“Pages from a Book:…

"In every heart there is a room"… and mine in in this room, occasionally but rarely floating up the curling plastic Italian staircase where I'd like to imagine sleep tucked eight in a bed, are Laura Ingalls Wilder and her siblings, cousins and neighbors, waiting for the Winter of Darkness to end and her father to stop twisting dead grasses into logs for the fire (I've tried it, it's harder than it sounds).

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, and on the ground floor falling lower it is toasty and warm, lights flicking on and off like angry candles – spontaneously combusting and dying at their leisure, and I am here, I am alive, and I greet you, even if your greeting isn't so much of one as a maneuvering around looking at what in your mind (and perhaps now in mine) is 'not really what you were expecting'.

The day is nearly over and I can say that it has been worth the little physical energy and rather unexpected mental energy to complete the week. I'll take seven more, in three months time…

Enter – was clearly looking for something and clearly always will be:
"Thanks, yes could I have her name."
"Chao."
Exit – was clearly looking for something and clearly always will be.

Enter – a slightly tubby little boy (yes, I can say that), and a thinner one with a football:
"Do we have to pay to have a look around?"
"Thanks a lot."
Exit – a slightly tubbly little boy (yes, I can say that), and a thinner one with a football.

Enter – woman in reddish pink jacket, perhaps a daughter in tow (though she wasn't of the age that needed to be towed, I expect it was for another necessary reason):
"Is this a place anyone can put up things?"
"We have a place…even crafts and other things?"
"Is that an American accent? Where in America?"
"Thank you ever so much."
Exit – woman in reddish pink jacket, perhaps a daughter in tow (though she wasn't of the age that needed to be towed, I expect it was for another necessary reason).

Enter – couple (women, dressed to nines all gold jewelry with a laugh that read years of smoking capris) and man in comb over and gold rimmed specs:
"Do we have to go upstairs?"
"Heahha, heahha."
"What we'd expect is right."
Exit – couple (women, dressed to nines all gold jewelry with a laugh that read years of smoking capris) and man in comb over and gold rimmed specs.

Enter – two lovely ladies who'd just been to 'Mrs Potter' so they were and took a moment to look around:
"Quite into our drawings now you see."
"Oooohh it was delightful."
"See, it has perspective."
"Well, what we've discovered is that you're not from this Island…is that why Africa is so big on your map?"
Exit – two lovely ladies who'd just been to 'Mrs Potter' so they were and took a moment to look around.

Enter – purple hair carrying really really really strange dead flowers (where do people find these things and then why do they put them in their homes?):
"Clever inn'it."
Enter – purple hair carrying really really really strange dead flowers (where do people find these things and then why do they put them in their homes?).

Enter – couple (one large/one not so large…not so large one carrying the bags of course) eyeing the stairs before they even get the door open:
"They look lovely but…"
"Thank you."
Enter – couple (one large/one not so large…not so large one carrying the bags of course) eyeing the stairs before they even get the door open.

Enter – classic white short sleeved polo shirt, dark jeans and black boots, backpack, sweater around the waist, with a pointed, yet slow walk of a SATURDAY AFTERNOON AT THE MUSEUM girl:
"Thank you."
Exit – classic white short sleeved polo shirt, dark jeans and black boots, backpack, sweater around the waist, with a pointed, yet slow walk of a SATURDAY AFTERNOON AT THE MUSEUM girl.

and finally: they'll never read another word of their work, but introducing a wider (however narrow they may be) public to a shrewdly edited scrap of A Thousand Plateaus by Deleuze and Guattari, …who at one point dug me out of a hole in the middle earth of my postgraduate degree theory seminars… is enough on a day (week) like this.

"when chaos threatens…draw an importable, inflatable territory" accompanied by eight bits of paper white picket fence cut outs, I guess it is just a little chuckle isn't it.

my life is truly amazing.

i am now sitting in the gallery on my last day, I came down geared up to get a lot of good thinking done (after I read the Saturday paper – which up to this point was just inspiring anger and needing to look up books on Wikipedia)…and then I sat in some coffee.

So, now 1) I've clearly entered uber clumbsy week and 2) I'm sitting in the gallery wearing a makeshift skirt, formed from a rather minging old white t-shirst which goes just far enough down below my overcoat to make me not look completely ne'ked.

ooo victim no 1 to this sightly scene.

Enter – one of those people that wears glasses that go shaded outside and clear indoors…ooo fancy:
"Is that it?"
"Ha."
Exit – one of those people that wears glasses that go shaded outside and clear indoors…ooo fancy.

I have no symphathy or pity for these people, I've even decided that I could live in their town (though I admit it has more to do with the proximity to the greatest audience of all time —- the sea……..

I was running yesterday evening on that very seafront and grinning like a bloody fool. The smell of freshly cut grass was fronting a light breeze that was bringing in the evening and following mornings' showers. It was absolutely delightful. It hadn't fully occurred to me, in the majority of my life, I've lived a rather landlocked state, and even in the County of Kent, only 10 miles from the sea, I don't often think about it. But that evening, perhaps it was the state of the tide, or the steps build for the sailing club, or the clear inadequacy of a crow's build for seaflying and the obvious triumph by those wacky gulls at the same task…I don't know. Suddenly, I was running along the edge of the Royal Albert Hall of the sea, modest in it's acoustics but extraordinary in the views.

The evening couldn't have given me any more pleasure just as sitting trouserless in my gallery is now making a mere final day, a little more fantastic and it isn't even noon. Oh goody.

i'm just about to sell out.

the lights didn't work when i came in this morning. i took

the momentary limping to run down to the shop and get the

local papers.

I'm thinking that if i stick around this county – allah

forbid – that i might live in this little town. hmmm.

I get rather excited when I see a notice that welcomes the

public down to the exhibtion i'm sitting in and the one

following that i've organized. yippee.

Man arrives to fix the lights. Sorted.

After a short while during which I have no recollection of

what I may have done. Phone calls?

Enter – man in green coat with shopping bags, reminds me of

the old men at my hometown church:
"Are there any pictures up stairs?"
"I'll come back…(and here I will tell you that I finished

his sentence with "…when there is something you'd like to

look at.")"
Exit – man in green coat with shopping bags, reminds me of

the old me at my hometown church.

I just want to come back, in July or August or whenever

there was another free week, take 4 days and hang up 10

slightly larger than A1 drawings. It would take me less than

7 days to make these drawings, without a doubt. I would

venture to guess, that if I advertised well. I would sell at

least one of them for somewhere between 100-300 quidsies. (I

have to write quidsies because there isn't a handy pound key

on my laptop.) So there it is, at once a personal challenge

and a public proposal. Everybody wins!! (Even though Mr.

Zerck is dancing in my ear again, holding up a hand drawn

sign stating "Sellout!" as cheerfully as blue smelly markers

can, his bushy eyebrows popping up and down.)

Enter – one of my favourite drawing students (whose actually

drawing skills are obscene – though I realize this is a

strange word to use – but his enthusiasm, actually that too

is in a constant state of decay, but he comes anyway…):
"I just parked across the street. It's great to see you in

here!"
"Well, if you are bored, I live here, I could come and

entertain."
Exit – one of my favourite drawing student (whose drawing

skills are obscene – though I realize this is a strange word

to use – but his enthusiasm, actually that too is in a

constant state of decay, but he comes anyway…).

And then I had to go to a meeting.

And when I came back, I was gearing up to go for a run on

the seafront so the time flew.

I could sleep in this gallery. I am more at home here than

in my house (and just as cold).

I forgot to mention the open evening – laid out, was the very finest of all simple snacking spreads — whole pears, glossy apples, cheese slices, carrot sticks and of course, Whoppers (as in the malted balls covered in choco, not that of the beefburger persuasion).

On my stroll before it all kicked off, I saw the depressingly critical (a style which I adore…) Jeremy Clarkson's 'The world according to…' in a shop window for less than 3 chucks. So I bought it thinking, if no one shows up, at least I'll be sitting warm and toasty in front of a fruit buffet, nibbling choco and hopefully laughing outloud at JCs antics. The day cannot end badly at this point.

And it didn't, a simple evening of answering simple questions about the work, passing out sad little plastic glasses of wine and discussing next weeks activities made it an enjoyable evening nonetheless.

I don't particularly like this kind of event, but when you are doing it for yourself, underneath not wanting to bother, you see that they are an important part of the whole process.

Good ridance, and I got to read the book on the long busride home, so everyone's a winner (except that pilot – ouch).

With my day creeping towards noon with the energy of a deydrated slug. I am tempted so very tempted. And in fact I could quite severely justify this temptation.

I've already committed to nearly a 1/5 of a century in fees on that damn DV camera that is meant to be solidifying my place in 'the art world' and the comments from the previous evening put me in the category I had a sneaking suspiscion I was creeping into….'gentle' and 'sensitive', and a few 'excitings' thrown in for good measure but only because one person had written it and the next four left one of these " in the comment box.

I could take a long lunch, get some sea air and vid the seagulls dipping and flying on gusts of up to 18 mph as updated every 15 minutes by my web browser. Or I could put up one of those 'so polite it's rude' signs "due to unforeseen circumstances…", I can't be asked.

and even Jeremy Clarkson is boring me this morning, as is Mandy Moore, Gwen Stefani and Kafka. I even looked up the Battle of the Bulge at 11a on my Wiki-love and grew disinterested after the third line where it was "bloodiest", "U.S.", 19,000 dead. Lucky granddad made it home with his new cig habit, and forty years later had to wheeze himself into heaven, leaving his initial sharing son to run the dairy business into the future.

I blame dehydration and staying up late dreaming in every fairytale ever told, and waking up thinking I was in one. Who would have thought that the Princess Diaries coming out in the past five years actually would change my life.

Two whole guests entered the gallery in the span of 8 minutes.

Enter – woman who huffed a little, but at least made an attempt to read things by leaning closer to them on the wall a little bit like they were infected, if I hadn't been there I bet she would have held her hand up to her mouth:
"Hmmf."
"Is there more upstairs?"
Exit – woman who huffed a little, but at least made an attempt to read things by leaning closer to them on the wall a little bit like they were infected, if I hadn't been there I bet she would have held her hand up to her mouth:

Enter – man in orange who is blatantly looking for watercolours and/or thick black lines:
"Thanks very much."
Exit – man in orange who is blatantly looking for watercolours and/or thick black lines.

If anything my continued analysis, not even that, observation and slight fictivity of these inidividuals taking a few moments out of their day to 'pop in' should be enough to keep me here. It is, but then again, it's not.

62 minutes is my goal. I'm happy to call it 32 and spend the final 15 cleaning up and taking a trip into the newsagent for a seriously necessary bottle of still water before getting on another time sucking bus to read a time sucking 'sunday book' on a Wednesday afternoon with the taste of aniseed and licorice putrifying my tongue.

Did I mention the decaf? I tell you what those, I refuse to give up dreaming in fairy tales late into the evening, waking up thinking I'm Ariel or Beau sans beau.

That is worth it. 18 months and a handful of Gs and only 25 minutes to go. Gotta get cracking if I'm going to make this convincing.

Enter – man who could potentially be the building owner.
"It would take a lot more time to take it all in." (paraphrased slightly)
Exit – man who could potentially be the building owner. (He was.)

and then my head blew off in the wind.