Artist and writer currently living in Aberystwyth.
He talks of how I make him feel safe. It is an illusion, of course. I cannot make him safe. We both know this. Life will do its thing regardless of the regimen we put in place to hold us. But, nevertheless I am glad that he thinks this and says it. He is the first for whom this has been the case. And, will probably be the last.
I tend him. I do. And it is a tender tending. It is an act of love, of care. I didn’t think I could do. Family paradigms, I suppose. The love is returned by doing it. Twofold.
I am touched by her kindness. She didn’t have to do it. She enfolds us. She is benificent in a way that I can never be. But I do try to share it. I sent some to her and her children. I wonder what she will think of this?
What looked like a lesser spotted woodpecker that had been feeding on one of their bird feeders flew off as they opened their front door. I watched from my studio window as she, her son and then her husband stepped out into the rain. She wore a coat, her husband didn’t. And it was she who accompanied her son to the waiting taxi. And it was she who stood waving him and the taxi goodbye long after they had driven out of the old school gates.
Is it an indelible trait of the human condition to always be longing for something other? We talk of trips away and yet we’ve only been back home a week. I want to be here in my studio working and yet I also long to be on the road, untethered to the weight of that work. The dreams are nice though, even if that is all they will remain.
Enough. When is enough enough? Enough drawing, enough to eat, enough sleep. It is hard to say, to be sure. And who decides? I didn’t get enough sleep yesterday. I wanted to attend the Slow Reading session but it does throw out my routine terribly. But it is an enriching experience and that is enough. So I do it. Can I take it easier today?
Today’s new moon has brought graphic dreams. Last night was about a little boy – maybe five or six. But it could also have been a little girl with a puddiing-basin haircut, as I used to have as a child. He was being returned. He or she had taken a long journey to be somewhere, or attend something but was being returned. On a ship. A huge ship. There were two adults who were attending him or her on their return journey. I watched this little child, who wasn’t at all distressed about being sent back, as it stopped at one of the bookshops on board to look at a display of picture books. I woke then, not wanting to. The journey, the adults had told him would take seven months.
I watched a video of him talking about his tea meditation. Take two hours over it, he said. Be present in the drinking, with the tea, otherwise, he said, you are not solid. I am not solid. I feel that. How can I make myself so?
It’s all we have. There’s no point being anxious about what is coming tomorrow or next week or the following year. This is it. This day. This moment. This breath.
He told me at breakfast that he saw the paramedics come in the night for one of our neighbours. Poor love, no doubt it was his breath that was struggling to come. I wish him well.
She told me that she is planting a wild flower meadow and I was pleased for her. Such a gift to the world. And at such a time when so many warmongers are planning on destroying it and us. How I loved her that day.