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Trajectories and targets

Dr Omed asks:

Have you ever walked a labyrinth? Not a maze, a labyrinth. A maze has false turnings and dead ends; the way in and the way out are hidden by walls or hedges. A maze is a puzzle or a trap; a sort of crossword for the feet. The purpose of a maze is to get lost. A labyrinth does not need concealment; it has curves and turnings that in the end bring the walker to the center of the pattern. The way out is the same as the way in. Turn about and follow the same meanders coiled on themselves. Step over threshold and exit where you entered. Like all forms of meditation or prayer the only change is the self of the one walks the path. The purpose of the labryrinth is to be found.

in the labyrinth

This labyrinth (constructed by a mental health charity, I note,) differs from that of Dr Omed in that the walls were so high they almost, in places, met overhead. Which gave it a mazey feel without the choices mazes offer. (Maizy wasn’t there, unusually.)

Appreciation of the dancing dappled light, the meditative pacing process etc etc was somewhat impaired by the alternative use to which the boys put the space which they found ideal stalking and sniping territory in which to employ their newly-acquired toys of mass destruction. For them the purpose of this labyrinth was precisely not to be found.

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Community and collaboration

Is it, I wonder, possible to have one without the other? if they were venn diagrammed would the circles entirely overlap or are there aspects of each independent of the other? at the moment of collaboration does a community spark into being, however short-lived? is it possible to have community, of any sort, entirely without collaboration?

This past weekend I benefited from the area enclosed by the arcs where the venn circles quite definitely overlap in two different ways simultaneously.

Firstly there was the computer. The old (2002) 17″ flat panel iMac which, having served me well was moved to the rather less tender care of the boys when I got my laptop. When we got back from our holiday it died. Wouldn’t boot up at all. The boys were, understandably, upset at the thought of losing access to… whatever it is they access. All we could get was a white screen with a grey apple in the middle and, while elegant and understated, it was rather unvarying and inflexible.

Grey

After hours of effort including hair-pulling, zapping things, unscrewing base plates, swearing and suchlike I’d advanced to being able to open the CD drive and hearing the startup sound. And had discovered that, search as I might, I could find every other installation disc for every other programme for every other computer in the history of the world except, of course, the one I needed.

Enter the geeks. One reassures me that it’s a software not hardware problem and the other sends out a tweet-o-s asking if anyone in her network (community?) had a copy of the appropriate disc they could lend a complete stranger. Less than 20 minutes later and offers have flowed in from across the globe.

You might be thinking that fine tweets butter no parsnips, but you’d be wrong. As instantly as is possible within the confines of the UK postal system I actually have a copy of the said disc in the letterbox, in the CD drive and soon after in my (ok, the boys’) computer.

magic happening

thankyouthankyouthankyou! to the wonderful person who came to the aid of someone they’d never met on the other side of the country. Look! It works! It works!

Soft-centred

And by a happy deliberance (what’s the opposite of a coincidence if it isn’t a deliberance?) the picture displayed in the browser on the computer is of the other, parallel, example of collaborative communitarian gorgeousness, namely my hap blanket.

As knitters will readily grasp this project had, because of the frequent changes from one yarn colour to another, quite a lot of ends to darn in. As my nearest and dearest will testify I loath and detest darning in (in particular, and sewing in general) with such a passion that it can mean I knit all the bits of a project and then fail to do the last bits that turn it from heaps of crumpled fabric into a functional finished thing.

Not so this blanket. Because, being aware of my sore affliction, the aforementioned pixeldiva and the also-present Erzebel plonked themselves on either side of the reluctant darner on the sofa, got out their needles and sewed in those ends. Such are the dimensions of the thing (more than three feet square) we could all stitch at the same time. And pix probably twittered about the computer disc simultaneously too. It adds a further layer of speciality to a project already dripping with wonderful associations (and Scottish rain).

Awesomeness abounds, unbounded.

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Another artistic interlude

This time Walking In My Mind at The Hayward Gallery.

I was so totally blown away by Keith Tyson‘s work, which is near the beginning, that the rest of the installations that make up the exhibition didn’t really stand much of a chance. But this is hardly surprising given where he’s coming from:

Keith Tyson’s work can be characterised as an artistic exploration of some of the basic mysteries of human experience. His artistic motivations lie in an interest in generative systems, and an embrace of the complexity and interconnectedness of existence. Philosophical problems such as the nature of causality, the roles of probability and design in human experience, and the limits and possibilities of human knowledge, animate much of his work. His practice is also defined by a direct engagement with scientific and technological ideas.

His installation consists of two walls of selected Studio Wall Drawings and one wall of an assemblage called “Locked Out Of Eden – Viewing The Children Playing In The Garden From The Safety Of My Cerebral Fortress”. Tyson says the Studio Wall Drawings exist “in a space somewhere between a map, a poem, a diary and a painting.” Many address and describe painful mental states and I was frequently reminded of Bobby Baker’s Diary Drawings (see previous post). However it has to be said this perceived similarity could also be due to the fact that they’re the only two art events I’ve been to for quite some time.

I wish I had known before I went that it is possible to download the curator’s audio tour from the internet to an MP3 player. What a great idea, particularly if it’s an interesting and well-produced example of the genre which would augment rather than distract from the experience. I haven’t listened so can’t give an opinion. I’m so out of everything I can’t tell whether this is an exciting innovation on the part of the Hayward or merely standard practice in these internet-augmented days.

I also wish I was going to be in London for the associated event Brain Making:

Make a model of a brain with scientist Dr Lizzie Burns, who in the process attempts to explain the mysteries of the creative mind. She discussed the work in the exhibition from a neurogical perspective and shows how the artist’s dreams, hallucinations and memories influence their work.

I shall, instead, be mashing up the words “walking”, “brain”, “mind” and “making” in a different way on a mindfulness meditation retreat.

However I can’t resist mentioning that, having finally had the long-awaited MRI scan, I now have my very own brain to play with. It arrived as a couple of files requiring a specialised piece of medical image viewing software to open. I haven’t had much time to play with it yet, but it’s been awesome so far being able to go through my own head like a packet of honey roast ham (slice by slice).

storm trooper

There’s a bit of a startled Star Wars Storm Trooper look going on here, I reckon.

Or how about the Yubaba/Zeniba clone/crone/fairygodmother? (That link to a picture of Yubaba is taken from a fascinating blog post – the trouble with coraline (or: fear of witches) from a blog which after this serendipitous discovery I am going to bookmark.)

aaaaaargh

Oh yes. There’s much more where those came from. And just wait til I start drawing on them.

Meanwhile I’m mostly offline again until September.

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Moved to moblog

For anyone interested in art & or mental ill health or the incredible amazing collision of the two I can’t recommend highly enough the current exhibition at the Wellcome Collection called Bobby Baker’s Diary Drawings: Mental illness and me, 1997-2008.

So many incredible images, issues, hyoooj STUFF going on here. Superb. Would love to write more but keyboard doesn’t permit loquacity. (Is that a word? If not it should be.)

PS The picture is her representation of mindfulness meditation. Hope it’s legible at whatever size this (hugely cunning and clever) widget chooses to publish it.

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The flesh and the net

Not only has the flesh been unwilling as well as the spirit feeble, now to further mitigate against any activity here we have swum through the net.

One of the many rather large-scale issues that has been occupying the horizon has been the prospect of major building work to the house which is now (one nervous breakdown later) actually taking place. As a result we’re not in it. We’re somewhere else entirely – all five of us – and while the alternative accommodation is a rather surreal but delightful bijou designer residence it lacks even a phone line never mind internet access.

I’m not sure how I’m going to manage without Ravelry. The need to browse yarns and patterns and drool over what everyone else is making is going to be too strong to keep me out of the occasional internet café. Perhaps while there I might post the odd picture of our current extraordinary surroundings.

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Post #919

So, who was I?

Hmm, difficult to recall, but it was something like award-winning international radio journalist; foreign correspondent; writer published in all the UK broadsheets (and a few tabloids for good measure); news presenter to ten million listeners; chronicler of pestilence, war, famine and death; interrogator of president and peasant; arts correspondent; habitué of Venice and Cannes, openings and premiers; interrogator of celebrity and star; someone who lived and worked – extremely hard – across three or four continents.

And now?

Three or four miles is the general circumference of my life, the reach of my being from the hub of my house, on the days when I can leave it. Nowadays that means most days, but there are still, occasionally, some when I cannot.

Yesterday I had a huge sense of achievement. I managed to post to a friend the reading glasses she had left behind after staying here at the weekend (which, in and of itself, was a pretty notable achievement, having people to stay).

And what did this require? It required the finding of a padded envelope, a pen, some cellotape and her address. It required that the glasses be inserted into the envelope, the address written on it with the pen and the flap sealed down with the cellotape. It required the parcel to be taken to the post office, weighed, a stamp purchased and affixed and the parcel deposited in the correct place for collection.

The friend left her glasses on Monday morning. I managed to post them on Wednesday afternoon.

This was not because my life was so full of activity I overlooked the task. Quite the reverse. It was the achievement of the task itself which took that long. But that was far quicker than is usual with such things, hence my huge happiness and the sense of achievement to which I have already alluded.

My life, my ability to function in the world, has utterly changed.

I am not looking for and do not require sympathy. What I would like is some effort at understanding.

What makes me extremely upset is the assumption, usually from people who are entirely well-meaning but sometimes from people who are not, that my situation is something over which I have control, a choice, something over which I only have to make a slight effort and all would be… well. “But you’re so strong…” “I’m sure if you tried…” “Surely someone like you…” It is a pernicious variant on the “pull your socks up” and “snap out of it” approach.

Let us imagine that, instead of suffering from an alteration to my mental capacity which affects my ability to operate in the world, I suffered from an alteration in my physical capacity which affects my ability to operate in the world. I could, through accident or illness, have lost my sight, for instance. Or as a result of accident or illness become paralysed from the waist down. Immediately there is a visual co-relative – the white stick, the wheelchair – which signifies the situation. Immediately there is a frame of reference within which the onlooker can make judgements and act accordingly. One would not, I presume, tell someone in a wheelchair that one was sure they could walk if they only tried. Or say to a person wielding a white stick that surely someone a strong as them really ought to be able to see, if they made the effort.

I understand that it is difficult to comprehend the disabling effect of mental ill-health without the clear visual cues provided by physical alteration. So let’s look at it from a different direction. Let’s look at the before and after. Let’s look at who I was – a person with a fantastically interesting, varied, stimulating, high-status, financially and intellectually rewarding job with a concomitant lifestyle. And who I am – unable to work, to earn money, to read a newspaper or listen to the radio, unable to do innumerable basic day-to-day activities most people take for granted, with a concomitantly impoverished lifestyle.

I am not complaining about my situation. What I have great difficulty with is the attitude that it is some sort of conscious lifestyle choice born of laziness or other character defect. That my situation merely requires moral fibre, effort or the exertion of will to overcome. That its continuation, perhaps even its very existance at all, is therefore my fault. Is it not possible to imagine the devastating frustration and shame that this situation engenders? how difficult it is to come to terms with the change?

How or why would anyone choose to lose what I have lost? How or why would anyone choose to be in a position not to be able to provide their children with most of what they want and even, on occasion, things that they need? How or why would not anyone do whatever they were capable of, fight, fight, fight to overcome such a situation?

And if they are not, by an effort of will, able to walk again, able to regain their sight, how or why should they be blamed?

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Fish eggs

My friend F paints duck eggs. Not in the Easter/pagan sense of applying pigment to shell but in the canvas-on-easel oils-on-palette sense of depicting them. This bowl, these eggs, are not from her studio. They are in her kitchen. On her black work-surface against her black wall. Awaiting culinary rather than representational alchemy (in both disciplines F is an artist).

a bowl of duck eggs

I can utterly understand the obsession. (She’s painted quite a large number of different permutations of eggs.) Taking the photograph was exciting enough – the textures, the colours, the subtle gradations of hue, the shapes, the way the light fell on and thereby changed all these things. And all I did was twiddle a couple of knobs, position the camera and click the shutter. Imagine the challenge, the possibilities of building up an image from nothing.

It is F’s birthday today. She is one of eleven pisceans sufficiently near and dear to have their birthdays entered in my calendar, the first of whom (February 21st) is 1st son and last of whom is me.

Are pisceans reputed to get on particularly well together? or is this bulge (yes, it’s far and away the biggest clump of nearest-and-dearest birthdays, I went through the aforementioned calendar to check it wasn’t merely “I’m a piscean” bias), is this bulge (I restate since the previous parenthesis was so long you might have forgotten the original question), a statistical anomaly?

Anyway, the explanation, should one ever conclusively be demonstrated, matters not at all. I merely wish to celebrate and salute my fishy sistren and brethren.

(And for the terrier-fancying fish among us – yes, that means you, Fresca – there are more pictures of the lovely Maizy from yesterday’s impromptu photo-shoot here, here and here.)

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Ferox

maizy is an hairy dog

I love this picture of Maizy, snatched today in one of the nano-seconds she’s actually still whilst not also being asleep. The near-palpable quivering intensity of focus in that gaze. The fact that under that utterly undisarming dishevellement of bristling fur there are undoubtedly fangs.

She is nothing if not ferocious. She hunts and kills, ferociously. She guards, ferociously. She loves, ferociously. Me. It was, after all, what she was acquired to do. She follows me around the house. When I sit to meditate and shut her out she curls with a thump against the door and wedges her nose next to the gap. I can hear the sound of her breathing from the other side of the room.

I need her ferocity, her tenacity more than usual at the moment, more than I can say and for reasons I’m hardly capable of explaining.

But, by a sleight of iTunesmancy, I can put forward the following:

I suggest a volume of ear-bleed-inducing intensity.