I went for a walk and I heard a man singing

I went to the most beautiful party last night.  I lay on the floor on a cushion beside a kind  man I didn't know, looking up at a grapevine-covered conservatory ceiling wound through with tiny lights, while listening to another man with a fairytale hat and a beautiful voice singing the kind of sad songs that make you feel lit up inside.

I woke up feeling wide open, like the interesting people I spent time with last night made the walls  I've been using to protect myself tumble down.  It's not an easy space to find myself in. With the walls gone,  I notice how grey I am right now.  How I'm kind of blunted and the world is watercolour, not bright blue like I'm used to.  I guess my brain is doing that sensible thing and shutting me down a little so I can deal with our first christmas without her.  I figure the colour will return in its own good time.  Just gotta keep going with this process.  Can't go over it, can't go under it.  Gotta go through it.

I went for a walk this morning.  As I crossed over to the riverside, I passed a man.  He had  headphones on, singing. Beautifully.  He smiled at me as we crossed paths.  His singing - and the singing of the tui in the tree above my head - cut through my sadness, reminded me that there is always loveliness in this world, if you choose to look for it.

Two men singing in the space of few hours. How delightful.

In what's likely to be the last post of 2017, I want to thank you for bearing with me for the last few months.  IRL,  have had my close friends and family of course, but this writing I do helps me in a way I can't explain.  The particular kind of grieving you do around death is new to me, and I'm finding my way through it blindly, with no particular grace.  I feel fortunate to be able to write some of it out into the ether like this.

I went for a walk just before, wrapped in her jacket, having first attached the wee teapot in the photograph to my necklace with a dodgy bit of thin black wire.  I wanted her as near to me as I could get this morning.     

My parents went on a world trip when I was ten.  My Mum bought a sterling silver charm bracelet to remember their travelling days by.  This teapot is from that bracelet.  It had fallen off and Mum gave it to me a couple of months before she died.  I played with it as a child - it would be on her wrist and I'd be playing with the rotating enamel interior, fascinated by the movement in something so tiny.  It seemed like the earth turning.

I know the holiday season is a lovely one, full of love and family and friends and fat men in red bringing new treasure to children.  But no matter how happy we are, how much love we have, we all have our shadows trailing along behind us, seen most strongly when the light is brightest.

Grief for the love we've lost, for the love we never had in the first place.  All those knife-sharp hurts that come just from the act of living.

That's why it's so important to treasure what we have that is good and lovely.  

Even if right now that's only the sound of a man singing beautifully as you walk on by.

You me the sea

you me the sea tidal, 2017

I'm posting this image for my dear friend, M, who is having a tough time, and has been having a tough time for years now.  I almost want to laugh when I think of the pressure she's under in her life.  Because otherwise I'll cry.  

M, her heart is so big.  Being in her company you feel her kindness and generosity wrap right round you.  She is also fiercely creative, with something strong and important to say.  This woman she knows how to love, she knows how to be there for those she loves, no matter the cost to her self.  She ain't rich.  She ain't famous. But damn, she is fine.

Ever since I've known M, she's been the same: periodically gone to the same despairing places right down deep, but jesus come out of it with such fierce determination. 

She has achieved so much in her life so far, but most of the time she can't see it because she's lost in the up-down-around of her overwhelming feelings .  She and I we're so similar in that way:  both more than half the time at the mercy of our big-wave emotions.  

What I want to remind you with this artwork, M, is to remember the sea.  That big big water. She has waves so big even ships are sunk.  Some days she's calm and blue enough that the mothers let their toddlers in.

Her endless change, her wild variation, that is her constant.  That is her strength.

Tide in, tide out. No matter the weather.

You, my friend, have ridiculously heavy burdens.  But you are like her, so big and elemental that you can bear them all.  

As long as you embrace who you are.

As long as you accept your life ain't ever gonna be no rosegarden.  Flowers don't grow in a wild ocean.

I could, as you well know, M, be talking about myself.

Let's let go those dreams of a life full of pretty roses, let's leave that to someone else.

Let's be who we are.  Grey and fierce-as-fck, calm and blue.  So strong we can carve the land up if we choose.

You. Me. The sea. 

Tidal.

Love you, mate.

My favourite kind of day

My kitchen sink, 17 December 2017

Sun shining hot.

Making good work.

Doing the washing.

Cleaning the sink.

This is

my favourite

kind of day.

I'm often at my happiest when combining the domestic with my work.  Guess it's because the quiet private ordinary details of my everyday life are where my work comes from.  

Counterpoint

It's beautiful here at the edge, on the workroom wall, 14 December 2017

I've had a tough week, one way or another.  Today, in counterpoint, I got a big print made of this, hung it on my workroom wall. 

The words were written during a happier time.  It makes me feel good to remember happier times.

“it’s beautiful here
in this small room
in this small town
in this small country
at the edge
of the world”

FInding brightness on dark days is so good for my spirit.

[BTW & FYI: Studio prints of this artwork will be available at the Space Xmas Night Market on Saturday.  If you're in Whanganui, rock on up.  If you're not gonna be in my hood, hit me up and I'll sell you one URL, and send it to you wherever you are. ]

Gaps and distance

Red string in a bow, December 2017

I've got a Xmas market coming up on Saturday and I've made some artwork for it which is quite good and, according to the schedule in my own head, I'm  supposed to be spending this morning writing a cheery post so you'll come to the market and buy some stuff.  But you know what I'm not feeling it.

This morning I couldn't give two flying fcks about the market or selling any prints.  No disrespect to the market, which will be a very good one, or to my prints, which are equally good.

It's just that I feel the gap of her absence so keenly.  I've got something to talk to her about and she's not here.  

Listening to  you cant' always get what you want as I write this. Music eases the ache, eh.  You listen and you know someone else felt the same and all of a sudden all this feeling just feels human like everyone else and you don't feel so wound up.

I have something I want right now, but I'm not getting it.  The distance between what I want and what I'm getting feels like Cook Strait. 

If she was here, I'd talk to her about it, and she'd say it's okay baby just be patient it will come. Chin up. and I'd feel annoyed at her and think yeah its alright for you you're not the one wanting this so badly and I'd say see you later Mum love you in an annoying offhand manner and drive home and then realise she was right and tell her so by text and she'd say love you baby and I'd feel all was right with my world again.

But she's not here.  She's so far away.

I'm left here writing by myself into the ether, trying to fill the gap she left with words, listening to rock songs very quietly so I don't wake my son, tears hot in my eyes, cool down my face.

I've got fifteen minutes before I start the day, before I shower and dress and walk the dog and put on my makeup and pretend for the rest of the day that I'm fine.  I'm not fine.  

Here's a lovely thing that happened.  This makes me feel better. Not such a miserable downer for you first thing in the morning lol.

I made a very large print of remember love for a beautiful couple J.D and A.B.  They live apart at the moment,, for work. This is the first artwork they have bought together.  You can't see it but under the large "remember love" I wrote "and stardust" because I don't know them from a bar of soap but they and their love feels a bit like magic to me, and this print, IRL, has lots of marks that look like dust and the stars and the expansive black universe.

Remember love [and stardust], for J.D and A.B, December 2017

Anyway, the other night they opened the artwork I'd sent them together, via Skype. This is the message J.D sent to me afterwards:

“I cried. It’s beautiful. Thank you so much Fleur. It’s subtle and it’s bold and it’s perfect. Was actually quite fitting that A and i opened it together but apart... our relationship has featured quite a few long-distance separations, and even now with only an island-length between us (barely anything at all when we’ve had to cover oceans’-worth of distance) it’s an amazing way to remember love. (and stardust.)”

It was so wonderful, getting these words from her.  It's why I keep doing what I do instead of curling up into a ball on my bed, which quite frankly at the moment is what I'd prefer to be doing.

Even though right now in my life I feel the gaps and distance between me and love and most kinds of loving, it cheers my heart to feel the love others have for eachother.  It makes me smile, it makes me glad for them, it makes me too remember the times I've felt all loved up, makes me hopeful I'll feel that again.  That I'll feel something strongly again, and not just this going-through-the-motions numbness that makes up so much of my days these days.

No time left on my writing clock this morning and  I gotta wrap this up.  This post feels like it's half written but I don't think the quality of the writing's gonna get any better today... Maybe tommorrow it'll be half decent. That's the thing, you just gotta keep at it.  Keep returning and pushing through.  Some days will suck like this one does.  Other days will feel like magic. 

You never know when you start which way the coin's gonna flip.  You just gotta keep flipping the coin.

These red threads they tie us so beautifully

A note I wrote about red thread, 11 December 2017

I sent an artwork off to Wellington today.   As usual, I found it hard to let it go.  Wrote this note to go with it. 

It's a dog's life

I walked into the lounge and there he was, asleep in the warm and yellow light.

The thing about Seth I have always liked the most is that he has this ability to get the love he needs, without fuss or demand.  

There's a silence about him.  He comes to you quietly, without whining or snuffling, presents his body or head to you for the pats he needs.  And you do pat him, because he's there and he's lovely and why wouldn't you?  I've got a lot to learn from Seth.

When I say Seth needs patting, I do think it is a need in him rather than a want.  My last dog could take or leave the physical affection.  Seth can take or leave food for the most part, but touch he cannot do without.  

Hmmm, they says dogs are like their owners... and yup I'll admit I'm the same as him.  Too long without physical contact and I can feel my body reaching outward of its own accord, increasingly needy.  Thank christ my friends and family are good huggers.

I have a sister Jack.  I don't see her as much as I'd like; she lives in a different city. But when I do all I want is be sitting beside her with my head on her shoulder.  Just being in her company gives me great comfort, and my body gets all calm and chill. Love you Jack.  

When I was kid, there was this tv show called Contact. Remember the theme song?

Contact is the secret

is the moment

when everything happens. 

Contact is the answer

is the reason

that everything happens

contact.

 I am so with that vibe.

This too will pass

What I wrote on the beam in my kitchen in 2002, rephotographed from the magazine 2017

I came across an old magazine while shifting Dad yesterday, an old New Zealand House and Garden with an eight page story about me in it.  Mum had kept for 15 years.  She always was proud of me.

Re-reading the article after all this time  was like diving into another life, maybe someone elses. 

The words the journalist wrote talk of my husband, what I wore on my wedding day, my work as an "award-winning" portrait and wedding photographer, the family of four step-children I had then, the home "perched on a hillside in Wellington's Melrose, a wild and romantic spot with views over the Cook Strait to the Orongorongos." 

Of all the things I can see in these pages from the home that was mine - that I created - there are only two things I have kept: the plastic chandelier I got for two dollars at the Red Cross Shop in Newtown that reminds me of the scene in Pollyanna where Mr Pendergast is showing her how beautiful the light cast from crystal can be, and the cruet set on the dining table that I still sometimes use for flowers.

When I got up on the ladder and wrote this too will pass on that beam in our kitchen, I didn't imagine it would be our family and life together that would be one of the things to pass.  I didn't expect to spend a decade bringing up our son on my own.  Hell, David wasn't wasn't even born.  Time teaches brutal lessons, eh.

Since those windy Wellington days, I've had lovers and a boyfriend.  My family and friends and son with me always.  I've experienced so much, grown deeper, grown up.  Come home to my self as a woman, and an artist. But the path I've been on has been mostly solitary.  I understand it's been necessary.  For my life, and my work. 

But I wonder if, in the powerful and necessary letting go I did of the material things that symbolized a love and life passed,  I also by mistake shut the door hard on the possibility of again experincing the very things from those years in that house that really mattered:  a loving partnership, a home to call my own, and a large part of my wide-open heart.

You know what? I want those precious things back. 

Good news.  I closed it that door.  I can damn well open it again.  I'm tired of protecting my heart so fiercely.

This too shall pass.

---

---

Taking it all down

Boy with his bubble on my parent's wall, December 2017

I'm going to Palmerston North today to help my sisters pack my Dad up and into his new place.  He's leaving the home he spent the last years in with Mum.  Most of my mother's things will be distributed amongst us six kids.  Dad doesn't have room for it all.  I am happy for my Dad.  He wants and needs to move on  - he feels her absence too keenly there. 

It will be strange though, to no longer have a place to go back to which is full of my mother's things.  She loved her things.  My parents have moved around a lot in their lives, so we as a family don't have a family home as such.   What I didn't realise until now is that my mother's things were our family home.  She was like a turtle and carried what mattered to her with her wherever she went.  But as I said to one of my sisters, she no longer needs them now.

When I was child - maybe eight - my great grandmother gave Mum and Dad some money.  With it Mum chose to get a whole series of Pears Soap adverts framed.  They were there on the wall as I played  games in the wide hallway of my childhood.  As I skipped and bounced balls and ran my hands over the big old-fashioned brass telephone I was fascinated by, felt the texture of the telephone table beneath it. 

I'm not a big "things" person. I don't keep a helluva lot in my house, aside from photographs and artwork and notes the people I love write to me.  Mum had style and her things worked beautifully in the spaces she inhabited, but I don't need her stuff for myself.  Her things represent her life, not mine.

Instead, I made this photograph.  It has her in it, her love of this print, and it also has me. And my Dad and our family and our life together too.  This boy with his bubbles has been there through thick and thin.  If only he could talk!  The loud fierce arguments, the everyday living,  the big loud love.

I'm going to make a beautiful print of this, frame it. 

Then I can look at it and and picture my parents and their private life together, see them sitting beside eachother in their beige lazyboys watching Masterchef or league, hear Mum telling Dad off for spilling his dinner on his tshirt, hear Dad singing a line in his no-tune voice to her because it irritated her, and because he loved her and it was his clumsy shy way of showing it.  61 years living life beside eachother and as Dad says, they're still together now.  

Wish me luck for today.  Even though I'm feeling strong and have this photograph to keep me that way, it's not going to be easy, taking it all down.

Tie a yellow ribbon

Tie a yellow ribbon, 6 December 2017

I was getting my morning coffee from the excellent the village snob down by the riverside yesterday, and came across these two ribbons.  One yellow, one black.

I wondered who put them there and why. A memory of a kiss?  Some kind of grieving?

Whatever the reason, it felt like a tribute to me.  Someone's way of reminding themselves of something that should not be forgotten.

Acts like this - silent and prepared to go unnoticed - sometimes hit me in the gut more powerfully than an entire installation at an art gallery.