vast

Listening to a singer songwriter, Irish, a beautiful voice, I remember singing her songs way back when I had confidence, long chestnut hair and strong limbs. They said I sounded like her, this beautiful Irish singer, and, at times, I could hear that. Just a glimpse, but a glimpse, nonetheless. I knew how to get lost in the words, the music, the glory of good musicians backing me, and a pub full of folk listening. I am so glad I knew those days, the arriving, setting up of mikes and baffles and wotwot. Walking down from Tapselteerie House, once my kids were (almost) in bed and all the dishes were washed, there I was, just me, wild and excited, nervous and alone. Each week we gathered, played Irish, Scottish, Gaelic, blue grass, anything that just came in the moment, no script. Then I would make the walk home down the unlit village street, on and up onto the dark track for well over a mile, high on music and laughter and strong and wild. I do remember arriving (quietly) through the kitchen door, shushing the dogs, grabbing water and going to bed wherein I could not sleep till almost dawn and HALLO wee ones, and Hallo guests expecting the full Scottish. I didn’t mind one bit, had the energy for all of it, just for that buzz, that wonderful buzz of music, song and just me away from the domestic demands for an evening.

A past now, but a last too, for I can still feel the thrill. I can smile at the remembering, and I can let it ribbon into my past. However, I may still bring back the light of those days should one of my children, or their children ask me to tell about me, not the facts, but the feelings. My own do this, but is that because I ask them to hear what my life was like at their age, no matter what they think they saw and understood? Perhaps. I know I have sat at the ancient feet of someone decades older than I and asked a question, that led to another question, that lit something in that old body and faltering mind, and I have heard stories way wilder than mine. I am glad of it. To imagine this shaky set of bones living a bonkers life, full of fun and mischief and crazy is, for me, a truth. Of course they did. They lived through two wars, real threats, real deprivation, not just two years of Covid lockdown, not that I want to minimise that, but I’m just inviting a perspective shakeup.

What I have learned of said fun, mischief and crazy from those old bones has laughed me into hope. They may be falling apart in a way that is overly ghastly, but they did really live. They were wild, once, crazy, full of fun and mischief and, ok, not all of them, but oh so many. They have stories they seriously believe no young person would ever want to hear. Ask them. Because I did, I learned coping mechanisms I would never have learned otherwise, domestic survival tactics, the way to keep bloody going when every sinew said I’m Done.

We can put an Elastoplast on our past, hoping it might heal. It won’t. Our past is what it was. Although I love and celebrate the current culture within which all those in dire mental pain, survivors of everything shocking and horribly wrong finally have a voice, I really hope that family, support and intelligent healers are ready to help a move beyond. I have no experience of such, thus, no voice in this space. From my fortunate place, I would fight for all freedoms, all areas, all colours, all sexuality, all of it. The past of us is not just my personal past, where I had bacon and eggs on Sundays, and cleaned the car on Wednesday afternoons. We have blasted way beyond this. I might get the terminology wrong as we all move, bumpily into a future, with all the wrong words, and wonky limbs and the mischief always at the ready.

I remember coming home at the ten o’clock curfew, my Dad (bless him) would not sleep till I was safely home. I waited some beats, heard the phew of silence and then escaped through the sitting room window, had a ball, and arrived home on the 5 am milk float. Who knew this? Well, you do now. It was my past and is my lasting memory, oh so many of them and mostly out of hours, on the dance floor, out there, out there, the vast of what was. And I was colourful, I was psychedelic, although I never took drugs, and then the comes in as it always does. See the stories?

I met someone today, a woman I respect and love, and she has dementia, and I saw it. Ask the stories now, right now, let the grandchildren ask, encourage it. This woman, that man, they really lived. Once. They walked back from the pub after a session, a song, a lift for a few hours from the dire of their lives. They all had, have a voice, have stories that will make your perspective shake into a whole new shape. Trust me.

Last night I watched the International Space Station move across the starry sky. A golden orb it was, arcing overhead, just a tiny dot. Six atronauts are aboard. I waved. I know, sad really, but you never know what a welcome wave can impart across space and time. I’m thinking ‘butterfly wings. The illusion of ‘just a dot’ in the wide sky of a sparsely inhabited island would be no less to anyone who glimpsed it last night between high rise buildings in a big city. And, yet, six whole living people are aboard. To them, we, the whole WE, that is, the Earth, is also illusive. They know we are millions, we are legion, and yet, all they see is a rolling ball of mountains, plains and seas. They don’t see us and we don’t see them, but because of our vast technology, we know we are all where we are.

Let’s look closer.

Up there, last night, NASA emailed a racheting socket wrench. Well, not quite the actual wrench, but a 3D image via a 3D printer that guided the Commander to fashion one himself. It would have taken months for supply vessel to deliver one. Months.

When we look up, we imagine stars to be small sparkly lights dinging about when the clouds are away bothering someone else, even though we know that some of them are much bigger than our own world. Still, as we point them out to a little one, to gaze up in wonder, we don’t think of great lumbering planets, already dying, but of diamonds in the night.

The International Space Station travels at 27,000 km per hour at an orbit height of 431 km, and here I am wondering how long it will take to drive to Doune for Christmas with all that festive traffic. But, my place is down here, not up there, and here is where I need to remember the illusions of time and of space. We know both are always with us, always influencing our decisions, our routines, our days and our nights, but because we cannot control either of them, tame either of them, rule over either of them, we just have to let them be. We must walk with them, through them and around them as fellow miracles.

Now, we may not think of others as fellow miracles. In fact, some are way off miracle grade, in our opinion. But again, this is an illusion. I know that, at this time of year, everyone is ‘goodwilling’ themselves to death, smiling when before there was no smile, giving when we only take for the rest of the year, lifting our care-worn spirits and tired bodies in frightful jumpers and paper hats and telling ourselves it’s fun, and I never did understand why January is all about diets and New Year’s Resolutions. Why don’t we eat sensibly and employ self-control all through the year? Why can’t we give to those who need something we have, and they don’t, every single month? It seems we turn back to ourselves after this crazy happy festive season to face the big black hole inside every one of us all over again.

Black holes. They’re in space too, and in time. Those who are lonely are often closer by than we might like, often in the family. In space, they eat you. As they do down here. For all the technology, the space research, the developments in education, social media, lifestyle (for some) and health care, we are still lost.

And yet, we are found too. If every one of us chose not to turn back in, to scrabble around in the illusion that we are not enough, not clever, not destined for greatness, not important, we might learn, bit by bit, to look out, to see other walking miracles, to learn from them. It isn’t easy for any of us. We all have black holes, black illusions. But those who do make a difference, who do become important, who are clever and definitely more than enough, are those little people who choose not to be consumed by self-pity, guilt and regret. Not one of them was born with anything more than the rest of us. There’s no magic here. Every single one of us grows a black hole. Once we acknowledge that, we can move on beyond it, whether we have ‘everything’ or ‘nothing’.

Another human illusion.

The people who have chosen not to turn back in are the heroes, the warriors, the fighters for life. And they began right here, taking one step at a time, one day at a time.

It’s a new day today. Christmas is coming. But Christmas will also go, leaving us behind.

What will you make of yourself when it does?