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by yon bonnie banks

Water is everywhere, pouring, rushing, pooling; the land is alive with water. White burns bubble through the woodlands on one side of the road; on the other side, trees are drowning in a wide field of water. It’s impossible to tell where the course of the river is or was – the whole field is flowing, and high on the hillside beyond it, huge falls roar where there were none before.

We’re safely north of Loch Lomond now, but as we wound round its banks, the loch itself was beginning to take its share. The outer half of the road towards Pulpit Rock had disappeared and road crew were there on built-out platforms rebuilding it – on stilts. It was a tight passage round the cliff there, squeezing between the water rushing down the rocks and the gouging maw of the loch.

As we come further north, the streams multiply. The steep hillsides are threaded by strings of white water and, as we approach Glencoe, the hills are scarred and scored in white. Snow fills each high crevice and ravine, highlighting the bare black bones of the rock shouldering through. Below the snow, streams continue the white lines, racing down the creases to the valley floors.

It’s not just the intensity of the water but its frequency that’s overwhelming. Each rock face is run over by a hundred slim streams. Even on the lower slopes and flanks by the roadsides, a new stream is gushing down every few yards, flooding the road and forcing us through ford after ford. Water is just pouring off the hillsides.

Water falling, water rising. And through the air too, great banks of rain move in horizontal gulfs. From safe inside the car, they almost feel sheltering, these great grey washes, engulfing us, until the wind harnesses them into harsh lashing whips. And so, through the water-ridden world we travel, sheltered and invigorated alternately, and all the while feeling secretly blessed by these thousand bright white streams.

Buachaille Etive Mòr, Glen Coe

Driving up the A82 (past Buachaille Etive Mòr, Glen Coe), Scotland
20th February 2014

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lily

In the heart of winter, white lilies are exploding quietly in my rough-walled room. Anthers thick with pollen hang heavily around an erect glistening stigma, like lusty vulvas, scattering their russet dust everywhere. The sexes are reversed in this case, the stigma being the female part rising from the bulb of the womb. The petals and sepals peel back like inside-out labia, thrusting their sex shamelessly into the world.

Even just looking at them, I feel myself spreading open; and the scent, rich and heady and sensuous.

Oh, lily of the winter morning, lily of the winter warming.

heart of a lily

Pontycymer, Cwm Garw, South Wales
2nd February 2014

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winter blossom

tree blossom

White crocuses poking through grass – the first flowers! A few steps later, pale blossoms leaning skywards on a tree. It’s raw out today though and doesn’t feel like spring: the winter is blossoming.

I’ve had white lilies in my room intermittently these last few months too. Despite their summer scent, they feel like winter flowers, opening secretly in the season’s dimness, and softening our hard stone edges in the absence of soft blooms of snow.

White flowers in the heart of winter. The crocuses look sort of virginal, like the snowdrops will when they bloom on the river banks beneath the trees. But lilies are obscene.

Walking by the Kelvin, Glasgow, Scotland
28th January 2014

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touchstone

Red is a touchstone, a transporter to all times and places.

This red door in a back lane in Pontycymer reminds me of a red door which I used to pass in a back alley in Montreal. These red leaves in the park remind me of the red leaves I used to sift through in Montreal gardens after the death of a dear friend.

Red is threshold and gateway, entrance and passage. The red door I used to pass in the hidden lanes of Montreal had ‘possibility’ graffiti-sprayed on it in blue paint. Red is for participation, for being there. Red is the belly beating, the heart moving through.

red-painted gate

Cwm Garw, South Wales
22nd January 2014

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a rain of light

A rain of light – a fine white veil sweeping along the sea horizon like a swishing curtain against a backdrop of slate grey. There must be a gap in the sky to the south but it’s gone now and the illuminated downpour becomes absorbed into the wall of cloud behind it. The tide is far out and the beach is flat and gleaming and, as I walk along the lacy hem of the water, I remember another rain of light.

That one was land-based but equally short-lived. It didn’t pass past but showered over, tiny particles of water scattering around me like myriad stop-motion gems.

I was pottering about in the corner of an overgrown stone-wall enclosure beside a ruined cottage on a green hillside up behind Fairy Glen, behind Uig, on Skye. I was standing in the slim shelter of a silver birch and the light beneficently showered down in the late evening summer sunshine. It was a sudden refreshment, gone as quickly as it arrived. But it was utterly beautiful. For those few moments, light was domain and dominion, and relief.

Coney Beach, Porthcawl, South Wales
18th January 2014

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let it begin

Season of old friends and new fires.

The sun was level with me at 11am when I rose, on the first floor on the high hill of Fergus Drive. Now, in the span of short hours, it’s fading, and the little fairy lights and Christmas globes that are strung along the mantelpiece glow softly. I couldn’t find the switch to turn them off in the daylight so they’ve been on steadily, but now as the room gathers darkness they emerge.

The streetlamp right outside the middle pane of the bay window begins to shine that gentle pre-orange red, and each of the droplets of condensation on the window glow. It’s only quarter past three but we are gathering in. My old dear friend will ring soon and we will meet, with his new love, and talk and eat and draw near.

Glasgow is always like this: an old city in a new night, with the rain picking up and the wind stiffening and the streetlights growing to their full orange strength.

Let it begin!

West End, Glasgow, Scotland
1st January 2014

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evidence

We never see the sun itself but evidence of it – slanted casts across the brackened red hillsides, bright incandescences behind mists of white cloud, small patches of blue on the western horizon, or a gold-green stripe across the back of the low hills of the north coast, ahead.

When we get there the sun comes out; a rainbow doubles and disappears. The smashing waves are greener in their curl than I’ve ever seen, the beach smoother; the rocks holding it down are the heaviest black. This is the northern limit of our country. Everything begins.

Durness, Sutherland, Scotland
26th November 2013