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Island Blog – Keeping Time with Time

I wake early and with the sunrise. Out here, in Africa, we are two hours ahead of the UK for a while yet, until the clocks go forward this month. Africa doesn’t bother about clock changing and it wonders me why anyone does. There must be a point to it. Perhaps there is only a limited amount of time in the world and it needs sharing. We lose an hour and another continent thousands of miles across the world finds it has gained one, over us, that is. What is achieved in that gained hour I wonder? Does somebody somewhere get a job done more thoroughly or is that hour just 60 minutes of boredom, time wasted, time not needed, time spent in waiting for something, anything to happen? And when we claim back that hour, around now, with Spring in our step, do we notice the gain of it, treasure it, make it really count, or is it just lost in sleep, a sleep cut short? This musing thinks me. I don’t need to know the facts around time gained, time lost, because this is not the way my mind works. I am more interested in the concept of time and what it means at the core of itself. Time gained? Who gains? Time lost? Who loses? All answers float in the stratosphere, high above factual explanations, beyond the reach of science or physics, free-flowing through the vast and unlimited space of an imagination. There is no such thing as time. Time is an illusion. We all have the same number of hours in a day. But what do we do with our no-such-thing, illusory and equally gifted gift of Time? Now that’s a question.

When I was mostly tapselteerie, way back when children were children, when I was taller than any of them and when, if I said NO, then NO it was, I never thought much about time as a concept. It was something the clock told me, tick, tock, tick, a hand at my back, a hurry up, a panic, a flurry of hours that allowed for no sit-downs, merciless in the tick and the tock of itself, selfish. Selfish time, stop a little, slow a bit, let me catch up? No chance of that my dear, you just need to shape up and move faster. It is like this for all in the muddle-frenzy of young life, building children, building a business, clambering up corporate ladders, learning new ways to fit in, diluting self for the benefit of the team and so on. From where I sit now, watching all this flurrying about me, I am glad it is done for me, no longer diluting self, no longer at the mercy of time, of business, softer round the edges, watching, smiling, calm. I was never calm in the olden days, although I did know people who managed the calm thing and it really irritated me that I couldn’t, me constantly on the boil, my guts in a right fankle, my legs never still. These people seemed in control of their time, allowing it to pass them by, yet still able to fire on all systems when required. Something to do with my faulty wiring, I told myself, and there was a damnit in that thought. However, looking back now through the rosy lens of hindsight, I smile as I recall the fankle, the self-flagellation, the waste of those minutes, those hours spent wishing I could be who I was not. Time wasted, or was it?

Self-reflection is no bad thing, as long as it is not indulged in and developed into a standstill. In my long journey through wasteland and over capricious and sometimes spiteful expanses of ocean, I did, and still do, need to trim my sails, to learn from life herself, to change this or that, to find a new way to look at an old thing. Learning is a lifetime’s work and I am still learning, still a student, an understanding that can really up my fed at times, and delight me at others. I still have my mind, my health, my precious life, time. None of us know how much of that we have, myself included, and it seems to me that this doesn’t really matter much. It’s who we are in the time we do have that remembers people, makes a dent in others lives. Did I waste time in my life? I did. Was I completely marvellous at filling my time to capacity and at all times? I was not. Did I share my time, gift my time every time it was needed? I did not. Am I deeply thankful for all the time spent, shared, gifted, wasted? Those hours of shared chatter, laughter, tears and silent companionship, those highs and lows, those moments spent staring through windows and wishing life was different, that something would happen to change everything……….am I thankful for all of that time? I am.

And now, for however much time is left, no matter the loss and gain of hours, I will keep time with Time. I will sleep some away, waste some, share some, sit alone and gaze through windows but this time without wishing for transformation, without regrets, analysis, criticism of self, all of that time wasting nonsense. Even through the rumpelstiltskin hours of a tossing night, even when I wish she would hurry up, slow down, stop completely for a while, even then, for Time is my friend and she is gift. So many have no time left at all.

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Island Blog – The Trees Speak me Friendship

Yesterday lifted into today about five hours earlier than I might have chosen. Sleeping is obviously not my strongpoint. I should know this by now, accept the truth of it but I am a natural believer in a good ending, not because the aforesaid happens to me, but that I happen to it. If my attitude is positive, my diet good, my daily walks beneath the giant trees accomplished, mindfully, then I will sleep and sometimes I do, but on those ‘do’ days I wake in astonishment and rarely expect a replay. Perhaps that’s my mistake.

I dress, pull on my attitude, go through my decisions for the day, squirt perfume, turn to the dark window and look out. I know it is fully dark here by comparison. No streetlights, no headlights, no light pollution at all. I keep looking. There is no such thing as full dark. My eyes adjust. T’is a survival thingy. I can see a bit more, a bit star, a bit moonslice tipping out from behind a cloud for a moment, just a moment. Ah, I say. I remember a time, no, times, walking home from a ceilidh in the village into the pitch black of night in all the wrong kit. I remember the first frill of fear, the fingers of it touching me, shivering me. I remember stopping still on the Tapselteerie track. A mile of this to go, more and a lot of winding and pothole avoiding. Stop. Look. Listen. The trees know where you are. Find them and listen. Alone out there and with the fear sliding off my back, I felt myself come back to me. Bringing all senses into an intelligent one, we moved forward in a new light. I could hear the wind coming from the west, or the east or the south or the north just by the lick of it against my skin and the trees bent accordingly. It thinked me, this bending with a powerful element. I chuckled as I move forward. Of course they, the trees, must learn to move with the wind changes, with whatever each one brings. Otherwise, well, think firewood. Could I, this small and only ‘I’ learn from the trees? Could I be as majestic and strong as they are in spite of wind changes?

I did and I still do. This day after the clouds dumped about 27 rivers on our heads, the sky cleared a bit and that lovely blue appeared, swirled with clouds. Actually, I can feel a bit sorry for clouds. They are at the mercy of all four winds, all four temperamental powers, shredded, clumped together, fluffed up until they get complacent and then pulled apart like rotten cotton and thrown into space. So, the blue came and I walked through the Tapselteerie woods, every single step a memory and yet each step completely new. I stop to watch the beech trees, all sung out and bare, silver trunked and light rooted. Hold tight, I say as I move beneath 100 year old limbs like gifting arms. I hear the squeak of birch branches, the tic tic of brush Hazel, the groan of the giant pines and the song of their needles. Looking up is fine but don’t step forward when you are doing the looking up thing. There are potholes and puddles and things that bring you right back down to earth just when you thought you were Alice or Dorothy.

I think of land ownership. Not that I believe in it. We are just tenants for a while and thus responsible for the land we think we own. I know now that trees care for each other, that a beech tree roots light, that pines go deep, as do oaks, but, as they do their roots find weakness in another species, say a birch or an alder and that root will lift like a strong finger until it holds the weakness, securing it to the ground. Now that is friendship.

And the trees are friends to me.

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Island Blog – Tuning, Turning and Today

I awake this morning knowing that I have been out of tune with life for a bit. I know it because, on awakening, I feel in tune once more. Instead of a night of mares and violent interlopers and slugging through the days quite certain that my internal cheerleaders have downed their pompoms and left for Ibiza, I floated inside the arms of sleep all the way up to 3.30 am. Going quietly downstairs to make a cup of tea, I noticed how dark it now is. Only last week, it seems, it was light enough to show me the way. Perhaps, I say to myself, it is the turning of the seasons that has set me at a discord; perhaps it is the unwinding of lockdown and the threat of incoming, be it friendly or hostile. This bubble has lived us pleasantly since March 16th, weeks passing like minutes, moons waxing, waning and all days are Today. We needed nothing more.

Of course, the current subject matter of care home, separation, guilt, grief, loss and fear may also have colluded in my needing a re-tune. Time is the best one for that, but we are impatient; I am impatient. When I might expect to back on my feet instantly, life is telling me Stay Down Awhile, you ridiculous woman, but I don’t take kindly to being told. I battle on, expecting my mood to lift with my feet as I troughle round the daily do’s and grow furious when it stays limp as old lettuce.

Trusting, however, as I do, in the spirit world, the one I cannot see, touch or control, softens my wires and loosens keys that have gone rigid of late. The tunes I played sounded like a mess of angry cats; hurtful even to my own ears, going nowhere, no cadence, no major lift or minor bend, just a racket. From this morning, I can hear the lilt once more of harmony, melody, flow and the relief runs through me like warm honey. Nothing has changed. All will go ahead, in its own time, at its own speed and all will be well. I know this now, even as I know that discordant days will come again as we make the journey to a new place and time. However, knowing this doesn’t disturb the melody for I have learned that life is not a set piece of music, but, instead, one that changes over and over again. All I need to do is allow it all to happen, to accept the sad times, to sit with them, say Hallo, and wait for them to move away.

Times like these we learn from, if we notice, stop, say Hallo and wait in trust. I wish I had understood this as a young woman instead of turning from the darkness, fighting the demons with sickeningly inadequate weapons, thinking that if I sang loud enough the melody would find me once again. So much time wasted in ignorance. But I am thankful to understand it now because I do not believe in the bad press; I know the nightmares are just unpleasant dreams and that all days are, simply, today.

Which, I am reminded, is Winnie the Pooh’s favourite day of all.

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Island Blog – Stasis, Statues and the Extraordinary

And so it is. The ferry will not carry anyone who cannot prove they live here; the shops are closed, as are the pubs, hotels and hostels. We are held in stasis, like the statues we see dotted around our cities. Whenever I walk past one, bronzed and frozen in some public place, I wonder what was happening to that notable person before that moment in time and after, if, indeed there was one of those. Did he or she live out a mostly ordinary life until he or she chose to perform something remarkable? Was that laudable moment his only laudable moment? Or was her life so very laudable that we, living out our own ordinary lives (that never epiphanied us into statue material) have to keep being reminded of our ordinariness every time we pass by? Did his feet ache in ill-fitting shoes or no shoes at all? Was she late for school/work/choir practice and did her teeth hurt eating ice cream? What does this laudable dude think of the pigeons that perch on their horizontals and shit them white and greasy grey? Do they notice the baggy coated homeless wanderer who slumps beneath their lofty limbs glugging poison from a bottle and staring out at the world through nearlydead eyes?

Who knows. Statement, not question. I would have to stop, obviously, and read the plaque, the blurb about this hero or heroine but I rarely do if I’m honest. I notice, more, the face, the expression, and I follow the trajectory of their gaze and even that cursorily because I am on my own trajectory from A to B, and this bronzed or marbled elevation of one human being (or been) will still be here should I come this way again with more time and with my specs on.

But now we are not marching from A to B, most of us. Those who aren’t directly servicing the good of our fellow men and women are at home behind window glass and doors with sterilised handles and knobs. The walks and talks and coffee meets and random encounters are now forbidden as we work together to prevent the unnecessary spread of a killer virus. Silent, deadly and very much alive. But we are enterprising, we ordinary people, and I am daily delighted as I hear more of this online idea or that distance contact. I laugh at the online videos created by minds with sparkle and am thankful when they are forwarded on to me. We are not statues. Most of us never will be anyway. But, in our ordinariness we are showing strong signs of the extraordinary. I knew we would. My granddaughter is doing a co-ordinated bake off with her school mates through WhatsApp or Skype. And what she is learning, what we are all learning, is that our ordinary brains are capable of so much more than we ever knew. The world will be forever changed once we come out on the other side of this war and although some won’t be with us, those who are left will walk into a new world and, although not many of us will warrant a statue in our name, there are those who would surely deserve to be remembered in such a way.

I remember a statue once, in Amsterdam. A rather splendid fellow in frock coat and tights with an ebullience of rakish hair and a fabulous face. He was holding out a painters palette in one hand, a paintbrush in the other. I was not on my way from A to B and he was worth a second look, so I did read the plaque. ‘Barent Fabritius – who lived till he went back to Amsterdam, whence he died’. Not a great ad for Amsterdam. It made me chuckle and look back up into his face. And then he moved.

He moved, he moved! I screeched at my friend who raised one eyebrow and shook her head. See that glass of white you had for lunch….? she said and walked away to check out some tulips. I risked another glance upwards. He smiled at me and winked and I laughed delightedly, upsetting the pigeons who burst into the sky, and the old homeless man on a nearby bench swore in technicolour, then slumped back down into the folds of his baggy old coat.

I knew then, as I know now, that nothing and no-one in this world is ordinary. Oh no, not at all.

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Island Blog – Dinner and Confusion

Sometimes I feel an inner confusion as I study All Things Human, referring back to history, genealogy, culture and just plain Getting on with Life Wherever and Whoever You Are. I am, however, a big fan of holding two (supposedly) opposing ideas at the same time with me as an observer. In short, there are 3 of us in this moment, the two thoughts and moi. It is so easy to side with one or t’other as the observer, mostly because holding two opposing thoughts is like arriving at a traffic light stuck on red. Do I go or wait for someone in a luminous jacket to tell us in the stop zone who can go first?

My current conundrum is all about when to speak out and when to shutup; when saying what I think can make a good difference or when it will serve no purpose whatsoever in terms of anyone moving forward, leaving, instead, a confusion of confusions in everybody’s head. Not to mention anger or hurt. Standing up for someone is a good thing, even if I wish they would do it for themselves, but when is the right time for my voice to be heard on their behalf? In doing this standing up thing I will obviously be knocking another somebody down so that the end result is messy, to say the least. In a relationship there are a gazillion chances to make a right stooshie of things by saying anything at all. I guess there are the same number of chances to make good but knowing which and when is the issue here.

In childhood I learned that to speak out was only acceptable when the eyes of my elders and betters turned in my direction and a question was asked of me. Even then I must needs consider my response, taking in everyone’s feelings and placement in the hierarchy of the moment. In other words, not using my true voice at all. Exploding into baby adulthood, I spent long times in my room asking myself what I wanted, believed in or felt and I often came up with a big fat zero. I had no clue. Then I met my life partner and learned some more about myself, but only through his eyes. The length of my skirt, the visibility of my cleavage, the kohl around my eyes, the way I walked, talked and laughed all were dingled through his idea of a wholesome wife, and delivered back to me as my guidelines for my life. I found it most confusing to be told not to laugh so loud. Over time I forgot how to laugh at all, giggling, instead, like a hyena but quieter and in a different key to the one I felt comfortable with. I could be severely remonstrated with over the way I said something whilst the actual something got lost altogether. Confusing that. Coming away smarting from speaking my mind on some relational subject and feeling like I was back at school and had just cheeked the headmaster was weird indeed.

Standing up for someone else is considerably easier than doing that standing up thing for myself. This wonders me. Yes, learned behaviour is in there like the roots of an old oak tree, but I do look forward to the day I can challenge someone’s jab at me with consideration to self and to them, concomitantly. It is so much easier to go quiet, hugging the hurt and the sense of injustice and then to la-la-la away, only to return bright-faced and in collusion with all involved, as if nothing ever happened. Trouble is, those times don’t leave the building, not never. They rise again over time when a similar situation arises, reminding me of those long tangled roots.

However, there are times to shut up and take the knock, never to challenge it at all, ie when the reason for the perceived insult is a result of their baggage, not my own. In many ways I feel privileged to be able to take it and not to respond at all, unless with a kindness. I like to be kind. Working out when to and when not to, on the other hand, seems to be a lifetime’s study into All Things Human, for me, anyhoo, and I still have no definitive answer to that. Perhaps I never will, and doubly perhaps it doesn’t matter one tiddley jot. When I lie on my final bed and consider my long life stretching out behind me, burgeoning with memories of ups and memories of downs and a million squillion hectares in between, will I have the answer? I doubt it.

The biggest load of questions come from my relationship with my life partner. Well that’s not news to anyone with one. A life partner, I mean. Opposites attract and then that oppositeness becomes opposition shortly after returning from the honeymoon. In the Great Plan for All Things Human, this is, undoubtedly, a major flaw in the blueprint. When people rant on about our education plan, saying that none of the really important things are ever taught to our children, I can agree to a very great extent but the old stumbler is that most of what they really need to learn has no formula whatsoever. A conjoining of two souls for life is the biggest ball of confusion ever. Everyone knows that. So how can it ever be taught or learned? Well, it cannot. It is as slippery as an eel and as hard to hold on to.

Yesterday we played a game. If you could invite any 10 people to dinner for just one night, alive or dead, famous or down the road, fictitious or real, who would you invite?

God, I said for starters. And he’d better arrive first and I bagsy sit next to him because I have a constellation of questions to fire his way, to which I will require clear and understandable answers (no parables please). Another would be Freddie Mercury and a third Billy Connelly. (I only got to three but I’m working on the rest). Between the three of them I just might gain a little more insight into this confusion of a life.

Oh, and none of them are allowed to bunk off early.

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Island Blog – The Ambience of Time

‘Ambience – the quality or character given to a sound recording by the space in which the sound occurs.’

That’s just one meaning of the word but one I like, on consideration. Quality, Character, Space In Which The Sound Occurs. In other words, the Moment. Life is but a series of moments, so many missed, wished away, ignored, rejected in a lunatic hurtle to either a new beginning or to the end of it. In a quest for happiness we can miss it all. No wonder so many lie on their bed of death in a cloud of regret, not, perhaps at their whole life but at those moments missed, ones that now take on the aspect and the voice of the Final Jury.

Ah, foolish man, foolish woman. There is enough well-crafted literature out there for us all to become professional livers of life, words gifted to those with eyes to read, ears to hear, minds to learn and feet to stay grounded in each moment, turning up for every one of them. It is easy to understand the rightness of such thinking, such a way of being but the world is loud as a bully and equally as daunting. Although we know that a bully is all fur coat and no nickers once ignored as we might a persistent bluebottle, the daunt is still there like an overwhelming fear, and it can confound the best of us.

However, knowing something is for the logic brain. Feelings, by contrast, riddle our minds, our hearts, our choices and our definition of self, like bullets from a machine gun. It’s spaghetti junction inside, a tangle of ups and downs, rounds and backs again, and appears beyond our control, as indeed feelings are. But here we have a choice. My choice is to say ‘Okay, I hear you all. All the feelings, all the logic learned from others way wiser than I and nothing makes a jot of sense. There is no flipshot way I can sort this tangle out. None of you agree for a kick-off and I am down here, little me in my frock and wellies wondering how deep the puddles will be today, bothering about my piddling worries, the state of the world and whether the battery on my phone will last until I get home again. So here’s the plan. You carry on disagreeing and tangling and arguing with each other and I am going to spend this day watching the moments as they come to me. I’m going to notice each one, be thankful for them all as they come and go and when this day is done I might check in on you bickering brats, or I might not. I know you are a gift. I know that all you feelings and all you counteractive logicians are, and have been, wonderful guides throughout my life, barring the times you meet each other across the valley of my mind with staves and spears, guns and a lot of yelling, but this day you are too much for me. There is a life down here being lived and it is I who am living it. So I choose to ignore you and to settle like a fatling hen upon her eggs for this day alone’.

I only have today. So do you. So does every living soul, regardless of status (perceived or real), colour, creed, race, history, size, plans and wealth. Just today. How will I live it? How will you? Will we hurtle in our steely rockets, slicing the moments into forgettable fractions or will we stop and share a smile, buy a beggar a burger and mug of hot tea, ask a colleague how they really are, phone mum, write an encouraging letter or email, study the pidgeon on the window ledge until we really see it?

There will always be a tangle within. We are humans with tangles. But if we forget to live our lives moment by moment, our life will still be lived without us being a part of it. Letting go of the tangles won’t bother them much, at first, but in choosing to notice everything and by some magical and out-there process, this tangle is no match for a person who lets go and who lives just this day as it is, who simply turns up, curious and wild at heart.

I leave you with a wisdom from Sarah Manguso:-

‘Perhaps all anxiety might derive from a fixation on moments – an inability to accept life as on-going.’ and, in her writing about keeping a journal…..

‘I just wanted to retain the whole memory of my life, to control the itinerary of my visitations, to forget what I wanted to forget.

Good luck with that, whispered the dead.’