It’s a lifetime’s work. I may not manage it. But I can try. It’s all about perspective. Here is this, this wonderful opportunity to learn, to develop and become what I have the potential to be and I bog it down with fear. Fear of failure, of not matching up. Try, just try. Work hard, face it and it will evolve. It will become something. Perhaps not what you’d ideally like it to be, but something. Something worthwhile. Keep going. Onwards.
My desire to take myself to bed yesterday was overpowering. I didn’t feel good. A stomach bug. But, was it a bug or was it more a physical reaction to my greyness at being home, at facing the tangle that is my work? I cannot tell. I ached, felt nauseas and grumped. I was a grump. Wasn’t I? Poor love, he has to manage it all. I am a little better today, though my colon groans and bellows. We’ll see. Just keep going and things will get clearer.
It’s been a time of breakings, of things ceasing to work, of shoes letting in water, of clocks no longer ticking. I am home after a month of comings and goings, and it feels odd. I am out of kilter. My body is sluggish, as is my mind. The transition from nomad to stay-at-home is a prickly one. He is kind and wise. As always. Take your time, he says. He is right. I need to. I need to allow myself that.
Mostly I don’t know how to pray. I went into St Paul’s Church in Covent Garden last Wednesday to try. There was no peace. Visitors trundling in and out and a young man standing on a ladder fixing one of the chandeliers. Is peace a requisite? I pray in bed but invariably fall asleep. I want to hold them – all those in Gaza, Lebanon, Israel, Iran, Sudan, Afghanistan – the list is endless. I want to stand with them. Feel with and for them. But it is hard. There is no individual to relate to. Just numbers and a memory of sorrow.
Transitions are always tricky for me. Do others feel the same? It’s that moving from one life to another. It is never smooth. I miss the other, and then, once I’ve got used to my own again, it’s a wrench to leave it. I think of that other family, to which, for this last week, I have belonged. And now? It is as if it was never there. No heartbeat. I miss them.
Is that the word that Edith Hope wrote on the telegram she sent to her lover from Switzerland? I can never remember. Anyway, we are. We are returning. Today.
I need some time at home. I am discombobulated by all this rootlessness (though as I write this I think of those trying to maintain some sort of normal life in a war zone or refugee camp). But my work does suffer, or at least that is what it feels like. I need to be still. Though I also learn so much from the travelling and the seeing of people. We talked of sadness last night.
I went to bed early and slept long and uninterrupted. Long dreams of making, loving and washing.
The parents return and I am glad to let go, to hand back responsibility. I have loved playing parent, for that was all it was. Not a game exactly, but a role assumed. I’ve loved their beingness, the sometime-adult, sometime-child-ness of them both. And caring. As I do. But it is tiring. And I am used to pleasing myself. Well almost. And now the next concern takes over. Let me draw well and be kind.
I creep along the corridor, open the door and slide in under the duvet. My feet are ice. The sheets are white and chill against my skin. I cannot muster the bodily warmth to heat them. I fold the duvet in two and hope for sleep. It comes. Soon.
I dreamt of the house in Spain. My work was everywhere. The agent had arranged an open day to attract buyers. They all spent the time viewing my work. Some were sellotaped to the wall. I’d forgotten it was there. That they were there.