Hey I just discovered something and I owe people , followers of my blogs an apology..
Firstly I have not realised how many people have commented, so beautifully on my work here at my writing blog , because like the true techno dafty I am ,I had not put the settings alert thingy on, so got now wee email telling me so..
Grrr..
Also my energy of late having been so scattered and not focusing on these blogs at blogger, has left them in an abandoned state.
Again I apologise.
As I talked of in my previous post at The spiral dances, I have expressed the wanderings, the trails, trials .. And the angst’s, the need to find a space and a pack to follow and learn from and grow with.. And sit down and howl with.
In order to do that I had to sit deep inside myself and think long and hard about a blog at another site. Which in the end, I deleted just two minutes before the announcement of MJ ‘s death.. So It was a bit ironic to me that I deleted something called ~wild wolf howl ~and there was a surge on the net that was palpable in so many ways.. And I surprised myself by crying..
I mean it was just a blog so what??
Well it was all a lesson in so many ways about connecting and valuing myself and what I write , and more importantly what space I choose to do it in..
A lesson about how I share what I am feeling ( and who I share with) and what draws me out of my self, what excites me makes me laugh and awakens my passions.. I need to be around and in a space of safety to do that as we all do..
So , I looked around for a pack and found them here and also in my own space
..in Alba ( Bonnie Scotland) and in the other dimensions, which in fact are one and the same are they not?
So, to explain now.
I have three blogs here ( yes I know… I hear you sigh.. sorry) there is the spiral dances where I move out from and into and around and about, sort of a dairy and more, there is the Isle of the fey ( this one) which was intended to be the story blog for the writing extracts, but I cocked up recently by putting something more personal in here and confused some readers so sorry about that.
I just did an explanation here after discovering all the comments and THANK YOU so much from me for READING I had no idea and feel so bad not to have Known….
Then there is my Wild place, which is new and had to be here before I deleted my wild wolf blog
….this is, for me, essential for survival and its really going to get wild in there from time to time..
if I feel like a good howl I will do it there.. (don’t let that put you off ,I am hoping in a good way, feel free to join me there….and throw your head back) also it will be for sharing about things that interest me about the environment, the wild and feral, music, film, laughter… and so on…..So that is it ,I think..
I am putting this in all three as some are following one and not the others.. An that way its clearer.
I just want to say a huge thank you for staying around as I have needed to come to this place to explore my creative selves and to explore you also..and I am learning so much..and I am thrilled my writing is being read..really thrilled..thank you
Saturday, 27 June 2009
Saturday, 6 June 2009
A writing for a mothers son
I wrote this piece on Monday for another blog site and for a friend
Thoughts have been whirling in my head. Ideas. Writings, people, events.
But something has been to the fore of it all, calling up from the depths and it swims to the surface as I sit down to write.
It may become clear for some as they read on what I am saying, for some more than others. But you will know deep down if it resonates with you.
I cant imagine being sixteen, let alone being sixteen and male. I try and stretch my mind into that one, and its another world. I push at its boundaries and find I don’t even know the language that shapes it.
Add to that , great height, and full strength with a fire energy, like a fusion building, seeking, always looking for a space to be, a place to stretch out and face up, wide and open to the embrace of the world.
Matching her fire.
I have enough trouble these days reaching from a chair to change a light bulb. My physical nerve is softened by stronger instincts of self preservation than I had when I was sixteen.
Its not as crackly, not firing up as it was when I galloped full tilt across the fields, bareback on my mountain mare, with no bridle, no guidance but my belief and trust in her.
But even then I had to push past fear, adopt a belligerent swagger and twist up the screws of determination and will. It was not on impulse. I knew the risks and I still took them.
Said to self. I can do it and I did, just.
I imagine being sixteen and being my father.
Compassion, in all its aspects, asks of itself to see another’s lifetime in all ages and stages.
I envision compass points on a map of the ages that shaped them.
So, I unroll his life before me, the latitude and longitude of time lines, and I hone in on a sixteen year old boy. Tall dark and yes, handsome. A sensitive face, deep set eyes and a full mouth. A brooding sense of artistic passion. He climbed the Cuillins when he was just ten, with his older brothers. A highlander, fit for his generation, raised during the pre war depression. Educated in the Gorbals in Glasgow, no life of privilege, nine siblings eight of them male and from crofting stock on both sides. His father a shepherd who had left his flock on the Island. To seek better life.
So how does this loop back to the sixteen year old I have never met, but have grown to love through his mothers words, through his energy, hearing him as he bursts into a room , laughing, fridge rummaging, full of humour, a genius in the making.
Full of life and life is full in him.
Potentials?
Limitless.
Dreams ?
Unknown to me, but some I can guess at. A warrior in the making, in the purest sense, gentle at his core. A warrior in the questioning, and that is the groove where my worry lies-
How, as a mother, do you raise a son with tender care and a deep love, as she has, all the while knowing that because he will become a man, his entire view of the world and experience within it will be an unknown territory to your heart.
My father was, to me, an un chartered territory.
Growing up all I knew of him was what my mother told me, of how he was “before the war“.
The fault line having been crossed after.
A well mined, cratered landscape that I could see in his eyes.
A man of phenomenal ability, yes he achieved much and created more than many people I have met, against all odds.
But his poetry, some sentences of which I stumbled on after he died, was full of death.
A crack shot discovered by the commando he volunteered for, he was in demand. Always on constant alert. Imagine, being on alert for you life at all times, for yours and your comrades.
Sleeping in caves, one on guard at the mouth, knowing the enemy were around.
Waking exhausted the next morning to find the man, deep in the bowels of the dark caves end , dead. His throat cut from ear to ear. A clear message. Not vigilant enough.
That, hyper vigilance never disappears.
It was hard for me, when I was sixteen, to look into his eyes and not see the pain there , the mouth of that cave, the panic of the watch that morning and all the buried memories of his witnessing.
Looking again at the scribbled sketches inside a book I gave him to draw in for his birthday, I see the words “I held your hand as you screamed your life away” I was told that was about a German soldier that they had found shot by a sniper.
I looked for him amongst the memories sketched. I looked for that sharpness of mind and wit shown in his art and his humour. When I was sixteen, I would search his face in vain for the mountain boy, who used to poach salmon at Ballameanach. One night catching forty in a splash net and feeding the whole village.
Another nearly getting caught by the game keeper and he and his brothers hiding the fish down their trousers .
“ When my father died a whole library burned down” ( Laurie Anderson)
And so to you, at sixteen, just starting to build that vast library of knowledge and memories and experiences. Already you have skills that surpass your peers. A gifted carver, a shaper of wood. Think of what those hands can shape and hold tenderly. Think of who could reach for them in hope and love.
As the Aboriginal mother says, to her child as she drags a stick over the dusty soil, “do not scratch the earth, for she is our mother”
You have been raised tenderly and taught wisely, though it may not seem so to you now.
Much great love has guided you.
Those hands have guided you, as my fathers hands have guided me to write this.
His spirit would not have you, forced to choose.
He would only say this.
“I believe in Michelangelo, Velazquez, and Rembrandt; in the might of
design, the mystery of colour, the redemption of all things by Beauty
everlasting, and the message of Art that has made these hands blessed: “
George Bernard Shaw
Think about creation and how you are creative. Think on the force of nature that surrounds you, coming from that same place in you, this time is short and it grows shorter as you grow taller. I cannot walk in your skin , but I have tried.
This is all I ask of you.
To read this and think.
Addendum
He still wants to go and sign up ..unbeknown to me the quote at the end which was my fathers favorite ( and mine) is also his, other synchronisties have happened since writing this to do with my father.
Thoughts have been whirling in my head. Ideas. Writings, people, events.
But something has been to the fore of it all, calling up from the depths and it swims to the surface as I sit down to write.
It may become clear for some as they read on what I am saying, for some more than others. But you will know deep down if it resonates with you.
I cant imagine being sixteen, let alone being sixteen and male. I try and stretch my mind into that one, and its another world. I push at its boundaries and find I don’t even know the language that shapes it.
Add to that , great height, and full strength with a fire energy, like a fusion building, seeking, always looking for a space to be, a place to stretch out and face up, wide and open to the embrace of the world.
Matching her fire.
I have enough trouble these days reaching from a chair to change a light bulb. My physical nerve is softened by stronger instincts of self preservation than I had when I was sixteen.
Its not as crackly, not firing up as it was when I galloped full tilt across the fields, bareback on my mountain mare, with no bridle, no guidance but my belief and trust in her.
But even then I had to push past fear, adopt a belligerent swagger and twist up the screws of determination and will. It was not on impulse. I knew the risks and I still took them.
Said to self. I can do it and I did, just.
I imagine being sixteen and being my father.
Compassion, in all its aspects, asks of itself to see another’s lifetime in all ages and stages.
I envision compass points on a map of the ages that shaped them.
So, I unroll his life before me, the latitude and longitude of time lines, and I hone in on a sixteen year old boy. Tall dark and yes, handsome. A sensitive face, deep set eyes and a full mouth. A brooding sense of artistic passion. He climbed the Cuillins when he was just ten, with his older brothers. A highlander, fit for his generation, raised during the pre war depression. Educated in the Gorbals in Glasgow, no life of privilege, nine siblings eight of them male and from crofting stock on both sides. His father a shepherd who had left his flock on the Island. To seek better life.
So how does this loop back to the sixteen year old I have never met, but have grown to love through his mothers words, through his energy, hearing him as he bursts into a room , laughing, fridge rummaging, full of humour, a genius in the making.
Full of life and life is full in him.
Potentials?
Limitless.
Dreams ?
Unknown to me, but some I can guess at. A warrior in the making, in the purest sense, gentle at his core. A warrior in the questioning, and that is the groove where my worry lies-
How, as a mother, do you raise a son with tender care and a deep love, as she has, all the while knowing that because he will become a man, his entire view of the world and experience within it will be an unknown territory to your heart.
My father was, to me, an un chartered territory.
Growing up all I knew of him was what my mother told me, of how he was “before the war“.
The fault line having been crossed after.
A well mined, cratered landscape that I could see in his eyes.
A man of phenomenal ability, yes he achieved much and created more than many people I have met, against all odds.
But his poetry, some sentences of which I stumbled on after he died, was full of death.
A crack shot discovered by the commando he volunteered for, he was in demand. Always on constant alert. Imagine, being on alert for you life at all times, for yours and your comrades.
Sleeping in caves, one on guard at the mouth, knowing the enemy were around.
Waking exhausted the next morning to find the man, deep in the bowels of the dark caves end , dead. His throat cut from ear to ear. A clear message. Not vigilant enough.
That, hyper vigilance never disappears.
It was hard for me, when I was sixteen, to look into his eyes and not see the pain there , the mouth of that cave, the panic of the watch that morning and all the buried memories of his witnessing.
Looking again at the scribbled sketches inside a book I gave him to draw in for his birthday, I see the words “I held your hand as you screamed your life away” I was told that was about a German soldier that they had found shot by a sniper.
I looked for him amongst the memories sketched. I looked for that sharpness of mind and wit shown in his art and his humour. When I was sixteen, I would search his face in vain for the mountain boy, who used to poach salmon at Ballameanach. One night catching forty in a splash net and feeding the whole village.
Another nearly getting caught by the game keeper and he and his brothers hiding the fish down their trousers .
“ When my father died a whole library burned down” ( Laurie Anderson)
And so to you, at sixteen, just starting to build that vast library of knowledge and memories and experiences. Already you have skills that surpass your peers. A gifted carver, a shaper of wood. Think of what those hands can shape and hold tenderly. Think of who could reach for them in hope and love.
As the Aboriginal mother says, to her child as she drags a stick over the dusty soil, “do not scratch the earth, for she is our mother”
You have been raised tenderly and taught wisely, though it may not seem so to you now.
Much great love has guided you.
Those hands have guided you, as my fathers hands have guided me to write this.
His spirit would not have you, forced to choose.
He would only say this.
“I believe in Michelangelo, Velazquez, and Rembrandt; in the might of
design, the mystery of colour, the redemption of all things by Beauty
everlasting, and the message of Art that has made these hands blessed: “
George Bernard Shaw
Think about creation and how you are creative. Think on the force of nature that surrounds you, coming from that same place in you, this time is short and it grows shorter as you grow taller. I cannot walk in your skin , but I have tried.
This is all I ask of you.
To read this and think.
Addendum
He still wants to go and sign up ..unbeknown to me the quote at the end which was my fathers favorite ( and mine) is also his, other synchronisties have happened since writing this to do with my father.
Tuesday, 5 May 2009
My writing blog
I wrote this in my other Blog To explain what this one is about..
IT.. will be for extracts from the story as it evolves, as well as a writing journal. The extracts may not be consecutive, so it may be confusing for readers if you do choose to explore.
I am really doing it as an incentive to write and also to be brave with the exploration process as it unfolds, and sharing it here where I feel safe is part of that. It is aimed at the young adult market, but a lot of excellent books in this market appeal to all ages, I should know as I have been reading them!
The story is part fantasy, but in our world, yet not. the Island setting is loosely based on the Isle Of Skye, where my paternal grandparents are from, my grandfather was a Shepard and crofter and my grandmother also came from a crofting family. She never denied the existence of faeries, in spite of being thoroughly indoctrinated in the Calvinist *wee free* Kirk.
It is her spirit I invoke as an ancestor when I think about this project and also work with in connection with the fey. I never met her, as she died before I was born, but I am told by my mother that I am very like her.
It is an ongoing learning process of reading, and reading more about the folklore and beliefs that would have still been influencing her as she was growing up.
She went on to bear ten children, nine boys and one girl. Six of those boys fought in WW2 and all of them came back in spite of being in grave danger, one was at Dunkirk and my father was a commando.
However my idea has a contemporary setting with flashbacks and links to the past that have still to be developed, mostly through the stories of the Isle itself, its own magical mythology.. The idea came when I was doing an English Lit degree, as an adult student and it has lingered and hovered ever since, but it has also morphed in many ways.
The title is also just a working one as I cant really think of anything better just now.
So that is my explanation of my other blog as some people are following it and I needed to make this explanation and introduction.
Monday, 4 May 2009
The first seed
Prologue.
Collected tales of fey isle. ( A work in progress) Grand Mother’s stories.
It is a well known fact that rats will leave a sinking ship. Their tails wormlike, slithering wet across the deck. They know by instinct to get out when the going is good.
I was told of a storm that struck this Isle with such force that it is said that it lashed the shores and changed its shape forever. Waves that built their muscle and weight far out in the ocean, hit the shore with such a pounding that the Island seemed to creak and groan. The wind pushed and moaned at the wooden doors of the houses.
Branches scratched and clawed black fingers at windows.
Candles guttered, their flames sputtering in the wind sending out black puffs of smoke like distress signals as their small bright flames fought against the darkness.
Small children sharing a bed ,clung to each other beneath their quilts at the sound of the pounding wrath of the wind and rain; their faces lit up like small moons by the flashes of lightning.The waves worked hard, beaching great piles of seaweed and shingle, sculpting it into mountains of green sludge and stone. In the valleys lay giant bones of bleached driftwood, like dinosaur skeletons, scattered along the shoreline.
Then, the next morning , in the pale watery light when all was calm again, the shadows of the Islanders were seen, picking their way down to the sea. They searched the treasures of the deep, turning stones and scraping seaweed back from wood, examining the changes wrought by the storm. It was with this foraging along the shoreline in amongst the sludge and shingle that they found her.
She was curled around a stone, hugging it tightly to her chest. There was seaweed tangled through her hair and scattered everywhere around her were small delicate shells, looking for all the world like confetti strewn across her body.
Now it has been said that she was on board a ship that the Islanders themselves had tempted, brought to the rocks with great fires and wreckers greed. There were others who said the selchies must have brought her, that the seal people took pity and pushed and nuzzled her to the shoreline.
Others said that she was of the blood of the seal folk but they had lost her in the great waves.
Of course there were dark mutterings that she was a witch and that she survived the sea, it left her, spewed her forth like some unfinished meal, unable to swallow her devilish skin. There were those folk who did not comment nor mutter; they just stared at her in a daze of wonder. They thought she was a gift from the sea, a miracle of salt and wind.
After the shock of finding the girl lying amongst the stones and the seaweed, the Islanders carried her body to the only person on the Island who knew any healing. The general opinion was that she was dead anyway, her body was cold to touch and her skin had no glow of blood pumping beneath it. She was lifted and carried gently, by Calumn a local fisherman, who had claimed last year to have seen the selchie folk gathering on the rocks as he returned home wards at dusk.
He strode ahead of the little band of storm weary folk, the girls head lolling against his shoulder, her arms swinging loosely by his sides.
He watched her face closely as he carefully placed her on the wooden table and with great tenderness he asked if there was anything that could be done.
Strong hands took her from him, a voice told him to leave, but to come later with wood for the fire. He searched the gloom of the croft for the source of his instructions but could only see the dim outline of a small woman. As he left there looked once again at the girl where she lay, the miracle of the storm.
Collected tales of fey isle. ( A work in progress) Grand Mother’s stories.
It is a well known fact that rats will leave a sinking ship. Their tails wormlike, slithering wet across the deck. They know by instinct to get out when the going is good.
I was told of a storm that struck this Isle with such force that it is said that it lashed the shores and changed its shape forever. Waves that built their muscle and weight far out in the ocean, hit the shore with such a pounding that the Island seemed to creak and groan. The wind pushed and moaned at the wooden doors of the houses.
Branches scratched and clawed black fingers at windows.
Candles guttered, their flames sputtering in the wind sending out black puffs of smoke like distress signals as their small bright flames fought against the darkness.
Small children sharing a bed ,clung to each other beneath their quilts at the sound of the pounding wrath of the wind and rain; their faces lit up like small moons by the flashes of lightning.The waves worked hard, beaching great piles of seaweed and shingle, sculpting it into mountains of green sludge and stone. In the valleys lay giant bones of bleached driftwood, like dinosaur skeletons, scattered along the shoreline.
Then, the next morning , in the pale watery light when all was calm again, the shadows of the Islanders were seen, picking their way down to the sea. They searched the treasures of the deep, turning stones and scraping seaweed back from wood, examining the changes wrought by the storm. It was with this foraging along the shoreline in amongst the sludge and shingle that they found her.
She was curled around a stone, hugging it tightly to her chest. There was seaweed tangled through her hair and scattered everywhere around her were small delicate shells, looking for all the world like confetti strewn across her body.
Now it has been said that she was on board a ship that the Islanders themselves had tempted, brought to the rocks with great fires and wreckers greed. There were others who said the selchies must have brought her, that the seal people took pity and pushed and nuzzled her to the shoreline.
Others said that she was of the blood of the seal folk but they had lost her in the great waves.
Of course there were dark mutterings that she was a witch and that she survived the sea, it left her, spewed her forth like some unfinished meal, unable to swallow her devilish skin. There were those folk who did not comment nor mutter; they just stared at her in a daze of wonder. They thought she was a gift from the sea, a miracle of salt and wind.
After the shock of finding the girl lying amongst the stones and the seaweed, the Islanders carried her body to the only person on the Island who knew any healing. The general opinion was that she was dead anyway, her body was cold to touch and her skin had no glow of blood pumping beneath it. She was lifted and carried gently, by Calumn a local fisherman, who had claimed last year to have seen the selchie folk gathering on the rocks as he returned home wards at dusk.
He strode ahead of the little band of storm weary folk, the girls head lolling against his shoulder, her arms swinging loosely by his sides.
He watched her face closely as he carefully placed her on the wooden table and with great tenderness he asked if there was anything that could be done.
Strong hands took her from him, a voice told him to leave, but to come later with wood for the fire. He searched the gloom of the croft for the source of his instructions but could only see the dim outline of a small woman. As he left there looked once again at the girl where she lay, the miracle of the storm.
Tuesday, 31 March 2009
Sea Spells
Today I walked along the shore, the wind was warm on my face and the sunlight danced on the water.
I took a handful of sand, looking for a while at the tiny ground up stones and shells, then I charged it with energy, most of it anger that needed to be acknowledged, some of it just good old fashioned frustration.
I threw it to the waves asking for it to be cleansed and healed there. Then I found a stick and in the shore line, as the water lapped at my feet, I wrote a letter. The water washed the words away as soon as they were written but no matter, that was my intention.
At home I cut some green branches, being careful not to disturb any new growth, I have arranged them for my altar,to represent the world tree, a point of focus and intention. I have collected shells and sea water and some wonderful driftwood to place there.
Sometimes it is the simple things that carry the most power. Tonight I will again thank the sea, as I cook fresh fish for us to eat and arrange my shells and precious stones around the tree.
I took a handful of sand, looking for a while at the tiny ground up stones and shells, then I charged it with energy, most of it anger that needed to be acknowledged, some of it just good old fashioned frustration.
I threw it to the waves asking for it to be cleansed and healed there. Then I found a stick and in the shore line, as the water lapped at my feet, I wrote a letter. The water washed the words away as soon as they were written but no matter, that was my intention.
At home I cut some green branches, being careful not to disturb any new growth, I have arranged them for my altar,to represent the world tree, a point of focus and intention. I have collected shells and sea water and some wonderful driftwood to place there.
Sometimes it is the simple things that carry the most power. Tonight I will again thank the sea, as I cook fresh fish for us to eat and arrange my shells and precious stones around the tree.
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