Orla Broderick

Council House Publishing

13 January 2021

My bedroom shelves are occupied by energies of barnacled bottles, watercycled wood, fairies and a lochan. They chat. Scraggy Angel became alarmed when I placed the Red Tile Square next to her. She sits pink and frizzled on the worn limb of a yew-Guardian I once knew. They are both from the banks of St. Columba’s Isle. The Red Tile Square is a new edition to the shelves. The Red Tile has been the altar to which I have focused my desires on. I have projected hurt and longing at it. Then; gratitude. It is a nothing discarded piece of pottery I found on a beach. Because I have been chanting my deepest prayers at it for over two years, it has a glow. Scraggy Angel can feel it. The eye of the lochan glisters on the square of red tile. When the sun is in the sky, the lochan and the red tile bounce and ignite light, here in my bedroom.

The lochan has no name or identity to me. I choose to sex her she because she catches Light in a way males rarely can. She was made from muds by a potter-artist called Nikolai Globe. She is a deep glittering pool in red barren earth. I can hear her breathy gentle flowing voice. She reminds me of my river channels. 

‘Slow slow.’ She tells me.  

‘Stay here.’ Says the red tile. ‘Make a bautiful home. Chant for world peace. Write raw and honest now.’

And I know the red tile speaks the truth. 

I have a large wooden labia I found on the banks of Cluny Dam. I carry her energy when I,  if I, ever go out. I don’t heave her about. I imagine her as a girdle shield carved round my core. The energy I feel from this hollow tree branch is trembling water-woman. She is cautious. She flutters silently.  She is awake to dangers. 

Last Sunday, lost, driving round and ever round, a grey array of high rise homes. I was looking for a woman to comfort. It was a gradual traverse in concrete. Nature vanished slowly. Connection to Nature voices, energies, Spirits faded away then disappeared. Even the lochan was silent inside me. I saw people surviving systems. People boxed and stripped, told ‘be quiet, be creative.’ With all their wild-knowing taken away. Gathering for a full moon ceremony with cacao or a sweat lodge is not done here. Permaculture is for far off others. 

As I drove round Sighthill I was minded of the way the doors to Custody, Falkirk, banged behind me. 

When I can’t feel or hear the river in my blood, I think of the trembling labia dam-water made from a broken tree. I think of the red tile square which I chant Sanskrit to. To try to stay sane, to have a focus, to have hope of a goal. I could not choose to live in inner city Edinburgh in a tower flats abomination.

My over active danger detector did not alarm. I survived a chat and a coffee and a smoke. I did not fall apart. I met a woman for possible dating. I did this sober and sane and conscously. But the time is not right. I need the former lover removed forever from our lives before I can date or make friends. There’s a new trial date. We go to open court in May, anyone can attend. She’ll be found guilty and sentenced.

When you have a stalker, you learn to think safety. I am a scraggy angel with a wooden labia. I do not believe the former lover psycho ex will ever go. She believes I am her prey. I chant and shoogle my beads to pray she gets the help she needs. But I know Electric shock treatment isn’t widely available here in the lowlands. I am a Buddhist student. In my spare time I make my body a drum to beat Sanskrit prayers to Mother earth. Will you help me? Will you send me a prayer, the kind from deep inside where it feels like Reiki healing energy? It’s a protection against harm prayer. I need your indigo purple bubbles of love sent to make me stand in a court to tell the whole truth.

I chose not to comfort the woman from the tower block last Sunday. I drove away again. In order to feel safe. I feel I let her down. There’s shame and guilt and anger rushing in my emotions, at the back of all the other life. Anger at me for me. I put me there in the power play with the psycho screw. I thought I could rescue and heal her, being Super Woman. I allowed a debacle. I starred in my own soap opera drama, again. The sick-gut feeling of disgust of self could damage the bit of self belief I have gleaned. 

I did not glister and sparkle the way I surely can, when I was knocking about with the prison officer tinder date. I drank too much. I walked the glen paths, took poetry classes, wrote scripts with Michael. She was there at the back of it, with bottles of wine. She is a strange angel oh so terribly wounded, hurting and drunk. It is all my fault it’s going to Court; hand me the horse hair whip and never let me date again.

I take beads of lapis to my tile. Transform me of my indescretions. I should have walked away, that first day, when my wooden labia shield shivered and said ‘no way.’ I should have run, as I have always done, when the lochan-light dimmed in me. I should have acted with more respect for me.

Help me. Send me your best prayer that I learn from this. That I release the ones who have harmed me. And keep safe. If I teach you my chant to the tile, will you teach me your own way of trusting all will be well?

maybe someday, we can combine our prayers, to heal all the hurts, bring only happiness and peace to all living beings.