At Menzies Creek

There can be no child on Puffing Billy today who is as excited as me. It's twenty years since I last dangled my big feet out over the whizzing wildflowers and blackberries, waving at cars stopped at crossings and gardeners hefting debris onto bonfires.
Half an hour to go before we reach Emerald Lake.
I was sorry to forgo the studio, today; to leave my little jar of flowers in the dark for all these hours.
But I'm taking Puffing Billy to Emerald Lake, all by myself, with a thermos of coffee and a packed lunch, my diary, my novel, my ink and brushes. Could any thought be more glorious?

I snapped this at Menzies Creek station, where I stepped out to stretch my legs. I was struck by the reflection of the little girl in pink. I had no idea, till examining the picture, that the station master was watching...

Whoooooo-ooot!
Departing now for Emerald Lake.

Day Five - Nearly Done

Day Four - Sandals progress

Day Three

It was 5pm before I summoned the courage to begin drawing.
My space had been ready since midday, and I spent the afternoon buying a pot plant and sleeping with my mouth open in my new old chair.

I have promised myself I will do practical tasks where creativity eludes me. I need a way to keep moving in the studio. It is an interesting thing to start fresh with a clear knowledge of my habits and tendencies. Cutting paper down to size is my least favourite - but necessary - studio task. It requires little brain power and virtually no creativity. I organised my tools and set to work, cutting more paper than was immediately necessary, so that I wouldn't meet that stumbling block again for a while. I nailed it all up on the wall, so that spanking white pages stared out at me, innocent and threatening at once. I sat down in my new old chair again.

Julia Cameron says, take care of the quantity and the quality will take care of itself.
I thought of Leonard Cohen claiming he never has any good ideas, but just chips away at things till something is good.

I'm not exactly a stranger to inspiration, but I don't generally work from it directly.
It's funny: when I am away from the studio, or kept from drawing by work or other obstacles, the world is full of beauty, surprise and meaning. Little things open up their secrets and show me fleeting glimpses of a cohesive universe, a pure, wordless understanding of everything, before becoming merely pegs again, or merely shoes, or merely a heron in the suburban wetlands, dishevelled by a sudden gust of wind.
But in the studio, where I must take some responsibility for these revelations, must translate them, redesign them, compose them - the task seems quite beyond me and, disappointed by my futility, the vision ebbs away and I am left with only an indistinct memory, and a slight concern that I may be just a little unhinged. Mostly, I draw pegs or rags, not because they are showing me the world, but because they did once, for a fraction of a second, and I hope to draw it out again.

So, it took a massive effort of will to get out of the chair and begin, yesterday (and no, it's not the chair's fault. I can easily spend hours sitting on a lumpy concrete floor if procrastination demands. The chair just saves me from associated injury). But beginning, in the end, contains its own, other magic. Almost immediately, the object has another interpretation, another existence, even. The drawing, like a newborn, is straight-away irrefutably present and demanding, and has a unique beauty or interest for me that did not exist, even in imagination, before I began.

Pegs (In Progress)

Day One

I have had a pretty good day. Good days at the moment only really come as the result of energy and purpose. I am still in a state of awful surprise over Lewis's leaving, and it strikes most painfuly at this hour, when one out of two nights I'd be on one or other side of his kitchen counter, sharing stories of the day, drinking wine and cracking jokes, with the steady, happy expectation of sleeping with his warm body next to mine all night. I thought I was expecting he might take the option of leaving. We had debated the issue of having children for so long, without much sign of a shift in him. But in reality, I am staggered that he could leave us in mid-flight like that. We were strong. We were - apart from this ever-present question - happy.

I was, anyway.

And yet - there is a part of me that has blossomed since the very day he left. It is a really uncomfortable thing to realise, but my life feels bigger when I am not attached to Lewis. It is not who he is, or how our love is, but the mechanism he has developed, over all his years of living and getting hurt, for quelling a wild, happy possibility as it arises. It's a crippling habit, and I hope he manages to overcome the fear that is its cause. And I need to develop a better resilience to pessimism! But it was a surprise to me, to remember that the habit is not mine, and doesn't come naturally to me. That, almost as soon as he was gone, my life - my dreams - seemed to expand with a snap like a great, bright parachute.
I visited Lewis, the other day, and was surprised to find that I and my great silken canopy did not seem to fit in his house anymore. Already.

And yet, at this hour each night, and later, as I tuck into bed, I have this vertiginous feeling, as though the wind has been knocked out of me and the ground has disappeared from beneath me. It's loss in its raw form, unthought, unrationalised. I just miss him horribly.
But what has changed is my impression that I was, in some way, not good enough for Lewis to choose a life with me. Instead, I think, his life is currently too small, too constrained, to accommodate me. It shouldn't be: he has a glorious parachute scrunched tightly inside him, but he doesn't know what to do with it, yet. I really, really hope he works out how, and that he does it before I get too accustomed to my airborne solitude. I miss him. But I don't miss the shape of my self when I was with him, and this is a revelation.

Today I moved into my new studio. That is to say, I was given the keys to my new studio and, with no car - in particular no Land Rover - I ferried a collection of inks and brushes and rags via bicycle and deposited them in the empty, blank space, where they seemed almost to be sucked into the void in their smallness. I have been psyching myself up for this day - I've known it before - the realisation that prorastination still presides, even when the gates are open. I looked at the space: it is, in its current state, procrastination aside, completely unworkable. It needs flat walls (they are stud walls at present), and a desk. There is nowhere to sit. I knew I could sit there on the lumpy, concrete floor for days, daydreaming and planning and wishing I still had Lewis and his manly know-how and his Land Rover and tools. But I really am determined to live differently in this, my year of art. To say 'yes' to myself, to be an artist without boundaries...

...well, let's not get carried away: an artist without fear of timber yards.

So! I gathered my courage and went directly to the timber yard, and ordered 3 GIANT sheets of plasterboard to use as drawing walls. The guy at the desk was convinced I had no idea what I was doing. I persuaded him that yes, I did want what I said I wanted, and once he understood why partially-clad walls would be adequate for my needs, he helped me patiently with all the things I didn't know, and I think he got a kick out of problem-solving with me. I ordered everything I need to be delivered, and then called on Aroha, who had offered to take me op-shopping for furniture, with her station-wagon. We didn't find everything I needed, but we found the one essential thing: A deep, comfortable, nostalgic armchair, covered in a floral fabric like we had on our couch as little kids. I recognised it straight away as MY chair. I bargained it down to $60, and we gleefully drove it home to the new studio, where it is now waiting in the dark with my little brushes and bottles of ink in an otherwise empty room. And so ends day one. Baby steps.

Tomorrow my plasterboard will be delivered! I have enlisted the help of Jessie and Dad for installing it, and when it is sealed and dry, I will have enough equipment to at least begin something, and a chair to curl up in and mull it all over.

Last Clunes Rose