...and so am I... at last!
I have wanted to write a post for ages but I've kept on stalling... I haven't known what to say... I've started a few lines in my notebook and then given up, and then suddenly a week's gone by and it all happens again.
The truth is, I haven't felt like I've anything terribly interesting to say. There's been more 'life' than 'creativity' going on here - and that's been the case for quite a while. I've decided to bite the bullet and write something anyway, just to mark the passing of time, because I want to be truthful with myself, and in the end this blog is for me, to read when I'm old, and what I'm feeling and experiencing at the moment is just as valid and as much a part of the story as the busy, successful times.
I haven't done any art for a while, nor any kind of expression other than the intense giving out that life seems to be demanding of me at the moment. So, I am 'inhaling'... taking in... absorbing... and trusting that the 'exhaling', the expression, the creation of something other than life and relationships, will come.
Maybe the new season will bring other newness with it. I hope so. Autumn is here now, I know this because as well as the rose hips and ivy berries and darker evenings and chilly air, there was a huge skein of geese in the sky this morning, very high up and distantly honking, making their way to Norfolk and the Wash to feed on the mudflats over the winter. We are right underneath one of their flight paths here in south Manchester and every autumn is marked by their passing from west to east. In springtime, back they go westwards, to Iceland or Greenland to breed over the summer months. I love hearing them and rush to the window when I hear the sound of them passing over to catch sight of their strung-out 'v' shapes making their way across the sky.
East to west, west to east... the miracle of time passing. My 'baby' granddaughter will soon be starting school, and neither of my children are teenagers anymore. This feels incredible, but there is something familiar and comforting about the journey of the geese that somehow makes it all ok. Good and wonderful things happen in amongst the terrible and frightening things, and there's a sort of rhythm and form to it all that I didn't notice when I was younger and saw it as a single, linear journey. It's not that at all, is it? Not a bit.
I'm doing a lot of reading. A lot of sleeping, a lot of thinking and praying and eating cake and back in August I did a lot of cleaning. Hopefully I'll be doing a bit more writing and taking photos and getting back into more of a conversation with life very soon.
