To 'Gift' the best part BACK.

 i am comforted by my Mags.....

how many of you have reached that point of - looking back and doing so far more than - looking forward.

why do we do this?  What are the benefits?

I think really it is to make sense of mistakes and also sense of relationships and how it all panned out over the decades.

Most in life will have chasms of guilt and pain and many seem to have a lifetime of this.

So when you do reach a certain stage as i have, you do look back.  You wish to place the jiz saw pieces at the corners first, work around the edges and then toward the middle, inch by inch, piece by piece.

Today was such a day that brought me to this point.
I went BACK and forward.  I met and then considered.
I chatted and realised.
I came home, BACK and looked forward.

I met a very vibrant person who will not mind being named, as Maggie Brown, photographer.

Remember Maggie as we parted with outstretched arms, hair flying and saying 'Embrace, embrace all this, the AIR!'  well, that was your idea. but what a picture.
one seated wheelchair user and one long and tall and dark haired sparkle.
i giggled and laughed as i electronified the walk back to my van.
i felt all warm inside.

i had a good day Back there, I did a nice bit of shopping, and found out nicely that my fingers were not broken.
i also informed the lady doctor that 'disabled people do not use the term 'wheelchair bound' now but 'wheelchair user'  "oh" she replied, "I shall remember that."

this woman from a tropical island somewhere in the sun had been in that A'E for a very long time,  it seems, and she saw my sister die and saw me in pain on too many occassions.  i do feel good in A'E when she is there.

ah back to the other beauty.
we did, chat.
we spoke about photography and spoke about ideas.
MY TWIN AND CONSIDER HOW MANY HAVE DONE THE SAME AS I WISH NOW TO DO....

placing ideas and many times to place these in context of where we are at, right now.
i am at that point..... of placing my work down for posterity.
there is, now and always was far more to me than the ravages of personality, but more of that anon.

what could i do now at this age that will be of use, when 60?

time has passed and the creative life blood is with the young.  As a 'Wrinkly' the computer age and multi-faceted media that all young now embrace from about four years of age is theirs.
Mine was and has been the paper and the pen
but i have touched and sniffed the new age and become literate, but only to a small degree.
i have to combine what i had always known and what i now know.
to place solid facts in details and fill the cracks of the jig saws for both me and my relatives to come.

I call it - TO GIFT THE BEST PART BACK.

Mulling on this and all the ideas and how they fly we spoke too of how full my head is actually with ideas and invention of ideas and bringing them to reality.
we giggled at how fast they fly and how so many stay in the air so none is really  held a moment to fully understand and place down.
i have to start a calming.
this would be difficult.
I then LOOKED BACK at who i was once, and how it was once.

i remembered the kiddie in the garden racing around on a blustery day wild with excitement.
A day so like to-day actually.  It was wild out there, Maggie Brown's hair flew.
Back then i grasped maybe a flower, a bee or a racing cloud and saw possibilities and saw colour and movement and joy.
I always saw that.  The JOY in the possibilities.
Fun was who i was but like most the life around shaped me.
it wasn't that fun.

So you get shaped and held against your Will, so to speak.
The movement of a society, of a family hemmed many in methinks.
It's like the autumn in all.
The time when the fruit falls and bursts open to spread the seeds.

Back then i felt encased.

Overwhelmed and suppressed. 
 I felt different
Not many around me was of like mind.
Not many wanted really to hear my story of the ladybird on a leaf i had found at the top of the garden.
as i gabbled and recounted i remembered now the 'oh would you be quiet.' said harshly to an excited child.
I was, for a very long time, especially inside.

I wanted to run.
I never wanted to be still, to conform, to be part of much.
i wanted to see things, use things, and do things.
colour and nature, the wind, rain, sky and earth was about as much as i wanted.

people absolutely, NO.
I wanted nothing at all to do with them.

I neither understood them, or wanted them.
but inside i did wish to be like those around me and knew i never would.
It is important for a human being to feel they belong to their own kind and family.  it hurts when this is not so and never was to be so.

It took me decades to come full circle.
the in-between time was the trauma unfolding, of escaping, trying, not succeeding, spoiling and ruining both self and also the chances i had to actually work hard on belonging.

you look back and say of certain people "only for you i might have been...." and "if it wasn't for what you had done i could have achieved..."

Some part of you can be very bitter on that!

Then i look at personality and wonder was it really so terrible to be who i was after all?

And who saw that i was?
If they saw this, was it important in the end that they did?
not really, i suppose.
But it is regrettful.

You did want to be together in all things.
If not so, can anyone be at fault, least all yourself?
Because shaping of an individual takes so LONG, and long past the grave beyond the person shall sing.

If i was the person i was at four and remained that person can one say then that the actual human that is before you has done wrong?
i think not.
Remember the child of the ladybird story.
"oh Ann, will you be still, shut up and sit down!"

The hurt!
Imagine being stopped in such a violent way for telling a story so dear and you wanted to share it with your family so dear to you?
Imagine the tears there, stinging in innocence and not fully understanding at all.
Imagine running away from that and feeling the hurt?
I did.  I did often.

I stayed away a long time.
Decades and forever.
I then never knew quite when to speak, how long for, when to shut up and for how long.

So the best really was never to speak!
I learnt that.
 I ran on the sports field, there i let vent the anger and the joy and the spin of a young child who embraced Joy but was never allowed express it the way she wanted to.

Gabbling with words a-tumbling, is not a sin.
relating, engaging, all too fast is neither a sin or wrong.
 To do it cohesively may be the challenge of this child.
And still.
Be still enough to do it even now.

So i am taking the jig saw by the corners of the page and making the picture real.
for all time and for myself and Peace.

remember when we live a lifetime its not time for the regret of each day in passing in pain.
when you have walked the walk of pain you want the peace and you will do anything for this.

If this peace is to make amends by offering the best you have within and for real then that PEACE you will have earned in spades and settled the debt of an age.

But within that i hope to show where i had shone and what i had found beautiful.
Where i had also found hurt and suffering.

Remember that i was that different child working on the great experiment of 'belonging.'
Also remember that on this journey so bloody long i discovered a thing or two which surprised me and yet didn't so much.
i have noted brain damage.
 Now i see.
 Can others do the same?
 Can others take this acceptance or this offering and calming for a woman old now who had that brain damage and yet held the best until last?
We shall see in the next few years if all will meet in a type of forgiveness and togetherness.
it is a final time for learning and for making amends and the PEACE that comes with this.

I am deeply saddened with the life that has passed -in human terms, that is.
Not at all saddened at who I am for I am proud of my honesty, my love and my joy.
i am glad for the strength that I truly had for I was sent many trials and continue to have them come fling to my Face to face.
So,  I am glad that the hurt has made a tough egg of me and my personality.
I am who i was at four.
I am who i was at four.
I remain four.
And i am sixty years of age.

Not unhappy, but not happy either.
Now do i belong in the world or not?

I most certainly DO.
Very much so.
All will say this at the end.
I am not unhappy, but i am not happy either.
If you say otherwise, you are not human!