la tiddleypom. No matter, because unlike a gazillion people I have hot water and soap and it thinks me of the gazillion who don’t. Washed, stacked, cake still sulking with a fatling girth of jam and butter and sugar, I go to release the whizzer bits. Ah. problem. It’s a button release and a strong push required to free up these stainless steel dancers. I press. Again. Both thumbfingers. Nothing. For a short while I go through the whole ‘Old age sucks thingy and This is It for me and Downhill from Now and all that awful shit until even I yawn and roll my eyes. So I abandon the clean hand mixer who is p*ssing me off big time with her holding on to her whizzer things, which, I remind her sternly, are actually mine, on the table. We will talk later, I tell her. She says nothing the smug little madam.

I walk, good lord it was tricky and a miracle I didn’t land on my ass a few times. Ice rain on resident ice is quite a challenge but I always need to get out, rain, shine or ice. Breathing in real air, not home air is so very important to me. There are stories on the outside air, something, a new idea, a new seeing, a new encounter, although encounters today were all staying home but I can feel their echoes, hear them as I slip and slide around the Fairy Woods. All those people, those meetings in the wild woods, their voices, smiles, shared moments, are the butter icing on a cake. When I came home, wet and upright, I focussed on the mixer, all sassy and white and sitting there and holding tight to her whizzer bits. A challenge. I walked right up to her and with both my whizzer-freeing thumbs I spat those babies wild. They scooted across the floor. I laughed out loud. I can still do this! That’s what I laughed out. I can still do this!

by

Island Blog – A Friend Gone

It took a while. She wasn’t well for a while but inside that ‘while’ she stayed lively and strong.

Now she is gone. Too soon, too young, behind me by two decades, ages with my own children.

It snaps me. Confounds me. And then I land and allow. She was a light. Now her light has gone out.

It is a shame and a longing hand reach for her friends who remain on the land of life. Watching her float away is tough.

But let her go. She was light and lively and red blood rebellion. She thought to gift at times when nobody else thought. She came when nobody else did. She was not afeared in the face of sickness or decay. She came. She always came. And now we need to free her.

Salut my lovely woman

by

Island Blog – Translation

Geese woke me this morning. It seems they are quite unable to go anywhere at all without engaging in a loud conversation, as if, their vocal chords are wired to their wings. It’s 4 am, I said, but they ignored me, honking on as they skimmed past my open window to land with effortless grace on the water. It’s all but flat, the water, and the far shore reflection of striated rocks, adorned like bridesmaids in butter yellow lichen, shivers – a slight surface rebellion, probably the translation of a tidal undertow. It makes the rocks look like they’re shimmy shimmy shaking. Perhaps they are. What goes on beneath the surface is only a guess, for me, but the body of water understands itself and knows from long experience how to communicate.

I eat breakfast, change bed sheets, clean up, ready for a new day, and all the while, my thoughts flow along, mostly unchecked by me. Sometimes a hand goes up. We need more blue milk. Or, I must water those little seedlings. Those thoughts alert me, ask for immediate action, or they might float off into the, now clean, ether to become part of a cloud and thus lost to me. Weetabix without milk is a crunchy thought, dry, not the same at all. Seedlings will flop and die of thirst. So, I must make a note of both and right now. Other thoughts circle a bit before they flee and I bring my brain to bear, make it listen, make it follow through. Sometimes that’s a mistake. By employing my logic I can see a seedling thought die of boredom. This thought doesn’t want to be fixed, arrested and imprisoned by me. It just wants to stay as a thought and the only reason it circled at all was to say Hallo and to hear Hallo back. Hallo, I say, and off it goes.

In these times of slowdown-lockdown #not meltdown, thoughts are busy. I suspect thoughts are busy in everyone’s head. All of a sudden there is time for them, space to circle and float without being batted away like bluebottles. It serves us well to allow this space to widen, to deepen, until we can learn, not to organise our thoughts, but to conjoin with them, for they are ours, they are us. The translation of these thoughts might, in the busy past, have been misleading. Reacting immediately, without due process, to a thought can lead us to making poor decisions. We don’t need to do that now. Now, we can spend time with them, get to understand the craziness inside our minds, see that every thought is there because of who we are, because of what we do, or what we did. This way we teach ourselves to reconnect with the whole body and it feels good.

Although you will never know all my thoughts, as I will never know all of yours, we will both be able to see a person who has reconnected with their undertow. It probably takes a lifetime. All the great thinkers who understood the power of this reconnection, of creating a synergistic relationship with their own thoughts, are ancient by the time they ‘get it’. Right now we have this gift, this opportunity, to consider understanding our own selves a bit better. If we can allow our thoughts just to be thoughts, to say Hallo when they circle awhile, they will flow at ease, no matter what.

The geese are diddling about on the field now, chattering incessantly, picking at the grass, preparing for young. Later, when the chicks are ready to swim, they will lead their young across the sea-loch, on a day when the water is a mirror, when it looks like they are paddling through the sky, when the undertow is at peace. I will watch them and I will smile as thoughts float through my head like will o the wisps.