Not The Last Post

It isn’t as though I took a long trip away or did anything spectacular, I just went for a few days to the far north of Scotland. But time in another place can do the trick, especially if you don’t (I don’t, can’t) travel very much. And it has been growing for a while, this feeling that perhaps the time has come for me to retreat a bit further, so as to find some new ground beneath my feet. I have already given up so much in the way of work, groups and projects that I spent time and strength building up. It was necessary, I couldn’t carry on living always at the end of my tether. What did I think? That my new, serene life would lead me to green pastures and springs of living water from which I could drink and be strong again? That I would find a way to order my life so that I could be (to quote Ben Okri) an “essentialist” – take up my pen and write, and all manner of things would be well?

The spirit was always willing, it is ardent and steadfast. But my M.E.-afflicted mind and body fail and fail. We all sing this song, those of us who have lived for many years with M.E. We try not to but out it comes, from the breast, because we want so badly to live our lives and do the thing that is in us to do: paint, take photographs, write, sew, plant, create. We try, but sometimes there is such a small space in which to be alive, and then we think we should do the decent thing and shut up about it but we can’t, it goes against nature. Keep howling, raging, singing, one must, and keep breathing. I have been touched by many voices here in this virtual world that became, for a while, a hearth for me. People come and go, they take on names that become a channel for some essence of them, and when they go or disappear, it matters.

So I don’t want to do that – disappear - at least not without saying goodbye. But retreat is in order because I don’t have the wherewithal to keep posting much if I am going to bring more substantial focus to the writing I still hope to do. I began this blog as a kind of simple reflective practice (I say simple, but I used initially to edit my posts) and to see what might emerge. I didn’t anticipate that it would become an actual place with real people who mattered to me, or that there would be so much fun to be had in the exchanges. Good times.

But back to the I-Ching, which is where I began when I started the blog: Care of the Cow, it seems, does not necessarily bring good fortune and the Ridgepole is always in danger of breaking, and knowing these things does give a kind of freedom. I am also reminded, as though that were necessary, that the Wanderer has no place to lay her head. It doesn’t do to be too literal about these things, but the motif is there quite plain and I have my knapsack here at the ready. I am packing the notebook, the ballpoint and a strip of Nicorette chewing gum. Anything else I should remember? Oh yeah, my sweet little razor-sharp Opinel knife, because you never know. And I quite fancy the thought of whittling while I’m whistling by the fire on a dark night.

I will be putting my head through the door now and then, coming back for the occasional rant or Tweet (as in Twitter, but don’t worry, I’m not going down that road), and I’ll be looking in on y’all, emailable as usual and - gawd! As my dear old Dad liked to say when someone was taking too long hovering on the threshold: "forgotten, but not gone."

Or as my great aunt Linchen always used to say:
“Geh mit Gott, aber geh.”

I should go.

Far North

Here is the lovely house where we stayed. Like mine, it is on the edge - but in this case it is hard by the sea rather than forest, these windows look right onto it. It is cloudy in the photo, but we sat underneath the umbrella in bright sunshine, to eat and to read and write.

This is my new best friend - a border collie called Flora who goes every day into the sea, either to swim or just stand and look out to sea, meditating on the horizon or watching trout leap from the water. She is both intelligent and hyper-active and, having no sheep to herd, needs four walks a day and is inclined to chase the chickens if she gets bored. Not the kind of dog that I would be able to keep, more is the pity, but it suits Ms North perfectly for when she is not writing and teaching she is walking with Flora and both are in their element.

Here is the beach that is right by the house. The photo was taken very late at night, it never really gets dark here in summer.

And just to prove that the skies really were (mostly) blue. A view from the side of the houses across the river. The place is a small hamlet, there are no shops to speak of, unless you count the hut that sells bedding plants and motor oil. We ate fresh mackerel caught by someone who goes out in his boat every night to fish.

While we were there, Ms North saw one of her poems published as one of the runners up in the Mslexia poetry competition - and the next day a letter came with the news that her children's story has been shortlisted for the Kelpies prize. She will be reading from it at the Edinburgh Festival, when the results will be announced - and perhaps (nudge, nudge) update her blog with all the news. Auspicious? I should coco.

So I am back to my own particular edge and rather missing the granite beneath my feet, but fired up for something or other, and thinking about new strategies for doing more of what I want to do - the usual damnable restrictions notwithstanding.

More on this anon.

all points north

On Sunday there was a family party chez Signs, given exclusively for the family members of Mr. Signs, as many as could be gathered on that particular day, some of whom I had never met and he barely knew. There were about eighteen of us in all, Mr. S being disappointed that more were not able to come, and me relieved. While they looked at old photograph albums and generally caught up with each other on the patio, I put finishing touches to the buffet, drank spritzers, rolled a couple of Golden Virginias and lectured the daughter about the evils of alcohol and cigarettes.

The day before, I had discovered that some of the attendees were extreme vegans, so no chance of cocktail sausages and tinned pineapple chunks with Gouda cheese cubes on sticks, or a vat of Coronation chicken. Googling vegan fingerfoods was useless, it all required making from scratch. But still, I am now in love with Discovery fajita powder and wholemeal wraps. You just sautee a large quantity of veg, add powder - and wrap. Tinned chick peas and assorted beans are also, as everyone knows, a good vegan thing – I uncanned and mixed with with “oriental” tahini dressing (made up on the hoof). There was also bulghur wheat tabbouleh, sushi and guacamole dip with crudités plus other things for carnivores and fish-eating, gluten-avoiding vegetarians. In the end there was far too much food and I offloaded a quantity onto my lovely vegan neighbour. I used to do this sort of thing a lot but am out of practice, not just with the catering side of things but gatherings in general, unless they have some clearly defined focus such as choral singing or poetry. It has to be said that I am no longer (was I ever?) a party animal – unless it is a party where I can sing Bohemian Rhapsody on karaoke. Just saying this in case a couple of people look in and wonder if I was just pretending to enjoy myself at the garden party the other week. No, look, I am contradictory. I am not a party animal but sometimes go to parties and have a lovely time, especially if someone else is doing the food.

I could complain about the heat but won’t as the weather is due to change soon and then I will be complaining about the rain. In any case, Mr S and I are going to Caithness the day after tomorrow to stay with Ms North and partner in their lovely house on the beach where you can sit in bed and look out at the sea. Ms North and I will be doing The Writing while Mr. S explores the terrain, reads and relaxes. We also plan to eat, drink and talk to seals. There is one who has recently taken to hanging out on that bit of beach and I am hoping s/he will stay around and let me come close enough for some eye contact.

Whenever I go to my hairdresser she asks me where and when I am going on holiday. She and her husband have about seven a year so no sooner has one holiday been taken than the next is within sight. You must like Scotland a lot, she said last time. Because you keep going there, don’t you? Yes, I do. And I do.

Midsummer Invocation

Today was the Feast of St. John and midsummer’s day. In days of yore, and even more recently, if you happened to go to a Steiner school, there would be bonfires lit and people would jump over them for luck and courage, and to frighten off the evil spirits. I have no lit bonfire but want my measure of luck and courage, and to give the message that any spirits whose intentions are questionable have no place in the house and being of Signs. One can but try. So I have lit a candle. It is just a humble IKEA tea light as I am out of beeswax candles (on which I tend to stock up in the autumn), but a flame is a flame and the village Wise Woman once assured me that wherever a flame burns the forces of the will are strengthened. I suppose this could work for good or ill, depending on whose will forces are uniting with flame. The salamanders (fire elementals) are neutral in the sense that they will go to work, whatever. So I resist the urge to call on them and the angels to smite my enemies with a great smite and such a thing would not in any case be seemly.

There was a yoga teacher I once knew briefly. I forget what kind of yoga – I was very keen at the time but I didn’t keep it up. What I still remember, though, are the words with with he began each session:

may all beings who live on the earth be free from fear.

Just that. It feels to be as much of the essence now as it did then.

I interrupt this show to tell you that

I hired a couple of detectives and now have conclusive proof that our dear friend Anna FomP has been abducted by alien nuns and is living in seclusion somewhere on a remote island, but which remote island I am not at liberty to reveal. My informants did, however, go undercover and take this photograph - there's Anna on the left, just after being forced to take her vows by the mother superior. She is now known as Sister Boffinata of the Journals. And below is the cave that she sleeps in, it's actually one of the more luxurious ones. The thing about this particular order is that they are very big on Lent. So big, in fact, that it's always Lent and never Easter, which means that they are always doing penance of one sort or another.

Anyway, I'm sure you'll be grateful that I've kept you up to date with the situation - well someone had to. Do her a favour and pay a visit to her house. Word has it that if you make a big enough noise the sound will reach her, even in the murky depths of the cave.

I Capture the Sweetshop

Every so often I try to get myself organised so as to be a little more productive than I am. This doesn’t usually work out very well because Malignant Entity hears about it and sabotages, but still: I have sometimes managed to do certain things that I wouldn’t have done if there hadn’t been some kind of plan or readjustment made. The plans and readjustments are not always the active kind, often they involve cutting out something else and usually the something else is given up unwillingly.

I sometimes read the blogs of writers from the land of focussed productivity and it is like pressing my nose against the window of a richly-stocked sweet shop. I want very much to taste the sweets I see, can almost feel the buttery slide of a striped peppermint humbug or the fizz of a strawberry sherbet in my mouth. But twixt them and me is fixed an impenetrable glass wall through which I can only look, and my pockets have only small change. The looking, though, is better than nothing and I still want to know there is a world out there and in there.

I wrote those two paragraphs last night and suddenly realised I needed to sleep. Now I see I have been rambling about sweets and clearly I was having another blood sugar swing and jars of sweets are in any case not the best image to stand for the actual doing of things, but let it be. So, I have a sequence of poems I would like to complete and a number of writing-and-process sessions scheduled. I have completed bits and pieces that I plan to put inside envelopes and send somewhere. I am waving a protracted goodbye to Shrink just as we were in danger of actually getting somewhere, but the driving was killing me and the writing, so that’s that. Back to the square on the board that isn’t quite square one or Go To Jail but isn’t much further on the road to capturing the castle either – and look, I am coming up with crappy images again, I could never stand Monopoly, probably because there never were any castles there to capture, and I have never been much of an entrepreneur.

I should go. Because otherwise I might begin to list the various things that are cluttering up the fragile soul space of Signs and then this would become a confessional blog, which is not necessarily a bad thing, just as confessional poetry is not necessarily a bad thing (and if you are Anne Sexton it is a very good thing indeed – for us, I mean – it didn’t save her). But I think if one is going to do the confessional then there’s no merit in being coy, it needs to be done properly, hammer and tongs and hell for leather, so to speak, and if done in the right way it is not (as everyone always fears) self-indulgence but something big and generous, and one takes one’s hat off to the blogger who does this.

No really, I should go.

Wodwo

You no longer exist, Wild Man of the Woods. But every time I go into the forest I expect you and am startled by your absence. How can it be only me here – me and my kind, in recycled rubber shoes, padding across the forest floor where nothing runs, hides and seeks but a few grey squirrels?

There are deer also, they venture out at night and get killed on the road. But what would you do here? The forest is not as large or wild as it once was and you too might wander onto the road, get caught in the headlights, your face for a brief moment illuminated, before the crunch. We read signs that tell us to go slow, there are deer and sheep. Another sign might say Caution: Wild Men of the Woods.

You have made yourself a garment out of bracken, deerskin and black bin-liners, something to protect you from the cold, perhaps. Around your neck there is a bone attached to a piece of string, bird feathers in your matted hair. Where is the mother that raised you – or were you suckled by the wolves? We do not see those either, and their absence is as loud as yours.

Alone in the deepest part of the forest where even the forest rangers seldom go, you squat on the thickest branch of an oak and open your mouth. From your throat comes the call of a woodpecker, and sometimes the long howl of a wolf.

One day some children find you – a brother and sister out with their parents for a Sunday walk, an autumn adventure with flasks of apple juice, peanut butter and marmite sandwiches. The parents are a little way behind and do not see what the children see: a wild and hairy man squatting on a branch, his genitals exposed, grey feathers stuck into hair the colour of rusted leaves, eyes like the big round letter O in their alphabet book, and inside the two Os it is black and shiny with staring. They stop and look, you stop and look.
Mum! Dad! shouts the boy.
You’re a funny man, says the girl. Are you a troll?
Dad! says the boy, Dad!

And then your nostrils flare, you growl and you are gone, disappeared.
He was here, say the children when the parents arrive. He wasn’t wearing proper clothes, I saw his willy, says the girl. The father pretends to have a look: well now, I wonder where he could have got to. The mother lays down a blanket for a picnic.

I’m not pretending - he was real, says the boy, and he will keep saying it, even when he grows up. There will be the story of a wild man in the forest. His parents are pleased he has a vivid imagination.

When they have gone, you come back and sniff the ground where they were sitting, pick up a half-eaten sandwich, put it into your mouth and spit it out. You go to your secret place under the Yew where there is a stash of berries.

Later you will kill and pluck a bird.