walking between sea and shore

I have established the computer by the upstairs hallway window where I have a view of screen and sea, a shag like a black cross passes, and far I see the low sloping hills of I'm not sure where, Findhorn or Portmahomack, across the North sea, and waves of course, unkempt thick grass and stones. Though most of the view is sky, white and blue. Blue clouds. I can see a curtain of rain over the sea. I wonder what fish make of rain; more of the same, or a sweeter water, a drumming interlude?
The rain of earlier this morning has stopped. I will walk. Take note. Return and tell.

My first sighting was of three people; two women and a man, dressed in battle fatigues or is that hunting fashion, under the bridge down by the river fishing. I didn't want the dog to see them and get entangled so didn't linger on that sighting. But hoped they wouldn't catch the huge salmon I saw a week ago under the bridge.I walk round to the beach, feeling the end of summer in the ragged thistles and the blackened nettles. Bracken has overtaken anything else on the slopes. Still green. Just flecks of yellow autumning the land. Out over the sea I spy a silver blade. And further on down to my little beach the blue green oyster plant is still printing the sand. I sit on a rock and find feathers at my feet, black and white, oyster catchers. A gull and I watch the sea. I strain to hear and see beyond cliches. So much has been said about the sea - waves crash, wind sighs, tides turn, gulls cry... My sitting here today by the sea is surely fresher than the worn out phrases. Or does experience and language go hand in hand? I know it has been said, and often, but today the sea sparkles. Later I sit on a bench and look down the sweep of the bay. The scene strikes me suddenly like a dress - blue skirt, white hem, tan boots, white hair. If I was a designer I'd make clothes like this. The wind moves from the sea to my face, parts my lashes and I'm hoping, having just leafed through a woman's magazine studying anti-aging creams that this sea air batting over me might just do the job. So the walk, the return, the reflection.
Night now, just returned from the harbour. Folks out just watching the sea, watching for the salmon leap. Often I see huge silver fish fling themselves out of the river, even out of the sea. Everyone we ask standing knee deep in the river angling says they are only catching midges yet the fish are there, big and beautiful. The end of August and the nights begin their slip inwards. Getting dark by nine. Then stars out over the water. Stars and salmon, silver in the sea.

8 8 8

auspicious so the Chinese say. somethings going to give - one world one dream...
I went to a party for the Dalai Lama's birthday given by a small group of Tibetans living in Eidnburgh. A motley crew turned up and sat cross legged in a colourful basement. We ate the food they cooked for us and listened to the Tibetan songs a man sang then they filled our glasses with wine and we all sang Happy birthday to the Dalai lama (he wasn't physically there). I don't know if I've ever sung happy birthday to someone who isn't there. There was a simplicity about this little event and real spirit of brotherhood. It wasn't as though I was personally invited to the party - there was a little advert in The List. The whole of Edinburgh could have turned out to eat dumplings and rice and salad and sing happy birthday. One of the people there, good at rock climbing, unfurled a free Tibet flag in full view of the world yesterday.
If the world is one world and that one world is symbolic of one body, what does it mean when we silence spirit? No doubt had Tibet oil the world police would have made a racket about its annexation. The prayers go silent,underground.
Not only was I born, apparently, the day the music died but I was also born when the Chinese annexed Tibet. Scotland seems ripe for spiritual communities; Findhorn, Camphill...and the biggest Tibetan Buddhist Temple outside of Tibet, although I'm sure India boasts them too. But I grew up seeing these prayer flags, sometimes going to Samye Ling, breathing the incense, looking at the paintings, watching the monks meditatively paint the dieities.
one world.....one dream
one world..one wake up...

coming home to it

it being writing, you know, the thing. And good writing thought I last night, bashing it out with the white wine flowing nicely. Do you want to save the changes? says it - no - says I, click, in a flurry of confusion. No! Stop, I mean yes. Wait. OK, wine and mind racing. Shit. All gone. Like it never was. And unrestorable. Just like that. Gone.
And now a day later and a few words of the great novel restored but I'm sure with less of last night's passion about them, certainly a lesser form of greatness and out my kitchen window dem clouds over the sea are either ready for big rain or perhaps it's just night settling in at ten pm and I haven't shut the hens up and the garden looks like a wild meadow and the dog needs walking. And the book needs writing and righting. amen

two hours later I and google have suddenly hit it off - password lost in some virtual sewer somewhere swirling about like an abandoned stick. No matter. What be time but the way we measure lives by, the way we measure patience by. I did not swear, careering around in cyberspace getting hopelessly lost. Now wham - we are re-united - my password and myself. Enuf. The present is rescued. I am alive on a Saturday night. I and the dog. I did not want to go to fireworks, bonfires, rage cages and waltzers, candy floss and fifteen year olds clutching onto their bottles of Wicked and their spangly belts, hair all straightened. I didn't want all that. Truth is I wanted to fill the house with the expanse of my self - after three weeks in Canada as one of a party of five - being the writer who did not write, now I realise much of this craft, this agony, this passion, has to do with being alone. And these summer nights are long. The words well up - the novel a pregnancy erupting, but of course so much else nudges in for seeing to first. The one thing - you know, the one bloody thing, is last in the queue, saying nothing, head bowed, don't notice me, I might rip the world open. As I remember reading on a toilet wall in them days when left wing-ed folks wrote on toilet walls - if women told the truth about their lives the world would split apart. Perhaps I was twenty or some such wide eyed scared one - those scrawled words impressed themselves upon me. Not many years later a drama teacher said of ancient Greece - and they would take your finger and press it upon a wall and everything you ever thought or did was there for ever. Impressed. Pressed. Words in print. Impression.

the saddest image of Canada - though it's hot, though there are cool breezes, there is some kind of cranky law to dry your washing inside (in a dryer) because it doesn't look good outside. Oh ma gawd - where did we take a huge wrong turn to think sheets billowing in the wind looked awful? But let's not end on a moan. Here world is Niagara Falls - that close, that mighty, cleaving two nations and knowing nothing of either.