SPC: by the shore
I love how the dodgy lens of the Holga gives a nostalgic feel to each image . You can’t help but feel a bit of nostalgia when you’re walking along the shore you’ve walked along your whole life. Living back in my home town as I do, I often find myself in locations that dredge up memories from the past, some good, some bad, some downright hilarious. It’s like walking through a photo album.
Enough is enough
{Sweet Betty on the beach earlier this month}
When there’s too much to be done, I tend to do nothing. I’ll have a to do list as long as my arm, and every evening more gets added, as tasks from the day are carried over to the next. I could provide an equally long list of things I can’t stand about myself, my lack of motivation being one of them.
As luck would have it, it’s about this time of the month when my hormones start to take over and my mood plummets, down into the cosy basket of the black dog – you could set your watch to my cycle it’s so regular. But this week I’m fighting back, this week I’m trying something new. Enough with the to do lists and procrastinating and excuses. Enough with the fear of failure.
I’ve made a deal with myself – I will do either one thing, or work for one hour, towards my dream, every day. That’s it. Just one thing or one hour. The idea is to break through the fear, push past the inertia and overwhelm, and do something, anything, that takes me one tiny step closer to what I want. The rest of the day I can lie on the sofa if I want to (which obviously I wouldn’t do) so long as I do my one thing.
I started this cunning plan at the weekend, and I’m pleased to report that so far it’s working really well. I can’t do everything; I can’t create what I want in a day. But I can do one thing (one thing which morphed into several things today before I even realised what I was doing). I’m also noting down what I do each day in my journal at night, to make the point to my subconscious that it IS possible to do things and move forward, and not slide down into the ‘I’m not good enough, so why bother’ crap that my mind spews out so easily. I’ve had thirty-four years of this fear and it hasn’t worked, so now I’m trying something new.
Work in progress
There are days when being a creative soul is a real pain in the arse.
I over stimulate myself with books and words and art and photography and creative blogs and ideas and dreams and hopes and expectations. I try to squeeze every last drop of inspiration out of my day: I’ll half watch a film while reading a book; I’ll take pictures while listening to music; I’ll upload prints to my Etsy store while scribbling in my journal. Smoke will be flying out of the back of my mac as I force Photoshop to do my bidding, flicking between Firefox and Word and my email while a document saves. The postman rings the doorbell, delivering photographs and film as I rush out the door to take more pictures while the light is still good.
Life was much calmer last year when I was writing the book, but life was much smaller too. I’m slowly adjusting to this new pace of living, though I could do more and procrastinate less. Sure, I look busy, but it’s not focussed busy. My attention wanders just as my interests do: photography, writing, poetry, painting, collage, interior design. I want to do it all, hence the artistic multi-tasking. I’m ravenous these days, hungry for cameras and paint, for food and love.
I want MORE of everything.
I should probably pace myself.
Thank you for your wonderfully supportive and loving comments on my last post ~ to have such fabulous cheerleaders out there is truly a blessing. You’ve all been witnesses on this journey with me, and I’d have gotten lost many times if you hadn’t been there :-)
SPC, and a realisation
Holga self portrait for SPC
The problem with spending a few days out of your normal routine is that when you return you want that routine, the one that has held you afloat for so long, to be changed. It doesn’t fit like it did just a few day ago.
We had a lovely time, the five of us, reading and cooking, chatting and playing games. The weather was rainy and grey and kept us inside our beautifully converted cottage in the middle of a forest, but we didn’t mind. There was sewing and making and decisions about where to have dinner to be made.
Yet away from the distractions of email, internet, television and phones, I found myself feeling unanchored and uneasy, and this manifested in a way it hasn’t for quite some time: hot, wet, self-piteous tears, tears that refused to stop.
I’ve become very adept at pushing emotions away. The tears that fell had been building, and as soon as I stopped running, they caught up with me. I miss him, that doesn’t stop – may never stop – but there is something growing that is starting to eclipse the missing of my love…
It’s the missing of love, the missing of intimacy.
And it took a morning of tears and my sister’s comforting hugs and understanding words to really let the penny drop. The grief falls away like a dead leaf from a branch and in its place is the shoot of something new, some new potential happiness that is waiting to be nurtured, that wants to be given a chance despite me doing everything I can to stop it.
I don’t know what to do with this realisation, but now I’ve acknowledged it it’s floating around me, making my skin itch, making my muscles ache. How do you get back on the horse after something like this?
I’m in love
No really, I am. A small black plastic camera came into my life in December and has been patiently waiting for me to unwrap him and press his buttons. And I finally have… and now I know what true love is. My Holga camera will be coming with me today as I drive off with my family into the middle of nowhere for a few days of R&R.
This means I am now shooting with film, and have no idea how the pictures will turn out until i get the negs back from the lab – this is the photography I remember, and it feels good to be returning to my roots. The further I travel along this path the closer I get to what it is I am wanting to achieve, artistically speaking. So I’ve packed my notebook and pen, and my camera(s) and film, and I’m leaving in half an hour… life is good.
Available in my Etsy store
SPC ~ found patterns
The Stolen Camera
Since the camera was stolen,
everything is a photograph –
pink bloom against white stucco,
serious face of the potato chip man
leaning over his cart.
In the square, gypsies with brilliant skirts
twirl among palm trees.
I reach for the camera, to hand it to you,
but it is gone, stolen by a thief
who knows nothing of lenses.
Are you thinking of the camera?
I ask you once,
and you nod.
You will not mention it.
Two days ago you caught
the shrivelled saint who kissed your hand,
the twins of Bougainvillea laughing
in their windowsill.
Your camera had careful eyes,
and now the pictures are stolen inside it,
babies who will never be born.
How would I feel if they stole my pens?
My lips would go on making words,
when I crossed the dappled street,
words everywhere, steps
or yellow leaves.
Today we pass the monastery silently.
maybe we are soaking up light,
brief angles of sun on stone.
Mabe tonight when we sleep
all we have seen will arrange itself
inside us, quick trails of stars,
and we will wake glowing,
the world in our eyes.
Popayan, Colombia
~ Naomi Shihab Nye, from Words Under the Words
For more patterned portraits, go here
Etsy love
Beach huts print set on Etsy
The only problem I can see with running an Etsy store is that there are far too many tempting goodies to buy there – you spend all the money you earn as soon as it lands in your Paypal account. I’ve been buying art prints from artists, photographers and letterpresses I admire, all of which will be framed and hung in a suitably mish-mash fashion on the pomegranate wall. While I can’t afford the orginals right now, these prints are making my walls sing, and inspiring me so much.
Here’s my wish list – some of which I own already, some I’ve got my eye on…
Birdie print by Matte Stephens
Paint brushes and pheromones
I wanted to share some photos from my week, a week that saw me complete three photography jobs, travel to and from Bristol to see my sister and indulge in a little flirty banter with a man playing a guitar. I was working, and was required to take this gentleman’s photograph – and there was chemistry, people, chemistry! It’s been so long I almost ran away.
I’ve always been a bit in awe of how musicians can put themselves on a stage, how they can reveal themselves in song. The worst thing you could ask me to do is to sing. Sure, I can do karaoke but that’s for fun – it’s not singing, it’s camping it up with a tambourine and an oversized mic. Real singing makes me feel utterly vulnerable – hence I never do it.
So there I was, snapping away as the two handsome musicians made music with a violin and a guitar, completely impromptu, sitting in the sun as they waited to set up for the gig they’d be playing that evening. As I listened I marvelled at how they had their thing, how they had a gift they could use, a talent they felt so comfortable with their instrument was an extension of themselves. And I envied them for a moment, until I looked down at the camera in my hands and remembered that I had found the thing that makes me get up in the morning smiling. And it’s true – I really do, even though I have no idea where it is taking me.
A friend of mine recently told me that she feared she didn’t have a thing, that all she could do was ‘be a mum’. And she is a wonderful mother, but I had to point out to her how gorgeous her home was, how her sense of style was straight out of an interiors magazine. Her thing is interior design; others are poets, writers, cooks, yoga practitioners, singers, painters, sculptors, gardeners, surfers, walkers, knitters… we all have a thing.
What’s yours?
Beach diamonds
Growing up beside the sea meant we never went on holiday because (the theory was) we had everything we needed here. As healing as this place has been for me, I sometimes hate the sea in the summertime, when the beach is littered with the gelatinous bodies of tourists greased-up like Christmas turkeys and kids crying over leaking ice creams. I much prefer the beach during the autumn, when I have the shore all to myself, and can walk and walk over the sand collecting shells and driftwood.
Yet as I walked along the promenade last week, carrying my camera and a fast-disappearing Cornetto, I couldn’t take my eyes off the people I saw: wobbly tummies, burnt shoulders, hairy backs, dimpled thighs, peachy bottoms on toddlers and shiny bald heads. I saw human beings in every shape, size and colour and it made me feel such compassion for humanity. None of us are perfect yet it’s easy to forget that we’re all trying to do our best. We all carry a million thoughts and dreams and plans in our heads, a million ambitions and disappointments and sorrows. We all look in the mirror and see who we used to be and who we want to be, rarely seeing who we are today. We really are all the same. I wanted to take the portrait of every person I passed (especially the woman with pink knotted hair who pirouetted along the tarmac), but I couldn’t, so instead I took a photograph of my feet, standing on the pier, watching kids splashing in the sea.
A few things…
{Etsy packaging}
a) Imagine a small wooden boat with crumpled threadbare sails that’s only big enough to fit one person inside. Now imagine a big ferocious sea that’s churning water with a fury that comes from the depths of hell. This week the small boat is trying to navigate the ferocious sea and is not managing very well. PMS sucks.
b) For dinner this evening I ate pan-fried duck breasts (that had been marinating all day in orange juice, chilli and thyme) served with roasted sweet potatoes and home-grown runner beans. I love food!
c) I’m gutted I didn’t get to participate in Hula 70’s summer postcard swap. I fully intended to, but with the move (that didn’t happen) approaching I wasn’t sure where I would be living. So I’ve had an idea: would anyone like to take part in an "Inky" postcard swap? I know that Tara organised one recently (which I failed to take part in, yet again), but I guess I want a reason to do something crafty and artsy in the evenings… and get some postal lovin’. The postcards could be collaged papers, or photos, or handwritten poems, or a secret, or a Mondo Beyondo list, or whatever you fancied really.
Would anyone like to play with me?
*Edited to add: yay, i have some summer playmates! Hadn’t thought about rules yet, but if there’s not too many of us we’ll send a postcard to each other (so ten participants means making ten cards) and if there’s lots of us, I could divide the numbers up into groups (you’d send a postcard to each person in your group) . I’ll do a group email soon and start collecting addresses :-)
