Recalled with Thanks

We don’t do Thanksgiving here in Scotland. But we do do giving thanks. (That doesn’t sound right…do do). Anyway…

Today I recollect the day of my mum’s death.

Cheery, I know. But it is, in many ways, because I get to give thanks to her for being my mum, for being who she was and who she still is, living on in my mind and heart.

I get to remember her and all the people I love because that was what she was all about.

She and my dad. Fourteen days from now I get to especially remember him all over again.

I get to think about what mattered to them and how they went about it in their everydayness. I can do that anytime, I know. But today makes me reflect more fully on all that I have to be thankful for, past, present and future.

And because I’m thankful for so many wonderful people in my life and the love that surrounds me I want to pass it on.

Thank you to all who read these pages. And thank you to all my beautiful guests who carried this blog for the month of November. I really struggle to find words of apt appreciation. You showed love and I love you for it.

Thank you all.x

 

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Remember

Driving on a highway where the sun shines,

Shadowed by the ghosts that haunt the light,

Veering left and right and ever onwards,

Watchful still, in rearview, that gives sight.

Stopping when in need of nourish’d succour,

Spying travell’rs haunted in the wayside posts,

Rushing to replenish, journey forward,

Avoiding spectres but communing with the ghosts.

Fleet of flight they keep apace with ease when,

Surging foot depresses on the gas,

Never overtaking but still present,

The ghosts of all the futures from the past,

Chiding gently, always so persistent, 

‘Remember all’, they call and follow on,

Repeating on the wind and on the highway,

Dead but don’t forget, their poignant song.

Field of Dreams

There’s a clearing in my mind where I can wander,

Like a field of dreams was planted long ago,

Sown by whom I’ve met and all I’ve felt there,

Waiting for the crops that had to grow.

 

There’s a feeling that I’ve been this way before then,

Like someone gave me glimpse then left my side,

Notional directions then abandoned,

But – not really – more as if they ran away to hide

 

To see if I could unearth in the threshing

Or the harvest, whenever it should come to pass,

If teasing, in a tempting sort of measure,

Should balance books bet or if I’d come in last.

 

I feel I’ve failed the test before I started,

Like the race was rigged before I left the block,

Like someone changed the rules and I, as usual,

Was writing or just reading some strange book.

 

There’s a field of dreams I guess we all get lost in, when

In a semblance of a future once glimpsed past,

We entered name and limbered for the race and

Hoped against all hope we’d not come last.

 

Strength to muster, this was all we asked for

Strength sufficient and a well-kept pace,

Sweat and toil, all that work notwithstanding,

We thought, believed that we could maybe win this race.

 

I never was a runner in my dreamings,

Nor in life – I’ve always walked with ease –

Sauntered through, feet always planted firmly

Though my mind has gone its own way as it pleased.

 

I s’pose, like most, I’m just some kind of farmer,

I trudge through day and work and fret and always feed my sheep,

I sow and reap and gather where I can do,

I rest my head and pray for easy sleep.

 

But the voice inside my head that keeps on saying,

‘Arise, awake, you’re sleeping when it’s dawn,

Get up and move, the day is almost over,’

Urges me to seek a brand new morn.

 

One where fields are harvested with fairness

And work’s a task we gladly take in team,

Singing, laughing all the while with gladness

That this is real and not another dream.

 

I guess I’m dreaming even while I write this,

The status quo exists for world and also me,

The race is almost over, I’m exhausted

And weeping for we all who just won’t see.

 

I wish I didn’t care and love was easy,

The way it was when dads and mums were glad,

Once upon a time, in some strange dream land,

In field of dreams where none are ever sad.

 

I can’t believe I’m writing and not hoping,

It’s the news, you see, I really shouldn’t hear,

All that goes around and races onwards

Fills my dreams and field with crop of fear.

 

But, listen, I know I can’t leave this foray

Into dreams and fields and races and this life

Without one, at least just one, little seed sown.

In love and light, the work is cleaved with sharpest knife.

 

I guess that what I’m saying is I love you,

Bizarre, I know, when all of you are figments of the light

Cast across my screen like all the seeds sown

Filling field of dreams in day and night

 

 I wish that I could write in brief, a haiku,

Syllables all counted and best said,

Time being of the essence, that would serve well,

But, alas, that knack in me, bypassed my dreams and head.

 

I’ll go on dreaming just because I have to,

I know no other way to make things real.

Arise, awake, enact, forgive my earnest ramblings.

I call it, tell it, dream it as I feel.

Voyeured Charm

I love connections – might have mentioned that before. 😉 In my blog reading this morning – long overdue – I wrote of a dream on waking, read of a dream then, inspired by Simon’s lovely poem, wrote this.

forgotten times, alternate rhymes,

dreams within the dreams,

suspended reality, sweet illusion,

nothing as it seems.

escapists’ art, all words impart,

dreams returned to dust,

daytime serves frugality

to dreamers, as it must.

but, come the day, the sleep it holds,

serving all our need,

our nightly visions, voyeured charm,

providence will feed.

Born of a Dream

I awoke from a strange dream around 5 a.m. this morning where Voldemort was telling an assembly that the treaty was broken, the Horcrux had been created and the parts sent to seven corners of the globe. Who knew the globe was heptagonal? So God told him that he couldn’t go back on his word not to destroy mankind again after the last flood but he had something else in mind.

I gave in trying to get back to sleep and got up to write. Did that then read a few blog posts. Just going to link them now. Dream related I think. Well, at least in my mind. 🙂

http://shaunynews.com/2014/11/29/the-10-commandments/

http://shaunynews.com/2014/11/29/the-image-that-defines-westminster/

https://scottishmomus.wordpress.com/2013/07/23/what-noah-built-next/

 

Time to build something new for all the shit around. Just a thought. Born of a dream. 

I’d include my poem in that clean up act btw. 😉

Dark Days

Complete

Utter embarrassment,

Watching consumerism gone mad.

Evidence,

If ever anyone needed it,

Priorities,

Not to mention,

Humanity,

Lost.

So sad.

Self-defeating

Annexed in a place where thoughts are reason,

Justifying all you see as real,

Stories oft repeated since the childhood,

Demonic, possessive, charlatan’s fairy tale.

 

Round and round on fairground’s junk attraction,

Addicted to the thrill, a do-again,

Dizzied, doltish, stubborn, self-defeating,

Spin the words, the thoughts, repeat refrain.

 

Creative truths or lies to self repeated,

Repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat, now believe,

Cost analysis negated, void or vapid,

Giving vent inside. Repeat. Receive.

 

Might the mind be mired in fault perception,

Spinning wheel of fortune for a prize,

Deflated, once again, at arrow’d misadventure,

Repeat, ‘my luck’, behind the wishing eyes.

 

Inducing vomit with the same old story,

Round and round and round, repeat once more.

Negativity, counter-clockwise, lost to present,

Dismount, alight, firm ground, fresh thoughts in store.

 

Tell yourself your story if you have to,

A rationale for what our lives reveal,

Tighten vice on regular rotes so writ there

Or change the record, let the spirit heal.

 

Listening Eastward

(Guest post for Anne-Marie)

will you read to me
from Upanishads
of the brahman and atman
the soundless peace
resounding in aum

bring me god
back inside my self
where knowing us both
becomes possible

read me cosmologies of spirit
the universe senses of all
read me psychologies of we selves
the immortal senses of me
read me theologies of deity
the powerful senses of one

will you read to me
from Upanishads
of vedanta and gita
the noisy destruction
of ignorant thought

bring me god
back inside my self
revealing that all
exists in my hand

– Paul F. Lenzi
http://poesypluspolemics.com/

OK, this is before edit…..

…..so keep it kind. Afterwards, you can have at it. Beta readers anyone? End of February. Fingers uncrossed and intentions pure.

Synopsis

Reliving history for Jack has become a matter of survival for the future of mankind. When all technological means of communication are withheld to thwart the Dawning it becomes imperative on those Awakened to share what they remember and what has been revealed.

With possible extinction in sight, at negligent hands and the hands of those who wield the power, it is Jack’s task after the Awakening to ensure that his granddaughter understands the past and uses her gifts as one of the Evolved to ensure its continuity.

Young as she is, and with so little time allocated to her, he must let her see inside his mind and disclose to her what she needs to know to ensure she may live a little longer. A place of images and imagination melded with fact and mythology, Jack allows her access to his memories and hopes it will be enough.

Set in the heart of the mountains of Glencoe in the Scottish Highlands, Jack reveals the secrets of his life and its history as he has come to understand it. By at last putting his own guilt and betrayal to rest, and facing fears known to all, he summons the strength necessary to reconnect with a world he has shunned for too long.

 

Yeah? No? Maybe?

OK. Excerpt.

Prologue.

It is difficult to describe a place nearer to heaven than the mountains of the Scottish Highlands. Difficult not to imagine that the hand of an almighty creator visited them and shaped them through the eons of time to ensure that they arrived at their perfect majesty. It is difficult to think that any other means was possible in their creation.
But we know that the land was formed in the evolution of a world become scenic through calamitous periods that graced the landscape with more wonder than is possible to inhale at one time. It is easy to breathe the air there and feel the source of all life pour into lungs glad for its renewal.
And it is not difficult at all to fall in love with the wild mountains and air that speak in a voice only whispered in sighs descending from the summits and up from the earth. A voice sometimes raised in wild wind and frozen breath, chilling into the marrow of our beings.
It is all too easy to think of the people who inhabited those mountains in days gone past and whose lives and livelihoods were dependent on working with the land they were born to, a land they became a part of. Some more closely a part of than others.
In the mountains of that land there lie secrets that only those who lived at that time may ever really have known. And even then, perhaps, the stories told would be one-sided, slanted as all stories are by who recounts them.
In the telling of history it is said the winner has the upper hand. Who else is left to relate the story and publish memoirs if not those who vanquished the other?
Then there is the word passed down, the history that is never written but is etched in the hearts of those who ensured that another account was possible. Another version of events that may just be as true as the ones scribed.
History is strange like that. Hindsight sees clearer but does not see all.
Imagination and some clarity attached to the events, reliving the moments as if one of those present, might better relate the feelings and thoughts of those who lived at that time. At least, I think so.
We pore over notes and search in vaults for clues as detectives of the past when we are the living embodiment of that past. In worlds within worlds, in places everywhere we carry the legacy of that past into our present, living it while rarely learning from it, it seems.
Forever destined to repeat the mistakes made, to follow the path outlined before, to not see and to not hear, to ignore all evidence that says there must be a better way.
Across the manifest histories, horsemen, battalions, warriors, and common folk have succumbed to the power that seeks to wield the control, to wrest from the earth and all upon it the privilege granted to share in the wonder around us. We do not enjoy. We eat it up and spit it out. Glad only that we have, that we can have more.
Then we see. We awaken.
And we see that whatever we have we only have for such a very little time. We pass as all others have passed before us. And leave only the legacy of our ways.
This is mine.

I see light now everywhere. The stars have been turned on and their light shines even in the daytime, seen from afar by all who have Awakened. But before that there was darkness. And illusion.

The purple of the heather has never been so bright; filaments on thistles reveal every nuance of history fed into their roots. The colours and life on these mountains bring me home. Home where I’m happiest, among those I love and those who love me. Among brothers and sisters, daughters and sons, old and young; life passing in its quiet way with grandeur setting the scene and diminished grief in the understood belief that we share one source.
I pick idly at the petals on one stalk of thistle and play a game in my mind as I pluck from its centre, asking ‘Reality? Illusion?’ I know that soon the thistle flower will die and I will watch as the down is cast on the wind. Each indigo filament becoming the seed that will grow afresh in a new flower; a wild flower dismissed as unimportant. A weed in the landscape. A mere nothing. But intrinsic to the landscape and as meaningful, to my mind, as every rose or orchid that ever graced more worthy tables. More worthy only in the eyes of the observer. Never more worthy than the child before me. One of the Evolved born to my daughter the night we Awakened. It is my task, as her grandfather and chosen mentor to ensure that she understands it all.

**************************************************************************

Maybe? Well, I’m going with it.

For some the world is small. For others a place too huge to venture alone. But together, we can change the future. ‘The Evolved’ is going to be the second book. Starting in December. Or maybe tonight. Not sure. Wine dependent. 😉

The third I know the story. Just not sure of the ending.

Guest bloggers required for the near future. 😉

And my thanks to all who let me wander in mind while my blog thrived in the hands of guests. I owe you all.

Paul is pending. Have you been pending before, Paul? 😉

If there is anyone who would like to use up the rest of November as guest let me know. I’m open to a few days R&R.

You have been the stars in my firmament while I wandered. Bless you all.

Takers? Anyone? Collaboration? Sexy poetry? Bit of sensual innuendo? Anything within reason! #not a pervert but…;)

Third glass of wine about to go down and I think Ill go and build me a farm on some virtual reality. Or knit a few rows. Or….maybe write just a couple more sentences about what our future may or may not hold.

Decisions…decisions…choices….choices….

Fuck! That would have made a much shorter synopsis.

Ach, well. That’s me.

Still loving you all.x

 

 

 

Was it good for you? November, I mean.

I can’t quite believe I’m doing this.

NaNoWriMo-2014-Winner-Certificate

And I’m really pleased. I’m delighted I think is the appropriate phrase.

I am. Seriously. Dead chuffed, as we say here.

But.

It’s been a strange sort of venture.

I started by signing up on a whim. I do that. Whims are my thing. Sometimes. Other times I’m steady as a rock. I flooded my blog the night before the 1st of November with posts that ensured I reached 1000 posts since my blog’s inception. My apologies. Wine (or whiskey) and blogging as no-no’s should be in the guidelines somewhere. Perhaps they are. I don’t read stuff like that. Until later.

Like I never read the Nano guidelines. Until later.

No, really. What the hell was I thinking?

I have just spent 26 days in a place I’m not sure I would voluntarily revisit.

Except….

I’m going to.

For more than three weeks now I have absorbed myself in a world that my mind and imagination has decreed should be so. Make it so. ( Is that Star Trek or something? I’m not sure. TV and me are not on intimate acquaintance. But I think my reading here tells me that it is so.)

And you wonder why word count is not the issue for me.

No. My issue is sewing up the jumper after I have knitted it. I’ve always hated that part. Despite the fact that the patience and resolve necessary are worth it in the final product. One jumper. Hand-crafted. Modelled by moi.

But you have no idea how many jumpers I have ripped out and started again, how many times I’ve unpicked stitches and ‘fucked’ under my breath (sometimes quite loudly) all so that, at the end, I could model my creation.

I feel a bit like that about my book. So much picking and unpicking to be done. So many holes in the plot and sequencing. So much more I want to revisit and work on.

But the guidelines everywhere say….let it be. Leave it alone.

So that’s what I’m doing.

Despite the fact that I still have whatever number of days left in November, I’m letting go. Fallow shall be its name. Until January and February when I shall edit the arse out of it. And request patient readers to be honest and spare my feelings in the name of the best I can give.

In the meantime…..

* my seven year old wants to know if I’ll be writing over Christmas and if I’ve bought any Christmas presents yet. The answers are, of course, yes and no. Why lie?

* my husband thinks he’s a monk. Feel like a nun myself if truth be told. Would it be ok for two such characters to get it on? Frankly, I’m gagging. TMI? Hell, why end the habit of a lifetime?

*I need a break. Seriously. I am sick of eating on the hoof. Over the weekend I subsisted on Corn Flakes and Weetabix and peanut M&M’s (broke a feckin’ filling in the process. Why, god, could it not have been the Weetabix that did it? I could live without them.) Hubby was off in Robin Hood country running for his country while I bought the kids Mcdonalds and made pizza. ( Farmfoods. I never made them. Heated up. Truth.)

*I have lost more weight than I ever have on any diet. Looking good, btw. 😉 Well, once I get rid of the black shadows under my eyes and the haunted look from the same source.

*I’m gonna finish a jumper I started for me. Begin the one I promised Anna. Find out where I stored my kilt during the summer months. I mean how many places can I store things?

* I’m gonna watch mindless TV. I feckin’ am!

*I’m gonna go, on Thursday (tomorrow), to my next political ‘Yes’ meeting. Because I’m still Yes. To life. To purpose. To meaning. To all the shit that isn’t shit that Yes means for me and all who are still in the affirmative.

*I’m making a dental appointment. Well, you know why.

* I’m gonna BLOB! I never really blob. But gonna. For a few days. Then…..

*I’m going to explain to Anna and Louise and Rachel and David. To the kids who don’t live here any more. To Frank who is still trying to get why, (think actions not words), that this is something I have to do.

*I’m going to explain that even while it seems selfish, that….maybe it’s not. That sharing isn’t really selfish. And that that’s kind of what I’ve tried to do in my book. Kind of what I thought and was taught I should always do. How can that be a bad thing? Even while I feel that I’ve locked myself away and absorbed myself in a world that is in my mind. But is also too close to my reality. A reality I fear in many ways. But one I have huge hopes for.

* I’m going to have a second glass of wine tonight. I have been inordinately abstinent in the name of art. I feckin’ have! Just the odd lubricating of wheels.

One for loosening,

Two for slack,

Three for, ‘Fuck it!’, no going back,

Four for, ‘Did I publish?’

Five for, ‘Ach,’

Six for, ‘They’re faceless, what the feck!’

Seven is a charm I’ve yet to uncover

‘Cos usually by then I’m……

* I’m going to rest and chill with my family.

BUT…

I won’t stop writing.

I can’t stop writing.

There are a few days left in November….one of the oddest Novembers I’ve ever experienced. Apart from the one where I lost my mum five years ago. On the 30th November, St. Andrew’s Day when, just a few days prior, she told all the family gathered. ‘ I need to get my kilt ready.’

I don’t believe in coincidences. I used to. Now I believe in connections. And reasons why things happen. And in reading the right things at the right time, in meeting the right people at the opportune moment. In worlds within worlds. And a cosmic connection that says, ‘Make it so.’

I’m going to post in a minute or so a synopsis and bit of my book that I hope gives you a wee insight into what it’s about. But, more importantly, what I think we’re all about.

Make it so.