drowning in March

Anyone else out there found this past month almost unbearably long, depressing, heavy and overwhelming?
 Today is the last day of it and I've decided to take drastic action;
I'm drowning in words, good words, wise words, possibly helpful words..........but I can't think anymore and what's worse, I can't see. I've surrounded myself with the safety blanket of books, an immediately recognisable identity which I needed at the outset of this journey but now, I'm being slowly smothered.
So......................they're going back to the library to wait until I actually need them as opposed to want them. Acquisition is not quite the same as being.
 I have a tendency to buy outrageous shoes in the mistaken belief that owning them is the same as living that life; I buy into a pigeonhole then turn out the light and walk away.

I'm reading Kathleen Jamie today and I now understand why :)

parallel pathways

 

• creating alongside reading

• the one informs the other

• blurring the edges

• merging

• reflection in action

• reflection on action

• becoming..............................

I see now how I think; it's how I see, how I engage, how I learn.
Anyone else feel this way too?

Not knowing, not caring.

 I'd like to talk a little about not knowing...that place we go to as we create; not knowing quite why we feel compelled to make a certain gesture, or mark or stitch or word...we just know we have to.

 I was given this beautiful handmade lace collar by a friend. It had a special place on my wall, waiting....then, recently, I just knew what to do with it. I didn't need to know why, I don't need to know why. The reason was like a fleeting shadow in my mind, then it was gone. No matter.















  I love handmade paper; irregular, smooth, receptive, responsive to my touch.

I'm reading Agnes Martin's Writings with great pleasure and resonance.

I like linen thread. I like words. I like stitching through soft, thick paper. It's slow, rhythmic, peaceful, stitching this lace onto the paper.

I wrote my words, I wrote Martin's words; an act of homage and of connection.

I don't mind that I don't know the cognitive rationale behind my doing this act over several days, it felt right.

I'm glad.

Paper Work & Lace: thinking on my thinking

life world

Much reading and thinking since my last post, primarily about these dark spaces between, where thought, image and experience meet, briefly, before we force ourselves awake.

Sometimes however, the need to make overides the quest to learn and this image above is what happens.
After creating it, intuitively, I completely forgot what it was that inspired me to puncture, rip, tear, paint and stitch some handmade paper. So, reflection on action didn't work this time.
Later though, I did see the connection between the text and the work; Husserl felt that as technology hurls us headlong into the seductive future, we tend to miss those very dimensions of experience so essential for our continuing existence.

This work is about 18 ins long, stands non too steadily on my table yet speaks to me more forcefully than any words. Maybe I just need to read more?

sketchbook conference

I keep a large sketchbook where I record my creative journey, visually but with an ever increasing desire to write carefully chosen words which add extra meaning to the images. I use these sketchbooks as teaching tools as well as for me; I forget things and at times need to remind myself who I am. I'm finding now that this sketchbook and my research journal, have met and crossed paths, at last. I've been waiting since November for this to happen of its own accord.
Now, I feel ready to start. I'm enjoying creating my own bus ticket for this journey of a lifetime. Below is an image which today appears in both books.
Silk/rock. Fragile/strong. Hard/soft. Resisting/yielding.

I'm a practitioner who thinks. There are lots of us out there with all kinds of tacit knowledge which we want to share. If we don't share, when we pop our clogs, that knowledge pops off as well, sadly. This need not happen if we value and respect where each of us as practitioners, comes from. The link below looks interesting and worth considering, if you're nearby or even if you're not. It's about sketchbooks; all kinds.

http://www.acessart.org.uk/events/?p=101

New beginnings

I've been struggling for weeks with issues of my research and finally feel a sense of another aha moment coming on. Timely, first day of a new decade. The following words expess it very eloquently;

'the search for time, for place and for a life - is necessarily a search that arises only as a consequence of the inevitable experience of loss, and, if it achieves any resolution of the distress induced by that experience, it is a resolution that is brought about through coming to better understand the densely woven unity of life as lived'. 'Only thus - in the concreteness of an embodied, bounded existence - can we come to understand that in which the value and significance of a life is to be found'.  Malpas. J. E. Place and Experience.