Stop, look, listen.

Things to do today.

1. Work out what day it is today.

2. Get back to the land of nursery rhymes and try and get at least 2 spreads done.

3. Remember to think about Christmas.

4. Walk dogs.

5. Water horses.

6. Wait, with patience, to hear from America. Wait, wait. ( Feeling really nervous)

7. Spend at least 15 minutes lying in a field watching swallows fly.

8. Think.

9. Listen. This morning I just stood and listened to Chris Wood singing Hugh Lupton and Chris's  wonderful song 'One in a Million' a poetic piece of storytelling in song, wonderful. Now there is rainsong on the roof. Earlier, horses breathing deep the scent of summer on grass while a whitethroat sang in a willow tree.

10. Write list.

Monday

Today I

painted a very small picture

found a moth that was soft and beautiful

discovered a bog with a river of irises waiting to flower

ripped up yesterday's painting into long ribbon threads

sent work as if by magic to America

waited to hear and was reminded that the earth is a large spherical object and while I was awake, she was asleep in the darkness waiting for the birds to sing the sun to rise

waited

walked in the evening hoping for owls

saw swallows

waited

hoped

thought

Summoning inspiration

The older I get the more I realise that either
a) I walk a fine line between creativity and madness or
b) I have the courage to do things I wouldn't have done when younger.

So, I took my healing bowl up to the top of the hill and played. The sound of the bowl out in the wild is something that would lift the heart and soul of any who hear it. To see pictures travel across to the cat blog.
I have to paint. 

So, I painted all day Sunday and then I sat back and looked and what I had painted was ugly and clumsy so now I have to do it all again. Only this time, better.

 

 

 

 

So far today I have found a moth, and a wonderful bog where soon there will be a river of irises, helped to organise schedule for October when I will be at the Norfolk Childrens Book Centre and Madelaine Lindleys in Manchester and Southend on Sea and the Starlit Festival in Hackney. Beautiful moth, soft winged and sleepily blinded by daylight.

Falling

Walking around the village in the early night time and the sky is hushed and still, alive with quiet stars. Late moonrise makes the world dark, and distant dog bark echoes in the stillness. Across the fields the sea sways into shore on muted waves. An owl hunts along the hedgebanks. In the sky something burns bright and then begins to fall and as it falls to fade but so slow like the longest slow falling star wish. I watch,  awestruck by this slow decline from light to dark. I forget to wish. Maybe.

Mothwing, water and an exultation of larks.

Quietly working away at a new project that might be very exciting and interesting and challenging, but at the moment is unusually secret. I have until Tuesday to get something done. It is so long since I have worked for a new client and nerves have chewed at my brain and now I am lost inside it and hoping I have not diverted to a tangent only I will understand. Maybe not lost, the wrong word, absorbed by, absorbed to distraction.  I muse on water, the stars, the sun and the moon, moths, wings, night and space. I walk and listen to the larks exulting and to the cuckoo.

My camera has returned, battered, bruised, sad and useless as anything other than a reminder not to put anything in that pocket again. The cats, fed up with watching me sit and look at the phone when it rings, until it stops, have started answering it for me. And the cats have more followers than me on their blog. I am not jealous of my own cats. There are six of them and only one of me.

In Suffolk John has taken delivery of the first of the large hare drawings framed in the white gold frames. I should be having an exhibition with him in September.

Photographs

One of my photos has made it through to the Visit Wales Spring Photo competition. Feeling blue a little because it is from the camera that died a terrible squashed death at the weekend, alone beneath the wheels of a car. Although it is labelled St Davids Airfield the photo was taken up the hill behind my house on the rock where I love to write. The ponies were the colour of the bone white lichen that grows so slowly over the stones. The sky so blue and quiet as the sky was closed to traffic.

The winner is decided by how many people go to the page and click the like button, so please do, and invite friends, family, lovers and spouses, children and pets and weasels to do so too. Follow the link here to vote.

Today's list.

1. Think

2. Draw.

3. Prepare snowleopard for a long journey.

4. Take poor Martha to the vets.

5. Cook supper.

6. Pick up dragons and seals and whales and leopards from shoe shop.

7. Walk dogs.




There is a tangle of twigs in the dark thorn branches outside my studio. Magpies are very busy visiting it. As they fly to it there is a flash of white reflected light across my studio walls and the sound of wings. They are so busy. Their chicks must have hatched. Time flies on the wings of pied birds.

Random facts 2.

Today I learned that there is a piece of old lore that says that if you do not hear the cuckoo call then you will not make it through to the year's end.
 

The Star Princess sings a lullaby.

Weasels are making me tidy the house as they do not like the chaos that has formed over months of working in my studio. For want of places to put things my door has become a pinboard.

Meanwhile another spread is finished and I have people wanting books and it is time to move quickly onto the next spread.

Baby's bed's a silver moon

Sailing o'er the sea,

Sailing o'er a sea of sleep

While the stars go by.

Sail baby sail,

Far across the sea,

But don't forget to come

Back home again to me.

For some reason this painting came through very differently from what I had expected when the words first ran around in my head. The woman is from Tell Me a Dragon, the star princess, grown up and fallen in love and waiting for her sailor husband to return while she sings their child to sleep. It is odd how sometimes these characters take on a life of their own and spin their own tale. I should imagine that few people will notice where she came from. A secret that passes from book to book.

So many thing to do with writing is simply asking questions. George Mackay Brown called it 'the interogation of silence'. Even though she is a character that I created out of coloured water I wonder, does she ever set foot on the earth or live only in the sky? Where did they meet? Does she still have her dragon? What is her name?

Cuckoos and thing that are lost.

On the airfield walking dogs and searching for peace of mind. Skylarks and whitethroats, wren, blackbird, small bell voice finches, raucous crows and a distant cock-a-doodle-do. And in amongst it all the first cuckoo call across the golden grass.

In April come he will.

In May he sings all day.

In June he changes his tune

And in July he flies away.

Things I have lost:

Weight, at times, to the point where I have sometimes been fit though never thin, but I have always gathered it back to me.

Heart, at times, but usually this is lifted by birdsong and beautiful things.

Mobile phones, and the loss of it was inconvenient but of small conqequence in the grander scheme of things.

Friends, some forever, but some to be found again.

Confidence, an ongoing battle never to be won.

My camera, the small one that Robin bought me for Christmas this year so that I could always have one with me, that was pink and white and also took films and panoramas. And, yes, I did find it again, St Davids being the kind of place where you would have a lost camera returned, but alas the wheels of a car or two may have found it first and whist shock proof and waterproof it was sadly not driven over proof.

Pop goes the weasel.

In search of a weasel we went to Newport and then on to Nevern for a walk in the woods where the bluebells are blushing the riverside walk to a beautiful blue. Home across the hills with weasels and stoats, and we found some lost sheep, but no sign of Little Bo Beep or Little Boy Blue. Back to the drawing board tomorrow. I have weasel, and treacle ( Lyle's Black Treacle in a red and gold tin) and rice.

Now, when I walk up the stairs to my studio I hear a whispered chattering as weasels talk with owls about what sould be done.