warmed

There are swirls of good advice-ness spinning around me like birds. You should #getoutmore. You should #interractwithotherhumans. And so on etcetera etcetera. Hmmm. Should is not a word I enjoy listening to. It sounds like two things. One, that I am not ‘shoulding’ as I should. Two that this is a judgement on my Now. Just to be clear, I am now speaking directly to anyone who is ‘supposedly’ hiding from ‘life’. Please excuse the overuse of hyphens,commas and speech thingies. I am feeling strong about this, wobbling on my wee rock in a big ocean of shoulds.

I walked today. Well, who could resist? The sunshine shined and. the ground warmed and the invitation was as hard to resist as the ones I recall as a turbulent teenager faced with a Saturday night watching Dixon of Dock Green with my parents. So, me and wee terrier set off into nature. We had spent the morning, she and I dithering about bird song and bird recognition. What is this bird? I ask her. She blanks and turns a circle or two before going back to sleep. I watch a huge white bird I don’t recognize pulling across the sea-loch, calling something not in my musical dictionary. I hear little birdsong I don’t recognise. Have I moved continents? I know my birdsong. I know the changes, the Spring songs, the calling songs for young, the mating songs. I know them. But, I am confounded. I decide it is all to do with the state of the world and, in small part, it reassures me. ish.

It thinks me. We change. All of us. The bird kingdom according to what works at specific times. Animals too, I guess. But we humans respond differently to a plate shift. Not only do we have to find a new way, or lose ourselves, but also this plate shift invites us to inventiveness. We can use this thing, this crash, this loss. Again I am talking to anyone who just wants to hide right now because the world is way too full of shoulds and oughts. Hallo.

The buds are budding. I look up and marvel at the pearl glitter of their outer cases. I see the emerald in the larch pines, just soft babies now and soon to be needle sharp. It thinks me of women. We start soft and turn needle sharp. Or, is that just me? I see an egret, a pair of yellow wagtails, robins that bounce with me the whole way, from branch to branch, saying not one word. I see mallards, herons, buzzards, geese. In my garden, siskin feeding their young, goldfinch, greenfinch, sparrow, blackbird, chaffinch, collard dove, starling.

Life goes on, indeed. But we are not animals or birds. A human heart needs to know itself and to challenge, without and within.

The cake is dry. What do I do with a dry cake, a dry fruit cake even? It’s not really a question I expect answered as I know fine what to do with a dry fruit cake, after I have recovered from the mild tantrum (well, a couple of mild tantrums) the remorse at the waste of raisins that said they were sultanas on the packet and the sultanas that were sultanas…so a LOT of sultanas to feel remorse for. Add to that all the other bits that went in, the time it took and, worst of all that argument with my new whizzer which cackles like an old witch with loose bones so that I have to stand well back in case she breaks her moorings and takes me out.

I googled my question. It doesn’t matter how stupid my question is, somebody has asked it before, because the internet has an answer. This is both alarming – I fear the world is slowly losing any purchase on Common Sense – and, reassuring, at least momentarily.

Syrup, they told me, warmed and drizzled in small amounts over a period of time. Well, I rarely have one of them anymore so I poured over half a slightly warmed can and it sits there still, sticky enough to keep everyone away and even more unuseable than it was before. So, I put the lid back on, bash it down (as punishment) and shall ignore it until the storm abates and I get over myself.

But, it got me thinking. You see, the cake, through the oven doors and outside of them looked perfect. Lightly bronzed on top and decorated with a festoonery of almonds, it promised moist mouthfuls of yummy rich fruit captured and held in a sensitive cakely hug. We would all love it, because of how it looked.

Some people are one thing on the outside and dried up prunes on the inside. Some of us actually believe that if we look right, we will be right, but what is more frightening and always was to me, is that we can open doors by presenting an acceptable outside. We are believed, credible, trustworthy, one of the Right Sort of People.

I love to turn up in the wrong trousers, because I must challenge this worldly nonsense. People should look into eyes, not take a mental picture of clothing, one that tells them just who they think I am.

At 60 I can do what I like, wear what I like, but I still can find myself lost in the dark folds of various items of clothing, just to get it right for the occasion. In the past, I have gotten myself upset enough to stay at home, for fear of being judged, pidgeon-holed, typecast, rejected.

Nowadays, if I see someone, anywhere, who arrives in the wrong trousers, then I just know we are both the full fruit cake, with no need of any syrup at all, and, that I am going to love them.