tidal flow

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Island Blog – The Elbows of the New Moon

Back from work, I’m watching the tide ruffle, lift, push against the rocks, elbows out. There’s a moon in this, somewhere, I know it, and there is. A new one, yet another, and isn’t that a wonderful thing? I mean, well, the moon catapults many of us who recognise her influence, sending us into haphazardness – and many more who justify their bad temper and bizarre choices to something else, like work, or her, or him, or school, or envy, a hightened sense of failure, or of a choice made in faith, hope and love, as being a grave mistake. Hmmmm.

Because of the discomfort, a big tide brings in, it reminds me. Living all those years on Tapselteerie, we would, or I would, walk my way to a ‘spending beach.’ Such a beach, almost a wee cove, a cup of catch, like a hand grab at whatever might come in, a something of value which might be held and captured. Then, it would be plastic, the weariness of toil and spoils, ropes and hopes thrown overboard, en route to somewhere after fishing, playing, not-caring about the ocean and those within her depths, who, btw, don’t want any of that sh*t. It hasn’t changed, but worsened. We gathered, cleared, unleashed, yes we did, seal pups from rope strangulation, setting them back to the ocean, scarred, disorientated, already time-separated from their parent, their safety. However, the beauty of a tidal flow is like a photo to anyone who has no idea of what really goes on. I won’t lecture. But, having seen what we are stupidly doing, does, I confess, alter me. Plastic blows and goes up with any passing wind.

Back to the new moon. She’ll have some ridonculous name, for sure, as if she could be tamed like a terrier. I see what she can do, the lift and luff of her influence over a tidal flow, big, lush, swelling, feisty, sexual. Her voice quiet. And yet she moves, grows, with no care for a sheep stuck on a rock, no care for uninformed canoeists who set off in all the gear but without respect for her. She is wild as the wind, stronger, more powerful. In fact, I think she controls the wind, brings it on, shuts it the eff up when required.

For now, in this balmy soft, sunshine evening, on this beautiful, grumpy, shifty, awkwardly weather controlled outscape, this most westerly point, this wild and wonderful place where folk gather to celebrate anything and everything, I am just going to sit quiet and watch the elbows of the new moon widen and spread.

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Island Blog – A Fetouche

I’m watching the tide, Springs now, so big high, big low. Kind of reminds me of me. The tide, at this flood time, brings in the salmon and sea trout which (I’d rather write whom) just want a reasonably safe passage up to the fresh water that they seek for spawning. Interruptus lies in wait with lures and nets to catch them t’wirly. You might have to look that one up. Nonetheless, it intrigues me. The full moon, the swell and suck of it, of her, for surely, with her tempestuous nature, the sea is female? I cannot believe I wrote that, so ridonculous it reads in our, thankfully new, appreciation of how wrong we have been for a verrrrrrry long time. Eish.

Back to the tide. And to the weather, which, or is it whom, has confounded us this year, as it did last year, only in a kindlier way. I have frickin massive sunflowers, green for about 5 feet, blocking my view of any tidal flow, and yet producing no buds at all, till now, tiny nubs, and yellow as butter and I am so pleased I didn’t wheech the stalks out a while ago. There is always hope and that’s how I live and so, perhaps this seasona interrupta is teaching me, and you, how to listen and learn. I have blue things growing, pink ones too, stocky and holding to the earth, hesitational. I get that. And it wonders me.

I worked at Lunch Club today, just as a volunteer. In the village hall we lay out a welcome table, flower festive, for anyone who comes. One did. Then two, and then, as we in the kitchen decided it was a quiet day, up to 17 arrived, all smiles and ready for soup, sharing and laughter, and pudding, of course. I leaned against a kitchen unit, as my friends accommodated the rise of human tide. It told me that, even if each singular life appeared all green and no flowers, even if the tidal rise and fall of this year, this season, never lifted their spirits, that we could conjoin here, in this kitchen, we could make a stepping stone for each other into the next day. I am no fool. I know that most folk ‘pretend’ that everything is ok, that they are ‘fine’ and that they are not afraid, scared, cold, lonely.

We know the moon rise and fall here. We see it loud, every time. We are so close, we could touch it. We can walk out into the blast of Spring tides. Sometimes, I wonder how you who live in cities and out there beyond the connection we have, manage emotional flow. It is hard enough to understand out here. A fetouche, for sure.

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Island Blog – So Worth It

I’m watching the tidal flow. Full moon tonight, the Buck moon, Feather moon, Berry moon and a load more, depending on where anyone is and what a full moon means, or has meant, for generations, for cultures, for people around the world. Here, the Buck moon tells of the young bucks, the hopeful stags, whose antlers are just growing now like a Big Thing in the way of their traverse. Imagine it. There you are, bouncing disorderly through woods and around trees and suddenly, you snag. Must be a twist in your sobriety, don’t you think? An encumbrance has encumbranced you, one you were never warned off, much like a period to an 11 year old girl, only different but no less embarrassing. It seems a tad bothering, however, that bucks soon get the hang of their antlers, whilst girls spend a frickin forever being embarrassed about their emergence into adulthood. Just saying.

The tide. It moves so slow, the tide, taking its time as it careens through the Narrows, initially in a wild and ebullient whoosh, then silent, to slide and saunce like a slattern as it arrives little by little, inch by inch, a burglar, a power with a knowing. Once it, no, she, has filled the basin, she keeps on, at full moons, rising higher than she ought, than she has before, just because she can. I know women like her.

I like the naming of moons, each one born of history, noting the seasonal changes, the life changes which ensue for those whose work on the land, on the sea and in the air, need to know and to really know which damn moon is which and what that moon presages. Once, it was survival. It still may be. Although here, watching the bigly intake of the Long Sea, there is no bother. But what a big moon means to me can be floods for others.

I walked today with a young friend, she concomitant with all things earth and sea, and we talked of such things. I don’t think we discussed the moon, nor the tide, but there is a knowing up here in the wild isles, that we just know. Beyond weather and whimsy, away from street closures and businesses closing down, a timbrel shake apart from the dire and the district, the closures and the chaotic, we can watch the tidal flow. No sound at all beyond the baa of a lamb, the slink of a moontide, the siskins, blackbirds, finches, sparrows, wood doves.

I am truly fortunate. A chance move 46 years ago, on a whim, a risk, a huge risk. T’was so worth it.

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Island Blog – Perception and a Blackbird

I sit in the darkling. Clouds are gathering like a people to church, some big and full of themselves, others following shred-like but I have no doubt they will puff themselves up in followance this night for there is rain forecast.

I watch the wintering geese fly in, fly in chatter and in synergy with the leader and with the nightfall. For me they fly right to left. I see the home-lights across the sea-loch, all warm and welcoming, a pipe of smoke from their chimneys. They are warm. They are cooking, chatting, cajoling and considering each other over there, a big swim away. And, they see the geese fly from left to right.

It thinks me beyond geese and tidal flow. It thinks me of how we see things, any things, all things. If geese can fly from right to left for some and left to right for others then what complexity lies in other of our seeings? Ah, it must be manifold. I can see this and you can see this, but you see that, not this. My perception of any one thing may well not be yours. I would like to be able to allow yours and mine and to consider neither one as an absolute, even as I am certain of my right to left of things.

As we converse, you and I, on matters from how to fix this or clean that, on the rights and wrongs of raising children, on the clarity of our shared memories, we move along different paths. What astonished you about something that happened meant nothing much to me and vice versa. We find it at best bothersome and our minds work like dingbats to convince the other of import and impact. But I still see nothing to upset me. Now why is that? Well, if we agree that my experience, my baggage, my history all come to bear on any given subject, as do yours, then we must also agree on a division of paths. We can both see the situation, yes. We can both recall to a degree what happened back then, yes, but where I see right to left, you see left to right and that is simply that.

How long a life do we need in order to come to such an acceptance? I am fed up of learning things like this. I wonder why it is we don’t finally arrive in that lovely place of complete understanding. I thought I completely understood years ago and yet here I am with my feathers ruffled and my heart beating too fast and my good manners thoroughly challenged as I watch your mouth insist on left to right. Although I write this with no actual cause, it is something I have observed recently between others and it intrigues me. To move freely and happily along an individual path of life, it is necessary to merely observe each other without dishing out labels, however silently. We can all learn from each other at every meeting if we decide not to judge. Every living soul has history, baggage and opinions, either learned or personally constructed, based on their experience of what worked and still works for them.

On returning earlier from slathering honey on young fruit trees, ring-barked by hungry rabbits, of which we have the lion’s share and adding a wrap of hessian to simulate new bark that will allow water to be drawn up the damaged trunks once again, I find a male blackbird flipping and floundering on the track. I gather him to me and feel the delicate softness of his feathers as I calm his wings. Is one broken, I wondered? His leg? Was he hit by a car or attacked by a predator and dropped? No, not that. The predators here are accurate as mathematics and there is no evidence of talon damage. I put him in a box in the garage to calm down. An hour later I return to give him water or seed or to find him dead. He wants none of it and is bouncing up in attempt to fly beyond the mesh that holds him down. I push in my hand and gently bring him out. Shall we see if you can fly? I ask him. He turns his head and looks at me through ebony eyes, then turns back to the great wide open. I lower him to the ground and to my delight he lifts and flies, a bit wonky-chops at first and then up up and away over the fence and into the sky. I watch him until he is a black dot in the blue.

Fly! Fly! I call out but he doesn’t look back. His path is his path as mine is my own. We come together and then we part and as we do, we are changed, just as we are changed after a human encounter. As I held that bird, I noticed his soft feathers, the majesty of nature in that trembling body, the perfection of design.

We can see each other that way too, if we so choose.