Ideas, ideas

NOW the ideas are flowing again. So many things I want to do. For seven months, while I was not working and had ALL the free time I ever wanted, I didn't do a thing! I could not drag myself to be interested in anything.

Now that is just killing me! When I think what I could have accomplished in this time, the fun I could have had, the techniques I could have played with and learnt about.... boo hoo :(

Mainly the fun I could have had playing! I am doing some of that now - making paper cloth a la Beryl Taylor. Glueing paper to cloth, then painting it with any coloured medium (fabric paint, acrylics, paintstiks etc) and scribbling on it with any kind of pen, pencil, koki, crayon - anything that writes. Then you maybe add some more paper, or tissue or paint and the idea is to get a textured surface with many layers that show through at various depths.

It's great, finally, getting to use my Shiva (Markal here in South Africa) paintstiks. They're awesome! Some gel pens are good on the paint too. It's such a lot of fun. Fun. What? I can't believe I am playing and having fun. When last...?

I'm also getting tons of inspiration from the US magazines I've been subscribing to, Quilting Arts and Cloth, Paper, Scissors. They're expensive when you convert our little Rands, but I read them again and again, so I feel justified. During my last manic episode, I must've not felt I had to justify anything to anyone,(!) so I blithely renewed both subscriptions, without a twinge of caution! I remember feeling sure that the universe would provide. When the credit card statement arrived, the universe was conspicuously quiet. What happened to "leap and the net will appear"?

Sometimes I sits and thinks, and sometimes I just sits. This new medication is pretty sedating and does slow me down, but I am confident that between the psychiatrist and I, we can tweak it so I'm alert in the day and sleepy at night. Whatever, however, I am going to make it work; just being myself again, after that long, dark winter, is a gift worth treasuring, and I am going to nurture it. Appreciate what I have.

I have yet to locate my camera. Things are in a slightly messed up state around here. Well, okay, I think a hurricane blew through while I was sleeping. My four-seater couch can narrowly fit one person on it. Both of my tables in my "studio", yeah alright, lounge, are covered with STUFF to the depth of about 20cm. But it's all such nice stuff! As a friend of mine says, my style is very... err... "organic".

You know how, when you're choosing colours, you have to pull out all the fabrics, beads, etc to see how they go together? And you know how you can't do this in one session, they have to lie there, so you can walk past them for a couple of days, and mull them over? And you know when you have about 10 ideas at the same time, and want to get things out for each one of them, so you don't lose the concept or pictures in your head? And you know how the pieces you haven't yet finished, have to lie out, so you can mull over them too, and consider how they want to be finished? Add the internet, a coffee maker, a fistful of pills, (alas, a necessary evil) and you have a little self-contained eco-system. THAT, dear friends... is "organic"...

Ahh, at times like these, 'tis a joy to live alone... :)