Earlier in the year I had a very lovely email from someone I’ve connected with on Twitter:
“..Your work really resonates with a group that I am working with currently. We are keen to make some performative work. We have been thinking of producing some work held in a public space that perhaps will subvert or agitate some feelings or responses. Perhaps something to do with flows of things: time, tides, sea, erosion, water, rivers etc.
We are a group of six BAHons Fine Art students from UCA, Farnham. We are in our second year. We would be looking at trying to create something by April… ” Rups Cregeen
A series of emails followed that disappeared down spurious rabbit holes, but what resulted (mostly due to deadlines and Rups energy) was a fantastically cold overcast morning splashing around in the sea, and this:
It was a morning that shook me from my hibernation and of being closeted up ‘waiting to get better’. We laughed a lot and got cold and wet, some more than others. I tried to harness as much of the energy from Rups and the group, her dog, her daughter, and the sea, and it kept me going for a little while.
We all really liked the reflections too, the unexpected and the surprises, not all were caught on camera.
Logging in today and I am surprised how much time it has been. I last wrote on the Winter Solstice. This week heralded the Summer Solstice. Half a year has passed. Six months of intermittent visits to the sea, of gradual improvement in fitness and health, so slight it is barely noticeable. This blog has loosely been mapping and tracing a recovery of my health, threaded with connection to the sea. I have been conscious of this blog, waiting. I’ve had thoughts of posting a picture or some words, but they have not seemed substantial or pressing enough. And yet it has snuck up behind me, my recovery. I am doing more things that I want to – that glorious luxury of choice. I can walk to the sea without questioning if I can, or what it will cost. This is worthy of a celebratory post if nothing else. And on Sunday I have the rare and great privilege to talk with Helen Scales – marine biologist, writer, diver, ocean storyteller – at Wealden Literary Festival. In preparation I have been re reading Eye of the Shoal and remembering what it is like to dive, to be held in and by water, the awesome power of the ocean and the wonders that it holds. It is a fine parallel of the surreal world I am currently inhabiting, with one foot in wellness (and the outside world) and one foot out.
