Ok, so here goes again. I am wading through heavy water, neck deep it feels at times. A creative block that feels like nowhere, something like stage fright, petrification. In a week or so I am opening up my work space as part of the local open studios event and a part of me is wondering who the hell I think I am. I hope if people visit I do not disappoint too much. 
And then after that this piece for the NNEP exhibition at Cley that I am working on, which maybe I have been standing too close by to really see. It's an annual exhibition which I have long aspired to be part of perhaps that too is forcing me up against myself, a desperate need to impress , to come up to the mark. What mark ? A mark I have set for myself that feels too high, too hard a hurdle.   
So I thought maybe another splurge of words might help. I can't bear to read the previous posts which felt like a fever and sickness when I wrote them, better out than in, but not pretty or sweet at all, not lovely. So, if I repeat myself apologies.
Something I've been pondering lately are those age old questions; who am I ? what is life all about ? what is the meaning of life ? where am I heading ? and so on .. I am surely not alone in pondering these questions  and they are all questions that don't really have an answer I think. They stem maybe from a loneliness and desire for companionship, or maybe not, maybe the desire for companionship stems from the lack of resolution, the inability to solve the problem, maybe another mind would make all the difference, maybe they would know more, maybe I just don't have the answers and need some other input to make sense of life, that old adage two heads are better than one springs to mind. 
Maybe I'll make things simple for myself and begin with just one, who am I ? who are you ? hell-fire how hard is that question to answer ? I am a mother, a grandmother, a daughter but somehow because my relationship to my parents is not very close that feels less important, a sister (not important at all my sisters and I don't speak), I am a friend, I think and hope that I am a good friend to some. I am an artist, woah, what does that mean ? Artists can be quite funny about that title especially artists with traditional skills who can define themselves by their field, they are painters, printers, sculptors, potters and so on, the chances are they do other things too but their skill in one particular area/craft gives them a credibility I daren't call for myself. I make things, I fiddle about, I play, I think, I think a lot, I'm not sure that counts as art but it is very much a part of what I do. But there is not great call in todays world  for thinkers unless they can give their thoughts saleable form. 
The "who am I ?" question is about identity I guess, I've begun with my closest relationships, and gone on to what I would say I do if someone asked me that dread question "what do you do ?" 
But is what I do or who I relate to the sum of me. Am I that photograph I like that was taken when I was younger and prettier, am I that ? am I what other people see in me ? am I the clothes I wear ? the people I spend time with ? the things I do ? places I hang ? I think I am all those things. Is that why when my lover, from so many years ago, left me without a second thought it felt like I'd been ripped in two. Is that why for four years I felt like there were two me's, the one living my reality, and another, a ghost of me, tracing the footsteps that had seemed so sure, so perfectly possible ? It's as if the momentum of those steps just kept going, my spirit path following tracks that had in fact been blocked by his decision to leave. Do I regret that he left, how can I  ? The real me carried on, I remember his last email in response to my asking what was going on. That the story he'd spun me about his move being a new start for us was empty words. It was a new start for us but separate, I was in the discard pile, no longer welcome in his world. He said he really just wanted me to be "a friend to fuck" .. I loved him .. I couldn't be that person .. my nature isn't brutal enough to play that game. 
Being dumped is always horrible, being dumped, being fired, being shunned, these things are set deep within most of us as unhappy events. Social isolation is dangerous for the human as an animal, most of us are too weak to thrive, or even survive, alone. 
But alone we are, alone we are born and alone we die. Or do we ? I suppose the hope is that through pregnancy a child is supported and loved by it's mother and through it's mother the people who support and love her. I am aware that this is often not the case so I am offering that as an ideal rather than a given. And what if the situation isn't ideal, what then, what if the mother is unsupported, or the baby unwanted. 
I know from experience how painful it is to carry a child without support. When I was just a few months pregnant I found my sister in my partner's arms giggling coyly and demurring flirtatiously as he tried to persuade her to have sex with him. It wasn't a great moment. Even now I'm not sure who I felt most betrayed by, him, or her, or the rest of my family who quickly covered for her - she was then the family's rising star, a Cambridge graduate, going places - and labelled me a feckless slut for having illegitimate children with a man who didn't stay to care. Am I bitter ? I am. More for my daughter, than myself, she was abandoned by everyone too. I am still crushed and ashamed that no-one came through for her when I was a seriously struggling mother of a newborn and a two/three year old. How can a family be so unfeeling towards it's own children ? I am still shocked that no-one cared enough to check we were ok. We weren't ok.
Maybe that is not necessary to the posting, but it is a big part of me. A shock that I carry still. I did live in social isolation, it was during Thatcher's time in power and single parents were one of her pet scapegoats after the miners. It was time of fear for me, a time of poverty, hunger and cold. This time around, with the Conservatives in power, I have been lucky, so far, not to have been hit by the their cuts to the vulnerable but I feel them because they echo my time at the bottom twenty seven years ago. Trust me, not much trickles down at that level. And I hadn't planned to be in the position I was in, I was in my happy ever after until I wasn't, it can happen to anyone. 
So what am I getting at ? Who am I ? I am who I was, who I am, and who I will be maybe. On my bedside table I have a picture of Alice in Wonderland falling down the rabbit hole which my youngest gave me a couple of years ago. In the corner I have tucked a slip of paper with three questions; where are you from ? where are you now ? where do you hope to go ? When I am feeling doubtful these questions help. The first two ground me, give me a sense of my history and my current being, they offer me a spring board from which I can take off. 

I'm a bit allover the place here, can I come back to the work I am doing for Cley, it's really just a line of sticks but the sticks represent my journey from finishing my degree to now. Four years of my history. The time after Jon left me. The time I discovered myself, living alone, it's been a journey, I've had jobs and holidays, made new friends, done lots of art, been a little ill, got better, he even re-entered for a couple of years as an email contact but tho' I asked him to meet for coffee we never did and maybe that is for the best, our contact ended in anger just weeks ago and tho' I regret that he was not the man I hoped he'd be, why should he be that man. 
Which brings me to another thing about who I am and back to those relationships. Let me say that I think love comes in many forms and is definitely not just about person to person but can be a vocation, a place, a thing, a pet, a book, da da, da da, da da. Often love is related to attachment, often love is conditional,  these two elements within a relationship can muddy the way. 
I identify myself as a mother, this is my most important relationship in my life, I'll not mess around, there's my kids and grandkids and they are the people I hold closest to me, the people I would drop everyone else for. That saying, my children are all grown up and live separately from me, so my attachment, the love, if you will that I feel for them, is necessarily stretched to accommodate their need to fly the nest. And this is the remarkable thing about love, it crosses time, it crosses place, I have a feeling it also crosses over death that if love between two people is great enough the lands of the living and dead merge. It seems too strange to think it would just stop. Even with my pets I love them still. 
This blog post is again a lot about relationships. i am fascinated by movement, lines and connections, the weight and speed, the push and pull of interaction, the choreography between one and another. It seems to me that every step I take leads to the present, to now, by that token I can kiss goodbye to yesterday but because each one of us is our own constant I cannot entirely shed that yesterday. This hearkens back to a previous post I know about traces so I'll leave it there and see if anything interesting comes up over night.