Maybe it is time for me to reclaim my blog as a somewhere a little less exposed. In the days and months after hearing about Jon's death i needed it as a space to air the feelings in me that were too powerful to be held in. I guess if i'd been surrounded by close connections who knew us as two together i might not have needed to howl so publicly but i wasn't; and in those first months of grief my self was so completely obliterated it has taken me this long to come to any kind of self composure. Now i am writing my grief in notebooks, old-fashioned pencil and paper have become my sanctuary; and sometimes i write him emails, which is mad because he won't get them, but writing the emails is different from writing in my notebook, and very different from writing in my blog, the emails are i guess the things i wish i could say to him, things i wish i could share, questions that will never be answered and also sometimes gripes (i would not have got away with those when he was living).
So that's the story of how i am continuing my grief journey as the shock waves spread and i find that i am still standing, still living and breathing and that the world has not stopped. There is pain and various difficult feelings to process but other matters press in and take my attention. Matters that concern me and/or other people. Matters that make clear that the river of life is still flowing, and time and tide stop for no man. 
At the beginning of the year i decided to take on the study of twelve fairy-tales/myths over the course of 2018 in part to distract me from the grief that then consumed me and in part to get myself back to my working practice. The fairy-tales are chosen at random out of a "hat" (actually a pin box filled with folded up titles) and so far i have worked on The Billy Goats Gruff, Aladdin and the Magic Lamp, Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves - these two i accidentally combined when i wrote Aladdin and the Forty Thieves on the spill of paper so February was split between them, The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, Puss in Boots and the Seal Bride. I am currently deep in thought, researching and making notes, written and drawn and mental, for The Handless Maiden. 
Because of my slip up in February i now have thirteen stories to work with, five of which are still unknown. My journey with each one has been very different. The first few months worth of notes are sketchy but I have a more connected body of work to be going on with for The Seal Bride, and managed to make ten linked images to illustrate and narrate the story of Puss In Boots from beginning to end. This taught me something about story telling, about beginnings and endings, and the bit in the middle.
I'm not saying any of the work i'm making is much to write home about but i am allowing ideas to flow, to pause, to flow again, to go backwards, forwards, upwards, downwards, sideways, letting the story seep into my bones, my being, my belonging. And because i choose a new story on the 1st of the month or more actually just before i go to bed on the last day of the month, i have a self imposed deadline which pushes me to work harder and to take the work i'm making to an end point even if that end is just a full stop. 
I tend to begin with a quick google search which throws up illustrations and blogs and to look at what Wikipedia says because it gives the background and the names of those who gave the story written form, and the when and where it stemmed from, often multiple locations. I also leaf through my own private collection of fairy tales for different versions. The Seal Bride and The Handless Maiden are both stories i have given head space and worked with before but all the others tho' known were less familiar. I was interested to read that during the period in which Perrault set down Puss in Boots the women in stories were notably dim and pretty and malleable because that was what was considered desirable then and there. I am not sure much has changed. The women in Aladdin and Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves - the princess and the slave girl - are notably more sussed and sassy. 
At first using these "children's" stories gave me something to hold on to. A structure to lean into, a stable source of inspiration, stable but not inflexible, it is the nature of fairy tales that they bend to meet the reader, a story that has survived retelling over centuries will take on the quality of the story-teller and listener because to give a story body you have to inhabit it. 
This month is the month of The Handless Maiden and it has felt very uncomfortable. The handless maiden is a serious victim, she is betrayed by those who might be expected to care for her. The first betrayal leaves her quite disabled. As part of my connecting to this story i have tried to imagine a life without hands. As a shiatsu practitioner and artist my hands are my life, my being, my doing. Who would i be without them ? How would i live without them ? The vulnerability of that position is painful. Even eating is difficult. In one version of the story there is a moment when the maiden having lost her hands discovers an orchard and eats a hanging pear from a tree and thus is discovered. 
If you have a moment i recommend allowing yourself to imagine a life without hands. How would you live ? It's an other world, an other kind of being. Using the physical disability here allows me also to connect with the broken child, cast out, alone, betrayed by the father who pushed by sometimes the devil and sometimes the stepmother, was the villain who cut off her hands. The weak father is  common motif in fairy tales, see Hansel and Gretal or Cinderella for instance. The wicked stepmother too features often. Who are these people ? 
A motif is a figure that is easily identifiable either in ourselves or others. Likely we carry a box of scraps of many motifs. Some we love, some we love less. Looking at fairy stories is giving me insight into the stories i tell myself about myself and others. In my previous blogs, particularly in the months after Jon's death I spoke of his family. Called them out as monsters. Now this monster image is not one that they accept. I imagine that if i am given any place in their world it is as a monster too. So many monsters where do they come from ? Monsters are common, and some monsters are more monstrous than others.
The monster does exist; it is rage, it is fire, it is fight, it is flood, it is pestilence, it is denial, it is jealousy, it is greed, it is ugly and mean and violent, it is all that you do not want to be unless you are a monster. It is the devil. It is Donald Trump, or not Donald Trump if you are a Donald Trump supporter. For those who support Donald Trump he is a hero, a man who gives voice and license to feelings they have felt unable to express. Those feelings may be abhorrent to others but their existence is certain, and the strength of their existence seems to be growing. A thing which to me is alarming but to others is great .. "lets make America great again". What is great ? Is it strength or force or wealth or what ? Great could be humility, tenderness, care.
So i've been thinking about narratives and counter narratives and how the stories i/we create create the world in which i/we inhabit. And how there are times when a story no longer fits, like a garment that once was perfect but now is a little bit of a squeeze to get into. Or maybe a garment that never felt right. My mum used to make me wear red polo neck jumpers when i was a child and had my hair cut bowl shape, this was the identity she gave me, i don't know why, but it wasn't me and to this day i hate anything tight around my neck even necklaces and heavy scarves and i still don't love having my haircut tho i have a fantastic hairdresser and i like it once it's done. 
I am not knocking my mother for putting me in red polo necks, she didn't know i hated them, and probably most parents have dressed up their children in clothes they don't like. My middle one hated a pair of red trousers that i thought were great. And the waistcoat and cravat that he had to wear as a page-boy for his dad's wedding made him cry. This is part of life. And parents can be dumb when it comes to their kids because it is easy to forget that your children are not you and that their journey is their journey and not yours to dictate. 
In relationships that require long connection like parenting, partnering and child-ing we are inclined to create deeper and maybe more compromising narratives as a way of feeling safe. In this way the narratives can become entrenched to the detriment of all parties. I think that these relationships are surely the most difficult to break from. You may be good or you may be bad but if you have been given this role you can be sure that the stability of the social unit relies upon you being that. It can happen too in friendship circles but these are generally lighter and more fluid than family units. 
I am returning in this blog to the theme of identity which i addressed last year in my blog when i  presented myself as a piece of sculpture in the Waveney Sculpture Trail, i was told by a visitor then that what i was doing was dialogical art, art that inspires dialogue. It is interesting for me to go back there in my head, to what i was talking about. Jon's death knocked my world into another universe and my thinking before his death seems vain and vacuous. I don't know that it is less vain and vacuous now but it is met with new knowledge. The new knowledge is grief, the feeling that comes unbidden when someone you love wholeheartedly, the good and the bad of them, becomes a definite physical absence, when they can no longer reflect back at you the image they have of you, or you have of them, when your shared narrative becomes something you carry alone, when your living connection ceases.
Self-identity often carries with it a need to fix down other people.  Maybe this is something i am having to come up against as i recall my relationship with Jon and work out what it is that i want to keep and what i do not want to keep. Self-identity may be conscious or unconscious, how conscious or unconscious is up to each of us to decide now and with every breath we draw and who amongst us us is really conscious. 
Going back to the Trump supporters, or the Trump detractors for that matter. Those who identify with Trump may take some of what he says with a big dollop of "yes, that's me" but with that dollop of "yes, that's me" they may also have to swallow some "i'm not sure" or even some "i don't think this is right but for the yes that's me i'll take it". So it is that we take on compromises and every time we accept those compromises we bury a little bit more of our true selves. The Trump detractors are making similar decisions "no, not me" but maybe by demonising and externalising we, i include myself in this group, refuse to see that which is Trump-ish inside ourselves. My waste, my greed, my selfishness is not prettier than Trumps but if i put it all on him i do not have to deal with it. I am less bad and that makes me "good-er". 
See every time i eat cheap cheese or cream from the supermarket i know that my purchase has fed an industry that does not fit the self i want to be. And all the time i/we are taking similar decisions day in, day out. Mostly those decisions are hidden in a crowd, i buy cheese, you buy cheese, we all buy cheese (or palm oil, or food wrapped in plastic, or factory farmed meat or take flights or "need" the new phone or i-pad or whatever), we all buy cheese and there is safety in numbers. In fact those who stray from the crowd are often looked at askance, sometimes mocked and derided. However deviation can be a reclamation of personal power. 
One of the themes that runs through The Handless Maiden is her victimhood, more than once she is treated brutally and the subject of lies and malicious talk that force her into vulnerable exile. It is however not until she acts to save herself (her self in the form of one or sometimes two children) that she is able to make a life that is not so dependent on the goodwill of others. This act happens after she has been thrown out of the sanctuary she briefly found when she was rescued. Exiled and still handless the child that she carries on her back falls into a pool of water and without thinking she reaches for the child and miraculously her hands grow back. After this she is able to meet life as a whole person, the child who was brutalised and cast out and the rescued and then exiled maiden are behind her. Her circumstances may still be impoverished but she now meets them as a whole person able to make decisions of her own and not only the subject of other's will.   
It's no good looking at fairy tales too literally. Hands do not grow back. And for that matter the father's brutality and betrayal may not be so obvious or specific. And stepmothers can be lovely. What i am picking up on within this story is the need to take ownership of our lives and in doing so we meet in ourselves a capacity to grow and be something other than the role we may have had forced upon us previously, in childhood or later. 
I have meandered through this blog and i am trying to find an end point to draw the threads together so that i can tie a knot. I am still working with The Handless Maiden and my grief for Jon is ongoing and Donald Trump seems to be here to stay at least for a while so how do these three strands connect. And what of the story, the possibility of story, which i think is what i really wanted to blog about. 
I think it is story that is the connecting point. The Handless Maiden, Jon, Donald Trump are all stories. Donald Trump is part of a vast collective story and that story varies hugely according to who is telling it. Jon is part of my story, he is also part of a collective story, his family's story, our stories do cross but our crossing points lack grace and are not generous or gentle. Sadly that's how it sometimes goes, there are times when stories conflict. The story of The Handless Maiden, having come through centuries of story-telling and travelled far - from France to Italy to Japan in just my collection - has been distilled, there is variation but the essence of the story is pretty much as is. So it goes perhaps with stories that stand the test of time. 
Perhaps it will be ok for me to come back to a little note of sadness in me for a moment, tho maybe i am being self indulgent.  To come back to my own fairy story. One of the things that is painful to me is that when i die, all that i shared with Jon will die with me, the good, the bad, the beautiful, the awful ... i don't know what i can do about this, i feel a little helpless, maybe this is my handless maiden story, maybe i have to learn now how to reach out to save that which was born out of our union and in so doing regrow my hands and find my new independent self.  

Blogging today because I feel so empty, so voided. All summer I've been blathering on about identity. Blah, blah, blah .. my thoughts, my words, spattered out on a page as if they are important, as if anything I think or say is worth the time and space I give it let alone anyone else. 
Yesterday afternoon I fell asleep for a little while and woke from a dream in which Jon was still someone alive, someone still here, material, someone with whom I could still hold a conversation and get responses that came from outside of me. Waking, I had to recall that he's not here, not someone I can bounce ideas off, banter or flirt with, share moments of wonder that light up my heart in the hope that they'll light up his too. He's a ghost. Supposedly he is in me but fucking hell it's not the same.
Fuck seems to be a bit a word. Fuck, bastard ... the list goes on, sometimes swearing fits. One of the things that I've become aware of is how far in everyday life as I follow societal norms I stray from my heart-mind, how much I depend on the brag and bravado, the big-face voice that the mind in my head throws up. Putting an a thick skin to protect myself, my ego, so that the world knows how fine I am, in mind or in body, or occasionally both .. "I'm diddly-dandy"  "haha what a joke" "look at me and my greatness." 
But what does any of that matter when we are dead. I thought the other day about the impression we make on the world while we are alive. Over the past couple of decades the proud planet-lover will surely have calculated their carbon footprint, once, twice many times. Will likely have done very little about it too. But what about this ? What about the psychic impression we make. Our energetic footprint not in material but etheric terms. In death that footprint is how we are remembered, what we gave, what we took, who we were to those that our lives touched. 
Here, now, I have no new memories to make with Jon. What I have of Jon is what I can recall. I was shocked tho' maybe not surprised by his death, but also shocked at how deeply I feel it. This I think is what I'm trying to say. On a day to day level, we are charged to conform with an intellectual understanding of the world. Too often that intellectual understanding is an act of betrayal to the heart. Too often the outspoken beast - the brain - over-rides the intuition that our hearts offer us as another way. Too often the beast as guide gets it wrong I think. 
I know I'm talking out loud to myself on this blog and that is a sign of madness. I could write it in a notebook, and some that is very messed up I do. But it helps to be witnessed and it helps when people hold out a hand and say "I hear you, I see you, I am here." I think that maybe when I am less insane what I'm writing now may help me later, god willing.  

Continuing to think about identity. Here's the big question .. who are you ? as the caterpillar said to Alice. Who are you ? Who am I ? 
Stripped back, no family, no friends, no home, no job, who would you be then ? Are you comfortable with that person ? Most of us attach our identity to things outside of ourselves in order to establish our identity. Maybe that is what is so terrifying about Alzheimers and dementia. Perhaps, not just for the sufferer but also those who care. 
Oh woah, that is not where I had planned to go. I had figured to coast around talking about identity being how we dress, who we hang out, yes families but families as a good thing or at least families as a constant. 
But, here is the rub, families are not constant, they shift and change, in the natural order of things children grow up and make lives that do not depend on their parents, parents grow old and die (my parents are both still here, the way we relate may not be perfect but it is still ongoing), siblings part ways and so on. 
Families come in myriad shapes and forms, what suits one may not suit another, the manners of each family vary, some families yield to accommodate newcomers, others not so much. Some newcomers are unbearable, others a welcome addition. 
As a single parent I had to quickly get used to my older two children's father introducing new mothers into the space. Thankfully only two, and both women who my children have benefitted from knowing. I'll admit it hurt, and that there were times i was jealous, struggling on my own it was hard to see him happy. I know that's wrong. But while digging through my catalogue of ugly feelings I may as well get that one out. 
But lets pull back to a more general notion of family. Our first identity is very much visited upon us by the family we are born into, we are good, we are bad, grizzly, easy, pretty, ugly, large, small. It's a natural response to categorise but what if we tie down a person too tightly, squeeze them in to a box that is all wrong, force them to wear a skin that doesn't suit them. 
Adolescence is the first real opportunity children get to take off that skin and try out others. Their friends become their family as they out grow their family of origin. It figures that if your family of origin was a comfortable fit that later when you are gone away you will return but having left it is never quite the same for you cannot return to the innocence of before. 
Lets say that in our quest for identity, we have grown up and left home, and made a family of our own. A self picked family made up of people you really like. They say that we take on the characters of the five people we spend most time with. For many that will be their partner and a mix of workmates and friends. Five is a handful, talk to almost anyone and they will say that they have, at most, a handful of good friends, really good friends, who know them well. So it figures they'd be the ones you keep company with but it's not always the way. 
So looking at identity, we have blood family, the family behind us and sometimes a family in front of us and to the side, and friends and acquaintances who make up our new chosen family. And chances are we may be a slightly, or very, different person according to who we are with. 
I'm going to reference my friend Sally now, who in conversation some weeks back said it's not so much about the other person being right or wrong but do you like who you are when you are with them, are you who you want to be when you are with them. That feels like an interesting spin. 
Am I blithering on ? Yes. How does this connect to identity ? I guess, as I'm really just thinking on to the "page" I'm thinking that this notion of skin, the skin our companions give us when we are with them as part of a collective is all part of the "who am I" conundrum. Those who we find ourselves close to lend their being to our being and borrow, take or steal, a little of ours in exchange. So what you value becomes obvious through the company you keep.  
Where am I going with this ? I'm being long winded and not really getting anywhere maybe. this is not the blog I'd meant to write about how the clothes we wear represent a facet of our identity and so on, but they do. The clothes we wear, the places we go to, the people we hang out with, the things we do, the way we speak, the language we use, our voices. And, well now, maybe that is a path to follow. Who are you when you are stripped back to just a voice ? I'll leave that one hanging and come back to it tomorrow. 

What is a blog for ? It's hard to judge how much personal life it is appropriate to show in a space where anyone, should they so wish, can see it. And very, very few people are so socially isolated that their lives do not affect others. 

Fore-warned this may be a long ramble, I am thinking about identity. Show me the artist that doesn't come to this at some point in their career. So I'm thinking about how we are perceived and how we perceive ourselves. And the space, if there is one, between those two points of perception. And how difficult it is to control the way we are perceived by others. And how we are shaped as children, and from there through out life by our experiences.

A lot of my work stems from feeling. I think it was Maya Angelou who said something along the lines of you never forget how somebody made you feel, you might forget the words and deeds, but not the feeling. I'm inclined to agree. And here-in maybe lies the essence of a being. 

I'm going to skip about here because that's the way my mind works. Those who are not in touch with their feelings or who would rather be unfeeling in order to block out unpleasant feelings are given to suppressing feeling in others. They are quite often people who will talk in a derogatory way about those they deem over-sensitive. But then those who are very sensitive can be so sensitive that their call for sensitivity also suppresses feeling in others. 
It's a fine line and there is a balance that needs to be struck, but that balance is not a command and control balance, that kind of stability is about domination rather than dialogue, the balance is when both parties are able to meet as equals, when no one voice, no one's needs over-rides another's. But how do we measure, how do we gauge, equity.

One of the ways that we find a small space balance in our everyday lives is to mix with people who are of similar mind, body, being, to us. They mirror, and present no deep challenge. It's about finding birds whose feathers and calls are like enough to your own that they feel like kin. 

Ideally you'll grow up in a family that feels like kin. Ideally that family will develop your sense of self worth so that you have no need to belittle either yourself or others. I don't know how common that is. I grew up in a family where I felt like a misfit, it was hard to get things right and is likely the root cause of my self-doubt and misfit complex. I'll get back to that as doubt and that feeling of not fitting is one facet of my identity.  In times gone by it was very uncomfortable, now it is less so, in some ways mis-fitting now is a license not to conform. I am more likely to say "f*** it, they hate me anyway, what does it matter" whereas previously I might have been cowed or my fights would flare, but then die back, weakened by a desperation to be liked and anxiety and fear of abandonment.

But to get back to feelings. I'm currently working on a body of pieces that is drawn from the sludge. The piece titled "Shirley Boyle" in a previous blog was the first to be born from this mire. It's not pretty feelings I'm dealing with. It's, as I say, the sludge, the dark matter; envy, vengeance, jealousy, social isolation, grudge, shame, cowardice, pride the list goes on and probably the prettiest emotions in there are sadness and anger so it's not comfortable space to be occupying. 

But these horrible feelings are shadows that lurk in all of us to a greater or lesser extent, in different measures. There are some sunny personalities who may be less subject to nastiness but those sunshine souls are not common. Oddly when  that which is nasty is  not acknowledged it gains more hold, more leverage, becomes more obvious and requires more effort to cover. And in covering we reduce our ability to experience the counter side, that which is light and free, and also our ability to break away from our demons. It may be possible to maintain superficial appearances but the need to stay superficial becomes a demon itself for it binds us to shallow gratification and a rotten-ness of soul becomes normal, an acceptance of imbalance that is selfishly shifted towards ourselves.
And I think it's easy to find oneself either in a soup of complacent self satisfaction (see David Cameron) or trapped in loveless relationships that only function on a superficial level.

Actually those shallow relationships have a place in all our lives, the capacity to get on relies on us accepting each other on a superficial level, being genuinely decent and polite. But it doesn't seem like quite enough to sustain a marriage for instance, the need to maintain an appearance of shine at the expense of the inner light drives me crazy, makes me feel like a caged thing. That's another part of my identity perhaps, a need not to be confined. 
So I don't fit and I hate cages. And yet, on lots of levels, I do play the game. Because there are people I deeply care for, and for whom I will subjugate my needs because their needs over-ride my needs. Now the trick with this is to make sure that fair play is being done. It cannot be right for only one party to be doing the giving. And whilst this can be seen close to in relationships, it is also the case that some nations, or groups within nations are taking, or giving, too much 

This giving and taking balance and the need for honesty and integrity beg us to ask am I really getting this right ? Am I really getting this right ? I ask that twice because it's easy to say yes when asked only once, easy to push away doubt, or easy-ish to push away doubt Am I really getting this right ?

This is, in a way, where that which challenges us is often a great opportunity. That which, and those who. Those who challenge us, who are not our flock, whatever our comfort zone is, offer us opportunity to witness another way of life. You can travel a long way to do this, I haven't, but maybe I'd like to some time. Or you can do it with those close by. It could be in-laws, ex's, ex's ex's, workmates, bosses, neighbours, someone who rubs you up a little wrong, or someone who rubs you up a lot wrong. 
Generally the challenge stems from a mis-meeting of manners, mannerisms, and communication style, the superficialities, the delicate structures we have built around ourselves that help us to feel strong and stable. It is politics whether it's negotiating between children, adults, communities or nations, and the ability to recognise another's right to be, to exist, is the starting point. Weirdly that right is often overlooked and so the seed of goodwill is disregarded before negotiations begin.  
I think I may have slipped into brain waffle now, and that which challenges us and how we meet those challenges is a story with a different set of keys to identity so I'll save that for another day. Also this blog has stretched out much longer than I anticipated so I'll close for now and continue further down the line when my thoughts are more clear.

Mmm, post script - as regards how much feeling I put into my blog, how much of my personal life I expose, I think I came to the conclusion a few years ago that as much of my work stems from feeling, or feelings, if I am explaining the thought behind what I am doing I am pretty much bound to lay bare those feelings. Those for whom it is too much I assume will look away.