the scent of water

cultivating wildness

It was a ridiculous amount of money to spend on a magazine, made all the more ridiculous because I have just spent hours culling dozens of books and older magazines I have bought and discarded over the last few years. Yet, here it is, on my doorstop, and I am not sorry for it. Making magazine is quite simply beautiful, and I won't buy another book or magazine for a very long time, because I won't need to. I bought something I deeply loved, something that fills me up rather than nudges me to want more, and I am content.

I cut the lavender off the shrub in the front of my house for drying. I have some precious linen I keep saving for something precious, but you know what's precious? Today. Today is so infinitely precious, but I spend much of my time looking at the possibility of tomorrow instead. Enough of that. Dry the lavender, use the linen, buy the expensive extraordinary magazine you deeply love. 

This rose. Isn't she beautiful? I am such a terrible gardener, so slack on pulling weeds and pruning trees and pretty much every garden job imaginable. And yet, there she blooms in amongst the wreckage. I can't tell you why roses, of all things, bring me comfort and the will to hope, but they do. I suppose that a world which contains such wild beauty in it, cannot be wholly despaired of.

And not roses alone, if roses best. 

christmas

Just 41 sleeps away! Or 40, I haven't counted, maybe 42. Short story, Christmas. 

I made these gift tags as a procraftinatory exercise this evening, to avoid reading One More Thing on aging masculinites and viagra, an academic study I am getting paid to research. Christmas presents are a far more interesting topic on which to dwell, I've bought about a third of mine already, don't tell my children. And my wrapping paper is plain white on which I will plonk one of these mediocre but colourful adorable gift tags, after I print them out on sticker paper. Maybe use green ribbons, these are important considerations. If you click on this link, it will take you to a PDF version you can download and print out too, because who doesn't want an owl and a christmas snowflake stuck all over their presents? EXACTLY. Just don't sell them or take credit for them, because, you know, those millions and that fame ARE MINE.

In other news, good night.

still with her

With all nasty women and bad hombres, everywhere and always.

 

sea-change

 

I logged on to my blog page proper this morning, the first time I have done so in an age. It lifted my spirits, those colours, that whimsy.  It lifted my spirits and it helped remind me how much I have been over-complicating things, second guessing my reasons for doing pretty much everything, pretty much all the time.

I wrote this excerpt down the other day, a quotation from James Baldwin:

...this collision between one's image of oneself and what one actually is, is always painful, and there are two things you can do about it; you can confront the collision head-on and try and become what you really are, or you can retreat and try to remain what you thought you were, which is a fantasy, in which you will certainly perish.

I think it is in the same piece that he discusses how it is not the opinions of other people about who we are that is our problem, it is the opinions we have believed about who we are. They are what destroy us. Which is something we all know, is something we would all likely agree with. I would, I do. But I find myself also understanding it again, anew, differently. Not deeper, perhaps, but wider. The condensed version is that some experiences I have had recently have shown me once again how very tightly I hold my enthusiasms in, how very much I fear they are mistakes, nonsenses, pointless daydreams of silliness. That I equate all that with inevitable rejection, and that it affects absolutely everything I do. Absolutely everything. That I go through life with my breath held in, perpetually waiting for the other shoe to drop; in my longing for connection I have made myself a prisoner of my own timidity, even while I imagine myself as bold and brave creative adventurer.

So, confronting the collision head on, I'm painting, colouring, journaling, creating my way into visibility. My home, it is as bland as I, and so I believe if I move past the reluctance to show myself to be an indescribably infantile boorish clod, not even really think about it at all, just make and change and decorate what I have the time and funds to decorate, in ways to lift my spirits and brighten my days. Tant pis to resale value and good taste and restraint and holding in one's breath.

In retrospect, the weekly creative challenges were an attempt to impose creativity on myself, a nice but fatally flawed idea. This is, instead, an attempt to impose myself on creativity. Not one holistic authentic unchangeable self, but the self of that moment, of that space in that time. The one who adored orange that day, or painted twigs in doll's heads another. I'll update at least once a week with progress on whatever I am currently working on. There's no timeline or list of projects - though I have a tonne of ideas and new things I am learning or doing already, as witness the photographs above. I can guarantee much colour and many whimsies.

Did you know that the term 'sea-change' is from Shakespeare, and describes the physical change in a body that is swallowed by the sea and is consumed, transformed by her? You probably knew that; I didn't know that. Perhaps I need to kill off some of the habits of personality I have developed over the years in order to make room for some more useful others to grow. Perhaps painting mirrors yellow isn't about painting mirrors at all, but about self-acceptance through the compass of delight. And if I am to write on creating maps of longing as I promised (and I am), then I needs must be bold in creating my own. 

 

a short introduction to the glumpi fregg

I spent all afternoon and most of the evening drawing. I drew wild-haired fairies and flowers and faces, aliens, a bird, and one Glumpi Fregg. Glumpi Fregg's are hard to draw accurately because they don't exist, but I've consulted experts and they all say this is as close a likeness as anyone has managed previously, so I'm satisfied with that.

Nathan wants to know if Glumpi is a pronoun or an adjective. I don't know, do I look like an expert in alien languages? 

I do know some things  about the Glumpi Fregg though. They eat once a month, but that's for a whole week at a time, a meal known as the Glumpi Gobbling. Not to be confused with the Gumpli Goblin, which is just an imaginary monster used to scare young Glumpi Freggs. Not very effective, it tends to just amuse them, but adults are odd like that. 

They also wear party hats whenever they are out of doors, in the odd chance they will run into a party. For Glumpi Freggs to run into a party without a party hat is such a social taboo that they would rather always wear one than be seen without at an inappropriate time. It makes little sense, for the Glumpi Fregg, as we know, only eat once a month, and hence only throw parties at that time, but one very, highly, extremely important fact you need to know about Glumpi Fregg is that they are totally and utterly devoted to their social duty as party attenders, and will not, never, not even where it makes rational sense, leave their party hat at home.

They also fart a lot and like to race cheeses.

I had to look up two big words this morning

Optative and teleological. I'm supposed to know what teleological means, but optative can kiss my buxom buttocks. Who writes like that anyway? Philosophers, that's who. They might be clever, but they surely don't write so very good.

Hello. I come here empty handed aside from an old photo of a posy that I threw out yesterday, and in a raging pissed-off-with-the-world mood, not helped by a flair in my brachial neuritis pain. Mostly it's okay to deal with, but not today. Today is codeine territory if the blasted thing doesn't buck up its ideas swiftly. I'm not a fan of codeine - gives me the weirdest dreams and I feel slightly disassociated from myself - but I'll do it if I have to, don't think I won't.

Back to our point - It's not even on a Monday today, is it? It's not a Monday because this Monday, like last Monday, the Monday before that, etc., and so forth, have been and will continue to be, much too busy. Mostly with good things, like paid research and a summer student scholarship (at least they will feel like good things when I am once again in a better mood) and some really boring things, like brushing my teeth. Have I ever told you how much I hate brushing my teeth? Really a lot much. Not as much as I hate ironing, but I never iron so it doesn't count.

Back to our point redux - the whole creative challenge Monday was a good idea, I just can't fit it in to my week anymore without it feeling like a heavy chore. Which in turn feels like a failure.

Truth is, I'm exhausted from my studies, and in pain with the neuritis and the arthritis and (still!) the ruptured ligament, and need the world to stop going round for a bit, which it never does THE BASTARD. I don't have any great pearls of wisdom or bright ideas, I'm not even sure if I have anything left to offer anyone, I just wanted to break the silence and let you know I'm alive, and you are not forgotten. Which is the best I can do for today.

PS - my Master's thesis was finally submitted and is in the process of being graded, so there is that.

hello, it's monday, and sorry for all the italics

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9. talk about that book you're going to write

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Another Monday, and another overwhelmed and underprepared Megan. It's been a while, I'm sorry. I finished writing my thesis (hallelujah) and now have three days to add in all my citations and references (poke my eyes out with a rusty nail). I'm not sleeping well, it is like my thoughts and my body are running on different timescapes and one keeps waking the other up to chat but the other one is somewhere else thinking about something else and they can never quite co-ordinate their times and places. It's very disorienting and uncomfortable. And I find the spinning plates that I'm running to and from in order to keep in motion, are instead crashing to the floor. And there are still far too many plates to run between in the first place. My brain gets jumbled. This morning, I'm standing at my kitchen bench, making a cup of tea, and say to my youngest, most people are five times busier than we are, when do they find the time to stop and think? She looks up from her breakfast, head cocked sideways, and replies: my guess is that most of them don't.

I don't live very well with a jumbled brain, and I can't unjumble it without the time to stop and think. Did you know that anxiety is from the same root word as anger, angere, meaning to choke, to squeeze? I did not know that. But there's a similarity of feeling, in the sense of a tightness, a squeezing, isn't there?

I have a book I am desperate to write (and make art/take photographs for), but can't find the time to even make notes on. It's called A Map of Longing, and it's about using the small freedoms we do have in our mostly regulated lives, tiny symbolic acts of autonomy that won't change the world, but can change the way we see what is possible for our world. Creative, imaginative acts like art, like poetry, like drama. Like colouring our hair pink and wearing a tutu. Embroidering a quilt with our happiest memories. It is about the things we can do, that may, in turn, stimulate possible for things we might do, things others might imagine being able to do also. That space of creative possibility is a power we all have, that place where we can run our imaginations across the edges of our longing. It may be a small freedom, a small act of our own free will.  But it is, now and evermore, a true freedom. 

Sometimes, when life is heavy and I am scared and the days ahead are clouded in a dark fog of impossibility, I lie in bed at night and imagine a winter cabin full of my favourite books. I'm snowed in and can't leave for weeks, but there is plenty of wood for the fire, plenty of food in the cupboards. I am sitting on a comfortable armchair in the corner of the living area, wearing handmade jumpers and socks and woolly hats, and I have a quilt draped over my knees. There's a thermos of whatever hot drink I fancy on the coffee table next to me, and a plate of scones and tim tams.  (It's morning tea time and I just made that last one up because I have jaffa thins but am out of tim tams and what I really want are tim tams). I don't know what book I am reading, and it doesn't matter, the point is I get to sit there and do anything or nothing as I chose, and will get to do so for weeks to come. There's nothing else at all that I can do.

It never changes the hard days ahead, never makes them easier to get through. And I will never own that cabin, never be snowed inside of one, never had a remote intention of genuinely wanting either thing. It's the idea of it that distracts and comforts me as I fall asleep, it's the idea that distracts and comforts me in those moments where sleep is the thing I am truly longing for.

If I dressed as a brave woman, would I act like a brave woman? And how does a brave woman dress? Boldly, I think, and unashamed of body type and size and scars and marks and wobbles. A brave woman dresses in what makes her feel beautiful, and that alone. I am not a brave woman. I don't dress like a brave woman. But I might, perhaps, start with thinking about what it would look like if I did. Maybe I will never have the courage, but maybe in knowing what it would look like if I did, I would also better understand that it is something important to me, something I am longing for.

Imagine if I had been raised by parents who were not broken and selfish, but wise and kind? Imagine how different my psyche would look now. It's impossible to know or understand that, impossible to change who they were and how I grew up, but in charting what I imagine the difference would be, I can discover those wounds I believe need healing. In discovering the wounds that still remain, I can then begin to t understand them, and in understanding them maybe come to terms with them better, recognise what must be worked around, and what can still be dismantled and rebuilt.

Did you know that word free comes from a proto-germanic word frija, meaning beloved, friend? I didn't know that one either. The beloved members of our clan, rather than those enslaved to us, is how the one word evolved from the other. The people we treated with honour and respect and not as those in bondage to us, not as those who owe us something. Imagine, imagine, if we treated ourselves as free, as friend, as beloved, if we honoured the person we are, rather than felt we owed the world a person we should be. Just, imagine. 

And if we created a map of longing, a landscape of the colours, places, people, values, and possibilities of an imaginary world that somehow calls to us? If we introduced the creative possibilities of our self to ourselves? It would, don't you think, also function as a map to living free, where living free is defined as a strong and honoured sense of identity and belonging?

I don't know. I have an idea it would. Or could.

I imagine that it could. 

I know it is a book I am desperate to write, make art/take photographs for.

ergh, argh

Have only a few days left to finish my thesis, and um, probs more than a few days left of work to do. But look! I made pictures for it!

I know, it makes no sense without context. What can you do, I'm just much too tired for making sense.

okay, I kind of cheated, but I did it in a very attractive way

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8. let the faerie out the jar without dying

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It's a harder challenge than you'd think. They're vengeful creatures. I mean, she looks sweet and kind enough, but don't let that fool you. Note the hand behind her back.

I didn't put her in there, but I did find her, dammit, so it's on me now. If I don't report back next week, you'll know I'm a frog. Or a statue. Or what even do faeries turn people into when they're angry?

all flowers. all the time.

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7. wear a flower in your hair

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I paint flowers so they will not die. ― Frida Kahlo

Katerina is this young woman's name. She was born of a tired brain in the early hours of a Saturday morning because I seem constitutionally unable to put down a pen or pencil once I have picked one up, however drastically, shockingly, unhealthily, late the hour has become. I only meant to lay down a couple of watercolour splodges to dry while I slept, so they would be all ready to go in the morning. And then just sketch her face, maybe, so I can see how it will look, and then no harm in adding her body, that'll just take a minute, and then, look, the watercolour is dry enough to work around, and, oh my goodness what is going on with that hair, do you even know what you are doing, that looks nothing like the picture that inspired you, arrrrghh, add in some leaves and a bird, bugger, wrecked that! Now colour, more colour, bit more colour, and fill those splodges in with a rose outline or the whole thing will look silly. Just a bit more colour and ... oh my God it's 4am.

But she was worth the lost sleep. She is, I think, representative of my favourite Muse. An impatient, beautiful, wild, and abundantly floral Muse. In any case I love her. I love her so much that I have used her likeness multiple times on every piece of internet space I frequent, and then redecorated my very own blog around her. Even though I only just did that a couple of months ago. She demanded it. I didn't argue. I didn't mind.

I don't mind saying I love her either, even though I drew her. She feels like something other than me, something that existed before, and will exist long after, I ever took pen to paper.

I wasn't consciously thinking of today's challenge as I drew her, though I already knew of it. I've taken to picking the challenge from the challenge jar early because 1) it gives me time to think and get supplies and 2) I am compelled to OCD levels of extremity to open things early. It kills me to have knowledge available that I can't access. That someone else has, but won't make available to me. My husband once hid my birthday present in our roof space and found my frantic failed searches hilariously funny. I did not. He still does. I still do not.

Anyway, flowers.

My rose bushes, they love to make flowers. Even now, neglected, in the middle of winter, covered in both rosehips and black spot, they still flash a pretty petal or two whenever they can manage it. Bless them.

I have been watching some YouTube videos on making fabric roses, a fascinating way to pass a day, and they all, without fail, got something quite wrong about roses. Roses are not perfect. Their petals are not symmetrical, not when they are in bloom. Wind, rain, insects, and good old Father Time, take care of that. Look at those petals on my dying lovely above. They're a crazy mix of sizes and shapes. That's what makes blooming roses so lushly, insanely, beautiful, their very abundant asymmetry. Treat them as a stack of cloned templates and you'll only get a highly stylised replica, recognisable but lacking any emotional resonance. A shadow of the real, of the individually unique, rose. Maybe that's exactly what you want. Good luck to you, I pray you live long and prosper. But it's really not exactly what I want.

LIFE METAPHOR ALERT. 

I wonder why I thought I might like to wear a flower in my hair? I think perhaps I was having a Frida moment, or wanting to have a Frida moment, because that woman was about as far away as you can get from my staid blobby bland persona of a self. I never have had, and never will have, the charisma of a Frida. But I could have the flowers of one?

Probably not. Probably without the cultural and historical context in which that charisma resided, I will merely look like a frowsy hausfrau trying, unsuccessfully, to add some longed for glamour into her dull day. Mutton dressed as bouquet. The original impetus behind it all, more likely, was something of a social challenge: I am so terrified of judgement I thought it might do me good to provoke some intentionally, and then weather it, get over it. Even if only in my own head.

Urgh.

Blurgle, gurgle, perg.

But I'm just so sick of that frowsy hausfrau persona. I mean, bless her, but I do find her so very embarrassing. 

Having dissed the template wielding YouTubers, I had to put my theory to the test. Random piles of that organza type ribbon were cut, and hacked into vaguely petal shaped objects. Some were rounder, some squarer, some kind of weird curvy oops.

You create the curl by holding the roughly hacked pieces over a flame, preferably not a house on fire, a nice atmospheric candle will do. I used pliers to hold them over said flame, because I am a menace with hot objects and burn myself consistently a lot. When you have finished your pile, you arrange them in a flower-like manner, as pleases you. You have freedom of will in this matter. And then just sew a few stitches through all the layers to hold it together. It was so quick, maybe 20 minutes, with 10 of those looking for a needle because my organisation of any and all art or craft material can best be described as unstable-chaotic. You have to wonder how I get through an entire day without adult supervision.

I was right though, about how good random mess would look, was I not? Eilidh says I earned 10 points for Gryffindor, which is confusing, because my house is Hufflepuff.

Pretty lady. I'm trying to sneak her in here quietly, because I think she's lovely and it seemed rude not to.

I hot glue gunned some crystals beads into the middle, because they looked the best. I kind of hesitated - you're going to use those, for that - but anything else would have been making do, rather than being proud of.

LIFE METAPHOR ALERT.

And yes, I did put it in my hair. I'm wearing it now. Didn't have to go out much today, but all the peeps looking in my van window as I drove to pick Nathan up from the bus station would have been totally impressed.

When outtakes become best takes. Stay classy, Megan.