the stones are getting higher and higher, heaped up into a wall by the force of the waves. I know it hardly needs saying, but living on the beach water becomes a reality -a nd I appreciate more and more its immense strength. I clambered up some rocks yesterday, a la child in me wanting to be a wee adventurer - and then came face to face with the power. a tower of rolling rearing wave coming towards me. Thrilling but should it have freaked and rolled over me I would have been powerless in its dashing force. Seals I conclude are really strong. They ride the waves and stay their ground or water rather, as strong as the sea. We have had rearing great waves for days now. It happens for a few days in a year and then the sea rids herself of our garbage or at least some of it. so does the river bank - limbs of trees are torn off and flung into the gushing river which then throws the great trunks and branches into the sea, which could do great damage to a fishing boat. There is a minor forest out there on the beach just now.
It is the view from my window.
and my novel is published which is wonderful and I've the sea to thank for that.

oh dear - quel very long time since I wrote something here. Ah well - the sun doth shine and the September day is warm. This sea of my inspiration, a stone's throw from where I sit now, helped me create a story - Magnus Fin and the ocean quest -and Magnus Fin and I won the Kelpies prize and will soon be in print.
And the joy to have an editor who is wonderful. Many long moons ago, when I was a journalist in London, I had an editor. Since then I had forgotten what that means - that there is someone there in conversation with your writing and those final touches do not have to be done completely alone. So much of the writer's life is being alone. It is a state I am getting used to and cherish. But all this writing or the best of it - I hope, is ultimately for other people - so it's interesting to now enter this communal aspect of writing. How about this? she says - and you said that in chapter two so don't want to confuse readers by saying this in chapter five etc.
Thank God. at the polishing stage it's fine and right to let others in.
Then there's the next book already to think about. I need to learn to trust the pregnancy of that and stay - like Mary - silent with the knowledge of it growing under her breast. I've blabbed too early and that's asking for a miscarriage. It's not for nothing foetuses are hidden and protected.
Anyway, nuff of that mystery. I met Joan Lingard and was presented with £2000 - which was utterly wonderful considering my card that very morning had been declined!
Ah but these short listed ceremony affairs are difficult. I had a deep feeling I would win but of course prepared myself not to - which meant numbing down on the whole feeling realm so as to, if it came to it, be a good runner up.
The book launch will be in Edinburgh on October 22nd.
much love xx

Seal with baby

Seal with baby
Originally uploaded by moymackay

north ronaldsay

just back from far flung North Ronaldsay - if this Caithness land is far north then - whah! it ain't nothin' one and half hour boat trip to Stromness then eighteen minutes in an eight seater plane toOrkney's northernmost island. The wind does blow. The folks there are wind blown. At one place the island is just quarter of a mile wide and one of side the north sea, calling to its sister on the other, the Atlantic. I asked some of the older islander what where they called - as in North Ronaldsians or such? Selchies, one elderly man said, smiling with the sea eye and wind face. Aha! So that's where they hide out, the selchies? These few folks who live alongside wild seaweed eating shaggy sheep and basking brother and sister seals, on land there are the ones who, for some time at least, have removed their seal skins. They are getting out the accordion, playing the fiddle with a pixie eye, drumming for all she's worth not with a drum kit but a square of formica and very good it does too. And there was a sexophone put in an appearance too. And the wine did flow and the songs were sung and in the eternal light the seals at midnight joined in and sung in their deep haunting soulful way.

like peeping my head round the quiet door to see if the cat has come home. hello. she said, her voice a dry brush into to wind. have been busy. Writing but mostly getting through each day's to-do list and until the book brings me a great sum and such the list means cleaning the house, doing the recycling, walking the dog, preparing classes, reading up on rhymes for next week's creative writing class and then getting in my head to thrash out a thousand words and try for a few short story competitions. Underneath the pile sits the book I want to write based on the life of my grandmother. I have the title already - the woman with the letter in her hand - and I have the front cover. I even have ten thousand words but for whatever reason she's having a little rest right now. Then there's emails to write, answer, sun to sit in.
but not only women with a room of their own and a thousand a year or whatever the equivalent would be now (thirty thousand probably) manage to write novels. part of me yearns to Fen Shui so much and part of me just lives with it - this chaos which occasionally aids cretivity but mostly dampens it.
but the sea at my window is calm, the birds wheeeling and screaming and doing what they do - intent on the few things they must focus on - survive.
I have been watching the wild. It's dangerous. So many die. So manyc arcases washed up on the beach, so many oyster catchers with broken wings. It's a wonder so many live at all. Coping with danger makes us strong I suppose and so this hankering after tea and eternally hoovered carpets and radio three and arranged bookshelves and ample toilet paper and gleaming windows and in short ORDER is perhaps not embracing the danger that will make me strong.
I on the other hand am bloody sick of moaning about the eleastic band between my imagined perfect creative state and what is. A bit of tension - good, too much, breaks. The carpets are fine. The sea is full of seaweed and whales and bits of stuff and angel fish. Girl - get on with it.

after three prose years I am teetering back into poetry. Instead of being a waitress, the in-between books seems like a chance to see if I can still do it (a bit). Teaching poetry at evening class I feel a bit of a fraud not writing any so yesterday tried to do the homework I set the students - metaphor that's what. That tones and addles the brain. Too much of it and you tip into madness, seeing always something as something else. Nothing is as it seems! Aristotle, apparently, said the ability to make metaphors led to intuitive perception. He didn't mention the madness - it's not the clouds what are you on about, it's my grandmother's washing line on a Monday. Or Kate Atkinson's 'the car hire lady's suit was so red if she fell into a vat of Heinz tomato suit you wouldn't be able to tell the difference.'

here is one verse of it;

Imagine cliffs that don't give you time to question

e

n

d

i

n

g

s

cliffs that don't doubt, don't regret

how one thing changes into another,

cliffs that like brides take the plunge

and go on plunging

while cackling newly-weds build love nests in the air

and chat manically while the wide sea sings lullabies

imagine Caithness

it has been a while. but the writer needs to write. Two books more or less done. the last full stop. how often have I siad that - more then more editing, re-writing, tweaking, polishing, dusting, then more final full-stops, until perhaps any more changing would make it a different book. A time maybe to say for now that's you. Is this computers? I remember writing a book at the bright age of 22 and any changes had to be carefully aligned - once typix had dried into a thick white blob, then hopefully the new word or even letter would more or less line up with the rest. Laziness I note creeps in. Back then I rarely made any spelling mistakes, now the words correct themselves and I have given up even trying to spell conciousness but actually think I just got it.
I note my last post was on Valentine's day. Since then the snow has melted, the daffodils are past their peak, the hens venture further each brave new day and the breeding sea-birds are chattering loudly on the craggy ledges. The hen with the broken leg is hobbling along with the others now and managing fine - so close she came to soup now look at her.
I thought - why bother blogging, no-one except my darling supportive signs reads it then I think - suddenly here - needing this now books have had their final stop till next one - I need it. It rights my world and tunes me the way I want to be tuned. Without it - the writing - I slump into a poorer vision, duller hearing, slower brain fog. Am trying to waken my word sound life. Just been to the beach with dog and stood on sand with cliffs at my back and nestled in them several pairs of fulmars. Trying for a sound poem

ka kakakaka
ke eheheheh
ke ke ke ke
wishhhh shushhhh washhhh
ho wah shaoshhh shhhhh shhhh woshhhhh
kak kak kak
akakakak eh eh eh eh eh eh eh

it's hard and staccatto over soft and flowing then my feet pressing and releasing the sand and my voice calling the dog, my voice like a bark. April and there's too many holes in the ground full of new life. The too many is because of the dog and her sniffing and eagerness to get to them - like those tiny naked rabbits she unearthed - little pink vulnerable freshnesses. April's full of it - full of hopeful holes in the ground.

heart day

happy valentines - a big bunch of flowers on the table and not from the garage either. and magnetic poetry on the fridge - I like this one - 'but you my love could drive eternity to me' or 'run on and milk your luscious life' and oh ho, so many more. The snow is slowly thawing but it's still a white dress over the green. This is the longest unbroken white I can remember - and its only been about ten days - imagine the feeling after six months of snow cover to see the first green shoots come early April? That would work on the soul would it not?
I have started teaching poetry in college and I have been working with the poet as maker seeing how the word poesis from the Greek means to make and also a poet in Scots is Makar. So we worked with making things. I asked people to list things they remember their parents (or guardians) made as they were growing up. Some had a big list, some could think of nothing. One man could only remember his father making chips. Then it struck me - dwelling a tad further on things that 'work on the soul' that growing up in an environment where things are made is good for ya. It gave me a deeper appreciation of my dad. Oh boy - did he make things - extensions, tables, stairs, summer house, garage, beds, knocking down walls, breakfast bars, pictures where you put thin bits of wood in different tones - an art form whose name I have forgotten. And so much more. He was, and still to a certain extent, was always making things. Mum too - soft things, material things, art things, a shoe box and cotton wool was Bethlehem, exotic puddings on a Sunday with names like pavlova and Baked Alaska where miracle of miracles the ice-cream in the oven didn't melt. Anyway all this to say it is I think an act of love and now I write - I am in love with writing and want to make things with words and somehow I think it is a transformation of what was made all about me as I grew up. As my sister makes clothes, the other makes pictures.
I was present at a conference where an elderly woman stood up and said to the large assembled group 'it is so important to revive the old crafts - to make things with your hands,' then she fell down and died.
happy valentines

bridal

it's the pure white stuff come down like a bride at ST Bride's time. My birthday. fifty. Half a century and a tug of emotions, the dream coming closer, so much more centred in myself - it has taken time, and of course it is and always will be a journey. I used to think in my twenties when you knew it all, that at some point - maybe around 28 - you'd be sorted and on course. Step-daughter who is twelve reckons she has 'found herself'' and maybe she has - jsut because any kind of self finding on my part took ages doesn't mean everyone churns through the same angst. So I had a party in Edinburgh - family, friends, poetry, song and wonderful little cup cakes in all the colours of the rainbow. Then fancy hotel in Inverness with himself then finally back north and now all is white - except the sea. She doesn't seem too perturbed by the weather of the land.

Enjoy the wedding. Happy peaceful time of St Bride.

yer coats at the door

As they say meaning oot ye gang. Wanna come walk with me - this walking enjoyed in the vast fields and wild places of the imagination. Coat on, hat and scarf? Then let us go.

Dawn is a thin line of pale blue light across the eastern sea. The night unpeels. The first glimmers of light say day is on the way. Outside now and the small bird of prey that was busy in the tufts of grass flies up, disturbed by us. Despite last night's million stars ther is no frost this morning. We are not breaking glass in puddles as we walk. We are following the dirt track that leads round to the beach and stepping out the circulation moves through the body, breath too is filling us with sea and wind and morning. We climb the small track that leads upwards/ We can hear the sea before we see it then we are up tothe rim and there she lies = spread out flat and crinkled and enormous before us. Tide is far out. waves break white onto the stony and sandy beach. Cormorants dive rubbery necks under the crest of a wave. We are breathing fuller now and for your sake a seal breaks the surface of the sea and stares at you. For a second your eyes meet then she is gone but she is playful and curious. She'll follow us along the shore. I look up the hillside where the brae bends like a knuckle and there on the dawn pale horizon stand three young deer. I watch them. They watch us but you are busy watching the seal. Look behind you, I say without making sudden movements, wanting them to stay long enough for their silhouettes to etch themselves on your memory so they will stay with you as the seal will stay with you as the sea and the air and the bright orange sun now rising from the sea will stay with you. The heron is at his perch on the stone in the hillside. For a while we pose no threat. He is still as the rock he stands on, patient as the earth, alert as the day, then he lifts off, suddenly now a thing of movement and air - his slow heavy wings take him away. And a huddle of oyster catchers rise orange beaked and white bellied over the sea, crying their high pitched song. And through a hole in the rock at the side of the cave we spy the sun. May each walk unveil some mystery.

january

The January man he walks abroad with coats of wool and boots of leather



Recalling sunrise on the solstice - that's her, bursting out of the sea.


The January woman on the other hand slips into her purple velvet dress from Phase Eight that once many january's past cost a small fortune. And what for, say the woman of February, March and May? The Burns Supper she hoots adding a fling and a whee at the end of the line, in practise for the twirl in an eightsome reel. Burns and I, I anyway like to imagine, have much in common - we are both born under the idealistic sign of Aquarius and both born into the year '59. Robert Burns is almost exactly 200 years older than I. We both are fired up by the word freedom and like what poetry does to the heart.


So as I prepare to strike my dagger into the heart of the haggis and raise a dram to the people's poet who has meant more to Scottish people than Keats, Shelley and Wordsworth himself let it be his words I give you here and may Obama and the ressurrection of credit crunch be fuelled by that same spirit;


is there for honest poverty that hangs his head and a' that


the coward slave we pass him by, we dare be poor for a' that


for a' that and a' that, our toils obscure and a' that


the honest man, though ere sae poor, is King o' men for a' that





yea see yon birkie ca'd a lord, whae struts an stares an a' that


though hundreds worship at his word he's but a coof fir a' that


for a' that an a' that, their dignities an a' that


the man o' independant mind, he looks and laughs at a' that





so let us pray that come it may as come it will for a' that


that sense and worth o'er a' the earth will bear the gree and a' that


for a' that an a' that, it's comin' yet for a' that


that man tae man the warld oer shall brothers be for a' that.

sea and silence

It's only being away from the sea I realise how constant and loud its crashing, sighing, breaking is. On a calm winter solstice down in the Scottish borders a few of us did a stint of the Southern Upland Way. It was so different to be deep in the hills and what struck me most was the huge silence, almost loud in its complete absence of sound. Which made me cognisant of the fact that, living yards from the north sea, sound is always there, even with double glazing. Now as I sit at the computer, positioned upstairs by the window so I can flit from screen to sea, I am aware of this background of massive watery heart-beat. I wonder what it does to my own?

Sei-Shonagan, Japanese lady of long ago, had a pillow book. In it she wrote things. Things that pass quickly - spring, summer, fall, winter, a sailing ship, youth...things that are red, startle etc.

So - taking a leaf from the lady of Japan - things that breathe - the sea, my duvet, geyser in Iceland, custard boiling, flower turned to the sun, jelly, ink, the quivering arrow, a song bursting into the cathedral, good poetry, the plants after rain, wood in the sun...

wind - gales - whip the sea - hens stagger against it and man and self plus dog take to the hills - an hour later I am exhausted. The Chinese have a name for it - poisoned by wind!

I was once - having lived in London and returned North for a few days. My uncle took me for a walk across the forth road bridge. The wind it did most fiercely blow. Afterwards I felt zonked as though my head was too blown through. I think I had to sit down and recover for hours.

So we are used or unused to breath. In London in them days I was in the habit of not breathing - it was (cycling through the city from Brixton to Regent's Park daily) not recommended. You wrapped yourself in a scarf and tried only to snatch at air but not take it in deeply.

A new year's resolution - to breath more. To open windows. To be part of the great exchange.

Happy wind to you. x

Happy Epiphany
In Russia I believe they are having Christmas. Here the cold of yesterday is less so and the layers needed to brave the elements less than of late. I waddle to the beach, waddle round the harbour, feel slim within all this but so few see! Did I have an epiphany moment? Yes - spent ages setting up a new printer and was about to send it back all righteous and pissed off when eventually saw I had not removed one piece of sellotape that was holding back the whole operation. Ha-ha! We have words. It clicks into action after an hour of incomprehension and it works. Not perhaps much of an epiphany moment in the grand scheme of things. I saw a huge fat rainbow. I learnt that Iris is the Greek Goddess of the rainbow. I saw that my hen with the broken leg (dog attack - not my dog) strayed far today and seems to be getting through this.
Perhaps that's enough of forced epiphanies.
I had a job typing for an elderly lady once. I remember she had hand written something she called the epiphany lectures and I typed them up on an old typewriter in her old house in North London and outside it was icy and she was afraid of slipping on the path and everything smelt old and musty. I wanted to be a writer and I wondered what I was doing in an old women's house typing? But also felt strangely priveledged to be typing up - the epiphany lectures. Like I was playing my part in something rather wise that I didn't understand but at least I was showing up, doing something, and getting paid.
That was an epiphany a long time ago. She was ancient then. Are there still old houses dark with mahogony and thick with moth balls and furniture polish and the slow ticking of a grandfather clock? Life can be so full of coversations, laughter, busy things, doing things, going places, digging gardens, making cakes but somehow methinks when so much of all this fades it will be these vague dream-like images that will remain - you know - the catalogue we each carry of - a bannister sloping into a green hall, the whiff of cinammon, the sudden dash of a white poodle, the splash of water into a tub, the gauze blowing up as the wind steals through the open window. Those things.

Happy New Year Brave World
REd walls, christmas lights, a wooden stable in the window with a little white cloth draped over for snow. I remember the sense of wonder I felt at the shoebox my mother transformed into a stable and cotton wool since then took on the possibility of magic. I'm back in her house - I know festivities have almost past but this bloody cold bug hasn't. I didn't know chests could rattle like a bag of stones shaken in an intruder's face. Though there is the family feeling and the Christmas feeling I hold onto still being here and not four hundred miles north. Almost fifty years old and still needing tae be a wee lassie sometimes. Like Christmas time. And they are moving - my mother's husband contracted (don't know if that's the right word in this context) dementia (after a car crash) and so they are off to a retirement village. Nice place. Community. Hot tub even. Still, here I am, taking things off the wall. Wandering through rooms and remembering. Take anything you want, my mother says. It is like being in a huge shop where everything is free!
Often I see 'stuff' as just that, like a burden. But here, coughing and sniffing and slowing down, packing boxes, I see it isn't that at all. All these pictures, works of art, photos, trinkets, ornaments, souvenirs froms friends and countries make up a home with warmth and character.
And here I am staring at my dear Grandmother looking beautiful in sepia tones at about the age of nineteen when she was in service. It must have been her day off. And she's dressed for the occasion and holding a scroll in her hand which the photographer saw fit. Above this girl is the same woman perhaps seventy years later smiling and looking also beautiful. Beside that there is one more photo of my grandmother, with a cloch hat pulled down and she is walking with my grandfather. He is dapper with a bowler hat on and in the picture he is pulling at his pocket watch. He made watches - and played violin - and drink to excess - and at the time of this photo had a wife elsewhere, of course unknown to grandmother. I have inherited many stories about this errant grandfather - and here he is now immortalised in sepia tones on some Edinburgh street with a wife far younger than himself and forever they will be going down the road and he'll be fingering his watch and she'll be clutching a bag under her arm and throwing him a look.
happy new year - to dead, alive and not yet born x