silence

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Island Blog – Silence and She’s Green

I found my old mum’s mood ring today. My jewellery box is mostly full of stories and not worldly wealth. I like that. I am not interested in worldly wealth, nor ever I was and nor was himself. We were all about stories, learned from them, made our own, spun them out into other times, other lives, like frisbees. Catch if you want, if you can. I put on the ring, a little finger fit, and noticed the changes, from green to blue to black to purple to amber and that was just one morning. I thought some about what goes on inside my mind and heart, and paused to notice and reflect in the early morning light. To be honest I have eschewed any rings and for a very long time, even though I love rings, because, for me, they denoted a control over the self of me. They actually itched and had to go. I remember being on a ferry back to the island, yonks ago, and an elevatory conversation between me and himself on the aft deck, and I flipped. I yanked off my wedding ring and tossed it overboard. A moment. Will you replace it? he asked. No, I said. I know I am married. I don’t need to show that. I never wore one again, but did stay married and for decades thereafter.

There’s a gap in my noise thing. I listen to Radio 2 and mostly love it. As the afternoon shifts into a difference, birds flying out, flying home to roost; as the tidal shifts and swifts, bringing in new seaweed, new fish flow, a change of the sea-mind, I listen to silence. Visitors may drive by, but mostly everything stops on the cusp of dinner plans, everyone showering, dressing up, timing departure for the table booking. I watch it, distractedly, as I make a new salad dressing with a load of inventive stuff. I also sense the tense of it all. I wish I could say I remember it, a family with young ones, but I don’t. In the days of running Tapselteerie, we went nowhere much. Five kids and debt will do that for you.

However, I did learn and that learning has held me up ever since. I notice everything. Everything. In the absence of television, no wifi, no mobile phones (none existed) there comes a deep need to find something beyond self, beyond the washing of plates, the providing of experiences for others. The Self demands a voice. I took myself on walks in the wild and at crazy times, and suddenly. I thank my reckless and colourful self for pushing me on, in the wrong boots, ill-equipped for the slam-dunk of west coast weather, in the silence and the shout of blast weather, among wild and growly cows, over lichen-slip rocks, over shell beaches, squishing through bladderwrack, kelp, sugar kelp, dabberloks, all wonderful as I sink into their gush of salty tannin. No nowadays visitor is going to like this. I love the connection. They will just angst about stain. I’m watching this happen, the distancing from the real, even as I know there are those who will listen in the silence, who will research, who do care about the beyond of worldly hoo-ha, the strive for monetary wealth, the need for ownership. the hunger for dominion. I know it.

I watched a young Osprey today, being hassled but gulls, all full voice. I saw it dip and flip across the sea-loch, giving no aggressive response. It thought me. There are times we just need to accept that the hecklers win, and we move on in silence. I look down at my mood ring. She’s green.

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Island Blog – The Mary Thing

I’m home and back into a precious silence, just the birds, the gulls screeching like a mother who is way past tolerance, urgent, a call that cuts like glass. I’m watching the shift-light, the white skinny, almost saying something. Blue sits fat and patchy, here and there, confident in its canopy control. I am always here, but playing hide and seek and damn good at it. I’ve been hours away this day, caught and captured into a gathering. That’s what we call it here. A gathering can occur on a hillside, within the walls of a completely unprepared cottage in the middle of nowhere, a sudden thing. But, this one was ready for itself. We all knew it was coming, the date set.

I was unsure about what to wear as all of my clothing fits a rainbow and this was a sad gathering, no matter the celebration of life thing. A very long life lived, a load of children, a big team of grandkids and a football stadium of great grandlings. 97 or so years of twinkling and working like not many women would these days. I knew her, a bit, but in talking with one of her grandsons (so handsome, as they all are) about body language and the words we say without saying a single word, I felt I suddenly knew her better. She was a generation above me, ahead of me, but she was so approachable, so welcoming, so naughty, perhaps not all by herself, but there was that sparkle in her eyes that told me she was up for anything. A very gracious lady, and I mean Lady.

We laid her to rest this day in the old graveyard, her beloveds, spanning generations, lowering her into the ground beside the love of her life, gone some years before, above the bay, with cloud dip, slight rain (very polite and thank you) and a lot of old, young, very young, all there for her. She leaves with them, her inspiration, her encouragement and acceptance and a lot of tears and laughter. And Billy, who brought her home was as he has always been, respectful, working with whatever a family chooses, so compassionate, so professional.

What a legacy Mary. You leave that with them, with me, with all of us who remember you now, and who will talk about you for frickin ages.

Thank you.

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Island Blog – A Peppering of Sleep

There’s a spicy dance in that, in a peppering, and the dance is my decision. When others hit the pillow and soon are lifted into the warm embrace of many hours of forgetfulness and refreshment, I soldier on. Well, I am no soldier, btw, but there are times I can imagine myself one, although, and this must be said, I would have baulked at the confinement of that ridonculous uniform with its guttural limitations and the inability to bend at the knee and the fact that nobody ever imagined a real soldier would need to move light-quick. Which they do.

Anyway, I am in a nightdress, a long tee-shirt to be precise, and why am I spilling this irrelevance?

I go to bed at an early hour, one I remember, way back, as a Let’s Go Out time. Not now. I have my herbal tea, my book. I close the curtains on the summerlight, apologising and thanking. So far so good. I read awhile, feel my eyelids and concentration shutting down, and courrie in to the feather down warmth, the comfort of a solo bed, the space, the peace, the quiet. An hour or two later I burst up, wide awake, completely ready for a new day. I kid you not. I am raring to go. I listen to the love-call of a Tawny Owl (actually, it’s deafening, but delightful). Mother moon has thankfully chilled her pants now and is a wee Fadie in the star-crisp sky, clouds banished, or just tired of clouding for a while. No human sounds. No outlights beyond those daft mason jars full of solar beads outside my own door. You might think the world has gone out, but no. Geese mumble and croon to each other, to the gathering of vulnerable chicks, who, had they been mine own chicks, would have required a load of gathering and a ‘Muchlouder’ than any mumble or croon. Oystercatchers, always freaking out about something, trillett and dive about around the rocks. I catch them in the moonlight. A plane flows overhead, a dart, heading north. I make another herbal tea. I watch and I see.

Sleep is important, yes. But, and but, there are those of us who don’t sleep to order, and never did. There is a fear mongering around lack of sleep, a feeding of nonsense from the ‘higher-ups’ who might tell us we must have 8 hours sleep. In the times I have known and learned about, the people who determined to make a good life, may have done so with little sleep but with a brilliant attitude. I can dance, no matter, I can laugh, no matter, work, no matter, rise and rise, no matter. My heroes. There are too many lovely folk caught up in tired, in lack of sleep, and I was there, a lot, and for years, until I got sick of myself and the whining. I realised I was looking at the lack of things, of me, of life. Well, that’s only going one way! I asked, instead, What Can I Do?

No matter the tired. What can I do for someone else this new morning?

Ok, morning is a stretch. I’ll ask again once you light-lift my looking, when the owls, geese and oystercatchers shut their wheesht, giving way to a blackbird, a thrush, the dive-dart of a woodpecker, the flutter of siskins and goldfinch. A new beginning. Another one. Lucky, lucky me.

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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 – Indigo and Goose Shit

I’ve been blue for a few days, I admit, and blue is my favourite colour, but not my favourite way to feel. Although I don’t show it outerly, this feeling, I still feel it. It’s like a trudge in my heart, filtering down to my legs and up to my thinking. And I did trudge, all of me did this trudging thing. Each task felt like a frickin bore and a half, more. I kept going, automaton switch on, but felt almost absent from proceedings, even if I did proceed. Sleep was bumpy and ebullient with odd images and chilly moments. But, now I have moved on to green. I also love green, the growth colour, the one that heralds change and the promise of astonishing colour. I went to church today in astonishing colours, my boots and one of my layered frocks, the colour of goose shit after a korma, and my underfrock green with white flowers and yellow interiors, the teeshirt below a washed out blue, a concession and a wink to the blue of late. My socks were wildly striped, my coat blue/grey with red hearts. Nothing matched but I read the lesson quite the thing, acting it all out in my voice. A definite improvement.

It thinks me. Sometimes, actually many times, when I remember the gazillions of counsellor guides who have gifted wisdom, revelations and inspiration over most of my adult life, there has oftentimes been the invitation to colour a feeling, or a state of being. As I am me, with my instantly curious mind, I wanted to know ‘which shade of this colour would you like me to name?’ There was a silence after that until, I’m guessing, strength was gathered along with an eye roll, pre responding. If asked, I might explain the difference between shade and hue, between the wisdom of naming a colour as a single thing instead of the many, many hues and shades of that particular colour, depending, naturally, on what other colour/solution/medium was added, and in what proportion. Have I lost you?

I walked today in the wild place. It is right outside my gate, a few steps, slew right, and I am on the right track. Always the right track. The air was a gasp of what might have been a snow warning, had the clouds told me so, but no. Damp held in fists as I breathed in the smell of Autumn’s stand against the Winter King. He’s a bugger, so he is, arrogant and confident and blowing early shards of ice at people when they’ve only just got the hang of those awful wooly stockings, only just thought about packing away all their summer kit. The trees wave at me, spindly now, ghost trees, sap sinking into roots. The snipe are in, the hedgehogs snuffling about for a place to hibernate, the stags are silent, dead, or triumphant, but wary. Grass is held in stasis and will soon be dead, but the moss and the fungi still stand tall, an arrogance in their standup. Thats an island word.

So, if asked the question today, What colour are you? I would grin, avoid doing the shade, hue thing, and answer, still blue, but with green. Blue but with a touch of rose madder = indigo. Green with a touch of cadmium yellow = goose shit.

Sounds like confusion. That’ll do.

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Island Blog – There is no Silence

I walk after the rain and into the silence. But it isn’t silent at all, not once I move further in, because, although the pitter and the patter has stopped, there is an aftermath and that is where I am, me and my wee dog on an empty track, which also isn’t empty. How strange it is to discover a new depth of understanding, new ears for listening, new eyes for seeing, but only when a curious person moves deeper into an experience. At first sight, on first hearing, something is an absolute. It has stopped raining. There is quiet out there. The track is empty of people, there is just me here. Then the absolute begins to dissolve, to reshape, to sharpen my wits and my awareness, becoming something unending, evolving and wide open to change. Within this dissolving absolute, I move on, wide-eyed, open eared, listening, looking, feeling, using all my senses. I am not powerful here, not the only ‘It’ in the situation, just a small part of something magical.

A drip falls on my head, a fat drip, one that has gathered other drips into its belly whilst hanging from a leaf, one I didn’t notice at all, what with that massive canopy above me. It is heavy, a kerplunk of a thing. It lands like timpani on the sound box of my skull, a beat, just one. I feel it break, travel down my neck, a tiny river, down and down until the small of my back tingles and I shudder. It is warm now, courtesy of my faithful skin cover, and it disappears into the cotton of my knickers and is no more. But I felt it, I noticed it and we, for just a moment or two, were together on this wander. The rain has left rivulets along the track, tiny lifted ridges awaiting a squash from heavy boots. Beetles wander, indigo blue and quite unable to remain upright, it seems. I right a few. Puddles reflect the lowering sky, the complication of clouds, stratus, cumulous, thisicus and. thatitcus, the nauties not visible and I long to see the nauties. High, they fly, way way up there, but this sky, this fluff of cloud mates are busy taking the stage for now. The sun peeks through in a spreadlight, slices of glare, pushing through the skinny fluff, determined to shine, much like me.

The floor of the fairy woods are dry, the ground bouncy beneath my feet. Mosses, wild green, almost luminous, abound in the dark which isn’t dark once you walk into it, and I do. I pause and look around. How many people over hundreds of years have paused here, right here, with a story to tell, a heart full of joy or pain, a thousand questions unasked, unanswered? How many decision made and what was the aftermath, how wide the ripples? What trysts were sealed, what lives begun or ended on this beautiful Tapselteerie land? I will never know, nor does it matter. T’is enough to wonder.

Lont-tailed tits work the trees way above me. A heron flaps lazily overhead and a sea-eagle yips from far across the loch, yelling abuse at an irritation of gulls. Wild grasses tip into seed, no less beautiful in their dying. A single hind across the sealoch mounts a rock in order to browse the leaves of a tree whilst her faun curls snugly inside a bed of bracken. The wind is soft on my skin, the cloud-sun warming to my bones, the birdsong elevated after the rain. There is no silence in nature, only a shapeshift, for one who is alert and aware. And, in the melee of a human life with its troubles and wotwots, nature keeps a conversation going, one soft voiced, uplifting and always ready for whatever comes.

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Island Blog – Silence, Shape and Change

I notice everything these days in sharp butts or gentle whispers. Funny how it happens. I notice new and surprising ‘friend’ requests from widowed men. I notice kindness from friends I know and trust. I notice how the expanse of life both confounds and cuddles me. I never noticed such dynamics before, busy as I was with marriage, with kids, with letting go, with caring, noise that took up my whole hearing. Now there is silence. I never got to know silence. It never came to me. there was never silence. Now there are hours of it, days of it, eons of it, both outside and inside me and we are learning each other. A greater part of me thrives on silence. I have craved it for my whole life. Stop. Talking. Stop. Telling me what to do. Stop thinking you know me. Just Stop. And now the stopping is here, like a shout, like a whisper, like a sharp butt. Well, there is work to do my lady. I know, I know. I am ready and I am open. The shape I have been for decades is no longer my shape. I can feel it shift, lift, split and become fractal in a whole new universe. It is very weird, very odd, very confounding, very welcome. Two opposing thoughts, held. A bit, no, a lot, like a marriage.

I walk today beneath cuckoo flight and an encounter with a pair of bullfinch. They, the bullfinch, are such an astonishment, such a gift for anyone, those big blood red chests, that black head, that unmistakable lift and flight, that hurries away. The Cuckoo also gift. I am guessing the same bird, for the location is always the same, but, nonetheless, a gift. The raindrops on the leaves make diamonds. It lifts the light, the shine of green, making each blade of grass like a newborn. The rain came on heavy, like way too loud for me to hear my audio book. I had to shut the doors to the sunroom with its plastic roof, as it sounded like the end of the world. Once quieted, I watched the way sound muffled and it reminded me of parents talking behind doors. An almost hearing but not enough to explain their concerns and not enough to make any sense at all. And there is a yearning there, to know more even as my hands back then were twists of troubled meat and bone. This doesn’t change. I know the Cuckoo is an adventurist, a taker, not a giver, but I still thrill to hear one, to even see one fly over my head. The ultimate human confusion. We want to hear and we don’t want to hear at all.

The rain popples the search. There are diamonds in patches, in swirls, moving but not with the tide. These patches are individuals. They hold, shift, move on and then concede and become a part of what must be. I like to think this is what I am. For ever I have conformed (not just me but all women/wives/mothers) to the ebb and flow. And yet there have been times and will be again to flash popples and diamonds just for a moment, just for a time. How wonderful is that!

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Island Blog – Curiosity and Attitude

I love mornings. Always have and I don’t mind early. According to my ma I could lounge about in bed till lunchtime as a grumpy teenager but all that changed once I floated up the aisle in my Edwardian frock and made my vows, sans obedience, for the record. I cannot imagine the damage that vow has done to so many women of generations past. Well, actually, I can. It was hard enough sticking with ‘in sickness and in health’ or ’till death do us part’, which it eventually did of course. I never thought I would manage that bit having been infuriated for decades. I had wings but they were clipped, or maybe I clipped them myself. Who cares. What I feel good about now is that, in spite of me wishing I had been born a greylag goose with all the challenges and thrills and freedom of migration being quite acceptable in all their circles, I accomplished the whole shebang. Let us not dig too deep into the way I accomplished this massive accomplishment. A lot of the time I slammed doors, ran away, hid my secrets and spat into his coffee. That’s enough for now on the subject.

Mornings. Curiosity. Opening like a flower to each day. Sometimes I am like a daffodil that needs de-heading, sometimes a vibrant rose, smelling divine and perfectly formed. I never know what way the which of it will be. I just spring out of bed, ping into the bathroom and out again, pull on a frock or jeans and scoot downstairs towards the coffee pot. Since himself flew to the higher realms I haven’t always been the rose. Sometimes I sprang, pinged and scooted just to outrun the mare of the previous night, but didn’t always manage it. She has four legs after all and I only two. But, in the main, it was my decision not to repeat the mare even to myself. Always the same theme, wanting to run but stuck in glue, wanting to scream with a mouth full of silence, the usual. At least I don’t meet an overrun of rats as my old ma did. I told her she deserved it. All those years of criticism and judgement. And we laughed about it because she thought I was making a joke, which I wasn’t.

Each day comes anew, obviously, and with potential. A deal of the unfolding of that potential lies inside me, in my attitude, my list of ‘ways to live again’. There are many. But the most important start point, the blocks from which to leap, ping and scoot through whatever the day brings, is my attitude, followed closely by my action. I like A words. They are beginnings and that’s a favourite B word. A and B. Much better than beginning sloppily midway through the alphabet. I mean, do I go back or forward now? I never do that. I start at the beginning with a big fat A. Or two.

I notice, have oft noticed, that without himself to ‘correct’ my diction, choice of clothing and sound levels, I am surrounded, enclosed and flailing at times within a new freedom. Freedom, another favourite word, and, as a word, it is the call of the wild, a heart thriller, new lands, new skies, new choices, independence and excessive sound levels, but to actually live in freedom is quite a different flower, sometimes a daffodil needing decapitation, sometimes a rose. I swing from one to the other, sometimes hour by hour. I don’t know what to do with all this freedom. Could someone hem me in please? I know how that feels, how to live as a reactionary, how to slam doors, swear like a fishwife and throw spectacular tantrums. All that pent up energy has nowhere to go now. It can feel like a phantom pregnancy. No chance of birthing. How bizarre.

I am learning to step out of myself, just a few steps back, and to observe. I am rather interesting, I decide. A query in a frock, someone worth further investigation, more study. I am curious about who I am just now. The overstory is still me, looks like me, sounds like me, laughs and jokes and cries like me but beneath what you see, what I see in the mirror, lies complexity personified. Both dead daffodil and vibrant rose. Very confusilating. But I know enough to know that it has only been a few months after almost 50 years of having my diction corrected and my sound levels on mute, so patience is required. That’s a P word, yes, but I know that attitude and action are my ways to be patient, so I’m allowed a P dash. If I am thankful for all of my life, all of it, the memories, the darkling times, the fear, love, misery and joy of it and I let it all settle within, patiently, then this gratitude will grow a new flower in me. As will action. Not the sort of frenetic action that hides me from the grieving process but the little insignificant-in-themselves actions I take daily; a little sewing, a bit of reading, a lot of bird watching and a moderate amount of walking in the wild, all actions that lift my eyes off myself and into the real ‘out there’. These actions create my attitude and as the circle circles, my attitude creates more action, more interest in ways to live again, to flower anew and to keep moving on through the alphabet, letter by letter.

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Island Blog – Pock, Shot, Falling and Holding

Early. I am up for the silence. The silence of snowfall. I hear something that sounds like nothing. A flip and a flop against the roof, the window, like something soft landing, politely. I know rain. I know hail, the blatter and scattermongery of it, the slap and splat against doubled glass, the alert of ice. Rain is easy. Like a friend. A well-known. It may cause me to sigh or raise my thinning eyebrows when it comes in the night but I know it nonetheless.

Waking, too early. Darkness with cold fingers, pre my ineffective central heating set for 0600, those ancient radiators puffing like old women losing the will to breathe, the ones affixed below windows as if that was ever a good idea. Hunkering behind thick, light refusing curtains, they pump their lightbulb warmth into a wide open space. But, I tell them, thank you. Good for you, you little cobwebbed fatlings. You do your best. If I had the money, I would sentence them to the metal tip, to landfill, and buy myself those svelte flatscreen daughters of effective heat. I don’t tell them that.

Walking in snowfall. It feels cold but is, in truth, warmer, or there would be no snow. My boots pock the elevations. I am old enough to know that it is wise to walk upon the elevations, the fresh-fall, where other booted feet have been equally wise. Where the tyre marks ride lie ice and a potential slip. I don’t beckon a slip, potential or otherwise, with my spindleshanks and my old bones that, apparently, break on contact, first with gravity and thence with a landing. We are not so good at landing as we age. Too much caught in the fear of it, tense, awkward, doomed.

My boots follow the high riser boots that have gone before, invisible walkers who only came today. I am enough of a tracker to know this. Pock, pock, scrunch, scrunch, my boots louding the sound of distant gunfire. I think of the trenches, of war. That sound must have brought such fear to listening hearts hiding in the dark. I notice the tracks. A man here, a bit overweight, or maybe just confident and well-balanced, his head and body strong above his striding legs. A child here and another, a bigger child. but both walking at ten to two, as we were always encouraged (enforced) to do. Here, someone, a woman perhaps, lighter of foot, and distant from the familial group. Or, maybe she walked alone and the other prints relate not to her snow traverse. I will never know. The scoot and slush of a bicycle, hollowing out the resistant mud of the woods, easy to slop and skew, wiggling and re-founding on its passage through the trees, beneath the moss-covered trunk of the massive Elvish Beech. Rounding back onto the other track, I study a flush of blown snow from last night creeping up the almost fallen trunk of a massive pine. It has fallen, but not quite, against another somewhat weaker tree. It makes me think of family, of sisters and of brother. I am huge. I falter and fall, but you are there and I know I am putting an inhuman pressure on you, but look at you……you are holding me up.

Do trees brace? Do they make a decision when they are fallen against, to hold and hold and hold for both? I like to think so. In human terms I know this. I can fall, but I will be held. But, as I watch this ‘a deux’ I can only see a final crash to the ground. The roots of the holder are still beneath the goodly earth, but the ‘leaner’ is showing her underpants and is so much bigger. Time will tell.

Today I did not feel great at all. It was a big thing to walk at all in the sunlit snow where most folk are out sledging and laughing and being eejits. But I did walk and I did track and this has to be a tick in my box of who-the-hec-am-I-now. There are so many fears. Fears that were possibly always there but were swashbuckled away by Himself, and, now, my kids. But the bottom line is just me. And that is my biggest ever learning curve and not one, if am honest, I really want to learn. I gave my final statement to the police this evening. He tells me the abuser has been located and will be contacted. I said, Oh, just a warning? No, he said. This is a crime. They will let me know once they have knocked on his door, but to be honest I can only guess at what the Met has to deal with on a 24 hour basis, real dreadful crimes, real imminent fear, and I am patient. Nothing has come since my number change.

How bizarre that it unnerved me so very much; made me fear shadows, look for footprints at ten to two or not; when I live hundreds of miles away from the caller, the sad, lost, angry man who, randomly (obviously) targeted an old woman.

The snow stands. The light it gifts to the evening, the way it answers the inside twinkly winky lights, marvels me. I will not shut the outside out. Is that a double negative?! I will embrace the inside and the outside of my life. I will not live in fear. I reach out, right now to anyone who is afraid. I won’t say Don’t be Afraid, because you might punch me as I would you if you said that to me. I am just waving. Just saying Hallo. I know how this feels and I so wish it wasn’t happening to you or to me.

Salut.

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Island Blog – Diving for Change

This morning I woke to a deeper understanding of an old thing, a truth I already knew at a lighter level. Funny that, how we can hear the same thing at a different time and hear it as if for the first time. The lift of emotion is the giveaway. Going below the surface changes the view, as it does in real time. Above the surface, and even at its level, there are sounds of the world all about our ears. Diving below brings silence, at first. We leave the world behind as it were and sink into the unknown. From where we were we could probably see something down there, maybe a few somethings, but in allowing ourselves to move among the somethings we let go of control. Down here in the swirly depths, the fish, the imaginary sea creatures, we are vulnerable and we feel it. The colours that drew us in from up there become vibrant as precious jewels. Closer now and we can see movement and lives being lived. We can reach out and touch a shell, brush a tendril, catch the filtered sunlight on the diamond back of some fish or other, feel the rush of its escape as our body invades space.

It was the same for me this morning. Somehow I had allowed myself to sink below the surface, I had let go and I was vulnerable in that. And, you know what…..it feels wonderful. I realise that I have been holding onto a pattern of living that no longer serves me. Joining the dots of hindsight I see that I have known this for some time, for look…..there is a shape to it now; the hindsight dots have shown me that. How did I not see it from the get go? Because it wasn’t the right time. Time knows herself. She’s a keeper. She will illuminate the right thing at the right time for me, for everyone. She also knows when to suggest a dive. My emotional response to her is the giveaway. Learning a truth, puffing out an Aha is one thing. it is also devoid of emotion. It is understood at the level of sensibility, of logic, of the world. But, when I respond to it again at a deeper and more vulnerable level, my eyes can make rain. This is the real Aha. From this point I can never go back because once my heart gets it, it stays got. And it is such a peaceful thing. No fireworks, no need to call a friend all excited, no need to teach it, not my thing, not my new understanding.

I probably longed for this to come to me yonks ago. I wish, I wish, I wish, but it didn’t come no matter how much yoga I imagined I did, or how often I walked mindfully through the fairy woods; no matter how many books I read on the subject. This process of learning and letting go of something is out of my hands once I start wishing for it, start doing the work, and, believe me, that work is demanded of me. Wishing is for children. Wishing adults just die of an overdose of unfulfilled wishes. So my trudging along for all those yonks has finally paid off. Nothing has changed and yet everything has changed. And all I did was dive in and let go.