Category: Writing


My Freckled Egg

Photo by blackieshoot on Unsplash

Going to the supermarket is one of the highlights of my week here in rural Corfu. I love the novelty of a foreign country, local produce, cultural foibles, different brands and branding, packaging in a foreign language and this week, especially experiencing the Greek version of Christmas. Spoiler alert – it includes chocolate Santas, Christmas stockings, bauble and tinsel that looks the same in Ireland i.e. made in China and a little disconcertingly, though not surprisingly considering the history between Corfu and Italy – Panetonne. I went to all 3 of the supermarkets in Sidari – the luxury of a day off from working commitments. Twice I nearly bought eggs and twice got a flash of the local veggie shop with their basket of eggs on the counter; eggs I have assumed are the result of a co-operative local endeavour supporting hens to live free laying eggs in rustic idyll.  I may be completely wrong but the romantic notions won out.

Giant Christmas poinsettias jostled for space in the Veggie shop foyer with sacks of potatoes and onions. Dates and figs appear more prominent and token trappings of Christmas dot their sparkle around the store. It is chill and dim as seems to befit veggies. The eggs are there on the counter – I find a little cardboard egg container and unconsciously pick out 3; then I notice my 4th, tucked away at the bottom of the bowl, a freckled wink captures my attention. A snapshot of a second illuminated and slowed in my memory.

I pile everything up in a cardboard box, it is shallow but well packed it all manages to fit though the light bundles of mountain tea, slide around the top. The shop assistant tells me to be careful, she will close the door for me. I bristle. The door slams, another car pulls up, everything feels precarious and I am now thinking how to open the boot of the car with my arms full. A shout of warning and a bundle of mountain tea flimsies to the ground. I get to the car, rest the box but it tilts, the cucumbers topple out followed by a gay abandon of strawberries and that egg, that one speckled egg, lovingly and carefully selected, delicately plucked from the cosy bottom of the bowl, that egg on its way to a baking dish or a frying pan. Did I curtail it’s purpose with my carelessness, did I push it over the edge or did it defy it’s inevitable demise leaping to a concrete death?

That clumsiness is not new. Carrying too much, overloading myself, stuffing in just one more thing; whether that be into a bag or into time, it is familiar. It is something I do. I have dropped things, broken zips, snapped fastenings, missed flights. For the most part I live with it, it is dysfunctional and awareness helps me curb the worst of it. I certainly wasn’t expecting an ‘oeuf’ to be the straw to break the camel’s back.

It broke me breaking that egg, the cucumber and the strawberries were easily dusted off and put aside for consumption but that egg. It chose me and I chose it. It was supposed to be a breakfast egg, fried or scrambled, eaten with avocado, freshly squeezed orange juice and LaVazza coffee. I didn’t know what to do about it, the yolk wide eyed me shocked and knowing the finality of this moment. I got into the car reversed to get into position and then drove forward to finish the job, I missed, I reversed and tried again, and again. I failed and I left. The broken egg bothered me for the rest of the day, this tiny little fragment of life splintering my consciousness, festered until it became obvious that I had to write an obituary, this obituary and I needed a photo. A race against time as the light drained from the ombre of the violet sky. The shop was open, there were evening customers and cars parked outside. The scene of my crime was lit by a lone street light standing guard. Where I had failed someone else had succeeded. My freckled egg was no longer egg shaped or hermetically whole in any way, shattered shell, faded and pale against the concrete, a yolk-yellow stain a modernist attempt to deconstruct life distorted by the light, fuzzy and unworthy of posting. The strangest, weirdest end to a day and an unexpected eulogy to an egg.

Stuck in Poetic Mode

I have a cold and I am not sleeping well. When I woke, I woke late, heavy, unrested and lethargic. The voice that spoke was by comparison brisk and business like

‘I know how you feel, I know how bad, ugly, rotten to the core you are’. The truth cut deep, a slash of self pity and the start of the slow bleeding slide into another day of dull depression. Sweet relief just a sandman’s whisper away but my soul is stuck in poetic mode.

‘I know how you feel, I know how bad, ugly, rotten to the core you are’.
 
And again
 
‘I know how you feel, I know how bad, ugly, rotten to the core you are’.
 
A chipper little voice, this Jimney Cricket of a character wasn’t going to let me put my head under the pillow today. THIS was a soul baby knocking at my door. There was nothing to do but write. And so:
 
I know how you feel
I know how bad, ugly, rotten to the core you are
How you want to rip yourself away from the flesh that is you
Raging, roaring, kicking, punching against the fibre of your being
I know how you drown, smothered, gagged, suffocated, suffocating
Writhing, clawing, tearing at the walls that are who you are
 
I know how you feel
I know the rage, spitting, livid, firey ire
Burning runways of smouldering fury through your soul
Destroying, exploding, killing love, kindness, compassion
Those mealy mouthed mother fuckers
I know how you are consumed
Inside the cage of your humanness
A twitching, flickering, putrid mass of toxic oozing pus
 
I know how you love to hate
I know how you despair
I am the evil bitch, the bully boy
Who wants to punish and obliterate all sign of milk and honey
Who wields a whip of righteousness and snuffs out unbecoming joy
I know the realness of this place
A landscape of the mind
Where goodness is a rag to the raging bull and destruction holds its sway
 
I know how real it feels
When those demons come to roost
Hideous heads and flickering tongues, devouring my flesh alive
I don’t know if I have been here before or if I never left
I don’t know if this is how it is supposed to be or if I am an aberration bereft
I don’t know if this is real, a dream, a play, a game or nought
I don’t know if I will survive, if love will save the day
I only know these words have come to grace the page and say….
 
I know

And It Is A Happy New Year From Me

I am exhausted, an existential exhaustion. It hits me every year, this last two weeks of December is like walking through treacle. I sleep and I sleep and when I am not sleeping I am feeling sleepy.
 
The bright lights of Christmas cheer wane and fade leaving a charcoal smudge on my memory making way for a cacophony of completing, resolving, resetting, rebooting. There is an I in me that rebels, resists, defies the collective ceremony of the end of the year. Every cell in my body cries out to hibernate, to sleep, to dissolve, to disappear – a gravitational force that has the power to suck me off this merry go round of life. It is a familiar shadow particularly amplified at this time of year. Aha old friend. We can rub up companionably on the sidelines, observers & watchers of celebratory shenigans, out of the glare of effusive joy and optimism – by ourselves but not alone.
 
And then as the watery winter sun rises on a new year, on a new decade that shadow will fade; slowly at first but fade it always does and my energy will return; in fits and starts but splutter into life it will.
 
So as I energetically ebb into this New Year’s Eve I share the Rumi quote that lifts my heavy heart like feather weight across the Julian rubicon of endings and beginnings. May it lift yours too if lifting is required.

Easter Rising*


Perhaps it is the emergence of Spring, the coming of Easter, perhaps it is all of us, or just my desire for new life and emergence but my radar is picking up a farrago of metaphors about the cycle of life and death.

And just in case I dont notice it in this bucolic muddy, bole of countryside that I am living in then it shows up in my mail box and my twitter feeds.

Courtesy of Sharon Blackie of The Hedge School’s newsletter today:

Now, arriving in magic, flying,
and finally, insane for the light,
you are the butterfly and you are gone.
And so long as you haven’t experienced this: to die and so to grow,
you are only a troubled guest on the dark earth.

From The Holy Longing by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, translated from German by Robert Bly

Photo by Suzanne D. Williams on Unsplash

*Being Irish – the juxtaposition of the words Easter AND Rising is poignant and particular and has a singular meaning. Also known as the Easter Rebellion, it was an armed insurrection in Ireland during Easter Week, April 1916. The Rising was launched by Irish republicans to end British rule in Ireland and establish an independent Irish Republic while the United Kingdom was heavily engaged in the First World War. It is has a personal impact too as a great uncle of mine, Walter Scott, was probably the last child to die in this struggle. This is not the topic I wanted to talk about here but it is part of the mythic struggle to reach the light.

Painting The Future

photo: Anne K. Scott (c) 2018 Carrapateria, Algarve, Portugal

Painting The Future

I can’t see
I can wield
I can’t know
But I am sure
In my lostness
I am found
And in the hum of the Universe
My intentions
Are subtle brushstrokes
On the canvas of tomorrow

My Camino Walk #1

My Camino Walk #1 is already an international #1 best ranking book on Amazon in Travel and Tourism; and a top 5 title in Motivation and Self Help. A compendium of stories from pilgrims who have walk the Camino to Santiago de Compostela in Galicia, Northern Spain. A rich collection from the practical to the personal it is published by Andrew Priestly.  I share my inner emotional roller coaster as one journey ends and another begins in my story The End Is Nigh

The Kindle version is on SPECIAL OFFER of 0.99p and here is a SAMPLE

The Pea Green Boat

In August 2012 I was sitting on an escarpment overlooking the ancient beginnings of civilisation in Swaziland in Africa. In the dusty haze a trail emerged laid out across scrubby, foreign land, a long, long walk leading all the way to the sea and, I imagined, a handsome sailor in a pea green boat.

Two months later I walking the Camino de Santiago de Compostela in Northern Spain. Almost 1000 km from the border with France to the Coast of Death in Galicia. Every step takes me deeper into the land, my edges softened by rock, my spirit dissolving in earth, the raging energy of the elements becomes my wildness, I breathe in the desire of soul symbiosis and exhale ecstasy.

Did I buy boots – yes Salomon Ultra X.  Did I take time to research my pack – yes it was an Osprey just the right size, complete with a built in hydration pack (fancy name for bag of water), did I carry a guidebook – yes a ‘John Brierley’, did I train – well maybe – if you count a few weekends of long walks.

My Camino journey was wildly imaginative and that is the story my spirit wants to share.  Fortunately that spirit called in Andrew Priestly and My Camino Walk #1 project – my story is one of 20 stories, jostling alongside 19 others, it is a wonderful compendium that gives you insights into 20 prisms of Camino perception. You have the practicality of preparation, the wisdom of spiritual journeying, the suffering of physical limitation, the mental anguish of being human.  The full experience of life.  The Camino is but a metaphor for life.  How you experience it is just the lens you are looking through.  Imagine living life when you can play with all the lens available to you?

Anne is a catalyst and ambassador for new possibilities. She brings cutting edge intuitive techniques together with 30+ years as an innovation and technical professional to deliver end results that appear improbable if not impossible. 

Anne works with individuals and businesses have a desire to create a better, sustainable and beautiful world. She is passionate about the purposeful application of imagination and although she could be defined as a coach, teacher, writer and speaker she is ultimately an Imagination Technologist collaborating with high level creatives to bring ideas into being and make them real.

Anne walked the 800km+ Caminos Francaise, Finisterre and Muxia in Northern Spain 2012 and a soupçon of her story was recently published in My Camino Walk #1 available on Amazon. Anne is a migratory soul with seasonal homes in Europe, Australia and the USA. She loves traveling and exploring the outer edges of consciousness enjoying, savouring and fully inhabiting this life. 

Testament To Spirit

Crumpled parchment
Brittle translucent
Silently compliant and dissolving into death
The breathe of life blowing dandelion seeds into the wind
Tumbling lightly on this earth with carefree abandon
The delight of tenacious spirit holding on to the joy of being alive
Of being human.

A spiritual light housed in a skeleton lamp of sinew, bone and a little flesh
The eternal spark burning more brightly as the body slips away
Leaving the indomitable spirit
Naked in its brightness
A defiance to death’s puny grasp
A giggle into its inevitable embrace.

A light that isn’t doused but rather wends its merry way
Into the memory of our mind
Daisy chained to those who have gone before
And those who are still behind
Dancing fairy lights into the glade of night
A glided teasing invitation to join Immortality
And snuff goodbye to Time.

In Defence of True Augmented Reality

My Computer VAugment is derived from the old French verb augmenter to increase , make bigger, enlarge, make richer.  And reality we all know what that is about.  It is our experience in the here and now or as the dictionaries put it something that exists as opposed to imagined.

So to augment reality – is to enlarge, increase, enrich our existence what we are experiencing right now.  I love the concept, I believe in the concept to the extent that I see it as the only way of being and living. Who wouldnt want an augmented reality?  One that improves on what already is.

Cut to the world of technology where all the good stuff is and augmented reality becomes something else.  It acquires a capital A, a capital R and a hint of a swagger.  In this world augmented reality is a shadow of its potential; truthfully it is about mediated reality where technology becomes a foil to enhance one’s current perception of reality.  Now don’t get me wrong; I love technology.  I spent 30 years working as a techie, I am in awe of its ability to keep us connected, create new connections, allow us to work from home, facilitiate global collaborations and keep delivering yet more gorgeous, shiny trinkets.  I design apps for God’s sake.  What is there not to love about technology!  Well yes.  It is the danger of arrogance, the blinding light of brilliance, when technology becoming our everything and we throw the baby out with the bathwater.

Augemented Reality is a loud, cocky imposter.  True augmented reality is a function of imagination; everything we experience is from our imagination, the technology that we have is from someone’s imagination.  Let us not forget that imagination is a tool that we all have access to.  It is there for the taking, it is free, it open source, we came bundled with it.  Sadly someone forgot to put that in our manual, in the education system, in fact it is actively deprogrammed in many educational environments.   Too basic for the sophisticates.  Let us not forget that we all have access to imagination, we just need to believe, take the time to reconnect with the pathway of intuition that takes us there and take follow through action that comes from our individual ability to join the dots and create connections that have never been thought of before.

Anne K. Scott is an Imagination Technologist who uses the tools of intuition to live her life and support others discover their intuitive uniqueness to enrich their realities.  She also loves technology for what it brings to the party e.g. her SatNav4TheSoul tool box and Google’s Picasa which enhanced the ‘V’ on her computer keypad to look like a heart.

For more information on the work that Anne does check out Coaching or drop me a line:

Highland Main Line Train

IMAG2886
The Highland Main line train siddles out of the cold comfort of Dalwhinnie. In the distance sugar dusted mountains tickled by fluffy low lying cloud, smiled on by the blue eyes of heaven. We trundle by wirey puffs of scrubby heather knitted into the patchwork greens of this bobbly blanket, covering a duvet of bouncy peaty soil. The necklace of pylons and the dinky trucks on the distant roadway wink sparks of winter sun. Scatterlings of light spin off shiny silver bark ruffling the copper mops of autumnal trees. Through the leafy cut, saluted by skinny regiments of pine, ignored by the shawl of afro haired sheep across the fields and the sleepy gaze of one brawny white bull lounger in the soggy bog. Kingussie huddled in a snowy cleavage. We are greeted by the dancing shimmer of white ladies ready to wave us on our way into the Northern light and the call of Inverness.

Travelling the Highland Main Line from Glasgow to Inverness November 2013