Today there was a certain new joy in persevering with the rhythm that will sustain the studio inside.

Alongside other chores, yesterday I had two calls with old friends, and although in a way both of them were need and I was helping (listening, which I am not always good at), the quality of the (re)connection – (‘re’, because we have been so little in contact in the ferocious wildness of the last two years) was very deep. They’ve both known me a long time, and although there is a certain element of them knowing a me that I no longer am, there is also a knowing of a me that I deeply am and will always carry with me, that newer friends will never truly know.

Then I cycled to the seaside on my bike, taking with the picnic food that my mother always makes for my family’s seaside trips, simplicity itself yet with the soul of a thousand small memories.

It is not totally the case that I have cleverly made a joy happen; it’s partly the sheer fact that after persevering with so many chores and so much work, some of them are now done. There is a loosening into the necessary tasks of the day. I am at liberty to untangle thing more, to create more freedom. I note to myself the importance of not accidentally accumulating more.

Nonetheless, I am aware of a kind of deeper nourishment. My soul is resting. My perseverance can come from a deeper place, from the deep heart rather than from a certain kind of drier (yet for a time necessary) intention.

In the middle of my life I found myself in a beautiful garden. I’ve longed for one, and although I expected it to be in a more conventional house and of a more private nature, the one I have tumbled into is a continuing wonder; a collective small garden converted from a tiny park, in the middle of the city, with small allotment boxes with the growings of strangers who are becoming known, and a communal, collectively tended vegetable garden from which I can at will pick spinach, herbs, beans, potatoes.

I feed my perseverance by putting myself in the path of beauty and trying not to neglect the wondrousness of existence, by a collaboration.