Cheers!

It's been an intense week.

I can now drive round a roundabout, even a complex one with weird lane changes or traffic lights or an overturned trailer of hay or all of the above, without breaking a sweat. I mostly even take my intended exit. So now my driving lessons comprise two hours exploring the shortest, blindest, deadliest slip roads known to West Devon. And then, when I am so tired I can barely think, I drive through Chagford and run the gauntlet of horses and double-parked delivery lorries and roads created for tinners' sleds. Ah, the joys of rural life :).

The final year of my degree's up and running now. I am jogging alongside trying not to look winded yet, although the truth is I'm already developing a stitch and when I peeked ahead at the essay questions I almost fainted. But everyone and their dog's running now, it seems, so this is my version and I won't quit until I get to the finish line, whatever state I'm in by then.

My little job has begun, which has already meant I got to have coffee with Terri Windling and Ellen Sherman while they discussed writing. (Tilly was of course in attendance, but chose on this occasion not to join in the discussion.) At one point Terri mentioned the Jean Rhys quote:

'All of writing is a huge lake. There are great rivers that feed the lake, like Tolstoy or Dostoyevsky. And then there are mere trickles, like Jean Rhys. All that matters is feeding the lake. I don't matter. The lake matters. You must keep feeding the lake.'

and I realised that's part of why I'm loving this work. Jean Rhys is talking about one's own writing - and, next year, yes with a hallelujah on top to that - but it's how I think about assisting a writer and artist too. I may not be pouring my own words into the lake, but I am removing obstacles so other words and art can get there. It seems a very humble thing, but actually feels important and deeply satisfying.

I feel Rhys has set the bar uncomfortably high for 'trickle', so I'll say I've added a puddle-splash to the lake. It's just one poem, but it's my poem and I'm proud of it and it's (soon to be) published, so I'm very happy about it. 

Meanwhile, there are still those girls to raise. 3yo is having a dressing-up phase. Here she is on the way to collect her sister from school:

and I am feeling quite emotional about 9yo's decision to learn the fiddle. I've bought her a half-size one, but I still have Thomas's and it would be a wonderful thing if she could play it one day.

Last Friday was the ten year anniversary of our wedding.

I manage these powerful dates a little better each year. We were given some homemade mead as a wedding present, to be drunk in 2012. We had planned to celebrate our second wedding anniversary with it, but of course that didn't happen. It has just been standing miserably at the back of the teas cupboard all this time. So, as our women's group gathered so near my anniversary, I risked the possibility of explosion and/or poisoning and opened it. It didn't explode and it was surprisingly drinkable (in tiny quantities - it's definitely potent!). Even 9yo had a sip, and although she pronounced it 'disgusting' and went back to elderflower cordial, I'm glad she tried it because she was at the wedding too :).

I am definitely not a writer who can work whilst drinking alcohol, but I'm raising a virtual glass of this mead to love in all its forms and to the next ten years. Cheers!

One good thing

The ticker tape streeling through my mind in various shades of urgency does not stop. I need to just accept that it has not and will not ever stop. Except, of course, it might. But for now, while there's just me and the girls and the meals to prepare and the house and the garden and the study deadlines and the driving lessons and and and and See? Endless streeling which can quickly become strangling if I don't keep snipping at it like it's some enchanted forest of briars with something worth having in the centre. There is nothing in the centre. All this effort to snip off this task and that task, get as much done as I humanly can...if I could magically make it all done; then for one shining, bleak moment I would have nothing. And I've never liked nothing. I've done a lot of workshops but they've never won me round. (It's the hen thing again.)

So I am left with the doing, but a deep need to be doing less frantically and more gracefully. Maybe I could go at my ticker tape thicket with a scimitar instead of shears. Maybe I could stop sometimes and look back at all I have actually done. I get so determinedly focussed on what I have yet to do that I forget I have achieved at all.

I have raised an exceptionally lovely human all the way to nine and a half. Here, she is industriously making granola balls for everyone at the outdoor skills camp the following day, wearing her Dada's T-shirt which has been her nightie for seven and a half of her years. I have just confiscated the maths workbook she was doing in bed by torchlight. Kids these days...

And another wild and wonderful human all the way to three and a half. Here she is on her daily forage for breakfast, still in her onesie :).

I have, through both luck and judgement, come to this spectacular place to raise myself and my children:

So far so loved-up and homely, but what gnaws at my bones is the writing I have not done. And I don't know why, when it's the one thing which brings me OUT into the world with a ferocious courage I can barely believe when I am unwriting. Yes, the time lost feels like time unwriting work which now will never be. It is a tragic loss, if only to myself. Every circumstance I could stutter in mitigation matches that of someone who just wrote anyway.

'Tis as 'tis. No more unwriting. Poems have been coming, which is new and surprising. I have sent some of them out with sturdy boots and knapsacks to see what they can make of themselves. The final year of my degree starts very soon. It mercilessly chomps at my time, but also makes me read good writing deeply and so fills the wordwell. And a tiny but perfectly formed job has been placed in my hands. I keep looking down at it like it's a bird's egg. It feels fragile; it has not yet begun; it may only last a short while. Terri Windling has asked me to be her assistant. We will discover the exact shape of the role as we go, but basically I'll do some of the non-creative work which is intrinsic to the business of writing and editing. I'll learn a lot and get to spend time in the happy company of Terri and the famous Tilly.

Sometimes you just need to achieve one good thing:

In the spirit of which, I have cut my own hair. Again. So here I am looking very pleased with myself despite 3yo quite painfully getting her foot caught in my earring. And, yes, I do know filters exist.

On hens and enlightenment

Terri Windling recently wrote a blog post which included Parker J. Palmer's thoughts on 'the admonition to 'keep death before one's eyes daily''. I started to write a comment but it became too much and so I returned, the prodigal blogger, to share with you my thoughts on death and enlightenment, through the medium of hens. (Did you miss me?)

There was a time when death was 'before my eyes daily'; I couldn't escape it. Perhaps it is a lack of courage in me, but when I lived with a moment-to-moment consciousness of my mortality and that of all the people I love; looking to the future became impossible. I literally couldn't plan, even a daytrip, even a meal. Life was difficult. And terrifying. 

I think of that time when people talk of 'being in the moment': I just couldn't make it work in my actual practical life. I was like the chooks I cared for when I lived in a commune. One would suddenly flutter over the gate. She'd peck about for a bit, then notice how far she was from the others. Bocking in alarm, she'd hotfoot it to the gate and flap and fluster there indefinitely, living quite perfectly in the moment, having forgotten that with just a short run-up she could easily fly back over the gate, and not possessing the imagination to plan that in her future. Eventually I would walk pass and scoop her up, mutter some insulting words of endearment and chuck her back over. By the time she'd landed she'd have forgotten there even was a gate. 

There is a real wisdom in letting go of the constant planning and organising and controlling the minutiae of our lives. I get that. And a lot of the past is best forgotten just to free up a bit of brain space for poetry and PINumbers.

But the years I spent at the gate, so close to death I saw it every time I blinked, they remind me to keep life, too, 'before my eyes daily'. I like to plan good meals for my girls, and it is a blessed relief to be able to imagine them older than they are now so we can plan many happy days together.

 

Happiness Week :o).

As advertised, Happiness Week is now upon us (yay!) as Action for Happiness launch their nationwide (British) campaign to increase cheer and contentment. For those of you who live elsewhere, all of their ideas and research can be applied anywhere, so please still check out their website.

Each time I blog this week I shall endeavour to bring happiness to you all. 

Thinking about how I might do that, I have come to realise that I am always, in part, doing just that already. This is a way for me to have a voice in the wider world and it's important to me that my input is positive. Sometimes I discuss what's not working or what I'm struggling with (see Love in the Snow and The story of an imperfect artwork), but my hope is that in sharing the trickier parts of my journey, I can support and encourage you when you come to a stonier path. Even if you're not a writer, artist, mother or animist, we're all capable of drawing analogies and learning from each other. Why reinvent the wheel every time?

For happiness in sound form, here's a beautiful link from Thomas Hine of A Basket of Leaves, a truly fantastic blog in every sense.

Just now, as I was eating my lunch, I found a story that brought me happiness in the way I was just talking about. And the strangest thing is that I found it in the Daily Mail's online paper! Now, I don't read the Daily Mail because I get angry. If you're British, you'll get the gist of my politics from that. If you're from elsewhere (please send sun), you'll know of an equivalent in your country which is generally avoided by open-minded, inclusive folk. Either way, do watch this.

So here I have discovered a story of love, courage and wisdom where I expect to find the opposite of all those things. Read it for yourself here. 

With little time to spare before my working day is over, I have finished my current artwork:

Gazanias

Brush Pen Mosaic on Canvas

5" x 7"

Thank you to those who left helpful comments on  The Spice of Life. The existence of gazanias is a source of happiness for me, as is this mosaic, even though too much light came through the canvas on the scanner. Still working on my technological prowess...

I'll leave you with a story which genuinely made me cry with laughter. Thanks to Terri Windling because I found it on her multi-faceted blog. If you click one link today, make it this one.

What makes you happy? Would you share it with us? Tell us about it in the comments, or email me direct with a link and I'll include it (credited to you, of course) during the week.

Reasons to be Blogging, One, Two, Three

To follow this bandwagon from it's first trundle out the barn doors, take a look at these (recommended) posts: John Barleycorn Must Die, Terri Windling's Studio, a mermaid in the attic and Ravenwood Forest. Or just hop on now and ride along with me while I give you my tuppence worth.

We (an organic web of blogs within the ww web)  have been pondering the whys of blogging; what it does for us as people, as artists, as earners, and what we can give through it.

For me, it's a kind of apprenticeship. I am upfront about still being in the process of 'finding my wings' and through this wonderful network of words I find inspiration, tuition, encouragement and discussion to broaden and deepen my writing and visual art. I think I'm trying to say that I find friends here. And I very much want to say that I offer friendship here. Maybe that's the heart of it.

 Unzip your doors and come make a fire with me.

Bring marshmallows!

I'm learning from those of you who have been flying with strength and grace for many years (and thank you, thank you for that), but I, too, have some things which I know; thoughts, creations, perspectives, which are uniquely my own and may, perhaps, be a help to someone following behind me. Our dust-trail caravan stretches far in both directions.

Here are two of the most useful posts I have discovered on my recent ether-travels:

For writers, here is an interview with Stuart Aken, about publishing on Kindle.

And for artists, a fascinating and insightful piece by Graham Hanks on modern colour theory - it may not be what you expect!

Because I have a secret dictionary addiction, I fancy drawing attention to a magnificent 'word for the day'. Today's offering is:

pettifogging : quibbling over insignificant details.

This word is on the endangered list, so your challenge is to use it sometime today, to keep it alive and well.

And my stone for the day:

Rain quenches the earth,

Gives shoots a root-up,

Bulges buds to bursting;

Drenches my sadness through

So I must peel it off

And be glad.

And speaking of gladness, a special thank you to Claire de La Luz for making me top of her favourites list. What a pleasure :o).

Do please keep sending me your words and images for Happiness Week. 

What really makes you smile?

Small Stones and Sexy Cello

A crow seesaws
On the telephone wire,
Dignity compromised,
Ducking and Rearing,
Until he is replaced
By a smug
Blue tit.


I walk in dusk
Like a shawl;
Like a cowl.


And the sexy cello I promised you is just at the other end of this link to Terri Windling's inspiring blog.