adventure

end of year

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The year is ending.
It is time to say goodbye:

To missed opportunities
(new ones will come),
to old patterns of friendship,
to stages of life
that I may not know have gone forever.

It is time to say thank you
for each delight:

Quiet evenings playing the piano,
noisy evenings with friends,
a new neighbourhood pub,
a delivery of beautiful clothes,
chatter of small children,
wisdom of older relatives.

It is time to ask for forgiveness:

For moments when I did not
reach out a hand of friendship
or of grace.
For sniping comments in asides,
for shortcuts,
and holding backs.

It is a time to let go:

To release expectations of others,
to shake off expectations from myself,
to accept what was not accomplished,
to let tears carry away loss,
to set down burdens of false responsibility
to shed the hopes of the old year.

It is time to turn around:

To open up to new hope,
to summon energy and courage,
to breathe in delight,
to laugh in anticipation.

It is time to welcome:

New adventures, new beginnings,
new people and new seasons of old friendships,
challenges bigger than ourselves,
darkness we must face and overcome,
every opportunity to bring beauty,
to offer kindness,
to overlook a fault.

It is time to step forward:

Into what we do not yet know,
into what we have not yet seen,
into what we maybe glimpse from a distance,
into what we know and long for, or even dread,
into each new day, a gift,

It is time to beckon and embrace
who we will become.

things I want to tell my children but might forget – at the station

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At the station

While walking in the street is fun, sometimes we will want to go on a longer journey.  We might go to visit London, or cousins, or go to see something interesting in a place nearby.

A train journey is one of my favourite things.  To take a train, you have to go to a station.  A station is an almost magical place.  In a station, trains come and go, all bound for different destinations.  Some are going to small places nearby, some are going to big places far away.  But the fact that so many trains are coming and going makes a station full of opportunity and potential and mystery.  You could take a train to a place you have planned to go, or you could just turn up to the station one day and take a train anywhere you like.  Trains are arriving and departing all the time, so an adventure is always just around the corner.

Not only this, but at stations lots of important things are happening.  People are saying goodbye to people they love, or welcoming back people who have been away for a long time, or they are waiting for visitors to come, or they are going to important work meetings or holidays or interviews.  Sometimes people are not there for a specific reason, but just to travel about and see the world.  This is called exploring and it is one of the best reasons of all.

In a station, you can also find things like things to read, things to eat and things to use if you happened to have forgotten something important.  There are people there whose jobs are to help people to find the right train, and the right ticket.

In fact, when you get to a station, the first thing you need to do is to check you have your tickets.  Sometimes you book these in advance, sometimes you go to the ticket counter.  If you decide to queue for a ticket, make sure you go in the queue saying ‘tickets for today’; otherwise you might have to queue twice.  You need to make a decision whether you want to return on a particular train, or whether you want to be at liberty to return any time you like.  These decisions will determine the price of your ticket.

Once you have your ticket, you might need to buy some things.  I sometimes buy something to read, and often tissues and maybe water.  Some people buy things to eat on the train, but when we are traveling together, I will always make us a picnic.  Having a picnic on the train is one of the most fun things to do in the world.

To get to the train you need to put your ticket into the machine at the ticket barrier, and find the right platform.  If you pick the wrong platform, the chances are you will take the wrong train accidentally.  This has actually happened to me and I can report that it is quite time-consuming to take the wrong train.  It is also important to concentrate on the time so that you don’t miss your train.  This is easier by yourself than with others.  Once you are on the right train to the right place at the right time, it is the moment to concentrate on finding a place to sit.  At a table is best for picnics, but this is not always possible.  Right now I also like to pick a quiet carriage but when we travel together, we will probably picnic an ordinary carriage, where you can laugh and joke and don’t have to be extra quiet.

Once the train departs, the next adventure begins.

found poem, London, winter 2014

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I like my town

Art is a dirty job but someone’s got to do it.

Back to basics.
Douceur d’enfance.

Today is a good day.
Live what you love.

She acts like summer
and walks like rain.

Art for all.
Discovery.

Let’s fill this town with artists.
Art is nothing without the gift

‘I love William Morris
as I love most artists who manage
to make their lives and work
completely part of each other.’

When William Morris lay dying in 1896,
one of his doctors diagnosed his fatal illness
as ‘simply being William Morris,
and having done more work than most ten men’.

Love is enough.

Own a masterpiece.

Welcome.

No peeking.

Skate.

He is like a tree planted beside the streams of water,
which yields its fruit in season,
whose leaves do not fade,
in all that he does he prospers.

‘Dying is as natural
as being born’.

The secret is out.

You are here.

Step into the adventure.

Thou God seest me.

A little patience won’t hurt you.

Notes on locations:  sign in Loft store, shirt in Loft, product in Loft, candle in Loft, art in Loft, art in Loft, Duke St Emporium, DSE, Landrover showroom, name of shop, sign in same shop, Anarchy and Beauty, National Portrait Gallery, cushion in NPG shop, sign in NPG, Jigsaw store window, Somerset House sign, engraving of Proverbs 1 in Somerset House monument, quotation attributed to Cecily Saunders, Kings College London, wording on a van, street map, advert on bus, wording above St Clements Danes church, sign on Tube.

raw materials

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Today in London I went to an art supplies store.  I had an idea for a picture that I wanted to make, but I didn’t know how to make it, because my experience of making pictures is limited to two particular domains only – black line drawings, sometimes coloured in, on white paper for flipcharts and cards.

The art supplies shop assistant was an expert in helping inexperienced customers.  Patiently, she asked questions that helped her track from her vast experience right to the door of my very narrow experience, and my even narrower requirements (despite the narrow experience I have very specific parameters).

The result I wanted to capture was large-scale simple black line drawings coloured in as if with felt-tips.  Slowly we cycled through the options; acrylic paint ‘pens’ (no, too much like paint), watercolour ‘pens’ (too much variation in shade when used to colour in – due to layering, apparently), fine-liners (too fine), and then a kind of brush-like felt-tippish pen (not sure of the technical description) that came closest to matching on the little tester note book the idea carried somewhat stubbornly in my mind.  Even better, this pen was available in the large multi-coloured set and a myriad additional subtle shades that I had been hoping for.  I was on the brink of realising the vision I had earlier attempted to capture in my email to Caran d’ache customer services asking if they made (/request that they would invent) flipchart pen versions of my favourite felt-tips (no reply).

But the process did not finish there.  In my mind’s eye, and slightly deluded by my perception of its ‘proper artist’ status, I had thought of drawing straight on to a (admittedly pre-prepared) canvas, but, it turned out, the effect I was looking for (a dye rather than paint effect) would not work on canvas.  So the process started again, watercolour paper (no, too bumpy), cartridge paper (too thin), mountboard (too thick) and so on to something called ‘papier epais’ (thick paper, extra appealing in French) which seemed just right – but I would need a larger size.

My raw materials selection afternoon has reminded me of a profound truth.  Each of us constitutes the ‘raw materials for some particular kinds of creation.  In the art shop, I could choose the raw materials for my vision.  In real life, it is the raw materials that are given, and my role is the expression of these into the artistic work of living a life.  The shop assistant reveals the a great call to a deep understanding of the raw materials of each other, so that we can have expectations that suit the roles others are equipped to play, and that our collaborations in relationships, in work, in community life match what each is able to offer with what each is able to receive.  This is creative work that never ends.

Letter to the forty-six

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Perhaps you had no idea
when you tinged your wand
on a ‘like’ button,
to ‘follow’,
when you clicked a link,
that you held my dream in your hand.

I’ve been here twenty-four days precisely
and my life has turned
upside down.
Maybe we none of us
know the meaning
of what we have
unleashed.

Creatures hidden unseen
for a hundred years
have opened their eyes,
blinking,
to the new light of day,

and breathed in
reality, and discovered
welcome,
have coughed up the old
poison apple,
started dancing.

I crept in here
away from the glare,
under the radar of a stasi
I never knew were there.
How did they come to rule
even a corner of my
universe?

Perhaps you had no idea
when you tinged your wand
on a ‘like’ button,
to ‘follow’,
when you clicked a link,
that your hand launched a dream.