Vernacular Wandering

A Next Step

It has been a long time it seems since I posted here, seven months in fact. There have been many reasons but much has been expressed in those much abused words ‘circumstances beyond my control’. Much has been health related and much has been about my bloody mindedness, which goes to show this woman has still much to learn.

The last few months have been as interesting as the rest but may lay claim as turning point, only time will tell. Following on from cottage and garden being flooding at the beginning of December and me having a mightily spectacular fall rather heavily on to concrete, there came the ‘delights’ of Bronchitis slipping in to bronchial pneumonia and a cough that has only very recently stopped punctuating every hour of day and night.

In to this mix came the usual appointments with neurologist and lots of scanning machines plus the many chairs in waiting rooms. All got a bit wearing and I am still to get any sort of sleep pattern that gives me sense of rest.

Marking a Day

Often as I sit quietly first thing in the morning watching the light gradually seep over the top of the valley hills I am overwhelmed by the gift arriving at my feet. There is always a moment when I really feel the new beginning and the clarity of the possibility held in those first rays of light, which never ceases to make my heart beat a little faster as the enormity of my part in a day meets mind and heart with a jolt.

The same old same old is not something that comes to mind rather it’s, oh goodness I am still alive and it begins again, let me honour this gift as best I may.

I begin my day with the first of five ‘petitions’ which I spread out through the day, they have no set time or place that they must be said and some days I have just the wee book I have put them in, in my hand as offering.

 

Memory

 The line crackled and the tears fell as I caught the cadence of a voice I had not heard for thirty five years. There was no hello, no may I speak to, or even this is. No, I heard the words ‘are you still a full participant my friend’ followed by a laugh I thought I had lost forever but whose owner had never left my heart, even when I could not remember their name or their face that laugh would follow me in to dreams and find me looking round hopefully when someone else’s laugh stirred a memory that slipped through my fingers as I scrabbled to just hold on to it for another moment.

Through a revolution and a war or two that voice and laugh lifted my spirit and held my hand even when I believed the human being had been lost. More than anything the phrase ‘are you still a full participant’ made absolutely sure that this lost soul never gave up on promises made midst laughter and love that there was only one thing we’d never give up on and that was life.

No great ambition then, only to always be a full participant in life no matter the cost.

Learning

I have recently been helping someone learn how to use a rigid heddle loom after she asked if I might be selling one of my looms. I said I wasn’t selling one but one I had given on long term loan would be coming back to me very soon and she could borrow it if she put it together as it had been broken down for travelling.

So the loom came back and was delivered in to very eager hands. I gave her the instructions to put the stand together, the booklet that originally came with the loom - a 16inch Ashford Rigid Heddle Loom, plus a copy of the Ashford book of Rigid Heddle weaving and a DVD showing the direct warp method.

Saying don’t worry just take it slowly and all the pieces will make a loom and a stand plus watch the DVD a few times and read the warping pages of the book and I’ll come back on Tuesday afternoon and see how you’ve got on, this was a Sunday afternoon so I thought she would manage to put the loom together and on the stand plus probably have a go at warping as she was so thrilled and enthusiastic.

 

Strength

Today has been a looong day, the kind that are often part of my life these days... appointments to keep which involve some medical procedure or other that lead to me beginning to feel oft times redundant as me the human being and obviously 'only' the patient with number and illness.

This feeling is rarely embraced by me instead I look around in the waiting rooms I find myself before consultation or procedure and actively set out to note those around me offering a smile and a nod in recognition.

Today has been a looong day but making another patient laugh and relax as we sat waiting our trips in the noisy washing machine - MRI scanner, let me be the human being I hope to be at least for a moment each day.

A Reminder for My Self

I had thought to put this blog to sleep and create another but the reality is that I like this quiet place and there is no one else I am aiming to please or encourage  to link, like or ‘listen’ to the posts that will appear here.

I’ve only been away a few months, cough, so my vast following will soon be back waving and singing, hah! Never did I intend to use this as a marketing tool, a piss pot or a pity me purge. I started blogging for myself, to discover what I was thinking, realise what I had discovered I already knew and follow clues to find out where I was in my life that day.

None of that has changed I still need to discover what I’m thinking, be slightly amused and certainly confused discovering what I already know and as to finding out where I am in my life… well that’ll take more than a lifetime to get near I suspect but following the clues is always fun.

Why did I stop blogging for so long, no reason really save for the fact the life love and the universe just got on ahead of me and try as I might I couldn’t see the point of attempting to catch up as I would almost certainly fall over. There has be a lot of falling over one way and another during the silence here, much to do with a fairly marked down turn in all things health which has left little room for pretence and even less room to get out of my own careering self.

Today I put this wee note here to try and remind myself this is a place I like to visit as it is a place I can ramble through mind and life in my own chaotic way and realise the new wonders and old knowledge that teem in this brain and heart, which find pleasure and release in making marks with pen keyboard needle and brush.

A new beginning, no fanfares or drum rolls no plans or great scheme just one woman with blank screen and blank mind discovering, reacquainting, exploring this life and my living it.

So my Grail may be plastic, but...

The long absences here have neither been planned nor railed against they have just been, it is my life. Gaps never filled, activities not remembered, people missed but not as name only feeling, days engaged with but impossible to bring to mind without detailed notes and pictures etc, etc.

Sometimes I just get very tired of trying to keep track and let the daily routines and rhythm slip but often lose them completely.

This is sometimes a conscious decision though more often than not it is a case of me absent of mind ripping up and throwing away the notes, books, alarms and all the other nuts and bolts that hold this life together, then metaphorically heading down a jetty path just for a quick look at boats and water beyond.

Of course the quick look becomes weeks and sometimes months of floating midst a sea of chaos oblivious to the rotting planks of the row-boat I have cast off in, until feet become decidedly damp or better still I find myself sitting in my boat with oars floating rather than pulling as water level inside is equal to that outside so that swimming rather than rowing happens whether I want that or not.

But always there are new things to glimpse in the waters surrounding and entering my boat and though there are times when sense of drowning is more than ‘just’ a sense, the delight of the life flowing around and past me rarely leaves me.

I often daydream about a last boat ride I will make and am never dismayed by these thoughts rather they are the life-preserver for now. They always awaken in me great feelings of thanks and joy in knowing that I have this wonder-filled landscape to glide through, be held by and eventually almost certainly be embraced and captured by.

The boat ride may one day be one embarked upon in a solid plank built boat, across known waters that roll on to familiar shorelines, moving ever towards the dark horizon filled with falling stars and rising sun. The wheel house will be empty with its steering gear lashed to a point on the compass for I will need to be at the prow to watch the waters I will forever be part of at journeys end and beginning. Where that horizon and I will become one as the falling star and rising sun become the only trace I leave behind.

Or the waters I travel through may be those labelled by others as madness, dementia or senility, the boat will be hidden from all save my heart and mind but still the horizon will beckon and the falling stars and rising sun encourage and fill me up with the wonder and magic that have formed and reformed me for the now and always known and unknown.