Conflict

If I stop to think about the process I go through in writing this blog, I would say that it generally involves catching a train of thought during the week, running with it to see where it takes me and deciding if there is enough in it to reach a conclusion.  It is usually intuitive, involving a slow meandering through my mind trying to link my various musings and then several hours searching for the words that best describe those reflections.  It ignites my creativity and takes me into a head space that makes me feel alive and most importantly shuts everything else out for a while.  Not so however, when your main train of thought during the week concerns the dog's anxiety and depression and the conclusion you keep coming to is that he needs another dog for company but you don't really want to go there, except that you could. It would be so easy, especially when the pros are all immediate and the cons belong to a world 'out there' and for now, out of reach.  And that in those few sentences you've just written, one son's heart has leapt, the other's has fallen and your heart remains torn and slightly broken.

As the media start ramping up speculation on the end of lockdown, I find myself increasingly conflicted about how this is making me feel.  On the one hand I can't wait to see my family and friends again, to be in their actual company where conversations are not disjointed, one at a time and privy to the domestic arrangements of whoever is talking (between themselves) the loudest, to share food and human touch with those who are 'huggers' and try my hardest, in my excitement, to remember that not all of them are!  On the other, I am frightened about the relaxation of social distancing measures, have no wish to see the orderly queue at the supermarket removed, can't actually hear when everyone is talking at once, and don't want Al to go back to work.  The uncertainty of how long lockdown will last, how we move on from this and to what end has put me in limbo and I know from past experiences that I don't fare well there - it muddles my head with ifs and buts and is not at all surprising that I'm struggling to think amidst all that chaos.

Time for some diversionary tactics.  I have sewn and cut fabric to sew some more, forced my head into the fiances and disappeared into the exercise and photographic frenzy that was my running club's lockdown challenge - an incremental test across seven days that had us traversing the local area in search of various things from ponds to bridges to places of worship.  Much as I think Michael would have liked this to lead to a blog on bridges, marvelling at their construction, strength, engineering feat and, at times, unquestionable beauty there was no time to bring myself even part way up to speed on the topic when I was already thinking about where to find the next items on the list, creative juices in full flow, everything else momentarily obliterated from my mind. 

That I should end the week with a prize for my creative input was an unexpected and added bonus, but really the true gift that it brought, in addition to the aforementioned distraction, was a reminder to open my eyes.  This is not a concept that is new to me, nor is it something that if you've been following my blog will be new to you, but it has come as a bit of kick up the backside to realise that even a visual artist who'd like to think she is in tune with this practice, lets so much go unseen.  And in my trigger happy state, where I am immersed in satiating my desire to capture what my eyes are seeing, what other sensory information do I filter out?  How often do I really focus in on my sense of touch or smell or taste? 

Short of getting him a canine friend, we're doing all we can for the dog.  After weeks of walking the same dry path, with no rain to have refreshed the smells, we are trying hard to inject some variety into his day whilst maintaining a sense of routine.  Sounds like something I should try to do for myself. Determined to build on the pleasure I have gained from this week's challenge, I too am going to let my feet continue to take me to new paths, unearthing hidden treasures along the way.  But first I'm going to return to a churchyard I have run past many many times, yet stopped to sit in for the first time yesterday.  In it is a dead yew tree.  I have never given it any consideration before and I although sat next to it, I almost left without looking at it, but for the fact that it had appeared the day before in one of my fellow runners photographs - a point of interested - something to do with Robin Hood.  What a feast for my eyes! Lined, gnarled and knotted it is a macro photographers dream, I drank in it's deformed beauty and went on my way to seek out the next item on my tick list.  

Not so today.  

Today, I'm going to allow myself a few minutes to escape into the world of outlaws and fourteenth century England and sheriffs and merry men and fair maidens... or of the Brontë's whose father was Reverend at the church some 300 years later.  People who would have found the idea of a Zoom call so incredulous they would be unable to fathom out my frustration at it's inadequacies, or perhaps our digital world would fill them with horror, much like our inability to eradicate poverty and the uneven distribution of wealth.  So many ruminations, so few conclusions.... but at least for a while it will stop me thinking about the dog!