thought

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Island Blog – A Fellow Human Being

I profess to being absolutely disinterested in any written rants, particularly on social media, although in my day I would have said by letter. I am almost as disinterested when standing a few feet away from a verbal rant. Now why is this? I have many thinks, but the one that sticks up like a pole in the desert is that this ranty person wasn’t listened to in childhood and the subsequent frustrational decades have taken root, like a tumour. Only one person can heal that deep wound.

A rant is a speech, really, and it goes on until the end. The ranter is fixed in his or her opinion, no matter any reasoning voice traversing the few feet. There is no solution, no turning, but only escalation if rebutted or at the suggestion of any level of understanding. It’s basically Don’t Bother. However, being completely in love with all people, I cannot just redact nor dismiss what someone is obviously in a right stooshie about. Conversational tactics are learned, usually as a result of noticing, observing through a singular and silent thought process. As I wander around the world, sorry, Island, reading books, hearing real life stories and really hearing them, eventually returning to the gentle tick tick of my wood burner munching old trees and the bashing crash of yet another night of an angry wind, I carry the arias of questions like a swirl of songbirds in my mind. (Way too long a sentence). I do wonder about my mind because it never rests, not even at night. It never did, so chances are we are stuck with each other at this late stage. I can wake amidships of the darkness, tossed and turned in some bajonkers seacrowd of sky-wipeout waves with a thought, an Aha, as if something wonderful happened whilst I sort of slept and I must needs grab my goonie and spiral down the stairs into the glorious pitch dark only wild places enjoy, and write it down. When dawn finally manages to push up the night, the heavyweight that she is, I read what I wrote and laugh out loud. It makes no sense at all and here’s why. This mind of mine, this extraordinary muscle, if that is what it is, has already moved on to another sphere and that means I got left behind. I remember this feeling as a young girl. A very high IQ is not necessarily helpful in life because unless it is gentled and respected and very carefully cared for, some ambitious parent will start pushing. Moving on……

I did digress there, I know. Back to where I began. Understanding people with different views to my own, with opinions and agonies and childhood wounds when in the shape of an adult is never easy. We like, we don’t like. We love, we hate. We want to be with this one but would run miles to avoid that one. Division. Exclusion. Judgement. Don’t like any of those. Saying Hallo and being open without bias, without sussing someone out from the way they present, isn’t easy. Our culture nowadays is so invasively critical, so knowledgeable on body language, on verbal dynamics, on fear and suspicion, thus not honest with ourselves, that we come to any new meet dressed in Kevlar.

I know we are fortunate here, despite the endless gales, because life is real. Rural places all over the two countries know what I mean. We learn to live with each other, even though, yes, we may tattle and maybe rant a bit, but so does any living creature who resides in a collective. Sparrows are a great example. If we want the end of war, we need to live that way. We know it even as we expect not to have to pay it forward ourselves. It takes one, two, consistently refusing to unfriend, to be open, welcoming in the spite of rejection, over and over and over again, listening to the angry, the ranters, those who are pinned to the wall of pain, just sharing time, gifting it, not as a fixer but as a fellow faltering human.

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Island Blog – The Disordinary

I’m on my ordinary list. Got through a few, a lot, in fact. I emptied the compost bucket, said hallo to an obviously newborn toad, for all the blinking and not moving thing he or she did on the step into the woods. I brought wood in, welcomed a friend for soup and a delicious afternoon of chat about everything to do with life and notlife and everything in betweem which is a hoor of a load of years and fears and tears and joy andchildren andregrets and gains and loss. I went to church, read a prayer, hugged, left. There are a couple of didn’ts. I didn’t do my 100 pulls on the rowing machine, nor did I walk. I feel bad about both. But, there is always the morra. I moved cash to cover incoming bills. I decided what I will wear to my friend’s funeral in a couple of weeks, and I felt good about the lunacy of my outfit.

Last thing is to sort the drain smell in the shower room. It used to be a bathroom, with a bath long enough anbd deep enough for a whale. It was a fabulous bath. However, times change and so on, and because we needed no bath, no chance of disaster. A wet room, a shower, hold handles and a non skid floor. A big change. The piping of this new song is too thin. The shower, still a good one, works fine. The drain requires constant attention. I have no idea what changed. Perhaps the old pipes didn’t fit with council rules.

Anyways. I went upstairs as the dusk dusked to pour some soda down the smelly pipe. Added some boiling water, just a cupful, to leave till morning. I was listening to an audio book, lodged safely on the radiator, atop my flannel. Somehow, and I don’t know how, I moved something and the mobile slid down between the radiator and the wall. I thought, oh shit. Here I am, alone, old, in the dark, and this audio book has at least 30 chapters to go and my phone is well charged. However, I am me. grinned a bit, moved downstairs to find tools, thinking all the way. Slim, grab, push, that sort of think.

I did all of that. We are together again, but it did think me of the disordinaray. It comes.

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Island Blog – Risk, Wild, Adventure, Lipstick

My roses are ridonculus. This year, despite being cut down to their knees last Autumn, they have risen like blooming lamposts. They know, they have to, that wind and WIND cometh, and daily, along with slews of rain, a veritable slam-dunk with potential collapse. But, they don’t do that collapso thing, not like the beech limb, that sweet strong gone-thing that prevents my traverse in the most polite of ways in that it fell whilst I was not beneath its massive tonnage. I see the black, the ingress of rain for perhaps decades, the finite a silent given, but not to me, not to all of us who wandered beneath the bow and the beauty of this superb and wonderful spread. We, human we, didn’t think at all. We just lifted an overhang, leaf heavy, and for so many walks and talks and unthinks.

Today, returning from work, I saw something, a definite some-thing at the side of the track, and moving. A buzzard low and just above this moving thing, taunting, dunting, a significant part of the moment. I slowed my mini (she doesn’t like to slow, so there was a tussle) and looked. An otter, an OTTER, right there beside me, slid into the ditch, then paused and looked right at me. It’s face, its eyes, my face, my eyes, we collided. Then, it grabbed the hen it had pinched from……where for goodness sake? There is nothing and no-one here, not for miles. That eye connection champagnes my insides and, for a bit, whilst Mini grumbled, I could not press play. I was in the wild and I didn’t want to leave. The. otter did, lifting over ferns and rocks until all I saw was the nothing I had expected pre this sudden eye-catch, this adventure. It thought me.

Adventure, risk and the wild is not for some, but for us all. We just have to see everything and to seek something beyond and above the usual, the what we’ll have for dinner, the whose turn it is to take the kids to their groups, the grind of expectation and disappointment. I remember being there, but please don’t think that just because my kids are born and gorn that everything becomes marvellous, because that is a myth. I began being ridonculus at 21, deciding to see the wild, to risk adventure, to find connection with my people, who were not always my family. It is a choice. I ask myself, and daily, Who Am I in this Here and Now? The answer comes. You Know Who You Are. And the voice is right.

One day I drove to the harbour, knowing one of my boys had parked there. I also knew I wouldn’t see him, but that didn’t matter. I found his big ass buckie and pulled out my pink lipstick. I drew a huge heart on the driver window and wrote I LOVE YOU, right across the windscreen. No-one saw me. Chuffed, I walked back to my car, passing, oh dear, passing, his buckie, I knew it, his stuff, his order, his things and thought, oh holy shit! I just defaced an unknown’s glassware. Then, the wild in me, the adventure, laughed me and I did it all again. As I hiked my wee car up the hill and away, I did wonder what the other guy felt as he came back to such a message.

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Island Blog – Still a Light

I watch the days and the nights. The sharp twist of frost overnight, the sun big as a baron in his barony, wide smiled and warm as a beacon. A light to guide. Jack Frost holds on as long as he can, but even he is no match for that burning fire star. Beaten, for a few hours, Jack slinks back to Winterland for a chilly snooze, biding his time. The switchback road is icy or it looks like it despite the gritter of last night, for it is still zero degrees. The sky is cerulean with whisper clouds, the ground flat and brown and decorated with frosted grasses. Sunlight catches the icy spider webs, diamonds in the bog willow and heather. I meet no cars at all. Ah, the perfection of island life in winter!

I am driving, not Miss Daisy, god bless her and RIP. By now she may appear recycled as a sardine tin and I sigh at the thought. So not how she would ever have seen herself. She may have had rusty underpinnings and found it a bit hard to fire into life of a chilly morning, but she was a strong spirited old girl and kept going till a very definite end. Out, as they say, like a light, which she was. It thinks me, about my own life, the light of it for me and, hopefully, for others. To remain in memories long after your drive belt, or shaft, or whatever has broken is a very uplifting thought. As we grow old, with rusty underpinnings and the struggle to fire up, we have a choice. We are sentient beings, spirited and intelligent and we can make that choice, no matter how crap we might feel, no matter our anxieties, aches, botherments and tiddleypoms. And they are, for the lucky ones, very tiddley indeed. As we readers and curiositors know very well, there is always a choice on how we present ourselves. I know of those, as you do, who have faced, are facing very dire internal horribles, whose lives are actively under threat and yet who still decide to be cheerful. I have nonesuch troubles but I like the ethic and choose it for myself. Ideally, I would like to live a good long life and to have my drive belt snap politely in a beautiful place with eagles soaring overhead and close to home, inside it, ideally. Miss Daisy almost managed the latter, but not quite. Her life ended just as we turned down the hill to home, thus allowing me the relief of knowing that we could freewheel all the way into the village. It could have happened on an upward bend, in snow, with the gritter coming at me like a huge yellow monster, but it didn’t.

This day I drive Miss Pixty, a sassy mini cooper who is a bit of a speed freak if I’m honest. I need to rein her in quite often, but she is great at turning on a sixpence, parking in tiny spaces and responding immediately to whatever I need her to respond to. She will outlive me, this teenager, and we have become fast friends. She is going for her full service, which means, I tell her, that handsome mechanics will be checking her personals. She blushes. It’s okay, I say. They are good lads and it will only take an hour or so. I meet an old friend for coffee. Neither she nor I admit to ‘old’ for we know that there are doddery old 90 year olds about, but because we have known each other for over 45 years. We laugh about getting older, learning acceptance, wisdom and humour at the various small demises we both encounter such as forgetments, bent fingers, slower walking and the strong likelihood of us walking through the town with our frocks tucked into our knickers. Together we can laugh. Alone we blush with embarrassment. We agree that connectivity at such a time is reassuring, uplifting, allowing us to feel we are not the only one going through this process none of us prepared for, one that came so quick, like a thief in the night.

I wander to various shops run by those I knew as children, not five minutes ago, those who now have teenage children of their own. It wonders me. Time, though an illusion, has such power to confuse a mind. She, Time, can scoot the years whilst also managed to dawdle an hour until I am screaming for the clock to hurry up and arrive at the end of itself. The smiles of welcome are heart warming. I wonder what they see as I fankle with the door handle, burst in, laugh at my fankle bursting thing. I surreptitiously check my frock is not tucked in anywhere and straighten, re-aligning the arrangement of island made soaps and candles and creams that almost toppled at my inburst. All well. We chat, I purchase and move on. More chat, more purchase. The island shops are wonderful, offering not Scottish Tat, thank the holy grail, but island-made, inventive and inspirational and I am proud to be an islander in a world that seems to have swapped quality for plastic.

Mis Pixty awaits me and she visibly relaxes as I say hallo and take my seat. How was it? I ask her, flicking on the engine. She growls a bit, then a sassy note comes into her voice. I know that sound. Although she has suffered various underskirt poking and proddings, she has also had her throat cleared and she is raring to go. Steady, I say, Gently, I say and then Let’s Go! And we do, driving round corners, hugging the road and meeting absolutely no-one. As we pass the graveyard, where Miss Daisy died quietly I look across at where Himself lies. The sun catches the stonewords, all of them, not just his. You all lived good lives, I say. Some hard, sometimes hard, some easy, sometimes easy. You had days of dire and days of ire and days of fire and sunlight when a child’s laughter, a moment of intimate love, a glass raised at Hogmanay lifted you above and out of yourself for just a little while. You read a book that smiled you, spent an hour in the pub with a friend chewing over old time, old memories when you were someone else, younger stronger, vibrant and fluid. Then came Time to fickle you. You didn’t invite her in, nobody ever does, but she came anyway and dulled your wits, challenged your dignity, unalughed your laugh. I hope, I continue, that you chose to present the great untruth when someone asked How Are You Today? Or, more unfortunately, and please take this one very seriously, How Are We Today? Eish, never ever ask that one. And, the great untruth is a wonderful light to give out because it lightens everyone you speak to. The bumbling, faltering slide into old age is no news to we bumblers and falterers. We know it, it wakens us in the night, it reminds us of itself all through the day but my questions are these:

How do you want to be thought of right now?

How do you want to be remembered?

What do you want to say about growing old?

This last is important. Young people say they don’t want to grow old, as did I. Now I am here. And I am still a light.

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Island Blog – Add the New and Let us Heal

Well, today was interesting. I went through my check list of new habits, ticking off this one and that. During that process, there were times of momental anxiety, as ever. Self doubt, quandary, up the stairs and down again. The usual. Moments when I doubt myself and never, ps and btw in the moment. I know my moments and they are mine and they are themselves and we work together nae bother. It is the times when I doubt something much bigger and all because a thought comes in. I now recognise these confounding thoughts as those rooted in the past, in childhood, in my marriage, in my gawky and faulty motherhood walk. Oh, Hallo, I say, I see you, I recognise you, I would like you to move back for now so I can see the moment. The moment shows clouds, bird-fly, trees moving in response to the wind, skies responding to whatever shit is going on up there way way way above my understanding.

I walked, although, confessing, I did not walk mindfully today. I walked blind. I was caught up in my thoughts, a gazillion of them and not many of them, if any, helpful nor relevant to the now me. This is the human condition. We are always at the mercy of our thoughts until we learn cognitive management and that is not control, much as we might long for it. No. It is the practice of noticing our thoughts, of stepping back from them and of assessing whether or not they are helpful in the now now. Our new now now. It does take practice. Hoping to be able to cope with a welter of thoughts at anytime is wanting to live in Disney. And, for you Scots, it disnae. I know Ive been at this for years but I am no model student. I can be overwhelmed easy. Like this day.

I am out there in my garden, which happens to be at the front of a lovely old stone house with views fantastic. Anyway, I am out there with seedlings and they are shouting at me to be planted, like we are so tired of this tiny pot, our roots are wound up like Freddie Mercury and Hallo? So I go out there with gravel for the planters and peat and topsoil and other witchy growing helpers and then in they come, the visitors, the lively, lovely dog-tastic, kitted up visitors with bins and backpacks and enthusiasm and a merry smile, their mouths oped for greeting and my peace is shattered. My nearly deaf dog catapults into hysterical terrier barking which has to be in discordant A minor on a badly tuned piano, and because she is fast, I can’t catch her, and because she is nearly deaf she can’t hear my voice and the whole lovely visitor thing turns into a frightful afternoon. Just like that.

They move on with their lovely dogs that don’t bark and I hide within in my turmoil. I know what this is. This is my challenge to get back out there, to get real, to find life again, the new life that I know will come from over a year of being in jail. For all of us. I shower. Change frocks. Look forward to seeing my beloved son tomorrow when his boat comes in to Tobermory. I get over myself. Do you?

This is an opportunity to hang on to the old. Or, it’s an opportunity to be curious about every single thing. This is a new world people. Do we want to be an active and loving part of it, or are we going to stay where we were, constrained by old ways and (seriously?) thinking that was ever helpful to a broken world that yearns to heal?

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Island Blog – After the Facts

Recently I had cause, and pause, to think on how things are and how I feel after the facts; how I notice what was what and then what arose from those facts. Fact was I had a notwell thing, the details of which are quite irrelevant, and it lasted one day. However, the hit of it was like a sandstorm in the desert, or a tropical raincrash in Africa or even, if I look at it as a thing of change and possible loveliness, the birthing of the Monarch butterflies. The timing is the same. It stopped me in my tracks. It levelled me, decided for me, flawed me. All this is good, I tell myself whilst in the thick and the thin of it. It will ‘pass’ and I will not.

However, in this thick and this thin, it is sometimes tricky to see so sensibly. It is all ooh and ow and oh dear and will this take me out kind of nonsense. The day was slow and difficult, the dog un-walked. The only reassuring consistent was the rain, for which I was grateful. If there is a constant to hang onto whilst riding a roller coaster, or when crossing an ocean that refuses to stay flat no matter how loud the pleas, I recommend holding on to it. Later in the day, one that felt as long as a trip to Mars in a balloon, I thinked. I could just say, well I had this thing and now it is gone and I am thankful beyond measure. Or, I could notice the slow rise of my strong goodly health into her rightful place and I could communicate with her. Where did you go my lady? I went down, she replies, and you came with me. Oh, I know that, for sure, I might snap. She smiles kindly. We are sometimes caught by storms, she says. Some storms are stronger than us, but know this; they are short sprinters, not long distance runners, as we are.

I find that reassuring. Now to the next bit. In the re-tell of my crashbang day, I could major on the superlatives. A horrendous day; So much pain; I thought I was going to die. Or I could pish-posh that melodrama and notice how I feel today, this day, the day after the facts. Facts will always come in, will always stun us like a tropical storm, soak us, fry us, fell us. Are we always to be at the whim of the facts, or might we learn how to accept them as they come, welcome or not, and then to notice ourselves within those difficult times, however long or short they are, and, as the shock of them dwindles like a fire without wood, to see ourselves rise up again, thankful and somehow stronger?

Well, how-in-the-hec am I stronger ps and btw? Well, says I, it is all in the eye of the observer. To notice thoughts and feelings, no matter what facts come stomping in like an army of boots and weapons and ghastly days, I will rise from the whatever and into new light, the light of learning, the learning about me, about my resilient strength and ability to accept and to move on, empowered, bizarrely by the facts that sought to bring me down. And this is not just me. Every single soul can do this. I am tired of hearing about awful days, bad years and terrible this and that. Once the facts are broken down, it was nothing so bad. Sob stories make me want to ask So what now? That happened last week, last month, 10 years ago, 20. What are you doing to alter the facts?

It does not mean that I don’t appreciate grief and loss and stories of abuse, neglect and desolation. I really do, but I have met too many people who have survived appalling things and who have decided to rebuild their lives and it changes my thinking. I see one woman, one child, one man, one tribe, one nation, one religious sect who still keep their faith in the light of life, and it alters my thinking. If we are to live life to the full we need to notice and pay attention, not to the facts, beyond being ready for the ‘sudden’, but to the beyond of them, the beyond in which we can relocate our own strength, a strength we may not even know we are brewing.

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Island Blog – Friend, Ships and Wide Open

If I was to ask you – how many true friends do you have – might you have pause for thought? Let me help you out with a definition or two…..

A true friend is always wide open. They may not be able, at the very moment of your ‘massive drama’, to speak with you on the phone, or rush over to your place. Perhaps her granny has just fallen into the wheelie bin whilst searching for her missing dentures; perhaps the kids have buried the dog in the sandpit and all she can see is a wiggling mound; or, maybe, she has just burnt the strangled eggs, is late for work, can’t find the kids, the granny or the dog and her partner has gone off with both sets of house keys. But, rest assured, this true friend will be thinking of you all the way through her own massive drama and will make contact the very first moment he or she can. Then when he/she hears of your pain, she will not compare it to hers. She might not even mention it. She will listen, respond without fixing, suggest nothing unless you ask for such, just leaning into your flow of pain, putting her hand in yours and saying – Let’s sail together on this.

This probably narrows the list down somewhat. On reflection, you might think, I wouldn’t go to this person, or that with my massive drama because it will pass and if I tell him/her I will need to follow up once the missing members of my family are re-located, returned to the upright and able, once again, to breathe. Or, perhaps this person might think you weak, or fix you with some cutthroat bright solution which will confirm she knows you’re weak. How long has she thought that about you? It gets worse, this line of thinking. It heads one way only, into the pit of all that you feared, have always feared. And now it’s the truth. You are a lame duck, a pathetic wimp of a woman and nobody likes you anyway. You can see the neon flashing sign above your head. It reads, Loser. So don’t add this one to your dwindling list. Nobody is that desperate.

This true friend might not be the first person who comes to mind. After all, not one of us is immune to self-protection. Most of us keep our true selves very private, considering what we will reveal and how we will reveal it on a moment to moment basis. There are things I have told no-one, not never, and I am sure you are not so different. But when you look at your list, pondering each name and reflecting on past history, shared moments both good and uncomfortable, you will eventually get that list down to about 2, if you are very lucky. And this, my friends, is absolutely normal. We may have hundreds of acquaintances, but the true friend, the one who just sails along with you, keeping a respectful distance when required, one who watches you fly the crests of monster waves as a purple storm approaches, or who keeps her eyes on you as you head towards jag-toothed rocks in some crazy game of Chicken, and who prays for your safe return, well, she’s the truth.

In a perfect world, this would describe a mother or a father, or both. Parents who do not load their own expectations of supreme success onto the soft-boned backs of their young, who do not reward according to achievements; who welcome you home late, under-age drunk, in suggestive clothing or with a biker boyfriend twice your age and with no space left for another tattoo; A loving mum and dad who, when you fail your exams for the third time, or when you tell them you cannot spend another day in this college, university or relationship, no matter how much of a messy split, will welcome you into loving arms and who will stand beside your decisions for all time.

I hope I have been that mum. I suspect we all do, we mums. To be a true friend and a parent is not simple, however. We want for our kids what we didn’t have for ourselves. We know, as they don’t, how tough the world is on colour, creed, race, sexuality, relational splits, career women, traditions, freedom of speech, independency. The labels live on. In fact, they are thriving. Nobody escapes the criticism, the labels, the judgement. But a true friend, one who sails beside you, who sees who you really are will make all the difference in the world. Even if this friend lives miles away she knows you without needing to own you; you don’t have to start from the beginning with her, not ever. She knows that you will fill in gaps if you want to and not if you don’t. She may well challenge you, you can be sure of that. But inside that challenge there is only heart, only love. You can tell her to truck off, as she can tell you to do the same, but she is authentic. You are authentic. Your true friendship is authentic.

Ok, so now we might be down to one. Still lucky.

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Island Blog – Confucious

He knew his stuff, this ancient philosopher. His modem operandi was this:-

The philosophy of Confucius, also known as Confucianism, emphasized personal and governmental morality, correctness of social relationships, justice, kindness, and sincerity.

I’m in. However, in this uncertainty, I get muddled, I feel doubt, I feel fear. I am sure that way back in his day, there was plenty of that. How someone rises themselves above all that worldliness beyonds me. I think I am practicing all these goodly things. I know I am. And, then, a call comes in from the council, who need to speak to himself, not me, and to tell this confused man that our shielding has now come to an end, that warm, safe bubble is now burst, and that we can now go shopping (that’ll be me). Now that visitors are about to be let in, to stay in their holiday cottages, and those who will now frequent the local shop, the street, the walks, alarms me. Part of me gets it. I am, after over 3 months of ‘bubble’ more than ready for interaction, conversation, smiles shared, freedom of movement. The other part, the one that keeps me restless at night is the one that knows this is not done. It will flick back, and in the winter, when folk like us are even more vulnerable.

Meantime, I walk. I find wild honeysuckle in the woods, cascading over a dying and fallen tree like it was all disco lights and smelling like a peach garden. I notice wild mint, new clover, hear the twitter of tits working a tree. I notice my footfall, one step, then the next. I know what I going back to. Confusion about headphones, connections, calls (from the council) where nothing was clear and certainly not lucidly communicated to me. What happened today? The council woman wanted to talk with him. I get the political correctness of that, but he has no clue about how life is run in this home. Not now. So why didn’t she speak with me?

I know that everyone is doing their best in these times. Me included. But this burst of the secure shielding bubble, when I know this is not going away, not for many months, confounds me.

Confucious said it all. In a perfect world, this is exactly how we should live. Actually, even in an imperfect world. But, you know, you other carers out there, this decision to hold to such magnificent principles is just not humanly possible day after day, hour after hour, minute by minute and thought by thought. I’m saying this because I am daily confounded, daily dealing with the ‘right’ decision, the best way to act.

It is exhausting. I’m waving.

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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.

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Island Blog – From There to Here

Leaving 40 degrees and arriving back to zero in the belly of a couple of planes with the ambient temperature of an airport or two in between requires a person to be vestment canny. Well, I really don’t know what I was thinking as I packed for Africa but it appears I put little thought into my return. Today I am wearing most of my frocks over jeans with a vest at skin depth, a long sleeved tee over the said frocks and a jumper to complete my shapeless bulk. When I step outside, I add to that a puffa jacket and a scarf long enough to wind into a neck brace. A most fetching look.

I noticed, among my fellow passengers, as a foggy Glasgow appeared at the windows, that they had considered a vestment strategy. How had I not? This question has thought me a lot since I returned to zero. All I can guess is that I was in such a flapdoodle as I packed for the sunshine that my brain dealt only with the immediate. Then I realised that dealing with the immediate has become my default, for everything is immediate around dementia care and any unnecessaries are pushed into the shadowland. Although it is delightful, in many ways, to realise how much of life can be unnecessary when necessary, it behoves a girl to remember those things that still await her in the wings of her life. In Africa I went to a spa and had my nails done. This was a first for me as I usually just bite them off or clip them to the quick so as not to scratch anybody by mistake (or intentionally). I have enjoyed watching my French polish flash little white moons into my looking and this little indulgence will not revert to the shadowlands again. Although this indulgence may not be a regular thing, at least I know the pleasure of it. It isn’t just the nails and how they look. It is the time taken for myself, to sit and watch someone else caring for me. This is important, for all of us, not just me. Taking time to spend time with Me is not something many of us talk about without either getting embarrassed at the blank faces around us as we try to explain what we mean, or getting the giggles. Well, it does sound a bit ‘out there’ does it not? I think the key is not to bother explaining it at all to a world completely caught up in logic and the daily dash to Nowhere. Of course, not everyone is doing this dashing thing but most of us are if we are honest.

But the wisdoms keep coming. They go back to Rumi, to Ancient Greece, and further back, and we still don’t listen, because we have not learned how to live this way, the way of emotional intelligence, the way of good health, calm hearts and heads, peaceful sleep, gentle breathing and love of self, not matter what the demands of our lives. I don’t think it’s easy, far from it, but I do know we need to wake up to a different way of being. In a hysterically busy world we are but cogs in a million wheels, or that is how it seems. children, work, families, governments, religions, rules rules and more rules can overwhelm the very best of intentions. We can feel like tumbleweeds in a desert wind.

So how to change that feeling of being out of control of a life? I am no guru with a mouthful of answers but what I have learned in this decade of dementia care with all its associated ‘immediates’ is that I want to come out of this as intact as is possible. Too many of my compadres have fallen sick as a result of intense caring over a long period, wherein any time for self was intermittent and without a plan. Perhaps, like them, I thought it wouldn’t drag on for years but it does. Perhaps, like them, I thought I could wait for me, that I would be there at the other end, just as I was before. I don’t now. Now, I know better. This is a journey and there is no map, no destination I can stick a pin in. And it’s ok. In fact, I would not have learned the valuable lessons I have learned had dementia not come knocking. One of these lessons, the one I most value, is the importance of self love and how it never seemed important before. I don’t believe I am alone in this. With accusations of selfish up-yourself coming from older generations, schoolmarms and all the other ‘For Your Own Good’ ies, it would have cried anarchy and that meant trouble at any age. But I have learned to own the ‘selfish’ accusation and it fits me well. Let them think that, is what I said to myself and myself grinned wide.

There is no rule book for self love either. Only this. Stop and listen, as the world threatens to swallow you whole and the noise of it is deafening and the demands relentless, to what your heart whispers. Hear it and do as it guides you. Just once will do for now, because when it whispers again, you will hear it more clearly. Then go with it a second time, a third, a fourth and on and on until your heart is a match for both the outside world and the inside mind. I admit there is quite a lot of stopping required at first, until you get in step with You, but the rewards are endless. Eventually the outside of you fits the inside no matter what Life brings.

I arrive home tomorrow. Let’s see how clever I am at walking my talk when the old ways and I collide on a familiar doorstep. One thing I do believe in is all that stopping to listen to the inner whisper.

It just has to have made a difference.