Rumble Strip

 It's the perfect day for sitting under a blanket with coffee and a stash of biscuits, looking at more photogenic versions of Autumn than the one currently outside my window, all windlashed,rain sodden and dripping. As usual I uploaded the pictures days ago and then got distracted by stuff so that I've almost forgotten why I chose them. I also had to re-read my last post to remind myself of where things stood back then (September for goodness sake!).Its a shame I got distracted because I know I chose this title and some of what I wanted to write about when I was walking alone on the fells this Tuesday which happened to be #WorldMentalHealthDay. I'd been reading this story  about the yoga teacher Michael Stone and trying to sort out all the tangled assumptions and conclusions I'd come to when I first read it; an initial thought that it is often those with insurmountable problems of their own who end up in professions where they are attempting to help others, physician heal thyself. His is a sad story of a struggle with mental illness that he felt he had to keep secret and my own lazy reaction, despite my own struggles with the black dog, proves that "Culturally, we don't have enough language to talk about this. Rather than feel the shame and tragedy of it, can we find questions? ... What can we do for ourselves and others who have impulses or behaviours we cannot understand?" (statement by relatives)So, as I walked I thought about how we're all just doing our best to navigate the waters and sometimes it's really not that easy- or easy to own up to our crappy navigation skills. We're little islands full of hopes, fears, dreams, histories and insecurities and we all deal with it differently. Rumble strip? Well you know when you go a bit off course on the motorway and there's that bit that makes it feel as though the wheel's about to fall off and jolts you into consciousness? I felt a bit like that last month and the rumbling told me that I needed to stop being quite so hard on myself for not being "The Most Successful Artist Ever" or "Having the perfect job that enables me to pay back the parents and bail out the kids" and take on board a bit of the new age bullshit... trying to be outdoors (a little bit) everyday, doing yoga, eating green things and writing honestly.Meanwhile in the idyllic edited highlights of the year we went paddling over  a mirrored lake, so smooth that it was possible to feel vertigo as it appeared as though we were actually in the sky. The surface tension of the water held downy feathers, bone dry as if still falling through air and it seemed to curve up and away from us like the meniscus on an overfilled spirit measure. I did feel dizzy and being in the middle of the lake in the eerie stillness I had half a thought that Rupert might be planing to throw me in or what if the boat got a hole or what if it got foggy and we were lost, what if...? On the journey back from the pub it was almost dark and bats flittered about hunting, I hadn't thought they would fly so far out over water. It felt like the last night of summer, like a night in a story and so in the dark, on the pebbly shore I jumped out of my clothes for a dip in the black water, giggling like a maniac.Back on dry land the digital "painting" of the Jack Daw in the September blog post became a stencil for a print which will be at the Cumbria Printmakers/Cumbrian Sculptors "Poetic Vision"exhibition in Grasmere which opens on Sunday. It's going to include some poetry chosen by the Wordsworth Trust and poetry readings. I'm really honoured that Polly Atkin allowed me to use her book title "Basic Nest Architecture" for this piece and will hopefully be reading from her poem Jack Daw.After making my fingers very sore piercing and sewing the paper I have now found a proper tool for piercing holes which takes a bit of the pain away and makes the sewing part much more fun. I've got completely carried away on the more recent prints and it's part of my new plan to make less work but to spend longer on each piece.I found the perfect poem to go with this hare print, just a little too late to be included in the reading on the night but it will be credited on the print and in its title "The Leap From The Lea"  none the less, with kind permission. It is by the writer Dom Conlon, a Twitter connection and can be seen here Now you know the nights are drawing in and although it's only 4.30 pm the weather has made it feel later. It's time to make a cup of tea and bully the stove into life. It's going to be a busy weekend and I'm really looking forward to it. Hopefully this little person will visit again at some point...She is a Goldcrest, called Regulus regulus or King of Birds and I've never seen such a tiny little fairy bird in all my life. She banged her head on the window which is why she sat for long enough for me to grapple with my camera ( not long enough for me to learn how to focus obviously) but happily she was soon recovered and flew away.Reading : Autumn by Ali Smith and this blog post  by Laura from Elsie & Nell which says a lot of what also I feel about the difficulties of being a small creative business.