I only just arrived in Glasgow and here I go back again. Gordon drove me to the airport.
He lives by the botanic garden. He and Sue make up fifty percent of my Scottish cousin allocation and I got to see them both plus her partner – for Sunday lunch. My suggestion had been a roast in a pub but Gordon is an authentic Scot and that’ll cost far too much money. Richard cooks a mean Shepherd’s Pie, and in the tradition of my family it’s called a shepherd’s pie if it’s with beef mince as well as if it’s with lamb. That crosses the family. My mother had Shepherd’s Pie as her speciality, mince interchangeable, great big rounds of carrot, chunks of onion so fat they squeaked on your teeth, Cadbury’s Smash, a rime of burnt cheddar. Hearty warm and flavourless. Food for a hungry shepherd. I found one in the freezer a decade after she died. Cooked it. It was rancid. I still remember the disappointment of my first and only mouthful. Spat in the bin. Time had taken that pie. Time foiled my attempt at a physical memory of my mother. Screw you, time. But mayhap for the best. When I find mum’s perfume on clothes I sometimes have to cry a moment, just a moment, at the shattering. More than twenty years. I’ll be her final age soon. She was a good mum.
“Death is the context of life,” is Gordon’s opener. He’s never been one for smalltalk. I’m up for that though. His mother died recently. Dear aunt Sylvia. Again again and always the mother can hurt when she goes. Sure there’s the nurture, the teaching, the sense of solidarity and the feeling of being loved even though you’re a bit crap. But also just selfishly, the parents go and that’s the buffer zone fucked. That just leaves THIS TWAT vs THE VOID the void the void “Your turn next” the voooooooooooi
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Gordon’s a therapist and curious about psychedelics applied in therapy. It’s an area I feel very strongly about. Some of my greatest shifts have come with mindful application of weapons grade psychedelics. Nothing gets you out of a hole like seeing the entire universe imploding. Nothing gives you perspective like unanchoring from linear time and fully comprehending that we are all splinters of universal consciousness where time is a trick to help us navigate infinity without madness and your finger hurts? Death is the context of life. Strong and true. If we forget we are just dancing through this colourful noise for a very very short time, we might forget to take it all in while we can. Glasgow was a glory today, crisp and bright, the best of Scottish winter. We find it where we can, that strange joy of presence, but it takes noticing or we are merely painting things with ourselves.
Sue puts me in touch her daughter’s boyfriend who is in Lewes and builds the Lewes bonfire. He might take the wood next week for next year. That’ll be an absolute coup… Sue’s daughter swims away from us perpetually on a picture she painted that I still have in my living room, bright and peaceful in blue and red. I would be very happy to help build a bonfire and save myself £75 a tonne plus VAT for wood and reconnect with family now based in Lewes. Which reminds me, I still haven’t found those tipper vans.
AlBarclay 