And so to begin again after hand-in. In education terms and deadlines become the points of focus. I have missed, i think, having very definite points of focus. Self-driven work is another kind of hard, easier in some ways because the pace is driven by oneself, but harder because without the clock ticking outside of oneself the drive forward can lose momentum. It makes for different work. The struggle at uni is to keep up with the pace whilst simultaneously owning the path taken and not squandering internal resources. 
The last term's hand in was on election day. I wasn't sure if i was wired because of the election or the hand in but either which way it has taken me some days to come down. I did not want the Conservatives to win this election so my moods have passed through some changes, from numb to denial to anger to resignation. I am not sure where i am this morning it's quite early so i guess i'll have to wait and see. 
My next term's source story is the stations of the cross, christ's journey to crucifixion, and i think to rising again. Are there comparisons to be made between Corbyn's modern day crucifixion by most of the press and the old Blairite-Labour people who resented his leadership and his call to socialism as the way forward ? Perhaps it does bear comparison in so much as great stories, stories that are told over and over become guiding myths, with characters that become icons. At present Corbyn is just a man who came to be a leader. But there are similarities between the two stories. The crowds that gathered, the ask that all should be treated kindly, the calling out of those whose worship falls to money & false idols, and now the pillorying of the man and those closest to him. I will be interested to see how he rises again. I am sure that he will. 
Politics and art and religion, what a combination, i guess it's always been this way. They stand as bedrock to humanity. Politics is body, if we are not fed & sheltered our bodies cannot thrive, if this is denied us the body dies. Art is soul, life blood poured onto page, take page as any form of art, it is expression, how soul takes form. And religion, religion can be corrupt, religion can be debased, defiled, made unworthy, but religion as faith is not religion that has made it's bed in corporeal pleasure. Let me say that religion is spirit but the spirit can rise only so far as the body will allow.
Before the election the Archbishop, Justin Welby, and Chief Rabbi Mirfiz firmly placed their faiths in the hands of the Conservative leaders. There is no distance now between these men and those they gave their colours to. Welby is tweeting empty prayers for the poor. His prayers are only for himself, a throwaway token that carries his hope that he would still like to be seen as worthy and good. 
Oh how they wish to seen as kind. Oh how we wish to be seen as kind but the election result has also brought me up sharply against my own worst nature. I want a government who cares for those who are struggling so i don't have to. Honestly, that's my truth. I am not a brilliant or good person. It will be interesting negotiating Christ's path from birth to death and beyond this term as someone who is decidedly not a saint or martyr and has no inclination to be either. I have no doubt this is going to bring me up against myself and teach me some hard truths. 
The Bible is the holy story i was brought up on. I was Church of England as a child, my mum took us to church and later i sang in the village church choir. I can remember being confirmed. I love to visit churches now and i would say that christianity is a lingering scent but i have no religion as such. I take a little of any that ring true and walk away from doctrine because i'm uncomfortable with tethering, it doesn't suit me. However, as with the Ramayana which i have just spent three months researching, drawing it in to my body and then letting it out again as i have understood it, i am looking forward to immersing myself in Christ's story. It's more familiar, i know parts so the path may feel more familiar, but a path trod over and over again changes all the time. 
At the beginning of my MA we were taken on a trip and asked to think about psycho-geography which is a coined phrase for how we know a place, not just physically but emotionally too. I suppose that my meeting with these great stories, the birth of christianity and the Ramayana is a similar kind of knowing. By immersing myself in the storyline i begin to know my way, i begin to map the story, knowing it as i might know landscape. 
With this second term's story i have begun by thinking about the birth of Christ. It is good timing as we are coming up to christmas tho' i think Father Christmas is the more cherished god at this time of the year. Still if anyone is interested i have scribbled a Madonna & Child as part of my thinking and posted it on my Instagram rebeccaclifford8379. I think most people will only see scribble but most of my ideas begin with a scribble.   
  

New post, new bibliography. I know a little bit more about referencing now so it will hopefully be done better and if i start now i'll have books, films etc in it from now to the end of the next unit. I think i'll include ear-worms, or maybe just ear worms i don't mind. And i'm debating over whether to reference as a timeline or in alphabetical order. Harvard is alphabetical but is it more interesting to me to know when and what i was looking at, listening to, reading, watching and so on. I guess it will become clear as i go along what works for me as private referencing which this is really. I know i will still get things wrong but i'm working on a practice makes perfect basis, hopefully as i go along it will become easier to get it right. 

Ahmed, Aisha.S. Why You Should Ignore All the Corona-Virus Inspired Productivity Pressure https://www.chronicle.com/article/Why-You-Should-Ignore-All-That/248366?fbclid=IwAR2Qh4XG_rYZoAKM3mvL4NnbqJfB2dnJRYzxRrNzXImF3eVDTElZ1gt9F14 (Accessed: March 30th 2020)  
Anderson, D E. R S Thomas: Poet of the Cross. https://www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandethics/2011/04/20/r-s-thomas-poet-of-the-cross/8661/ (Accessed December 29th 2019)
A Thousand Times Good Night (2014) Directed by Erik Poppe [DVD]. Sweden: Arrow Films
Away with Words (1998) Directed by Christopher Doyle [Film]. Japan: FusionMediaSales.
Behind the Scenes at the Museum: Cancelled! Censorship and self-censorship in the arts (Podcast) https://www.podbean.com/media/player/abb6c-d0a546?from=yiiadmin&download=1&version=1&skin=1&btn-skin=107&auto=0&share=1&fonts=Helvetica&rtl=0&pbad=1&fbclid=IwAR08L11jtnxEZy3lQw_WZUHFCXt3J0eXzRzbhK62ANExnlYW_T1kGtOcPCw (Accessed January 29th 2020)
Brooks, C. (2007) Magical Secrets About Line & Engraving The Step-by-Step Art of Incised Lines. San Francisco: Crown Point Press.
Desire & Sexuality - animating the unconscious (----) 
Eyes, Feet, Road - Hamish Fulton (2006) Directed by .... [DVD] London: Illuminations.
Fanelli, S. (2007) Sometimes I Think, Sometimes I Am. London: Tate Publishing.
Four Horsemen (2012) Directed by Ross Ashcroft [DVD] ... Guerrilla Films
Hentoff, N. (1966) Maurice Sendak's Fantastic Imagination The New Yorker. Available from: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1966/01/22/among-the-wild-things (accessed 16th January 2020)
Freidli, I (2012). Steve McQueen Works. Switzerland: Laurenz Foundation.
Ghost Stories Keep the Roma Alive (2020) The Atlantic Emily Buder https://www.theatlantic.com/video/index/607222/blueberry-spirits/ (Accessed February 29th 2020)
Hunger () Directed by Steve McQueen [DVD] 
Jesus of Montreal (1989) Directed by Denys Arcand [Film]. Canada: FremantleMedia. 
Lehoczky, E. Cartoonist Lynda Barry: Drawing "Has To Come Out Of Your Body" https://www.npr.org/2019/11/27/782921983/cartoonist-lynda-barry-drawing-has-to-come-out-of-your-body?fbclid=IwAR3tS5-0Z4WwSIwK9zcTVEwXeKelQcFmcv8OtaUoJVQdLLvavf3jniyXD48&t=1577682071685 (Accessed December 29th 2019)
Lived Experience within the Body (2016) Arts Enterprise at the University of Sheffield. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mIUXb3siqFE (Accessed: March 4th 2020)  
Mary Magdalen (2018) .... [DVD]
O'Brien, S. (2018) Europa. London: Picador.
Otherworlds The Art of Nancy Spero & Kiki Smith (2003) Directed by Andrew Hodson, Gary Malkin & Helen Baker [DVD]. Gateshead UK: BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art.
Pincushion (20--) ... [DVD]
Shapiro, D. (2001) Cy Twombly Coronation of Sesostris. New York: Gagosian Gallery.  
Stations of the Cross () Directed by Dietrich Bruggemann [DVD] 
The Dance of Reality (2013) Directed by Alejandro Jodorowsky [Film]. Chile/France: Curzon Artificial Eye ?
The Haunted Forest: Ghost Stories of the Roma. (2020) https://youtu.be/cDaKihBR8S4 (Accessed February 29th 2020). Published by The Atlantic   
The Secret Joy of Falling Angels () Simon Pummell. [DVD]. UK: British Animation Awards
Vagabond (1985) Directed by Agnes Varda [DVD]. France: ?
York, E. (2008) Magical Secrets about Aquatint Spit Bite, Sugar Lift and other Etched Tones Step-by-Step. San Francisco: Crown Point Press.

And as i'm writing down the books and films and web pages i've come across, i see how good it is to have it recorded. In my head, as i note down The River which i watched right at the beginning of the term as a window into India, i am taken back to early 1950's India. I remember that the film gave me my starting colour palette. The River is filmed in Technicolour. It gave me sounds and images and a way into India. And the extras to the DVD were documentary films from the late 19th century through to the early 40's which let me see India as a colonised country through a very English lens. The documentaries made me realise that my not having lived or visited India was less of a problem than i thought maybe because nobody knows the life of another, the India of the Mughals was not the same as the India that was held by the British Empire which was not the same as the India of the 1950's that i was looking at through Alan Ginsberg's eyes and mind, or the India that friends spoke of or the India in my mind that comes from 30 years of yoga & meditation or the India of the Ramayana which is the seed point for all my work this term. It made me think that a man/woman cannot live in another's skin but through imagination we can gain some insight and that art and writing may offer passage to the being of another.
The man who did the cinematography for The River was Jack Cardiff. He also shot Black Narcissus and one of the documentaries which led me to look for more by him on youtube and it was from watching one of those, Temples of India, that i began to think of columns and stories carved onto columns, because learning how to tell stories is another aspiration i have come to university to learn. 
Thinking about columns made me put a long sheet of lining paper up on my studio space wall that i could start to scribble on , first with water soluble graphite pencil, then glue (uhu), then paint, then varnish, and more paint, and more varnish (some with sand mixed in), and collage, and more paint and so on. It ended up a big ugly mess but it didn't, it doesn't, matter because doing it made me think of stories and how they layer up and change and how bits get missed out and bits get added on and who knows what the story started out like at the beginning and maybe it doesn't matter. And all that connected to my reading and watching half a dozen retellings of the Ramayana, all of which have key connecting points and characters but all of which have varied here and there. And from painting, the ugly painting, i then was inspired to draw some of what i was thinking about on the back of secondhand copper etching plates and one was the column in my head with a turtle which is one of the incarnations of Vishnu who also incarnated into Rama to save the world from Ravana. And some of this i know from reading the Ramayana over and over again, and some of it i know from reading Ritual Art of India by Ajit Mookerjee which was a brilliant introduction to Indian culture along with Tantra Art also by Ajit Mookerjee which i'll confess i've still only just dipped into and also Tantra Song by Franck Andre Jamme which i've also only just browsed. Because time, time, runs away with itself.
At the beginning of my MA i felt like a snow globe that had been shaken up, forgive me if i'm repeating myself, it was an overwhelming impression. Now i'm aware of how i have had to keep my foot down on the accelerator pedal just to achieve the little i've achieved. Sometimes i think i've achieved a lot and then other times i think how so much time has passed and still i'm only just beginning and haven't made any work that is more than a scribbled idea. If i get another lifetime as an artist i'll try to get cracking sooner. i wish i had learned to print at 18 or 19. But i didn't so that's life and i guess it's better late than never. 
This term i've been learning inks and papers and process. I've tried sugar lift as a way of making a mark on an etching plate and next week i'll try at least one other way. And i've tried using more than one ink on a plate because one of the 2nd year students i chat to was doing it and so i asked Jess, the technician, and so i've begun and can now plan to do that if i'm thinking about what to make and i know that it's called a la poupe. And next week i'll maybe try chine colle which will add a collaging element to my printmaking. I must read more about it before trying. 
In the screen print room i have learned how the tables work. And in theory how to register the print with tabs of masking tape. I need to try other papers for screen printing and to think in layers of image and how to be more careful with my lines so that i get the picture i want at the end. My first screen printing was really just learning the basics, how to mix inks, the manners of the print studio, how to be part of the space, how to be competent at the process not worrying too much about the work i was producing. My second screen was full of itsy bits that then took ages to print and so i tried to make a three layer print which felt like new learning, and was, but i rushed the lines i drew and so the finished picture is clumsy, so next term i will try again in the hope that i can make something i'm more satisfied with. 
I'm going to stop soon but i just want to add into this blog post that after feeling disheartened by my tutorial the week before i raised my sadness with my tutor and he was lovely. I realised that his job is not to pat me on the head and say very good but to get me to learn as much as i can while i'm on my MA, that that is some of what i am paying for, a critical eye, and tho it is uncomfortable sometimes it has to be that way. If learning was all easy it would be less precious, less hard won. Those are my thoughts not thoughts he put into my head except perhaps by being my teacher and pushing me to be my best.  
Later in the day after i'd spoken to him, we had a group crit with most of the full-time MA fine art students and we looked at everybody's work and the teachers talked about it and asked questions and it was so interesting to see and learn about fellow students work and process. At the end Desmond aka Mr Desmond said that all of us need to look at more modern contemporary artists and the idea of a dream exhibition was also mooted as we fell a little short on our knowledge of contemporary artists who weren't ourselves. I think looking at and seeing others, other's work, other's lives, is a way to avoid becoming too narcissistic and self absorbed.
I love the idea of a dream exhibition and i've been mulling over who i would have in mine. Who would you have if you could have any half a dozen artists, some living, some dead ? It has got me pouring over books and the internet to see who inspires me and made me ask who i am making work for apart from myself, what context do i see myself in, why am i doing fine art instead of illustration or creative writing if story telling is what i am interested in. I have discovered Kiki Smith and Laura Owens as a result of my search.    

Because i'm not an academic my day to day life does not call for Harvard referencing but doing my MA does. It's something i find difficult. I think i am more forager than farmer by nature, with all sources of sustenance. But, i figure that while i'm studying it may be sensible to have a bibliography blog entry that i can easily amend and update as i go along. i think if i do that it will make things easier when i come to write essays and will allow me to track my inspiration pathways. Tracking is mapping & i love mapping so even if it feels a bit of chore now, the chances are i'll like it later. So this blog is my referencing for the term to 12/12/19. Forgive it being a bit sketchy to start with, i'm learning how to do it  

Books
Chetwynd, M.G. (2014) Bat Opera. Cologne: Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther Konig
Hughes, T. (1967) Poetry In The Making. London: Faber & Faber Ltd
Lewis, J and Rigby, P. (ill) (1976) The Chinese Word for Horse. London: Bergstrom & Boyle Books Ltd
Okri, B. (1996) Birds Of Heaven. London: Orion Books Ltd
Sattar, A and Zohra, S (ill) (2018) Ramayana: an illustrated retelling. New York: Yonder
Jacabon, B. (2015) Ay! Mi Amor. France: Benoit Jacques Books
Patel, S. (2010) Ramayana: Divine Loophole. San Francisco, CA: Chronicle Books LLC
Hegley, J. (2013) New and Selected Potatoes. Hexham, Northumberland: Bloodaxe Books
Journals


Webpages
Swansea University (2019) Research as Art: available at https://www.swansea.ac.uk/research-as-art/ (accessed 25th November 2019)
Firer, S. (2018) "Transubstantiation": available at https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/11/12/transubstantiation (accessed 25th November 2019)
Louisiana Channel (2019) Rachel Cusk: You Can Live the Wrong Life : available at https://channel.louisiana.dk/video/rachel-cusk-you-can-live-the-wrong-life (accessed  3rd October 2019)
Louisiana Channel (2019) Jan Grarup: The Dark Side of the Lens: https://channel.louisiana.dk/video/jan-grarup-the-dark-side-of-the-lens (accessed 29th September 2019)
Louisiana Channel (2019) Erkan Ozgen: When Language is Not Enough: https://channel.louisiana.dk/video/erkan-ozgen-when-language-is-not-enough (accessed 1st October 2019)
Christies (2019) Quentin Blake on doing things a writer can't do: https://www.christies.com/features/Quentin-Blake-a-retrospective-forty-years-of-alternative-versions-9274-3.aspx?lid=1 (accessed 2nd December 2019)
Hass N (2018) Kiki Smith & the Pursuit of Beauty in a Notably Unbeautiful Age: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/26/t-magazine/kiki-smith-artist-profile.html (accessed 26th November 2019)


Films
Kar-Wai, W (dir) (2008) Ashes of Time redux (DVD) Jet Tone
Zecca, F.  (dir) et al (2012) Fairy Tales: Early Colour Stencil Films from Pathe (DVD) BFI 
Trueba, F. (dir) (2012) The Artist and The Model (DVD) Axiom Films
Renoir, J. (dir) (1951) The River (DVD ) London: BFI
Boyle, D (dir) (  ) Slumdog Millionaire (DVD)
Van Sant, G (dir) Elephant (DVD)

Paintings

You Tube
BFI (2010) Temples of India: available at https://youtu.be/VI-l-dn_hFA (accessed September 2019)

BFI (2009) A Road in India: available at https://youtu.be/cOsv6kWGxGI (accessed September 2019)

This is the end of this terms MA units December 11th 2019 ... the bibliography is incomplete and no doubt full of mistakes but i have started to think about how to reference. At the weekend i will start a new bibliography for the next terms units and hopefully i'll make a better fist of it. Just as with my degree it seems like there are skills that will be learned beyond the making art malarkey. It's value for money really, an added extra, learning how to research, learning what i'm interested in, and how to lay markers on my trail that allow me to see how i have got from A to B. 

New post ... keep going. This is my reflective journal. This is my notebook for my MA. If i keep saying it and making myself write it down maybe at some point i will understand what I'm thinking and feeling.
I think my MA honeymoon may be over. I am still over the moon to be studying to have landed in the place i'm at. But reality has hit in. I wrote my first draft RIPU essay and it is rubbish. I'm not exaggerating it rubbish-ness, it's wooly and ugly and says nothing of any worth. Back to the drawing board. Research essays come out of real time research. I think i am researching but have i been sitting back expecting to use what i already know ? 
One of the things that has been hard from the start of the MA has been separating the ASU from the RIPU. We have RIPU lectures in the morning and ASU in the afternoon and often the ASU wipes away the RIPU. So now i am faced with layer on layer of eaten up but not digested learning from RIPU. And that doesn't necessarily mean that the ASU is going well although i know i have learned quite a lot this term and i feel like i've made headway but is it visible ?
I have learned how to use the screen printing tables. I had screen printed on fabric before but it's not the same as screen printing on paper. The process is different, the feel is different. They are sisters perhaps who may look similar but if you get to know them you find their likeness is quite superficial. 
I still have lots to learn about screen printing and i intend to continue but as i was exploring the oil based inks print studio i have discovered etching. I had not thought to get to etching quite so quickly in my studies. I had thought it would be beyond me. But i fell into it by accident.
I began with mono printing. Jess, the technician, showed me how to print from the glass table and then how to print using a matrix (an aluminium plate) that then goes through the press creating a different kind of print to the hand pressed table print. By chance after a morning of experimentation that ended with using the matrix and drawing with my finger tip and white spirit i produced a print of a monkey, very loosely drawn and maybe not clearly a monkey to all or many. With art i find that there is a moment when my heart says yes, i make an awful lot of bad art, stuff that leads up to the yes art but which isn't worth much or any looking at but when something works a gut instinct kicks in and i have a feeling of jubilation. 
So my monkey print worked but being a mono print there was only one. At this point MA fine art and curating students had been told that in a couple of weeks we'd be putting up an exhibition which was a bit of a holy hell moment. Coming into the MA with the intention of learning how to print starting from a base of pretty much no knowledge my printmaking skills were slight to say the least and making work that felt exhibition worthy was a challenge. 
I should perhaps explain why i have monkey's on the brain. As my seed topic for this term's work i decided to use the Ramayana. It's not a story i know much about but had i read Daljit Nagra's epic poem a couple of years ago and loved it and wanted to make the story part of my knowing. Different cultures grow up knowing different stories. In England, in a casually practicing christian family (my mother goes to church) i grew up with bible stories. And on top of that  folk and fairy tales and some of the great children's books; Alice in Wonderland & Through the Looking Glass, Wind in the Willows, The Hobbit, The Narnia stories, The Secret Garden and so on. But I'd missed the Ramayana as it goes. 
In the Ramayana there is a monkey character called Hanuman who is a key player and hence my mind has been following monkey tracks. I have a feeling that Hanuman has introduced to me a character within myself that i will take away from my reading of the Ramayana and beyond my MA. This monkey character is perhaps the monkey in man. I will sit with him, it seems to be a him, and see what he has to tell me over the course of the next few years i daresay. 
Monkey in me was found by my finger tip when mono printing, unleashed perhaps. I was thinking about using the image as a screen print over the screen prints that i had made from my son's old maths homework and a circle that came from a sanding disc i'd found. But because time on the screen printing tables is limited to availability and i was not sure how it would work i turned to photo etching. This was my path to etching. Now i am hooked. 
From photo etching i went to sugar lift etching using scrap copper plates. Using camp coffee an image is drawn on the plate, left to dry, and then painted with black straw-hat varnish. When the varnish is dry hot water is poured on the plate to lift the sugar up and wash it away which leaves a negative image, this image is then processed with aquatint and acid. That is just making the plate. After making the plate comes printing and in my arrogance i'd thought that would be easy, just put some ink on and run it through the press, but oh no no no, it's easy to rub off too much ink or to rub it off unevenly, it's a skill i'd not clocked that i'd need to learn. And even something as simple seeming as making a black and white print asks the printer to choose the black, the print room has half a dozen blacks on offer. And what paper ? I plumped for snowden white for my test prints my working proofs of the sugar lift because when i printed out my monkey photo etching i'd tried several and snowden tho' not the most beautiful paper is cheapest and gives a clear line but now that i know how they print on that i'd like to try them with other colours on other papers.
Aah and now it is time to get up and go again and i haven't written half of what i hoped to write but this week is looking like a catch up on writing week so i'll be back to this blog desperately trying to note down two and a half months of thoughts and happenings that i wish i had set down sooner. 

I'm mad at myself for not having blogged my MA from the start. Maybe i would feel less edgy if i had. I jumped into my course feet first, excited to be learning again. But out of the loop of learning i find that i was unprepared and now i feel like i'm floundering, anxious about my documentation, is my work good enough ? will i pass ?
The course is divided into two threads RIPU and ASU. The names are enough to make a mind wonder what is going on. I think RIPU is Research into Practice unit and ASU is Art Studies Unit. I imagine this was explained to us right at the beginning but right at the beginning my head was spinning with all the new, new acquaintances, new teachers, new learning, new being. 
For me my MA is my first major step back into life since Jon died. My "i am alive" affirmation, my "life goes on". And it is certainly giving me that affirmation i already feel miles away from where i was a year, two years, five years, ten years ago. I feel like i am passing through a fire ritual, coming out cleansed and beautiful. By beautiful i am not so much talking physical beauty as being beautiful, being spiritually beautiful. It's perhaps not for me to say whether this purification by fire is succeeding but it is my hope and the feeling i have right now. 
The course began slowly. We were enrolled on a Thursday and then there was a week before our first lectures. I'd wondered if one day of teaching a week would be enough but it turns out to be plenty as it leaves four days to make use of the studios and to learn from the technicians who man the studios. The generosity and patience of the technicians i've met at NUA both now on my MA and before on my BA is enriching. They give their knowledge away with such heart warming kindness and show respect for our work and desire to learn even when what we turn out is unoriginal, ugly or unsuccessful. And when we succeed, when we make something that makes us happy, that gives us a "yes", they let us know they see our happiness and it makes a difference. Being witnessed in joy is a gift. 
I am trying to catch up on a term's worth of knowledge in this blog and i know i will fail to get it all in so i may jump from moment to moment as moments pitch up in my mind while i'm writing. If i try to go carefully day by day i think it's likely i will struggle to keep my momentum. I think i will be a monkey leaping about in tree canopy rather than a more earth bound creature like a deer, an elephant or pig rootling on the forest floor. But maybe i won't. I never know how words will fall out of me when i blog so to fetter myself with an identity is perhaps unhelpful. 
After enrolling i went into the studios and wrote and drew on sheets of paper on a table in the corner that was not then my studio space but is now. I say it was not then because being the only one in the studio it wasn't really my place to give myself a specific corner without the agreement of the other students sharing the space but it came to be my space because no one minded that i kept it and i was happy to stay there. For three days i went in to the studios and saw pretty much no one. It was very odd. It was cold and as i wrote in my notebooks and scribbled on paper and tried to feel like i belonged and was meant to be there i could hear the working life of the university going on a round me. I felt separate then. Now i feel like part of the university body. In a year i will no longer be part. Now i walk through the big doors swipe my card to get into buildings that for this one year belong to me and to which i belong. It's a good feeling. It feels like coming home. It feels like i am amongst people who understand to a point, whose minds may also be filled with ideas that in other worlds seem off beat or weird. I am amongst people who get excited about a mark on paper, a line, a dot, a sound, a smell, a shadow, a body, a thing of small consequence that maybe matters an awful lot for an instant.
Being in such a world takes a little getting used to after being out of it for a while. Suddenly every sense is alert and it's easy to feel a little skinless, or whippet-skinned as opposed to great bear-skinned or pig-skinned. There's a desire to do everything, every which way there are enticements, i briefly went through a phase of feeling like a child in toyshop told she can have anything. This was somewhat closed down by a tutorial in which i was given instruction to refine and draw in my exploration. 
Tutorials are strange. I have felt sad and disheartened after both my tutorials with my tutor. He is kind and he is polite but after we've spoken i find that my confidence takes a dive, that my trust in my process is diminished and it takes me a little while to pick myself back up. I am not sure if this is a teaching technique and i wonder if maybe it's part of the course that in tutorials i will have my practice torn open and questioned, that tutorials are not where i will receive affirmation or approval and that maybe they will be easier if i accept that is not the point of them. Formal education has a form, it would be a shame if at the end of my MA i was making the same work as i was making before i started it would be a shame if i had not moved on and perhaps the pulling apart is part of the process, the journey from interview, acceptance and enrolment to, hopefully, graduation and working life after graduation.
But the MA course is designed well, i think, because before we enrolled we were asked to create a manifesto for ourselves and when i feel knocked back i refer back to mine which is a "snakes and ladders" manifesto. I let myself feel the slide down the snake but know that it's part of the game and that with a new dice roll i'll be back up and running and to remember the joy of the game is playing and that when i reach a hundred the playing will be done. 
Perhaps I'll end this blog post here to come back to later, later today or tomorrow, or the next day. I'm aware that i'm on a catch up but for a moment maybe i need to pause and draw breath and get back to tackling the first draft of my RIPU essay which is giving me a headache and making me worry that i will fall at the first hurdle. 

Back to my blog after an absence and thinking to again change the way i use it. I began it way back in 2012 when i was in the second year of my BA. I used it to catalogue and document my creative process back then as suggested by the tutor in a class session about blogging. He also recommended that we limit our blogs to our creative practice and not post personal stories and i pretty much kept to that for the duration of my degree but how do you keep creative practice and personal separate ? i think for those with a mathematical mind this is easier than it is for those who are more sense & felt experience responsive. 

Regular readers of my blog will know that in 2017 when faced with the death of someone i loved i used my blog to scream my grief, my pain, into the ether. I needed to give voice to my feelings and my blog was a safe space for me to open up and give voice, all the boundaries that others were giving me could be abandoned and i could express at least some of my need to speak, to tell my story. It belonged to me. My blog belonged to me. My story belonged to me. i abandoned the notion of right and wrong feelings which i think helps with grief and let myself be who i needed to be in that time. Now my grief has softened, it's still there but now i am more at peace with my broken heart and i don't need to talk about it so much.

Before 2017 i had used my blog to explain the process behind work that i was making for exhibition or sometimes to just muse upon life. Often story telling the journey i took with the seed of an idea to it's flowering as a piece of work in exhibition or not, sometimes just watching it grow.

 I wonder if this is something that others have found when blogging that their blogs evolve to suit their needs in much the same way a home evolves to suit the needs of those who live in it. 

Once upon a time my home was full of children, now my children are all grown up and as my youngest said a few years back on a brief visit it is now pretty much all art studio. He's right. Before my children were my life, now my work as an artist, be it good, bad or indifferent, is my life. The river keeps on rolling. 

Now it seems that i need to jiggle up my blog again. Almost to return to it's original being as i am studying for my MA and my MA has become the most demanding factor in my life. I am about six or seven weeks in to my one year course and time seems to be rushing rushing rushing by. It's fun and exhilarating but also i have a sense of if-i-am-not-careful-i-will-lose-things-in-the-rush. So it makes sense to use my blog as my reflective journal. 

I have tried notebooks and no doubt will continue with them, but they start off neatish and then become unreadable scribble, and maybe my thoughts on paper tumble out so completely unregulated by contemplation or consideration it is unreasonable to ask anyone to read them particularly some poor soul whose job it is to look at my work. I guess i will hand them in but i'd like to have something easier to read and access to give to my assessors and for me to refer to later when my MA is done. 

Also writing by hand on paper is not the same process as writing on a screen. I am a little more aware of needless words on screen. If you think i waffle here you should see my notebooks. And then also if i write a blog i can then post it to my social media platforms and may get response especially if i ask for a response and in my next blog i hope to begin to ask questions of my readers that if they are happy to give response i will be pleased to receive.

So what is this blog ? This blog may be a grandiose announcement "behold, look at me" but it's also a statement of intent meant more for me than any reader, i am changing, i can feel myself changing, i can feel myself sloughing off one skin to become a new being and my blog may be part of that sloughing off process. 

Oh hello blog, i may have neglected you as a way to get words out of me, as a way to understand how  the world feels to me. There are lots of ways to communicate and the how and the with who makes a difference. My notebooks are private, my blog obviously isn't. Emails may or may not be. Conversations are as private as the participants allow.
Before Jon died in 2017 we wrote emails to each other for about two years, back and forth conversations most days, often inconsequential chit chat, sometimes deeper stuff. When he died i missed his voice on the other end, the response, the return. I carried on writing emails for months, occasionally still i will email tho' i know he won't answer. But emailing dead-Jon feels unprivate, it's not me talking to him, it's me talking to an empty space, or a space that is Jon in my head, and i don't know if other people occupy that empty space, if i send him an email does it get seen by people who are not him the never-will-receive intended receiver. I guess we can never know these things. 
Privacy is something held within. People are more or less private it's a personal choice. As soon as a word is uttered or written to another it ceases to be private. Though there are people who hold our words private, counsellors, therapists and if we are lucky a few close friends we can trust with our secrets. 
Women who have been pregnant will know the super-secret wonder of a child forming in our wombs in the weeks before we tell anyone just in case the baby doesn't stick. I am lucky i have not had a child i needed to lose, or lost a child before it could live, how it feels to live with those feelings i will never know. There are feelings that are hard to express, that cannot be given voice, or which are terribly hard to voice. Those feelings become secrets.
Secrets can be good, can be great, but not always, some secrets are terrible. Holding feelings in can feel like safety but always holding is difficult and bad feelings held in and not allowed expression can become dreadful, unbearable. 
We are living in a strange political climate at the moment and some of the big frontsmen appear to be terribly damaged to the point of psychosis. When deep emotional wounds are left to fester within they may find outlet in cruel language and acts.  Or else terrible unfathomable depression. I know from my own bad self that mostly it is driven by things that cause me pain, feeling worthless, feeling rejected, feeling wrong. 
What is a bad self ? Why would i think part of myself is bad ? Is my bad self worse for being witnessed or worse for being shoved away, forced into submission and given no release, no breath, no light. When Jon died i was insane with grief, books and blogs say it's not insanity but it felt like insanity, insanity caused by grief but definitely not straight, not common place everyday normal. I think tho that maybe being insane with grief when someone you love deeply dies is an appropriate response so maybe that's why the books and blogs etc say it isn't insane. They also, all of them, state clearly that burying grief will not help, that each of us must live it as we need. 
I felt at the time that Jon's family would have liked me to grieve less, not for my sake, but theirs. Go away, be neat and tidy and out of the way, they brushed me away like rubbish and still that hurts and i don't know quite what to do with that hurt as over the past year and a half i have slowly recovered my sensibilities and begun to occupy my now and point my gaze to what next instead of what was or what could, or might, have been. 
Because what was still occupies space in me, and what is connects to what was, and what will be meets the was in the is. My lived experience with Jon was intense and marked me so of course it is still part of my now but i know that it is also done, that he is dead and who he was with me lives only in me. That won't be how it is for everyone grieving i think because often grief is shared with others who loved and cared for the deceased. But still each relationship is unique and i guess that's why mourning is such a lonely journey. 
For me it has been a kind of mapping process. A connecting of memories, places, moments, books, music .... and feelings. Feelings i think are the most personal of all our memories, I might see a mimosa tree for instance and it will take me back to the place we stayed in Italy where there were several flowering but as I fly back to that time i am at once again in the feeling of that holiday. I am in my now seeing a mimosa tree, but i am also in my past with Jon, on the platform of the deserted station, finding a boar's skull, looking over a bridge at the rubbish clogging the river, seeing Naples far in the distance from our bedroom window, exploring the roads and pathways around the village we were staying close by to, and so on. I am also in the future knowing that what is done is done and cannot be undone, that flights of fancy, what ifs, are strolls within my imagination and will never be reality but that my path keeps going. 
In that moment when i see a mimosa tree (other memory joggers are available) time meets time. And time meeting time is a place. A place in me. A cave within a labyrinth of caves. 
Ever since i was a child i've been a walker. There are lots of types of walker and i think maybe the way a person walks maybe matches their thought process. I'm a wanderer, maybe a roamer, i'm not a hiker, i'm mostly a solitary walker, there isn't a right way or wrong way to walk but different types of walker need different types of journey fellows if they choose to walk in company. 
When i was a child i used to roam the paths and roads and lanes around our home. We lived next to some water meadows and close by was a clay-pit where fishermen would sit in the gloomy shadows surrounded by midges in summer, once a pike stared up out of the water, it's head the head of a monster, still remembered, another memory that sits within my labyrinth of caves along with the gorgeous gloopy threads of toadspawn and the light on the water and the mud gap in the hedge that was how to get to the pool.  
I loved walking with Jon. Right from the beginning of our relationship it was something we shared. He took me to the paths at the back of his housing estate and the housing estate where his mother lived. We wandered together from word go. In many ways our wanderings were like the wanderings of two children. Two children roaming free in a beautiful garden world, our own garden of Eden.  Innocent and carefree we stopped to look at bugs and flowers, to listen to birds, got lost together and found our way out of being lost together. We learned to read maps together. I learned how to draw a map inside my body by treading paths, linking places together until i could draw them in my head. This is a practise i continued to do after Jon and I broke up and which i have found is a sanctuary process since he died. 
I apologise for going on about Jon, he was someone i loved, he wasn't perfect, and i could have grieved less if i had loved him less, as maybe i should have done, i would have grieved less but love is what it is, it's a feeling given free-ly not a creative accountancy game where you hope to get more than you give, tho i think maybe well balanced books make for easier relationships. 
When i was doing the sculpture trail in 2017 (blogs about this are from around about this time of the year in 2017) the area around the trail was unfamiliar. My friend David and I had a little explore and some of the places around the trail we'd visited before because he had family roots in that area and so we'd looked at Heckingham church and Hales church and walked around Loddon a little. My commute to the trail is longish but lovely. I catch a bus from Norwich to the road that leads up to and past Hales Church and i walk from there to the site, the walk takes about 40 minutes, i often see deer and hare and buzzards, some of it is grassy paths some of it is quiet roads, in good weather it's gorgeous. In 2017 i was my sculpture so my day was that, it was an odd enlightening experience, a chance to know how it felt to be seen being. It's all in previous blogs so i won't go on except to say that every time i walked to the trail i passed a crossroads. I came from one direction and took the turn to the right but the roads straight on and left called to me. Always i planned to go back to explore them and it is this that i've done as part of my research for this years trail piece.
Over the course of the past year i've been exploring the roads and ways around the trail site, building a new network of experienced wandering around my historical self. The first walk i took 4 deer crossed the road once, twice, three times, four times, i felt my knees buckle and my self crumble it was a moment i would have shared with Jon and weirdly at the moment i broke i felt his arms around me and his voice saying "it's alright, i'm here, i'm here"  i don't care if that seems mad it was my experience and it's mapped on that road and so i know that even tho he is gone forever as a body the feeling of him is always there if and as and when he is needed/wanted and maybe sometimes when he isn't wanted. 
My piece for the sculpture trail is giving me head issues at the moment because it isn't pretty. And it isn't clever. And maybe anyone could do what i am doing. In fact, yes, anyone could do what I'm doing.  I asked for a cave space within the shrubs at the end of the garden and have been gifted a beautiful space. I am wrapping the network of branches around the space, the space that is the cave, the inside of the cave. I want the branches to feel like the walls of a cave. I want them to feel like chalk lines marking out the paths that lead to the cave. 
Just after Jon and I split up in 2013 after my degree had finished and he had left for Gozo i went on a strange walking holiday in the Dordogne with a group of people i didn't know well. I'd been told about the trip by a woman whose work i'd admired in the degree show, i'd got in touch with her, we'd met for a cup of tea, we talked about walking, she told me about the trip, i got in touch with the man who was leading the trip, someone had bailed so there was one space in the minibus which i decided to take. It was a trip to walk and look at Lascaux amongst other caves with paintings and carvings and I'd wanted to see Lascaux for some years so it was sensible to go and i needed to pick myself up and get on with life after the shock of being dumped just when i thought Jon and I would be adventuring together. 
The trip to the caves was a beginning and ending, beginnings and endings belong together, sometimes they overlap and sometimes their meeting is marked by a sliver of thin air. Jon and I emailed semi-courteously for a while pretending to be civilised until my yoga teacher lent me the "Fuck It" book  and i decided that whilst he was quite within his rights to leave me neither he or his horrible family could tell me what to feel and if i still loved him, goddamn it (or fuck it) i was going to let myself love him. I knew i was supposed to behave, to accept rejection politely, to let him go without making a fuss but i decided to let my wild grow instead because it felt honest, because it felt good and i grew out my box, was unruly and thorny, gained mass and flowered and i'm glad i did. 
Oh, i must have needed to get that out.
I am talking about caves. I am talking about visiting caves and caves inside of me and the inside of the tree cave that i've been given to draw the map of the territory i've been walking this past year, this past two years, ten years, life. Inside my cave are my memories, my memories of Jon and the part of our lives we spent together, also my memories of other people, places, times, moments. Because inside of each of us i think is a cave, at least one cave, in which time and space and passage of time and presence all meet together in a place that is called Still. 

What do you do when someone you love dies ? Not someone you are fond of or someone you have an affection for, but someone you love, someone whose being resides in your heart ? When Jon died I asked my daughter this because I knew that she knew, she replied "you live, you live mum" ...
My experience of grief is only one experience of grief. My grief for Jon who I loved. It is different to the grief that other women who loved him will be experiencing because their grief is their relationship, the man he was with them, the woman they were with him, the chemistry between them that made them them. 
The interaction between two is always very slightly different, even day to day between the same two, one and an other is another recipe. Even if one of the two is a thing like a place or an icon. The individual within the story is the difference. 
Yesterday I watched a film about a little boy who died of Meningitis. A dad talking about his young son dying. A film of him playing with his little brother, performing and playing. It is an agonising watch. I have not experienced the death of a child. The pain is unimaginable. It stops me in my tracks, there is no breath. I see those who are having to carry their loss from a point of innocence, not knowing, of sympathetic pain, of understanding that is limited by my lack of experience, please god may that always be my good fortune. 
Experience is the teacher. I have my experience and you have yours. I know what I know and you know what you know. If we allow ourselves to meet with open hearts we may find that we have common ground and through that common ground we may be able to share our experiences and learn from each other how it is to be another. 
This is what has happened to me since Jon died. I was felled by his death, my blog is testament to that. And i have a stack of notebooks, and sketch notes in 2d &3d, and close friends who have held my space and listened when i have felt shot down, who have re-lit my light when i have been in darkness. 
My grief is not comparable to the grief some one feels when their child, their baby, dies. It stems from a different relationship, so how could it be ? But I think grief has meeting places, the loneliness seems to be common ground, sadness is too mild a word to describe grief, but it is in the mix a kind of whole sadness maybe, I can't explain this feeling it has no words in me, it is akin to love but love in darkness maybe rather than light, those who know what I mean maybe will let me know. 
I have felt since Jon died that I am occupying a completely different world. And this too seems to be a shared connection. The world itself has not changed, it carries on regardless as if nothing has happened, day breaks and night falls, relentlessly marking the time between the last point of contact and the end. Does no-one know that this great person once lived and now doesn't ? But it is only the few who love a body whose world has changed, the rest of the world carries on oblivious to the pain that those who are grieving are coping with day in day out. And all the videos and blogs and memes and poems seem to say this that grief is not a finite thing it is there and sometimes it is less pressing and sometimes more. 
Last week I decided to open the email that Jon sent me just after Easter in 2017. We had had an argument. His emails had become less frequent and more offhand and I knew he had started drinking again if he had ever really given up, he said he was drinking daily as a habit because I had asked him what he did with his days and he had told me that he'd have a couple of drinks mid morning before returning home in the afternoon. At Easter I asked if he was seeing someone, and if so i said i should back off, because I was not sure if the days when his emails didn't come were days when he was with someone or days when he was blacking out, and if he was blacking out that wasn't a good thing. He replied rudely, I replied rudely, we exchanged a vicious spat of words. I did not like the way he talked about the woman he was seeing. I decided on Easter Sunday that year that I had to let go so that the woman he was with had a chance to bring out the best in him without the jealousy of an abandoned ex creating more difficulties. The email i opened last week did not suggest he was giving her his best but it may be that he was being a better man with her than the person he was in the email, i hope so. 
When I opened my folder of Jon emails and scrolled back to Easter '17 I found a time-bomb. An unopened email he had sent in August '17 that I had erased from my memory. I believe i blogged (about a year ago i think) about how at this time I had repeatedly woken to loud banging on my door in the small hours of the night that my first thought on waking, or maybe still in dream, would be "it's Jon" but then i'd know it was not real, that he was not knocking on my door, that it was only a dream, that it was not Jon. But this unopened email spoke of his missing me, of how he woke thinking of me, wondering if I was married to, or "besmitten" with, someone else, asking me to email. I didn't see it. I don't know how it got in my Jon folder. I don't know how I would have responded if I had seen it then. I felt betrayed. I was furious and heartbroken. Furious and heartbroken is a very odd combination of feelings. It hurts now, knowing that he like me was wishing we were still in contact at that time.
One of the things about emails and letters and texts is that we don't know if the other person has received them. When I accidentally sent an email to Jon in September giving us our last conversation, and me now two still unopened mails, he will have assumed that i had read his August email. I hadn't. Would it have changed the way we communicated then i think so, tho' how i do not know. Embodied contact allows us a greater depth of feeling because we are witness to movement and shape, smell, sound, space, timing, and so much more, all the subtle signals that our animal bodies recognise without even knowing, the light in someone's eyes, the curve of someone's smile, the inclination of bodies, the touch and how the touch is received. I felt, and still feel, sure that if Jon and I could have met for a coffee we would have met as old friends who loved each other still.
A certain generation (type) of people may remember a computer game called The Sims. The Sims was a model for life, a way of telling people-stories, soap opera lives were lived out on a screen under the hands and in the mind of the game player. Births, deaths, marriages, work, love, money, learning, friendships were all there guided by a god-like handler. The first version of the game was quite manageable especially after you got the cheat that gave you unlimited finances. Unlimited finances make a difference to wellbeing it seems, funny that. As the game evolved with add ons and new versions and real time relationships it became more tricky. Want to get in touch with that friend, in the first game people didn't age with you but later they did, their friendship didn't just diminish if you accidentally dropped contact because you were busy building your house, or making out with your new lover, they aged with you, some of them died. I'm aware that The Sims is something my sons and I would recognise as a formative experience but it's not a catch all. My point is really that relationships need nurture and the easiest way to nurture a relationship is to give it time and space and love and light just like anything you want to grow to flower. A plant may flower without attention but like The Little Prince's rose that flower becomes your flower when you give it your attention. 
I wanted to blog today because this past week has been a funny one for me. Opening Jon's Easter 2017 email on the two year anniversary was a challenge i had met in my mind before I did it. Discovering the one I did not know about was a shock. It was kind of loving, so kind of nice, but it made me cry a lot. Last year at Easter his daughter's mother wrote to me saying they had letters I'd written to him and would I like her to send them to me (I said yes but I have yet to receive them). That made me cry too.
Sometimes when a feeling is difficult it is best to meet it, chances are it won't go away on it's own and will keep nagging and nudging until it is met so I decided I needed to go back to Bungay and to tread some of the soul paths Jon and I wore together in the years we were lovers. 
My relationship to Bungay did not begin with Jon. I was friends with a girl from school and I remember staying with her for a weekend and bicycling around the town. And later, when I was very nearly full term with my first baby, her father and I stayed the night with a friend of his in the old pit where he lived in a caravan with a goat and his dog and some chickens. Because I was only 20 and her father just 21 the friend seemed fantastically old, I suspect he was probably mid thirties or fortyish, but people in their thirties and forties look old to the young i think tho' they may not feel it. The caravan smelt of pee and I was very keen not to have my baby there so when the bus failed to turn up we walked and hitched back to Norwich. I think we walked about 9 of the miles and I suspect that my daughter's determined nature was in part forged by that experience. 
Since Jon and I parted company I re-met Bungay through the sculpture trail at close-by Earsham where/when I met my friend Andy who lives there. But Jon is a big part of my relationship to the place. So if I need to feel really close to him it's where I go. I think this is my third trip since he died and each trip has been for a specific reason, a need to connect with that which was best in us, to the time and place where we were most solid, where i feel/felt closest to him. Time passes, I cannot undo Jon's death. All I can do for peace of mind is endeavour to accept and understand what is. That's not easy. And as I said at the beginning of this blog, my grief isn't comparable to anyone else's because it is mine and something only I know. Someone who has lost a child or a sibling or a parent or a husband/wife may wonder why I am bleating on about Jon but their wonder is not really my business because grief just is, no-one in their right mind would ask for grief if they know how grief feels because it's like a stain that can not be over-painted, the pain of the loss is forever, i think. I'm sorry if that is un-comforting. But I am wondering if the pain i feel for Jon, because of his absence, is how he maintains presence in my life and reminds me of the pleasure we shared. 

I promised myself that I would write a blog in which I spilled a little less of my blood onto the "page" but I don't really know how to do that. I think I write in blood because I don't have any ink. Call ink style and blood passion. My blogs tend to come out of me when my heart is bursting with need to express myself, when my mind is on fire with thought and I can't hold it all in. 
But what I want to get started on is blogging a quiet pilgrimage I am taking. Using the word pilgrimage I hope gives a sense of the form of the journey I have embarked upon. I do not know if I will reach my destination but I have started the path and that is enough. 
Lots of people walk the coast of Britain. I've been following a few blogs over the past few years and most recently a man on twitter who is doing it the adventurer's way with a tent. But I am not an adventurer. I have however wanted to walk the coast of Britain for years now, maybe as long as twenty, thinking about it and not knowing how to start, where to start, making it all more complicated than it needed to be. 
Because in October last year I just began. I walked from Southwold to Lowestoft. Just because I could. I started in October because October was the anniversary of Jon's death. He gets the whole month because his actual death date is different from the day I found out by nearly two weeks so in my body he has two deaths, his actual death and the death of him that happened later when I picked up his sister-in-law's email informing me of his death  
Southwold was the beach Jon took me to on our first proper date. And we walked the length between Dunwich and Kessingland over and over again in different parts during the six years we were lovers. Starting at Southwold meant that my coast walk began with Jon as my journeyman, a ghost journeyman. I suppose that I hope that walking and walking will help me to lay his ghost to rest. He is not, for me, an easy ghost to lay to rest. I meet him everywhere. And sometimes I like that and sometimes I don't. 
I took the first step of this pilgrimage on a date that was before the actual anniversary of Jon's death but was the anniversary of a friend and I going to Southwold the week before he died. It was a strange day. I was tearful and thought I saw him on the bus and we found ourselves in places that he had taken me to on our first and last dates, places that connected me to him where memories had been made, and places he'd shown me that belonged to his childhood. I couldn't get him out of my head. I wanted to be there alone, or with him. My friend kept saying I had to give up on him. I had. I couldn't have given up more. But it hurt. I guess my head had given up, but my heart hadn't. Hope still defying reason.
I digress. I took the first step on my pilgrim path because all the time we have choices. October 2018 was the anniversary of Jon's death and I needed to force myself back to life, to seize the day, carpe diem. I took two walks in October and have taken four since then. Southwold-Lowestoft, Lowestoft to Gorleston, Great Yarmouth to Caister-on-sea, Caister-on-sea to Winterton, Winterton to Happisburgh, Happisburgh to Mundesley. 
Mostly I go by public transport and mostly I go alone. So far the exception has been Winterton to Happisburgh when my son, at my ask, helped me out by driving me to Winterton and then parking up at Happisburgh and walking back to meet me at Sea Palling. Mostly I like going by public transport and walking alone. Walking alone gives me time to think and public transport especially buses allows meetings to happen that wouldn't normally. 
This walk, this long walk, began with a trick. I was just walking from Southwold to Lowestoft, no big deal. The second walk was more conscious, on my birthday, the anniversary of the day after I found out he was dead. Lowestoft to Gorleston. One walk and then another and another, beginning. I needed to begin and then I needed to keep going and then when Amis joined me I needed to ask for help because I could feel myself stalling, and I wanted to share what I was doing with someone I loved, someone living, a tangible, physical presence. Ghosts and spirits are all very well but not the same as flesh and blood, body and living soul. Amis' help briefly made my path warmer and sweeter, less lonely. Time and space are gifts. I was glad that Amis accepted the gift of my time and space and gifted me his in return. Time and space are gifts worth treasuring. 
Following my day with Amis I walked Happisburgh to Mundesley, passing the shameful nets at Bacton a week or so before the sand martins return, the cliffs looked mean and grim and bleak. I am so thankful to the people who got those nets removed. They stand as heroes in my eyes, everyday people who rose to a challenge and beat a system that says birds lives are worth less than money and man. I wonder if that is the mark of civilised society, the ability to understand that that which is not us, is not "I", is as of much value as us, we, ourselves, "I". 
Food for thought maybe for my next stretch Mundesley to Cromer. My walks are not too long at the moment and it might seem like I'm dawdling, taking this walk at such a leisurely pace and with no certainty of reaching it's end but it's a choice I have made to allow myself to be slow, to let myself go gently. Going gently, taking things softly, means I will do what I set out to do, I don't respond well to a whip but I give all that I have if my heart is resolved. I want this journey to be a healing path. I am walking it widdershins, tempting the devil I suppose but my hope is that the pull of my road will give me time to work out where I am going and will find me moving forward even if my forward is met by sometimes going back in time. 

Part Two ... because there is more, there is always more. I'm going to write about memories, again, history, personal and social, the who and how it is told. I imagine that Jon will slip into the story because although some people might say "oh shut up, get over yourself, he left you, he died, no one cares" their opinion has to be nothing to me because though he was surely and often a git i loved him and loving him changed me. I cannot deny the changes that happened to me and in me as a result of our knowing each other and so he stands as a markable, remarkable presence. 
So where to start. That so wasn't necessary, but i don't know how to write so there it is and there it is again. Where to start. I am currently reading Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel. I have just read The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes, and Private Peaceful by Michael Morpurgo. Each one of these books are a historical account of a story. Wolf Hall tells a story that has been covered by many, a story that perhaps most English people over the age of seven have an inkling about, and a viewpoint or opinion even now, nearly five hundred years on. Private Peaceful is one of those books that makes you weep for all the men and women killed for living in an unjust time.  Michael Morpurgo, the author, addresses the injustice of 290 British and Commonwealth soldiers killed for desertion in the first world war with his usual grace and gift for engaging with heart, his own i think and his readers. Private Peaceful is a story told by one man, about his life and his brother's life and all that touched them. It's a story about a single death but also the life that led to that death. And living after death i suppose too. It's about how lives link and connect. Because we are linked. We are linked even if we don't want to be, sometimes the links we don't want are the hardest to break. The Sense of an Ending addresses human connection on a very personal historical level. It's a quick read but every word is meat. The story could be anybody's story. If we get to be old the likelihood is that somewhere along the lines we will have done something that perhaps at the time seemed like little but later turns out to have been a wrong. I have wrongs sewn into my seams. I imagine most of my friends and loved ones do too. 
What is it that i'm trying to say by mentioning my recent reading matter. I'm mentioning my recent reading matter because Wolf Hall in particular is making me think about how and who tells a story, or history. And because Britain is my country, and we are in a spot of trouble at the moment, and having a historical moment, and it's causing strife and disorder in the highest court of the land, i guess parliament is the highest court unless you count the Queen. Wolf Hall is also about Britain at a time of upheaval, and to me the story resonates with the history being made today. Maybe it is always like that to a greater or lesser extent. 
Wolf Hall, the book, is also set in my history, my history with Jon. How can something like a book be part of relationship story, i guess in much the same way as anything else if connection was made over a book then the book stands as a open door leading back to that connection. 
Wolf Hall won the Booker Prize in 2009 Hilary Mantel, the author, seemed to come from nowhere though in fact she had been a working author for years just not very well known except among her peers. I remember Jon reading it and talking to me about it, sat on the sofa in his living room, my reading it now flashes back to the time, i wish that i'd read it with him but books come when they are meant to and back then i was battling demons on all sides, work, college, my family and his, and all my energy was engaged in not giving in to feeling worthless and worth less than worthless. I am reading it now and thinking about him and that's nice but also quite sad. He's here reading it with me, as is my son, who read it last year, and who is thankfully still living and with whom i can talk to about it. Not talk to a past him but a present him, a now him. 
That's one of the big "fuck-off"s with death, i think. Not being able to hold another conversation except in your head, never to see the other person, to laugh with them, or touch them is really painful. I remember Jon talking to me about his mother after she died. He said that after she died she was easier to get on with because he didn't have to deal with her bad bits and could just relate to the best of her. I didn't know her. I gathered quite early that she and his sister-in-law had been at odds. And that her family rep (Jon, his brother and his brother's wife) was as someone difficult and unpleasant. But that at her funeral someone else had said to him how kind she was. I did not know her so my judgement of her is of no worth, she may or may not have been as described, she may have had reasons to be as she was described. Because people often do and may not know or want to acknowledge why they are as they are. 
Reading Wolf Hall has been mind-opening. Who can fail to be intrigued by that period off history ? It has legend written all over it and creative types have played with the storylines and characters over and over again. It is to me to read about Thomas More who wrote Utopia, to know him as a not-nice character, a torturer, a religious zealot, a mean husband, the image i'd had of him was as a gentle family man, someone almost saintly, this had, in the main, come from a 1970's film i have seen more than once. How easy it is to fall in with a narrative if it is the only source drawn from. 
This has been some of the problem with Brexit. Maybe any conflict where sides have arisen. I guess all the time there's a need to look more than one way if wanting a rounded understanding is wanted.  If wanting a rounded understanding is needed. If I see only my own point of view as valid then all i can do is dance on the spot and hope that enough people will dance on a spot close to me so that i feel myself not too isolated. Alternatively if i am prepared to see, to feel, to engage with other people's thoughts, needs, feelings then i have opportunity to step out of my spot and make my dance a more moving thing. My opening out to others creates space for interaction that holding myself tight shut like a shellfish on a rock will never do.
Because i don't think any one person can always be right. Most of us will have come up against someone who believes themselves always right. But, really ? Really ? I don't know how to deal with people who are never wrong. I suppose that the drip dripping of time will wear them down in the end but whew in the meantimes saint's preserve me from having to spend too much time with those who are are without fault. 
Er hum, where am i going ? History. Memories. Well a lot of my blogging has been about memories this past year and i have a project idea building at the back of my brain about memory, same as a million other artists, authors, play-writes, poets, film makers and all the others with a calling to the arts. But memories are a very personal form of history. And yet even as we write and read back to ourselves our own histories, they trip and fall and become imperfect. When i wrote a few weeks  ago about the church at Wenhaston and the devil weighing the souls, that was my memory, but returning a week after i saw that my memory had missed St Michael, and that he was the one doing the weighing and the devil very close by was just looking on waiting for the wicked to be weighed and passed on to him. And before that i spoke about my hair being green when i was pregnant and straight after i remembered that it was probably pink and blue and bleached a good white blonde and the green had been cut off just before i got pregnant.
Recognising the holes in my own memory make losing Jon feel harder because i know that the time we spent together is passing into kodachrome dream-like images, images that replay and feel real but also not real. I don't know how better to describe the feeling. It's hard to accept someone i love being so physically cinematic, so physically distant, but that is how it is for me now. It hurts, i don't want a sugar coated Jon, i want him good and bad, as i always wanted him. So, and there's that "so" again,   i find him in books, and fields, and hedgerows, and, and, and: and what i find is feeling, the feeling of him, it's not him, but it's him as i knew him, sometimes brilliant and sometimes a bastard. And the bastard is not such good company but i did learn a lot from the bastard in him just as learned a lot from his brilliance. 
Do I close there ? I struggle with endings. Some people are good at them, are masters, but i don't know how to close, for me there is always an after. Perhaps it is that sense of one thing leading to another and another and tho' threads drop and fall away new threads pick up the stream and go forward. Now I am walking the coast path very very slowly and maybe I'll blog about that next and put in a picture or two to lighten my blog. But it's life isn't it, it keeps going.
In a few weeks time Britain will or won't be a part of the EU but life will go on and the body of our country will have moved little. What the politicians are fighting over is a lot about money, i think, and power. Some care about the human cost and some don't. And i'll give my vote to those who do. And some care about planetary cost and some don't, and similarly i'll give my vote, my coat, to those who do. And that in the end is all the little man/woman/child can do is give their coat of arms to the causes they feel most strongly for, whether in their personal or political life. And there perhaps i'll end because it's as good a place as any.   

Here goes again ... launching myself into another blog ... many years ago when i was a child my dad used to sometimes take me as his sailing crew. I wasn't his preferred crew, my oldest sister Vicky was keener and more competent, but sometimes, not often i would be there in the boat with him. It would be planned the day before, getting up at whatever time was needed to catch the high tide, gearing up and going to the boat yard to rig the boat, it was a Tideway, a wooden clinker-built boat that my dad maintained well because that's how my dad is. When the boat was as rigged as it could be on land he would wheel it on it's squeaky trailer to the harbour slipway, along with all the other boats and their sailors, with me following. I was a bit of a puddle of a child, not sharp or clever or agile, I suspect taking me out sailing was a bit of a chore for my father, but the thought of launching into my blog brought back the memory of getting into the boat, leg deep in water and over the side before my dad pushed the boat out getting in as the boat sailed out into deeper water. I think of the salt smell and the clinking of metal ropes and the flapping of sails and the shouting and excitement and i think thats a good memory to have tho' i suspect i was really only part present as i was/am not really all with it, more often than not i am faraway in some dream world.
Memories are funny things. This year past has been full of memories of Jon, i think i've mentioned that before, and as memories of time i spent with him and without him have surfaced within the net are other memories and they are all very live, vivid and visceral in quality.
We are as living beings and bodies a container for the life we've lived, I think. I am repeating myself please excuse me. Repeat is a thing, part of our patterning. Here we go again, this way of living that actually doesn't quite work for us hitting up against the same or a similar obstacle and until we learn to meet it in another way. 
We, who is this we ? I've noticed i slip into this when i blog as if i can speak for others when i only speak for me. because how can i know how it is for someone else. Maybe it's only me that repeats mistakes, responds in the same way to some one or something that gets to me, makes me feel bad, or good, tho' feeling good would seem like less of a problem. But then what if good is an addiction, this drink makes me feel better, now i need this drink to feel better, now the drink doesn't necessarily make me feel better but i need it because if i don't have it i feel awful. I'm speaking with very ancient knowledge about drinking. Falling back into my late teens when my drinking was no more than any eighteen to nineteen year old's drinking but when if i hadn't had my daughter it might have gone bad. 
I am throwing up yesterdays because over the past few weeks i've been thinking about time. It began when i started using my instagram account. 
I'd had a look at Patti Smith's and looking at hers gave me ideas about how i could use that platform to make notes in a slightly different way. All social media platforms eat time. This blog is no exception. But if they perform a useful function then they are worth the time. This is a kind of diary. Twitter and facebook i mostly use as scrapbooks/notebooks often posting stuff to myself much as i might jot down a note on a scrap of paper. Face book memories are great. On twitter and facebook i get waylaid by national and global politics, then i become someone i don't like, mouthy and horrible, but i can't seem to help myself. I guess it's one of my patterns, it forces me up against a version of myself i am not comfortable with but can't let go, a part of me that has to fight when i think something is foul. A legacy perhaps from feeling desperately vulnerable when my children were small and Thatcher was in power. Anything that triggers feelings i recognise from those days tends to make me edgy and ugly. My body contains the fear and darkness of those days. Or maybe it is something even earlier in my life, something wary that hates to be confined. 
But back to yesterdays and why i am throwing those up in this blog it's because beginning to engage with instagram has made me wonder how long is an instant ? Is an instant a lifetime ? A lifetime of a species ? A lifetime of a world ? Is the lifetime of a thing that lasts less time, a mayfly for instance, of the same worth as the lifetime of something more long lived, a human, you or me ? Does their instant  weigh the same as ours ? 
Here I am a series of breath filled incidents that occur from the moment i'm born, or maybe conceived, until the day that i die. Does my instant go back into my ancestral past ? Does it go forward beyond my dying to my descendants and those i have touched whilst still alive ? 
It feels strange to me that a person's instant might end when their physical body ceases to live because those and that which i love and value is part of my being and so continues to be part of my being. Will that go on forever. I think of the me that got up early to go sailing with my dad, that me is still me, and the person i was before i had children, and later the young mother and the woman i am now. Every part of my being is part of my instant, my now, and in that instant, that now, even tho' some of the people and places i was once connected to are no longer accessible physically, their being still lives in me until i forget or die too, until i dissolve into the ether. 
I can feel resistance like a wall of wind as i write now. I am trying to finish this blog but i keep writing and then deleting what i've written and starting again. I don't know how to meet my next day.  I want to talk about Jon but also I don't. I want to stop grieving, I'm tired of grieving, is that a terrible thing to say ? I want to let go. But also i don't. I don't know how to move on without losing him. He was important to me and so the thought of forgetting him hurts. But forgetting will happen I think. Is that why i am calling my life a single instant so that the time we had together still retains some presence in my everyday ? He was far from perfect but a person doesn't have to be perfect to be loved do they. 
Understanding is a curious thing. The effort to understand can be unbearable, filling space with questions and mind-noise, but understanding itself, i feel, is quiet. I wonder if maybe the only path to understanding is to let go of some of the questions (some questions are un-answerable) so that silence and softness allow understanding to nestle gently in the steady beat of my heart, so the steady beat of my heart can carry me forward into tomorrow. 
I think this blog is to be continued ... this is maybe part one