as i walked out

2009-11-06T02:39:00.000-08:00

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.

2009-09-11T01:52:00.000-07:00

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

2009-07-17T02:20:00.001-07:00

Seal with baby
Originally uploaded by moymackay

north ronaldsay

2009-07-17T02:07:00.000-07:00

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.

2009-05-26T06:34:00.001-07:00

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.

2009-04-21T05:36:00.000-07:00

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

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

2009-04-18T03:52:00.000-07:00

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

2009-02-14T03:16:00.000-08:00

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

2009-02-07T01:11:00.000-08:00

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

2009-01-27T01:40:00.000-08:00

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

2009-01-23T05:27:00.000-08:00

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

2009-01-16T05:22:00.000-08:00

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...

2009-01-11T09:29:00.000-08:00

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

2009-01-06T08:34:00.000-08:00

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.

2009-01-02T09:09:00.000-08:00

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

2008-12-19T10:34:00.000-08:00

When you live in the remote Scottish Highlands with only an oil rig to lighten the view from the window, and when you spend most of the day in some fantasy writer's space and when even the real world is edging on the fantistic, being of sea and sand and stone and waves and cliffs and dear and seals, you can get to feel as though the hip, clever, cultural bus is going on down the road and you ain't on it. Ain't even close to catching it. Then the question tugs and challenges - well? And if that hip-street-wise-arty-culture-laden bus you imagine did stop - would you get on? Um!

Yes - if I could get on and off. That's how it seems to sit. Living the rural life, hens out back clucking and waves out front sucking and me in between - mostly liking this life - and then these days when I just have to click on some hip blog and there it is - the world where people live in cities, go to lectures, art galleries, workshops, seem so up there and out there and engaging with the witty and wonderful.

I pull on my wellies, rain trousers, rain jacket, hat or two, scarf a mile long and on days like today tip my head earthwards and strain into the wind. Slosh, slosh, boots hitting down through mud and rain. Three dear startled by dog, turn and become silhouettes on the rim of hill. Dead seal is tossed about by waves, its body blown up, floating but not brought into shore. I see more oyster catchers than folk.

There is something about, or not about, the beach, that makes it hard to bring on the Christmas feeling. Beach in winter, seaweed strewn. I have taken to writing poetry in the sand - scoring words with sticks. Words where you are unsure what will come next, even what letter. They are public art works for the two other dog walkers because the tide has not erased them. So - as we dip into the solstice in the far north accept my poetry from the sand -

poem 1 - scaffold turn into sugar. poem 2 - when the night jumps. poem 3 - such wild holds back the numb and smashes it into life.

As read by gulls and oyster catchers in the far north x happy solstice.x

2008-12-12T11:38:00.000-08:00

What a day of darkness! Dog whines, my alarm clock after darling has gone to work, leaving a loving cup of green tea by the bed. I sleep on knowing the dog will not allow this for long. Whine, whine. But Flora, I moan, it's still pitch dark. Even after a bath it was still pitch dark. By eight fifteen I have layered myself sufficiently against December and out we go, into the dawn. It is a slither of tangerine lying over the sea in the east and above it dark clouds. I stand on the sand and speak some words to the morning but it is only half an hour later that the lying down slice of tangerine has seeped the sky. For an hour it is painterly and hopeful then the clouds assail the light and come two thirty the dusk drops followed swiftly by night. For a few hours in this dark day I wrote so at least in this activity, the activity Freud said only creative writers can get away with and still be called sane (that of living in a fantasy world) I inhabited the world of warmth and light and colour.

And I wanted to write about things I saw as I walked out. What did I see in the half light? That they had filled the pot holes in the track. That my neighbour was not in. That a raft of gulls were racketing on the waves, getting tossed about in the wine coloured seaweed. That rain was splatting the stones. That the love heart I had made on the sand from stones last summer is still there - partly. That the wings from oyster catchers that for ages have been lying on the grass in more or less the same place have been moved.

Had I posted this last week it would have been more interesting. A few days ago - as I walked out ( to overdo the thing) I saw the antlers of a deer behind me on the horizon and in front of me, lifting its head from the sea was a seal. Deer, human, dog and seal - all poised for a minute or so, kind of geometrically lined up. As though we planned this line in space and time. Then we all moved on. Life, I thought, is like that. I like to notice this. May your fusions be to the good. x

2008-12-08T09:06:00.000-08:00

Christmas comes in slow up here. Across the river we have a few decorations that suspend from the lamposts - there's a star and an angel and a santa and a candle that flickers on and off and a robin in red and green and outside the fire station there is a tree lit up and outside the bus stop there is another tree, lit up and doing us proud. And that is it. Yesterday we put up a tree in the living room and strung a length of coloured lights around the picture above our bed and the blue and red and yellow and green lights reflect in the window which reflects onto the sea.

I know, In Edinburgh, where I used to live - most beautiful city on the planet - that in George street outside a very swish bar lavish decorations get wound around columns in October! And I walk past trying not to see, thinking, at least let us have Halloween first. Give us a pumpkin and a witch at least.

Here, in the local town twenty miles away the town Christmas lights are switched on at the beginning of December by Mr and Mrs Claus and the local primary school children belting out a few festive songs. And maybe it's the time of year and its tendency towards provoking memories but as I wait for Mrs Santa Claus to finish her rendition of 'it was the night before Christmas' being, as she told us and I quite agree, Santa's favourite story, my mind ambles into Christmases past.

Like Dortmund and one ginormous Christmas tree and the smell of gluwein and bratwurst and stalls with candles and cake and people in gloves and red noses. It's obviously a social thing. Friends gather round the gluwein stalls laughing and reminiscing, in for the night, you can tell.

Then there was a Greek island where Christmas dinner was cooked in an outside oven and a group of us sat cross legged, and, if I can remember correctly, meditated.

Then there were the Christmases in Sussex with the real candles on the tree and the hushed feeling that comes with seeing that, no matter where you've been and how you've been feeling, some peace comes with a lit tree and people under it singing Holy Night in as many launguages as we can muster and in those days there were many.

Then the time I played the angel Gabriel and sang while trying to hold a very heavy star and there was my dad in the audience and I am not six but twenty two. Better late than never.

Then us huddled in the hall, six for real now, and dad saying we had to go back to bed, Santa hadn't come, and the excitement, the heart rush no amount of wine since can ever re-create and us shouting from the wonderful banishment of our room - has he come yet? And then the answer from heaven itself - YES.

golden

2008-12-05T07:48:00.000-08:00

the sky right now. amber liquid and edible, or drinkable perhaps, and the sea, oh God the sea. the waves are leaping, rising high cry then cresting and spraying whiteness as they curl. When this happens the sea pongs. And this huge wave time seems independant of the wind. But there they go, elemental and unceasing, wave after wave yards from where I write - saying yes. I have travelled miles, been so far away, now here it is - land and here I go, giving, the whole thing is so total I can't help but be impressed and wish I could write like that, live like that. It reminds me of the last line of Ulysses which I can't remember. Something about here I go to forge for the millionth time.. which is also a kind of hurling, saying yes, mistakes and all. Living by waves there is no need for television which I gave up thirty years ago. It poisoned me. I felt that as a teenager sitting there five hours a night. Sitting up at eleven pm and feeling as though some inertia that was not me had seeped in. I counted the hours, the hundreds of teenage hours and come eighteen I thought - basta! The amount of people who look incredulous when I say i have no television is amazing. I think, is it not so much more incredulous, that we - human beings - have given ourselves to totally to this entity? Some people I know never turn it off - it's there, buzzing away as they sleep, it's there, chattering inanely while people visit, it's there, trying to sell you this that and the next while dinner cooks. Not only have we married it, we can't it seems, get enough of it. How many channels? You may say - not everyone has waves at their window. True. I had a window once in London near Balham. I looked on this tree. It was the one thing in this view that spoke nature. I waited for spring. It never came. The neighbours killed it, my landlady said, the leaves choked the drains.
Do not kill the waves, I ask. And think, if I cans till look on them with wonder they and their majesty are alive.

darkness

2008-11-28T10:26:00.000-08:00

almost seventeen hours of it each day. I am wrung out from over much driving with the low slanted sun blinding me and the window washer not working - six hours of that - ah poor me. But all this way to be a mentee and for that I am delighted. This writing needs guidance - others to show us the way. Living almost in the artic archipeligo long drives are necessary for most things. Take not the local Pilates class for granted yea who live where others live also! While in Inverness today, enjoying cappuccino(she doesn't get out much!) prior to meeting my mentor I longingly perused a brochure on a Pilates class. Next to writing and running and a bit of therapy thrown in now and again nothing does it quite like Pilates. I was even considering driving 100 miles to suck in the core and pull up my pelvis floor but after the strain of driving and peering hunched up through a dirty windscreen I probably won't.
now home after the dirty window trip and partner wants to go out - another fifty miles or so and I can't quite face it. I see his disappointment and I feel old and I know sometimes the renewing comes in the saying yes, having now learnt to say no. And I find myself at almost fifty years of age having just bought (not intentionally, it just happened to have the extras) a little zooped up car with alloys, spoiler, and four very throaty exhausts and a gear stick that twinkles red! The car is green and too noisy but I didn't say no. Did I say I have learnt that no lesson? Ha-ha! Listen as I pass, somewhere far north of Inverness, roaring the single track roads in search of cappucino and pilates! The dirty windscreen - that was old car - that was Audi on her last day out. A life in the banger derby awaits her then crushed to a sheet.
I have a wonderful blog friend who describes her life as being in the slow lane. I veer; sometimes it is sea and sky and beach and dog and writing and fresh air and the speed is as fast as feet move. At other times it is over taking every slow coach on the A9 and doing many things and juggling coloured balls high in the air. And on those days, where the windscreen makes the world a place of muck, the lure of the slow lane is calling.

2008-11-14T12:57:00.000-08:00

have been round the world. in a short space of time. in paradise in sunnyside guest farm in south Africa near Lesotho where baboons bark at you in the early dawn and where, because you have travelled so far for so short a time, you get up at five and climb that golden rock, yes, the one called face rock because of the shape of the wise ancient one, where the dangerous baboons live and sit and swing and pull up roots and snakes and make a right racket, and walking through the valley before the sun has come up you hear a crack resonate like gun fire but it's not gun fire, it's a bull whip and a man on horse back is encouraging the cows to pasture - crack, crack and its echo is still in my imagination, the way the sun did come up from behind the rocks is also there and the way twenty of us met together under this mighty rock to tell stories and bring to our work and our lives the food of story. And to it the rhythm of good food, of people of walk slow and bend close, and to the stories we shared - some in the workshop, some over breakfast. Here's a breakfast story.

A man called Roland runs a hotel. There is a staff member he values highly called Thomas. Thomas is perhaps sixty now and has never gone to school. Thomas though, can speak thirteen languages and Thomas will remember you. If you come to the hotel and order a drink then return a year of two later, he'll remember what drink you ordered and he'll bring it to you on a tray, without you having to ask for it. Recently Roland found Thomas in great distress, crying in a cupboard, sobbing his heart out. Roland couldn't console him. He tried to ask him what was the matter but Thomas couldn't stop the tears. It was only after his tears had run dry he was able to turn to his manager and say - it's my daughter - she's passed her matric with 13 honours.

After Roland told me the story over breakfast both of us had tears in our eyes. We too cried for the black girl who had what her father never got.

And many more such stories.

I went via Dubai. There's a melting pot of a place - in some ways like a brave new world where racism is an ugly fact of history.

and back to Scotland where Hamish Henderson wrote -

roch the wind in the clear day's dawing

blaws the cloods heilster gaudy o'er the bay

but there's mair nor a roch wind blawing

through the great glen o the world the day

.....broken faimlies in lands we've harried

will curse Scotland the brave nae mair nae mair

black and white ane tae l'ither mairried

view from a writer's window

2008-09-30T06:47:00.000-07:00

Been walking - not enough - feel the need for good miles - out over the bracken that's gone all coppery. Here the sea. I can't walk on that. My eyes walk over it. Been watching a cormorant's black rubbery neck dive hopeful for an hour.

2008-09-03T12:06:00.000-07:00

the boats are out slow and picturesque in the bay - that is one or two boats. I forget how huge the world's population is. Two or three small boats would be busy. Meeting several cars on the road would be rush hour. I teach keep-fit on occasion to elderly people. It is quite common for us all to stop stretching to the ceiling, or relinquish our spinal twists on the odd sighting of a passer-by. Usually it is the same woman at the same time, en route to pick up her son from the village school. Six pupils started p1 this year. There is worry the school will not survive. I have done creative writing classes with elderly people and love hearing their stories of how things were. For one there were schools dotted up the coast every few miles, and the snow got so high they had to tunnel themselves out, and one woman was in her snow bound house for ten days, and the helicopter dropped baby food and how long or not the snow would last depended on the overnight frost. Here I am, the start of September and still a good heat to the sun and yet I am full of snow. Is that a tendency amongst writers, the first hint of autumn and there we are, corking the red wine and snuggling down by the log fire? I see the sea from my window, I don't mean as a distant glisten but as a close up hugeness. That doesn't change apparently but I may have to stop eating salmon. I mean, it doesn't sit well the closer up to salmon I get. I see them in the river, waiting for a spate so they can get up the river to spawn and die. And I see the same bloody man day in day out and he doesn't look hungry that's for sure and there he is, fishing, endlessly fishing. You don't need a permit at the confluence of river and sea and all the mighty salmon are there, waiting to complete their cycle and whack! One after the other, up we go, hit on the head with a stone we go. Can he eat that much? And yet, I smile! He is such a jolly fellow. Bad luck, I mutter under my breath, smiling. Then I think, for God's sake, what is one man fishing compared to trawlers combing the sea and lifting thousands in one scoop? I see them jump in the sea, or rather out of the sea. I see them jump in the river. How hunted - except on a Sunday. No line cast then. Or am I overly sentimental? Do the salmon offer themselves gladly to our feasting?

I know not. I eat fish, I see them hunted, it pains me. I eat fish.

walking between sea and shore

2008-08-25T03:05:00.000-07:00

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

2008-08-07T08:22:00.000-07:00

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

2008-08-04T13:44:00.000-07:00

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

2008-08-02T12:35:00.000-07:00

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.

canada

2008-07-20T18:59:00.000-07:00

hot, humid, not complaining, often walking the beach path in the far north of Scotland I long for more heat. Here it is. Nights of sleeping with no bed covers, the cicadas in the pine trees, and I'd rather that than air conditioning. North America, of so much is thrown away, why walk when you can drive, why get hot and sweaty when you can turn up the a.c. why wash a cup when you can use a paper one and throw it away. And yet amid this abundance in what money can buy I find the words don't come. OK I'm not here to spend hours writing but it was only for half an hour in some hip little cafe in Toronto in a neighborhood where the black guys were playing backgammon on the street that I could suddenly write. So do I write into the gap, I asked myself, walking the block.
perhaps
as you see - not very inspiring - but hot - new - different
xxx

St John

2008-06-24T03:28:00.000-07:00

today - the feast of St John - the midsummer fires, the rites of passage, the out breathing of the northern hemisphere - the half year until Christmas eve. for he who walked in the wilderness baptising in the river - no few sprinkles but a taking you to that edge of drowning, of not quite drowning, of opening the eye that suddenly sees and understands when it is that close to death. And as it should the sun shines, the sky and heavens are blue, the sea a great sweep of reflection, of glinting silver. I sit on the beach watching the blue, watching the patient oyster catcher mine the rich seam of the shore - I remember fires for this day, moments of lighting torches to mark some passing - some moving on - graduation, from student to apprentice - even in the Brownies I flew up to Guides, the moment given special ritual. I remember the salute, the few words and the 'flying up' - not with fire but rite of passage all the same. I remember long haired seeking cotton shirted men, with guitars and Cat Stevens songs around fires. And stories. And being mesmerised by flames and how it can touch a melancoly place that simply sits and stares, not thinking about anything and at the same time digesting everything; the changes, the births and deaths, the places been and left, the friends. Give into the fire whatever in you needs to die, someone said. And Rudolf Steiner of midsummer said 'loose yourself to find yourself.'
Burn. Like the whin bushes on the brae to make space for the new.
glorious summer to you xx

one midsummer's morning

2008-06-22T05:19:00.000-07:00

As I walked out this midsummer's morning I saw bright coins of fortune birl on the glass surface of the sea, and the local fisherman's red boat make wakes. I saw three shages stand on a black rock, like tall thin ministers in tail coats with their bony hands behind their backs, looking out upon the still midsummer's sea for a sign. Maybe this day - when the light is stretched to her fullest, the day the Sun stands still, maybe on this solstice Jesus will again walk towards them over the water. I saw tall pink foxgloves sway ont he grassy steep sided brae over the sea. I saw a thrush on a stone wall, alert, speckled breasted, watching the dog warily. I heard the cry of gulls braided into the accordion music drifting from the fishing boat. It is still. Hardly a breath of wind. As he hawls up his creels, tantalising gulls, petrifying lobsters, the radio plays the sea. Now with some country and western song, at odds with this scene and also adding to it, giving it that dimension of funky celtic blend. Oyster catchers, with young somewhere, make a din. Sand pipers send Flora, my collie dog, on a merry tour away from their young. The bay is alive with bird song, wild flowers, and sea, sky, one fisherman and his radio, me.

Make a wish, she says, the solstice, the flat sea. I'll carry your fortune, I'll transport your dreams ont he solstice tide to a place where dreams are planted to flower the coming year.

Then later fire. Fire and sea.

Happy midsummer

so much walking

2008-06-19T12:40:00.000-07:00

There was the slow uncertain kind of walking, that takes you in through the hospital doors and upstairs, leaning away from the cold blue, the old linoleum, the smell of wards, and into ward eleven. And there he is, sitting up already. Whatever the thing was in his intestine is now out, the protruding stomach is back to its slender self and my father seems well. Hospitals. The man opposite tells his lyrical story - of wires and tubes dancing round his body, of how the man in the ward last week shouted call 999, of how if he bends too much one way the tubes will come away. How the next day he says exactly the same and it saddens me. That we humans are so fallible, so strong yet so able to be forgetful, repeat ourselves. We who held down good jobs. We are all going there in our different ways.
Then there is the walking at the treefest - round the grass and under the summer sun. The wafting in and out of the right on tents - nodding towards recycling, build your own tree nest, hippy clothes, tarot cards, mountain bikers leaping over jeeps if leaping if the word for flying on a bike. This walking where my darling nephews are buying nineteen badges. Where my cousin and his children are swinging. Where my sister is buying pale blue nuggeted jewellery and my other sister is enjoying falafel and pita bread. Where Si is dressed up medieval style and carving wooden spoons. Ah, here's the life.
Then the walking through the New Town in Edinburgh. The sort of walking I often did and when i'm down in the city, still try to do; the slow ambling through the elegant streets, the gazing into the opulent rooms, wondering that those lemons are still sitting in that wooden bowl in that basement flat. Then finding my cafe. The classical music, the cappucino, the croissant, the dreaming. And for those few days the sea is far away. When I return north I am surprised and even a little frightened by her strong persistent noise - those waves crashing just yards from our bedroom window. All through the night the waves come in, and go out.
I bless them. All of them. Those people who walk with me, even some of the way, and each in their different ways. And I am blessed in return.

flowers for youth

2008-06-13T04:51:00.000-07:00

June. And cold. Yesterday I picked wild flowers quickly, white headed cow parsley then to break up the weed feel, pink faced bright ones (red campion perhaps), thniking as I tore at the stalks, breaking them, not always cleanly, sometimes yanking them out by the root, that the act of picking wild flowers in the morning should not be rushed. Being June the grass up from the beach is not only green but cheering and swaying with colour, albeit it mostly the white headed carrot family. When had I last picked flowers? The daffodils that I had filled the kitchen with were all dead. Once, some years ago I had this idea a writer should know the names of things so I scavenged the headgerows near my mother's cottage and came back with an armful of wild flowers. The next day the cat was dead. Reason of death unknown. I suspected some poisonous belladonna or some such killer. So I'm slow to bring in the wild flowers. We, the generation who have forgotten our floral healers and balsams and poisons. But my rushed pickings before jumping in the car and heading off to work were not bound for the kitchen table but the heads of fifteen year old boys.

An hour later I twist the wild flowers into crowns for their heads. The boys help. 'Bind them' I say, 'with elastic bands.' I watch their slender fingers take the red elastic and fumble to tie a bow. I stop myself from saying 'don't bother about a bow, just tie a knot' because there is something beautiful about the attempt, the effort to tie a bow. This small act is one of beauty. A garland of flowers asks it. They have not wilted - the flowers, nor the boys. I wrap them in white bed sheets and they are ancient Greeks. For moments some Gods of goodness and beauty bend close.

beach

2008-06-08T14:26:00.000-07:00

I live by it. Can hear it. Globules of oil have been washed up along the shore, spillages from off shore rig. No great hoo-has considering how many wings may stick together, fins turn black. This simple image is a stretch of the planet I will look back on and my feet will remember; the white stones, bracken that hides the rabbit burrows even though the dog still sniffs them out, the primroses, daffodils then later a whole host of pinks and white and purples and yellows. Golden sand under white limpets that gives under bare feet, darken under rain or tide. There is a great and ordered breathing here, nothing small or afraid about it though my own small snatches at air yearn to be like it - and also am afraid of its greatness, its absolute truth to its own deep nature. Edge. The place between. The teetering point the writer knows and pitches her tent, saying OK teach me how to swim, how to clean, how to make waves, how to trust. walk slow

2008-06-06T05:26:00.000-07:00

You could see them transform out of school unifrom and into white sheets and laurel wreaths, these teenagers in the sun. Plaiting weeds then wearing these crowns of summer, speaking sophocles' words I am drumming into them - sometimes a relief to taste another's words working our lips, forming and sounding in the air - you crawling viper, lurking in my house to suck my blood. Then later I find myself dying several times on the school stage and rising up like a zombie and scaring them out of their wits. They seem to love it and I don't mind either. Then off I scoot to the next job - teaching creative writing. Teaching? Trying to get the hang of third person subjective - you know, the 'he rose and twiddled his thumbs, wondering whether to buy himself a toffee or not. Oh dear, better not. Think of those dentist bills. He sat down again, breathing deeply till the urge passed.' Agh! Help - an adverb. Are they allowed anywhere? Can the ly's find a place in language without being completely naf? Hesitatingly she crossed the dimly lit hallway, gently calling his name. Imperceptibly at first, the kitten, meowing softly, appeared. Is that so awful? Scrub them off, I hear myself say, because that's what the creative writing books insist upon. I see the faces of students fall. What? All of them? Yes, away with them all!
She crossed the dim hallway, calling his name. The kitten appeared. Ah, there we go - economy. Think I should end there lest I twitter the afternoon away.
May whatever needs to go well for you today go well.
xx

and flowers at my feet

2008-06-03T05:26:00.000-07:00

we have them this far north - flowers. But shy ones, wild ones, flowers that take root by wind and tenacity and blend in with the braes, the beach, the shore path. I intend to take my 'Scottish Wild Flowers' and learn their names, I mean beyond buttercups and daisies. The rain it raineth - not everyday. In fact not for six weeks but here she comes, stitching the grey with silver, getting rid of the stench of sea-bird shit that was beginning to pervade the cliffs and stacks and smoothing down the track that was beginning to resemble the after-math of a horse and cart race in a two bit town. Here is the rain and we all nod and say the earth needed it - but I was enjoying the stink and the dust and the cracked earth and the yellowing grass and the laundry left out overnight and the scent of coconut from the gorse and the dulse coming up from the beach. Smell and having some is like living in a hot country. Unless it's the smell of grass after rain, the smell of green. mmm

the virtual shift

2008-06-02T03:52:00.000-07:00

on the suggestion of a dear writer friend I have moved - from freeblogit over to her garden where I'm hoping, more souls come seeking herbs and flowers and the way words move, wince, jar, express. as i walked out, except of course here I am sitting, hen watching, dry stone dyke watching, grass growing noting, sky change seeing. June has brushed the warmth away. On this wild far northern tip the nights and mornings are light light light. Wild flowers ambush the braes and we have the rare oysterplant doing its beautiful thing, all pink and violet flowery, on the beach. There are a pair of hard working oyster catchers who work the seaweed beds. A pair of fulmars have taken up perch on stones in the river. The wild work hard. These hens, for all the grains I chuck at them, still scour the garden constantly in search of worms. If the cockerel comes upon some morsel does he gobble it down all for himself? Not a whit - he nods his handsome red and white head, gabbles a bit and indicates for his girls to get on over. He looks after them see. And when dusk falls he gathers the girls up and makes sure they're all in for the night. I have not had a television for thirty years so watching hens is still good viewing.
greetings from the north, from sea and Highland river, primrose and nights opening out like an accordion. xx