Happy Halloween!

I've just come home from a wonderful evening out with my neighbour and her little boy at the Bungay Pumpkin Night. Its a celebration of Halloween. Dress up, trick or treat, bring out your pumpkins and have fun! I took my camera, and I am so glad I did. I was completely shameless about going up to people and asking to take their pictures. Everyone looked so amazing! And the pumpkins! There is so much creativity out there in our little town. I was sorry I hadn't dressed up, but I was wearing my bright red coat so I pretended I had come as the dwarf in 'Don't Look Now'.... Never mind. Happy New Year everyone!

Trying too Hard

How do you make lemons into lemonade?

I've spent two days this week pretty much flat on my back. Utterly burnt out. 'Malade com paraquette', as they say. Unable to even think straight, let alone read or write coherently. Today I felt a bit better and threw myself back into doing mode. Duh!

Back to square one...

I'm trying to do a rewrite of my novel, which is currently involving a major rethink. Not just of the book itself but of how I work as a whole. Its slow going. Think Plate Tectonics. Moving continents. That kind of thing. I am having to change my whole practice, and that is hard.

I guess I am truly part of the MTV generation because things never go fast enough for me. I want this change to happen NOW! Like, as in YESTERDAY! But major life changes don't work like that. I am too impatient. A Zen Master would have beaten me to death with my broom in exasperation by now. Why do I never listen to myself?

The way to make lemonade out of this particularly frustrating and sour lemon is to sit with it. Let the process happen. 'Be Still and know that I am...' as my Guardian Angel keeps telling me, while He is pinning me to the floor so that I can't do anything else (He is a very proactive Guardian Angel).

I wish I had a really good photograph of a lemon to go on this post, because that's how I feel now. A complete lemon. For not working it out sooner. For being too impatient. For not listening to myself. And then for beating myself up about it when I realise what I have done. What a goon. Never mind, onwards and upwards. And off to find a lemon to photograph!

Halloween Time Again

Hope you like my creepy self-portrait. Its been a tough couple of months, and I am busy trying to work on my redraft of my novel, with slow results. Not much time for other writing, hence the lack of posts here. Still, this time of year always starts to get my juices flowing. The clocks go back, the evenings close in, we light the fire and snuggle down. An interior time of year. That is when books are made.

It is also Pagan New Year. I am thinking of all the things I am leaving behind as I leave this year, and the new seeds I want to plant in my life for the next. A time of new beginnings. The veil is thin. I am aware as always of mortality, and the cycle of life, death and rebirth around me. Putting the garden to bed at this time of year is the outer manifestation of this process - putting one's life in order before going down underground, into the Other.

Letting go seems to be the theme that is coming up, over and over again for me right now, whether it is the constant nagging memories of failure from my the past, of emotions, of people (including me) who are getting older, of old patterns of ill-health that no longer serve me or just entrenched patterns of tension and stress. I think that even if we are chucking stuff out, it is important to remember that it was once crucial to us, and to honour the part it played in our lives. So I am trying to do that, slowly, carefully, sitting with what I am trying to release, knowing that letting go will lighten the load.

We all need to let go of things so that we can make room in our lives for new, exciting things. What are you letting go of right now?

Thresholds

A lot has happened since I last posted. Suddenly I am aware that I am passing across one of life's thresholds. Everything is changing.

The other day, I took my wedding dress to a charity shop in Norwich that specialises in bridal wear. It will be sold in aid of the local cancer charity, The Big C Appeal, which has raised vast sums so far to set up a support centre for cancer sufferers and their families at the Norfolk and Norwich University Hospital, as well as for other projects around the county.

It was a huge wrench to leave it behind in the shop. I burst into floods of tears. The volunteers are used to this reaction, though. They were very kind. And it had to go. It was huge. It was taking up space and gathering dust. Now it will bring someone else happiness.

It was not until I had sat in the garden in the church across the road and cried my eyes out that I began to realise what I had let go. The wedding dress is a symbol of youth and beauty. You wear it on the best day of your life, when you look your most lovely. By releasing that dress into the world, I was letting go of that young image of myself. But I needed to mourn its passing too.

On that day, in 1996, I became Mrs Barrow. Together, Pat and I created for me (for us both, in fact) a new identity that has progressively allowed me to become more myself. It is because of the love we share that I have grown into the woman I am now, older, yes, but also wiser, thank Gods,and more at peace.

Now I hope that someone else will come along and love that dress as much as I did, that it will carry someone else into the life of love that I have been priveliged to enjoy. And I hope that the money it raises will help someone else to face a threshold, to embark on a journey of release, whether it is letting go of cancer, or coming to terms with letting go of life.

Oh and....

Every girl needs a mad mum.....
You can tell she's going 'What are you doing with that camera?' The nose-crinkle thing is her trying to see the camera through the right part of her trifocal lenses. Actually, I don't think she'll ever forgive me for letting people see this pic. Seventy-eight, and mad as a bag of cats! Go Mum!

Crochet Bliss

I've been expanding the whole creativity thing...

I have spent today in our lovely cool study, playing with my beads. And this is what I came up with:

And then this:

(Not a very good photo I have to admit. It looks slightly more even in real life.) But then I made this, and I think its the best...

It's just glass pearls and AB coated crystals on silver wire, but I think it looks quite impressive.

Now, how did it go, again?

I am trying to remember how to doodle. This sounds utterly ridiculous. How can you forget how to doodle? Actually I think it is something to do with perfectionism. I have a nice sketchbook, but there are only so many pages in it and I want every one to be perfect. So its really hard to just muck about. There can't be one page that is manky and a mess. There can't be one page that looks amateur.

Ridiculous.

I painted the above pages ages ago when I bought this new acrylic colour. I thought I'd try it out. I was going to stamp and collage all over it, but instead, when I looked at it today, I thought I would try out some doodling. I have been reading this book and found it very inspiring. It's basically about making a mess and trying things out, but I can't seem to do that.

Doing this doodle page took me ages. I just couldn't seem to think what to draw next. I mean how hard can it be? And yet it has made me realise how little I doodle now. I used to do it all the time, at school. Then art got serious and sensible and 'A' level-ish, and now here I am, blocked.

But the only way you learn things is by practising,and the whole point of practising is that it isn't perfect. You get mucky and make an unholy mess and have to do it time and again to get anywhere near what is in your head to come out on paper. I think this month's challenge is to learn how to muck about again. Time to undo forty years of colouring inside the lines.