Enclosure
The first studio I had was a room without windows that had two strip lights, which resonated with a communicative buzz. I used it as a room of reflection and an enclosure to let loose my wide collection of bouncy balls:
If I happen to be incommunicado it is not my fault. I am in writing jail – a self-set constraint where I retreat in to four walls, feed off their flatness and project ideas back on to the key board resting on my desk. Ideas are bouncing around all over the place; I find it hard to stop for breath or for water of for Spanish meats.
A friend of mine is off on a week’s meditation retreat in the bowels of Western Scotland. I am jealous of her power to jump on an bus sharing the destination of others, arrive and then be absolute in the solidarity of her own mind and the connections therein. Sometimes I make up the practice of meditating. The last time I visited home my mother was preparing to move out: I was laying across her bed watching her pack – I picked up a supplementary magazine from the weekend paper flicked through its pages and found a relaxation technique spelled out in a sidelined column referencing ‘ways to deal with stress’, it said: “… breath in for four seconds through your nose, then breath out through your mouth for another seven seconds”. This is well practiced within these four walls, I count in and out envisioning waves on a beach swelling in 1 2 3 4 and… swelling out… 1 2 3 4 5 6 7. I imagine the words associated with migraine and anxiety washing away to drown in the sea.
One: I hit the desk with the heels of my hands just above the wrists, my fingers flayed like antenna projecting out towards the walls around me.
Two: I am a bat loosening my thoughts and waiting for the return of measured displacement with my eyes closed. I am in the dark until their return.
Three: I feel the crochet under my feet and liken it to crotal lichen. I am otherwise here as well as there. I am beyond the walls as well as within them, using their divide as a platform to frame and otherwise throw ideas at, bouncing too and fro.
Four: I slowly clench my toes and my fingers tightening the hole of my mouth waiting for immanent exhale. It works and my back is aligned with my neck as the rear of my head arches to allow the tip of my nose to face the ceiling.
One: I realise the ceiling is not there, instead there is sky, my process of meditative state seems to have worked.
Two: through my mouth I begin to blow a balloon filling it with helium that is reverent to my elevated state.
Three: this balloon begins to lift me, still attached to my throat, and my body tears away from its seat. My wrists leave the desk; my feet leave the patterned floor.
Four: I get so far and something stays my flow as I begin to run out of breath. But I push on anyway hoping for more. The balloon’s size increases but exponentially, soon its volume will reach its plateau matching the capacity of my lungs.
Five: the peak is reached. The ceiling manifests and returns to hold me within. I bounce gently against it and then settle as if the room has been turned upside down, filled with water and I have gently floated to the bottom.
Six: my potential weight takes over and I start to reduce in height – I prepare myself for landing, I retrace my steps making note of each second in the elapsed time. I will repeat the process and perhaps the ceiling will remain gone.
Seven: my last second and I feel the magnetic pull of the desk, my seat, the floor and its crafted edging, pink, purple, blue, red, yellow, green with intersecting faded white squares. I don’t open my eyes – I return to my exacting and grounded formation. And I repeat the process again.
