Dreams are such strange things. They feel so tangible when inside them and often, afterwards too. I can sense them through the day but cannot decipher the images or the meanings. Last night I think there was a badger. Though perhaps his black and white coat was too clean, to distinct to make him a real one. Could he have been a toy?
I went and drew. Oh, such good intentions. I fail and fail again. But at least I am doing it. I am watching and thinking. And I did make that initial contact with the ACW. We shall see. I think about how I might write about practice – possibly I can follow the trajectories of other artists and include quotes? And there must be that mix of artists and writers, for both are to be at play. However, I don’t want it to be dry. I want it to be authentic and spontaneous and warm.
I woke from a dream that took a while to decipher, or at least work out where the images came from. The bit I remember took place in an outside loo, well small bathroom really. I was standing inside it watching a small baby who had been placed, naked in a sink feeding itself from a bottle. It was struggling a little and I thought to help it but it righted itself and the milk started to drain. It had one eye in the centre of its head, an issue that at first I thought nothing of, until staring at it the one became two.
There’s a butcher’s shop on the corner of Bridge Street and South Road. It’s a ramshackle affair, half-soaked really. You know the sort of thing, discarded egg trays and ropes of onions in the window, a half-filled glass-covered counter and a sign on the door saying closed Wednesdays and Thursdays. Well of late it’s looked even emptier. And then the other day I saw a row of cards by the till. Retirement cards. Six or seven of them at least. So he’s gone (though the empty egg trays are still there). Sweet that he thought to display the cards. It saves questions and explanations, I suppose. Will he be missed? I hope so.
I drew the wasteland outside yesterday, in between the showers (I was caught, trapped in the car during a long one). Unsatisfactory, really, but I must keep going. I need the momentum that real studies – that is moving objects – give me.
I don’t have it, but they do. He read out the article about them to me as I made supper yesterday. They own the Hungarian restaurant in town. He’s really a doctor. And he, and his wife, have shut up shop and gone to Afghanistan. They want to help. Taking nothing but bare essentials and wearing t-shirts with DOCTOR across the front they will go to offer assistance and aid. They’ve done it before in Syria, Africa and other war zones but always with the protection of the UN and other NGO. This time they are going it alone. (Though how they will get there God alone knows.) I am in awe of their simple humanity and the willingness to act on their desire to offer succour.
And what of the rest of us more ordinary mortals. Well, we have our ups and downs. Mine were down yesterday as I tried and failed to draw well. I went out early, as I promised but there was no hub, no energy, just a few joggers and early promenaders. I did make marks but I was self-conscious and awkward. There were the two detectorists for example, one who had all the kit, including knee pads (he kept jumping down on one knee to dig) and the clearly homeless man (he had a huge coat on and rucksack) who appeared to picking up stones and shiny things from the shingle. Then there was the fisherman, dropping his line over the Promenade rail. And then later the smoking woman. None of them were still enough for me to draw a decent reflection them – they were skittish, fidgety, like me I suppose. Walking home (he came to meet me looking fresh and handsome in a new shirt) we came upon the first round of the Round Britain Cycle Race. (Is it a race?) It took us completely by surprise. Lights flashing, cops on motorcycles roaring through the main streets, a rather meagre cluster of bikes and then more roaring from their support vehicles. And all the elderly crawling from their easy chairs to stand still slippered in the doorways and on pavements to wave at them. It was hard not be moved. And Llanbadarn Road absolutely gridlocked.
I think about my drawing all the time. How to do better. I feel my dips and later, though still cross, I experimented with white space. I need to look more – always and try other ways of communicating.
Warm nights seem to make people of certain age in this town a little crazy. Perhaps its an inability to sleep. Bodies were abroad. I did not have the Promenade to myself. There was noise. A group of kids were scampering across the wet sand beneath the harbour quay. Two of them, girls, were giggling. At every thing. It sounded like they intended to steal or borrow one of the boats that were moored up. A dingy perhaps or a rowing boat. As I was walking back I saw them driving a small red car further along the Prom and parking up. All with the maximum amount of noise and screeching of tyres. They all piled out. The girls, after a short whispered conference between themselves, resumed giggling. I don’t know where they went after that, maybe the beach. The boat rustling was clearly a failure. Two figures were already on the beach, lit up yellow by a fire. Prior to this I’d seen a man in a pair of shorts, his chest bare leave the house on the corner of South Marine and walk round to the one next door. He then walked into the road and appeared to throw something up to the top window. The narrative, his narrative sound became clear. The top flat was ablaze with light. I could see a young man either dancing or throwing his hands up into the air. There were sounds of music and shouting. So that was it. The man (I could now see he was grey-haired) had clearly been woken by the noise and was trying to get them to stop by ringing doorbells or throwing stones at their window. Neither were being successful. I hope he got some sleep eventually.
I find it all so frenetic. Too much, when silence is what one wants. But as The Stones memorably sang, you can’t always get what you want. I’m off drawing today, a new tactic in response to the sun. I will go armed with my flask of tea and see what I can see. The Norwegian class left me high. That was nice. We sparked each other. It felt good after my dark Monday. You see, he said, it always passes.
It’s still there, bless it. We’ve just passed it this morning, it’s rigor-ed body yet in tact. It must have missed its timings leaping across the road, as they do, and been hit by a car. Death has frozen it in a flying posture, its tail and paws aloft.
A low day yesterday, brought about by all and nothing, as it usually is. Walking and being out drawing yesterday helped. The drawing was up and down but all those men sleeping in the sun, their bellies full of fish and chips helped. I need to still myself, to breathe and to take time to look before the marks are made.
Today is better. I am better. The glorious sun helps. And already it is warm. As did the break in routine, our going out for coffee so that I could draw before getting my hair cut. I like her. We talk about her mobile home. She’s to go to Jersey soon. I love the cosiness of her chat, the way her life with W and their dog is offered up as warm as a currant bun. Bless her for her cheerfulness, when she can’t always feel it. And him, so jaunty in his new jacket.
Two students were sitting in the middle of the Promenade pavement, just beneath the War Memorial as I walked this morning. They were in deep conversation. He sat cross-legged and she kneeled, facing him. I think he might have been crying.
The echo of an oystercatcher’s pip pipping was carried across the sea, while gulls ripped open bin bags on Chalybeate Street a day early.
My body aches and I fantasise about a massage. She writes of her pain and I think of another in hospital and another newly placed in a nursing home.
There are so many things going on with my current drawing practice. (My whole life is a practice – and that’s OK, isn’t it?) I mean there isn’t just the challenge of observing better, of preserving my stamina, of paying attention, of composition and quality of line but my engagement with those whom I draw. I feel such warmth for those I watch (such as this old man, who had clearly had a stroke. His friend had to help him off the bench and kind of shift his legs for him. They spoke in Welsh, with soft, reminiscing voices). It is a kind of love, certainly. And often what I feel is not in the drawings. Ah, I have such a way to go.
It was an unexpected joy. For they are utterly joyous. The way in which they curve into an arc as they fly out of the water is quite marvellous. We were all enraptured. For people had gathered, stopping their cars and rolling down windows, or leaning over the Promenade railing, or rushing onto the beach cameras and phones in hand. Some were even on the water, paddling or standing on surf boards. I felt lifted and stopped still. Thank you.
What are you doing? People kept asking me questions. I felt a little invaded. First it was the lad who we’d see in Caffe Nero on Wednesday, whom I’d tried to draw. What are you working on? he asked. I’d been drawing in the harbour and he’d made his way down from the house he’d been working in to ask me that question. A nice lad. A pleasant open face. I didn’t take offence. He was genuinely interested. Unlike the landowner (‘I own several properties around here’) who interrupted my drawing of the digger outside his derelict property with its sparkling white fence to ask me what I was doing. Apparently his tenant (he has a tenant in that ramshackle house – I thought I’d seen a light on some mornings) who had ‘bad Asperger’s) had seen a masked and hooded figure looking suspicious. I showed him my drawings (not a flicker) and said I was only interested in the machinery.
My drawing goes up and down. I can feel when it is slipping from me and when I make back compositional decisions. It all goes in the bank, he says.
The sun is trying to come out, though a liquidy cloud persists. The cleaning is done for today.
She had Covid-19. Her daughter rang me to tell me she was going into hospital. She has it too and with a young babe to care for. Poor loves. How helpless we are with other people’s pain.
The town jeweller has died. He took over the business from his father, so he and his shop have been part of the town’s architecture for a long time. A woman he knows in M&S told him about it yesterday. I questioned how she had heard about it, being from Aberaeron. Oh, everyone will know, he said. When I walked past his shop this morning (all boarded up) I saw that someone had placed a small pot of mauve chrysanthemums on the step.
The geraniums been looking so tired, and knotty and gnarled. It was time. So I pulled them out this morning before my work. It was a violent act. They’d put in such roots. Soil went everywhere and the hall light, being a push in timer switch kept going off. It was almost comical. I didn’t like doing it. I don’t like killing things. And it felt like a murder. I will plant hyacinths in their stead. But for now I want the blankness. The sweet peas are still flowering. I took one of the seed pods (wait until they are papery, the website said) and, not being sure what to do with it I placed it on a dish in the kitchen. Eating breakfast I heard a noise, a kind of ripping, but couldn’t work out where it came from. He didn’t notice it. When I looked it was the pod, it had split open of it own accord. Six seeds. I will keep them in a bag and plant them next year. Who knows?
Drew again yesterday afternoon, though the wind in the harbour was unrelenting. I will return today and perhaps with some crayons.
Sometimes life is inordinately strange, and that’s not to say that I don’t like it being so, for I do. Like the other day when I was walking beneath the war memorial and I saw something flashing from inside a wastebin. I was loathe to stick my head inside to see what it was, so I just left musing upon whether it was a torch that someone had chucked in there or a mobile or something less logical. And then yesterday afternoon my alarm clock went off without prompting, just once, just one urgent ring then it stopped.
The spiders are coming in. Or that is how it seems. There is one huge one that is always scurrying over Bryan our sausage dog draught excluder behind the front door when I return from my walk. And then there is the moth that has taken up residence on one of our geraniums on the windowsill. It flaps about a bit when I water them but then returns to its perfect camouflage when the spraying stops.
He dropped me by the Prom on our way home and drew and redrew the little coffee van. A young lad told his mother to get out of the way so that I could see properly. She hadn’t noticed me but he had and he kept watching me out of the side of his eye, wary but interested. The drawing came better……I think.
(Oh, and here is the digger I spoke off. I love watching it in use. It is a dinosaur-like being, ever hungry, and slow and heavy in movement, lumbering even. I shall return to draw it.)
