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Island Blog – Don’t Stop the Dance

So what, after death? Nobody can answer that because a whole load of shit blocks all doorways for the closest, the ones who, from now on will face down anger, regret, emptiness and a big dark. On the outside of them there’s another so what. No question there, just thinks. What we outsiders feel is the obvious, the wonderfully human impulse to make things better, which we cannot; the beautiful desire to bring something like a plant, or soup, or words which can be swords, trust me. The formers are well meant, lovely, kind and do very little because the dark is all invading. So what can we do? There are two answers to that question.

Bring light. Not the light we want to see but the light worked out through a lot of thinking. Too many times we have all given gifts that weren’t well received. The reason for that is simply because we didn’t bother to really find out what makes another tick. I’ve done it myself, we all have, until that is we decide to learn, and that learning guides only one way, in human contact, in calling, in asking, in gentle conversations over coffee. See, the problem we have, as we had pre the invasion of Covid when we were ‘forced’ into neighbourliness is that we have forgotten each other, all over again. It seems, from my friends who live in cities and environs where nobody really has a scooby doo about any of their neighbours, even when all 10 flats or more share an entrance, that nobody knows anybody. It saddens me but of course it does. Out here in the thwack of gales and skinny switchback roads, we have a strong community spirit, but don’t let that think you that it’s a breeze (scuse that) living an island life because it is tough and controlled firstly by weather and secondly by the ferry company, by product being landslides. We are volcanic and eruptible, although ages late on that one.

My point is this. Communication with others is our key to surviving. It is also our key to a happier life because no award, no amount of money, no rise over someone else, in work, in words, ever lasts beyond the initial feeling of superiority. We all still have to put out the bins, deal with bills, sort childcare, park our dreams, work hard, bring in food. All of us. However and but……each one of us have to find the fun, the dance in our lives. From the time the dance left our feet, when we got a baby, a mortgage, a demanding job, we stopped believing that we had a choice. And the years go on and when something takes over as acceptable, we let go of it, the dance. Until when? Every life is tough. But, and this is me talking about me as I face olding and don’t want it, as I have a few aches and hesitations and lacks of confidence, and as I, every day, tell myself Don’t stop the Dance, don’t, because all around you are falling into a grimace as if their legs have forgotten the steps, Don’t Give up. Someone has to keep bringing in the light and the tunes even as cancer takes hold, even as a beloved dies, even as a child is traumatised, even as those my age slip and dip into an acceptance I won’t accept.

This is my so what after death. I can’t beat it down, but I can still dance, still reach out to others, ask them about their lives, actually see them, and learn. And I can bring light, not a candle, nor an enlightened fixing, but just by sitting there, making eye contact, no mobile, no other agenda beyond that other broken human across the table talking with me.

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Island Blog – Maybe an Acceptance

I know that, when I am feeling tired, things arise that don’t bother doing so when I am not. I have learned this over many decades, not to fix on any choices, opinions, nor decisions when feeling tired, angry or hurt. It’s as if a mind, so clear and engaged with daily life falls into super-tired and then goes deeply weird. Sometimes, most times, the whatever that finds a way into the within of an already compromised state takes on the efficiency and the focus of a drone, with no empathy, no emotive colour nor depth, no ability to connect beyond its own directive. I was going to write that it feels like finding myself in a small space with a whole nest of angry wasps, but, although there is something of that, it isn’t quite the truth. It’s more as if the whole terrain changes, one I trusted, was sure of, my footing securely supported, all my thoughts lining up like good wee scouts, my inner team.

With all of that gone, the troublemakers come in like missiles, like drones, laden with regrets and recriminations. The trigger can be something someone says that swipes a person right back to childhood; could be a moment in time, long long past; could be a choice made in a different time that still troubles up in a bad dream. For me, it’s listening to an audio book today, feeling tired. Although the book is fun and engaging and brilliantly written and spoken, one of the characters has a husband with dementia. She knows it, we who listen know it, even the husband knows it, but he floats in an out of reality. Because the writer has obviously experienced this situation, even distantly, the theatre is accurate enough to take me back to so much of the real situation.

However, I have read acres of books on dementia. They do sadden me, but only at a distance. I was there and for many years. The grief for a strong and heretofore upright, impossible, infuriating, figure of importance and value as they lose their grip, their hold on reality, their control of self, begins way before death. Way, way before. We know it, all the family knows it, all friends know it, neighbours, shopkeepers, anyone and everyone. However, and here’s the bit that got me in this audio book, the man, the gentle, bright, strong and loving man who caught this awful disease, also knows it and chooses to talk to his wife about his feelings of fear, of sadness, of loss.

I never had that. That’s not a poor me thing, nor written with blame in my keyboard tapping, but I can feel, like a punch in my heart, how wonderful it could have been to cry together, to talk, to hold, to share. Perhaps, and I would say this to another who told me just this, it was just the way it was for you and him. There’s hurt in there, an unintended rejection, and maybe an acceptance.

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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 – See You There

We do what we do, what we can. We step out there every single day, sometimes with the underworld sludging our forward movement, all those doubts and obsolete plans and the damn chatter monkeys that always fill the spaces. But we keep going and that is a very big thing. Being human, we have a strong hold on the life force, even when we might consider letting go. Finding a reason to be cheerful can be a daily frantic search through the dusty dark corners of our capacious minds, but we keep looking anyway, because the alternative is a steady sink into a pit with no footholds, and in the middle of the biggest of Nowheres. Even those around who make out they never feel low, sad, unhappy, depressed, disconnected, doubting, hopeless or desperate, do, believe me. They, perhaps, just see any such admission as a sign of weakness, and, perhaps again, they have managed to build multiple layerings of protection atop any rise of darkness, until even they believe it doesn’t exist.

Although it is over four years since Himself took off to join his mummy and the angels, I have never really mourned for him, at least not in any messy breakdown sort of way, nor into uncontrollable tears that might have rendered my nose blocked, my head pounding and my face a strew map of a continent randomly divided. I don’t want him back, not as he became, anyway. If I miss him, I miss the way he could lift my spirits, comfort, encourage and support; the way, I think, that he showed his love, not being a romancer at heart; the impulsive Shall we go out tonight invitations. Walking just now in the sunshine (how wonderful to even write that word!) I feel a powerful rise of emotion, the roaring in my ears which once would have heralded tears, tears I haven’t been able to shed for many decades. As I bring his face onto centre stage, he is young again and grinning wide, his eyes bright. Do I miss you? I ask him, knowing that I don’t. What I miss is Love, pure and simple and yet not simple at all. I can feel love all around me, from my kids, my sibs, my friends, my fellow islanders, but that love is not the same as one between two people for whom the other is the only other; the only one you don’t mind being stuck with in any situation, like a tailback, a broken down lift, outside a ‘sorry, no tickets left’ venue, anywhere, everywhere. There is always another option because the most important element in any situation is being with that other person, not the stuff around it. What a rare and beautiful thing, and one I realised, saw super clear just now, on a walk I didn’t complete.

So, I am open and honest about feeling deeply sad for myself, for my loneliness, full of self-doubts and confusion in my go-for-it navigation of a world I never wanted to inhabit. As I bounce out there like Tigger every single damn day, grinning, thankful, uplifting others, making friends, cracking jokes, it is my truth because this attitude is a daily choice, not a lucky-for-her gift from birth. Most days, really most of them, I believe in this attitude, and then comes a day when I want to cry me an ocean, never mind a river; when I just want to hide away, to not be seen by anyone, to disappear completely. I know, for sure, that everyone has such days, but that is not my point. To be honest about it, particularly to oneself, is to fully embrace the holistic human state instead of pretending everything is tickety boo all of the time. We all are the drivers in our own lives, and nobody wants to slop around in a cloak of gloom and misery, but it is exhausting to stiff-upper-lip (whatever that means) all of the time. And, it isn’t reality, and I honestly believe that good people who are doing their very best to live life to the full might stop judging themselves so harshly. Accepting down days, admitting loneliness, self-doubt and so on, isn’t comfortable, but it is real and honest and normal and understandable.

Social media is uplifting twaddle a lot of the time, although I have uplifting quotes stuck to the walls of my kitchen, and they do help. The hourly news are about as ghastly as can be. Some days feel just as ghastly. Our culture is all based on couples. Two steaks, two tickets, two, two, two. One to hold the front end, the other, the back; one to check this, the other to check that; one to joke, the other to laugh; come for supper invitations are usually for two, adventures are shared and somehow a tad pointless alone. Going out is always uncomfortable at first as an unwilling single. Do I look ok, is this the right wine, should I mention this, how can we (we) avoid that, or him or her? Somewhere in between, we live on my lonely friends, doing our best, falling, rising, laughing, crying and then doing it all again, over and over again until the wind changes and our candle gutters to the wick, once and for all.

See you there. It’s guaranteed I’ll make you laugh.

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Island Blog – A Feisty Queen

Waking after a good sleep to the moon, huge and bright, her mountains shadowy. She isn’t full yet but will be tonight. So long we island folk have missed sight of her, clouded thick and rained off as if dissolved completely. Funny how important it is to be able to see the moon (and the sun) and after many many weeks of a closed day/night sky, I can feel a joy run through me. It was midnight when we met. She lay heavy on my bed, waking me, her lemony gold light pushing around the blackout curtains, strong as a policeman’s torch. I got up to welcome her. She hung powerful in the black, throwing her light down into the sea-loch, lifting it into an eerie luminosity, rippled, soft, almost green. I heard oystercatchers up way too late and, in the distance, the scream of some creature calling out the last of its life. It didn’t last long.

Some days are full of fun and laughter like the lift of a kingfisher, all sudden and electric blue and unexpected, or the happy cries of children, or a kindly word from a friend or stranger. Other days can be quiet and unresponsive, seemingly tired of being ‘just’ a day. Little things can elevate a mind, blow away the closed sky, open it wide to the sun or the moon, bring a gasp. But these are not little things, not in my thinking. Little things are such as a household shop, taking out the bin, opening a bill, tidying a room, making a bed. Big things always involve people. People change everything. A chance encounter with a kingfisher is a wonderful thing but I want to share it. I want to point and say Look, There! It’s the same with the moon, or Father Sun when He finally battles his way through the endless cloud. I want to share it all.

Although Myself does, as you know, a lot of snorting, she is a mate. She is always here and I now recognise her value to me. Chances are she snorts at this too, but I am busy writing and she knows not to disturb me at such times. I also get that people talk to themselves. I am doing it all the time and it isn’t weird as is generally perceived. When there was another here, I didn’t need her. Now I do. And I am thankful. However, in the perception of the world, I might be seen as a weirdo. Well, no change there. I decide to fully engage. I still love people interactions, still need them, we all do or we end up in a silence that I’m not sure is healthy. But I do know that being alone and out of kilter with that alone-ness is just a state of being and I have gone through plenty of those, all those transitions, all those changes over so many years. And what I understood every time is that my full engagement with the uncomfortable process handed me the key. I must re-kilter. If I can accept and allow whatever life has thrown my way then I take control, not of it, but of me, and that is empowering.

I love a full moon these days because I have her number. Instead of allocating all blame to her, my mood swing, my lack of sleep etcetera, I welcome her. I ask her what she is teaching me about the bloody hoopla of womanhood, the lies that fetter a woman, the controls that imprison her. She doesn’t bother my sleep any more and I love to wake to her voice, to watch her fill the night with all her power. Controlling the tides, the women of the world, the weather, she is, indeed, a feisty queen, whether I can see her or not.

Feisty Queen. I wouldn’t mind that on my gravestone.

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Island Blog – You First My Friend

Lockdown, schmockdown. Time gentlemen, please! It is almost a year since this whole stay home thing began and it feels like it may never end, even as I know it will. Of course winter hasn’t helped in our slow trudge back to what we took for granted so easily before. This time has made us think, stretched our inner resources and taught us new skills. Some of us have become bakers, some painters, some just good with the management of Time which, to be honest, has turned into something we all notice and some of us, minute by minute. To say ‘I am Too Busy’ are words for caseworkers and frontliners but not for most of us. Most of us can spend ages staring out at the rainy dark wondering what on earth we can do to turn this day into something other than a trudge.

I know we must wait. I know not one of us wants yet another lockdown as the restrictions lessen their grip on our days. I know this, but knowing something and living it are two very different things. So how do we continue when we feel fed up with the prison we are all in? One day at a time, that’s how. There is no other way to face this. Many of us, if not most, have hit rock bottom a few times over the past year and for good reason. Not being able to hold and hug, meet and talk, visit and touch are all alien concepts for a human race. No travel, no lift share, no hand holding, no gathering of friends around a table. And, for some, the death of a loved one. It abnormals us, all of us. And yet we must abide and we all know it. However, the damage done by such restraints will show once we re-emerge into the light of ordinary life, it has to for we are not all strong like bull. Some of us, isolated with our fears and doubts, our imaginings and anxieties, will need a hand to walk again. Some of us will have lost confidence around more than two people, two we know well. Strangers may appear even stranger. We may be asking ourselves, Where have they been, what have they touched, who have they met with? The natural reach out for a handshake may be compromised, a hesitation freezing our limbs and stumbling our words. We are going to need help.

Let us who are strong like bull consider all of this. In any mix of people there will be ‘outsiders’, folk who hesitate, who are shy, afraid, unsure and compromised by this long incarceration. Emotionally we may be damaged and damage takes time to heal and then only with help. Let us remind ourselves that odd behaviour may well emerge alongside the damaged ones and let us keep our hearts open. Let us wear our coat of empathy in our rush to the shops or the cinema, theatre, concert. To consider all other human beings is to be truly human. We are, after all, a team. Together is the word for the future, not alone, not any more. It didn’t work after all, now did it, this alone thing? I beat you to the front of the queue might have felt good at first, been reflected in a higher salary or the best parking space, but the elevation of such ‘success’ will never sustain its position, not for long, and it brings no lasting peace, not to the winner, not to the ones left behind. How much more benefit might be felt if I was to turn in grace to another and to say ‘You first my friend.’?

You first my friend.

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Island Blog – Memory Thinks and Flying Colours

As I light the candles in my lovely sitting room, I remember how oft I have done this over the years, and not just here but everywhere I have settled. My home is a sharing place. I remember the faces of all the young people who have barrelled in after a pub visit or for a party here and there was always a party here. We were known for it. Always a welcome. A candle or 20 at the window beckoning. Come in, come in and rest by the fire; eat, share, drink, laugh, settle that tired body right here. Music played then and music still does.

However there is no sharing now, no candlelit welcome, no visits at all. How extremely bizarre is this time in our life. I sit alone beside the merry woodburner and I reflect. I remember. I can hear the music and the voices, the laughter and the fun and, more important of all, I can say thank you that I have known these times; times when I could hardly cross the floor without tripping over somebody; times when young people chose this home to visit, knowing, as they always did, that there would be a warm welcome, refreshment, friendship and the chance to dry off. I know that everyone left feeling better. I know that we gave that, me and Himself and I feel a rush of happiness flooding through me. We didn’t live with a stricture, nor a fixed structure; rules were rules of course and there certainly were times when I waved my stick at bad language, or poor behaviour, but apart from that, freedom reigned within these walls and the ones before and the ones before that. I like that. It is not how I lived as a child. There were so many rules it was hard to move at all. A bit like those laser security beams, criss-crossing every room. Only a spider would get from one wall to the other in safety. Perhaps that is why we did it differently.

Now all these young people, the marine biologists, the geologists, the cetacean experts, the ecologists and many other ‘ists’ have grown into their own worlds, have their own families, their own four walls. They will not come again. But they did once and I am glad of it for I have an ocean of memories to warm my cockles. I can hear their voices, see their faces wreathed in smiles. I remember feeding the five thousand on huge pots of refried beans or bolognaise or chilli con carne (chilli sans carne for the vegetarians) and just loving each shared meal. I see steaming bowls in cupped hands and bodies on every available horizontal surface. Even now, after so many years, I still cook too much and my first thought when someone visits is of what I can give them to eat. So strange to know for certain that there is no chance of anyone visiting anyone and for some time to come, and when that time does return to us, will we really connect with the gift of that freedom or will we just take it for granted as we did back in the normal times? I did, take it for granted, I mean. It is natural to do so, until that ‘natural’ is removed, forbidden, wiped out. Only then do we consciously think.

I have enough roasted vegetables and pasta for at least 4 days. As I sit alone by the merry woodburner watching the candles flicker and dance, I let the memories float through my mind and I say a thank you; thank you that I can remember; thank you that I experienced all that youth and colour and fun; thank you that I am still alive, can still use my brain, am well, happy and absolutely certain that we will all get through this time of strange estrangement with flying colours.

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Island Blog – Unicorns, Bananas and Hope

I wake with a wobble this morning. I suspect I am not the only one. I know there is a big shopping list downstairs in my cosy kitchen, plus a couple of things to post, and, yet, I don’t want to go anywhere near people who still breathe. I make tea and drink it, watching the day rise like Venus from the troubled waves of the night. She looks good. The usual fly-by of geese, loons, swans and garden birds entertain me for a while until I hear the sounds of the seventies overhead. That’s himself getting up. It thinks me of a first drum lesson, all bangs and thumps and with no rhythm to speak of.

Although I am not nosophobic at all, I have a healthy respect for an invisible enemy. Who doesn’t! So, after a ridiculous and chuckly conversation with a girlfriend about what bananas remind us of when baked and floppy, I decide not to shop this morning. We have enough in store and besides I can cook the sole of a gymshoe and make it tasty, or so I tell my grandchildren. I decide to inhabit the day with an attitude of ad hockery which feels rather racy and sounds loaded with opportunities. First, I bleach the door handle after a delivery of unicorn poo. For those who have never encountered a unicorn, never mind its poo, let me explain. These pellets, prettily gathered into the depths of a little hessian pouch, ribbon tied, are, in fact, wildflower seeds. You just push the pellet into the earth, not deep, and wait for your unicorn to grow……should take between 4-6 weeks. I can’t wait. I bake the bananas and cover them in custard. They may taste lovey but, naked, they are far from eyesome. Listening to tunes of the 80s and dancing along a bit, the day moves forward in a beamish sequence of start, middle and finish. Many tasks complete themselves this way and all I do is walk beside them, mindfully, of course. We sort it out together.

Walking, I see the larch green above my head, the little primroses peeking out from sheltered dips, yellow as sunshine. A pair of mallards lift like an eruption from the burn as I startle them into the air, the drake a rainbow of colours. Two otters cavort in the sea-loch, pushing out from the rocks, from the safety of their holt, out in the wide open on a fish hunt. I watch a huge fish jump although it seems too early – maybe not. Horse chestnut leaves look like green fingers against the sky, now a mackle of clouds in shades of grey. I see nobody. For a whole 40 minutes as I walk through woods and along side the rocky shore, I am alone, just me and the little dog. By this time, visiting walkers would be all over this place like a pox, and welcome indeed, but not this year. Maybe not at all this season, for who can say? We are, after all in the incunabula of something we cannot explain nor define and that’s enough to wobble the sturdiest of us.

I light the fire for it is still chilly, even if the sun does shine down his generous warmth. Flowers are pushing through the earth, shrubs throwing blooms and trees beginning to spread their canopy. It’s a time of hope and that is one thing that never runs out. If one person loses it for a while, someone else can bring it back and it doesn’t require physical contact to spread. It just flows between us like a soft breeze and we can safely breathe it in until it fills us up once more. Then we can pass it on to another who needs it.

In 4-6 weeks I hope to have a garden full of unicorns. What larks, Pip!