a pocket full of stones

I have a handful of stones, rattling around in my pocket, tumbling about, but never quite finished.

For what they are worth, here are a clutch of thoughts made word, little moments over the last few days.


a V and A museum gift shop plastic bag absentmindedly left behind in the bottom of the supermarket trolley I pull out of the bay. how very Waitrose.

******

life isn't always a summer day is it?
there are bruising greys and approaching storms,
the only truth is that everything eventually passes.

But close to my heart, like a note tucked safely in my old jacket pocket,
i hold the sliver of faith that there is always light, piercing and warm,
behind those scudding slate-grey gusts.

******

it's fly apparently, and peng not butters? i don't understand what my kids are saying. i need lessons in yoof.

******

sometimes words come winging in, 
great flocks overhead,
swooping down to me,
making shapes I can see,
circling truths, words for free .

other days I look up
and nothing swoops by
so I helplessly stare
wringing words out of air,
but they stay out of reach,  resolutely up there.

small stones

A few of you have asked about these 'small stones' I have been writing this month, and it made me realise I only gave the briefest explanation. This is why I started writing them:

"small stones will help you connect to the world, in all its richness & complexity & juiciness. 

To find your own small stones:

1. Keep your eyes, nose, mouth, fingers, ears & your mind open.
2. Notice something.
3. Write it down.

That's it. Extremely simple, and extraordinarily powerful. Try it & see.

If you want to get started straight away, read more about how to write small stones & then pick up your pen. Do it today. And do join the River (our daily small stone writing challenge) in Jan '12."


This is the description of what a 'small stone' is on the website of two writers, Kaspalita, a Buddist priest and Fiona Robyn, a published author, and I love the way they are encouraging so many people to slow down and appreciate a moment in each day, and attempt to capture it in words. 


I am just joining in for the month of January, but I think I will keep writing them now and again afterwards, because I love the discipline and the pleasure of attempting to find words to enshrine a moment. Just a few, well chosen words, that is the rub for me, not the happy rambles I am prone to, but pithy, to the point written observations.It isn't anything as grandiose as poetry, it is just the wrapping of a few words around a feeling or a noticed moment, but I hope if I look back years from now, those moments will be alive still in my memory. 


Every day though, it is hard, I often don't feel that inspired. But nothing worthwhile always feels easy does it? I'm pushing through!


Have a go in a notebook or diary. It is fun and it feels like a good discipline if you enjoy writing.


These are my latest four (all unrelated):


Clearing the final wizen remnants of last year's growth from the garden 
seems suddenly like a slate wiped clean, an absolution of sorts, 
earned by going out in pinching cold and doggedly clearing the way for hope, 
for this year's bounty yet unseen, for promises of beauty yet unknown.




A child at a piano, fair hair haloed by a lamp, makes a mother's heart sing.




A glass of wine, sipped slowly between happy conversations
with delicious food or in quiet contemplation, to me tastes good. 
Wine in gulps though, so easily becomes
desperation, foolishness, anger, self sabotage.




Softly, the winter sunset hovers over fence and hedgerow, 
the day slips away in a sliding, iridescent glow.

Give me a big blue sky (small stone 19)

Give me a big blue sky and I will be free.

I will breathe it in and the wrinkles in my mind will smooth, my soul will stretch to fill that place,
and if the sky is partly hidden, I will funnel my mind towards that smaller space.

and if only a little patch of blue is there, I will seek it out and fix my sight on the light I find.

and if there is no blue at all, no light to free my mind, I will close my eyes and dream of blue and scudding clouds and streaks of light until my mind is washed and free again.

whispering grasses of january

Just breathe. Slow. Be. 

Message from the whispering grasses of January.

More than enough for me

Panoramic vistas, soaring mountains, dramatic cliffs, dazzling blue sea. Of course I love all these things. But this morning the frost dusted fields and seedheads of one sort or another on the common-land by the river behind my house were all the beauty I need for today. There is enough quiet glory there to inspire me forever. Anything else is a bonus.

Hope you have an inspired day too. xx

*****

small stone 17

Nature, even in its tiniest, quietest corners

is cradled by an unseen, symbiotic web of numbers. 

Exquisite art, exquisite science

blended by a maths so pure, so infinite

that beauty seen is only fleeting inflorescence 

amid the never ending flow of perfect counting.

Material moments in that numeric spiral,

deliciously caught in light and photons

delight my eye and cause my soul to sing.

It's been like this

Outside:

Suprised by green. (Helleborus Foetidus)

Bowled over by the scent of Christmas Box.

Beside myself with pleasure when these pop up every winter, but so early this year. They are simply hope made botanical, no?

But winter cold suddenly returned at the weekend, -6 degrees C this morning, even the river froze over.

The river reeds and grasses look dessicated now, but there is still such ineffible beauty in their demise I think.

Inside:

Every year I get slightly exasperated by January and February, partly perhaps because the 'hygge' (Danish for 'winter cosy') has slightly lost its novelty and partly because I am just plain longing for the colour and warmth of Spring, and that can be a couple of months away yet.

This year though, I am finding a quiet rhythm in this slow, dark month. I am making time for extra sleep and reading, planning and baking, things that need a gentler pace, less rush. Like the dark, bare trees along the field margins, I am taking my time, absorbing nutrition of one sort or another, knowing all the time that busier weeks lie around the corner.

The best description I have found of this restful quality of January is here - and for the first time, I really understand what she is so eloqently describing. I hope you find it as inspiring as I did.

*******

small stones 14,15,16


Snowdrops
hope made botanical.


The river is iced, solidified, 
halted by nothing more than air.


It is not the tea itself I really love, 
or the frothy coffee, or hot chocolate milk, 
it is the warm cup in my hands, the heat seeping into my curled fingers, 
the radius of comfort for me alone.

Looks can be deceiving

It may look bleak mid-winterish out there,

but when I wandered into the little wooded area at the bottom of the garden this afternoon, just lookee what I discovered -

and, bestillmybeatingheart, these -

We are only half way through January and the hellebores are already flouncing their hearts out. 2012 just got lovelier!

*******

small stone 13
The hellebores have turned up early to the party
and their gentle, nodding blushes
only add more glory 
to the aching beauty they can hardly bear to own.

Today - small stone 12

Today. Picture postcard perfect.

Shifty winter - small stone 11

Shifty winter keeps pretending to be Spring.

Even the birds are singing along,  

dancing in the hedgerows, 

celebrating warmth and gentle days 

that belong to Spring, not now.

I don't have such faith, 

underneath this this season's velvet glove 

there lies the bony claw of winter still.

jewellery news and small stone 10

I am having an exciting time planning my jewellery collections for 2012. Collections being the key. I am going to be making less smaller, one off pieces, and concentrate my efforts on designing and making four or five coherent collections inspired for the main part by the "wild acre" of garden, riverbank and hedgerows around my home. Once I have enough stock they will be available in my online shop, and I am hoping a small range of galleries and other stockists.

Today I visited a gallery owner and jeweller, Jo Mason, who had seen my work online and wanted to have a closer look. She took ten pieces - I am so delighted to have my work under lights in a gallery cabinet! This was a Wild Acre goal for this year, and I am really glad to have got off the starting blocks with it already. If you are anywhere near Radlett, Herts, (surrounded by lovely farmland just north of London) do pop in to the Hertfordshire Craft Collective's jewellery gallery, full of beautiful and diverse pieces by a small range of different jewellers. The gallery and jewellery school is part of a wonderful collection of businesses and shops in a converted farm development called Battlers Green Farm - little barns around a courtyard with a farm shop, cafe, butcher, fishmonger, furniture and cook shops, holistic health shop, florist and lots more. Check out the link above - it really is a gorgeous place to shop or browse.  Here are two of the pieces Jo chose, soon to be available in my online shop too - the willow leaf pendant (from the intersections collection) and oval bangle (from the dewdrop collection).

*******

small stone 10


I love hearing my daughter sing and dance in a room across the hall. 
I hope she will always have cause to sing and dance like this - with carefree limbs and upturned face.
That nothing will cause that bubbling life in her to hide away.
That schedules and constraints will not hem her joy, 
nor disappointment mar her confidence.
I hope, with all I have, that she will still  be dancing in her nineties, 
twirled, perhaps, upon the arm of an adoring grandson.
Strange the dreams we dream for our children.

small stone 9, a storm of energy

Just below the quiet winter earth,

a storm of energy is brewing.

Yet like the wild electric fury

of life beneath my skin,

I hardly consider its tilting, rushing power.


So, placing my palm upon the ground, how is it

I cannot feel the creative pulse beneath its somber face?

Exploding divisions, multiplications,

a torrent of living maths I know is there but cannot see,

bound together in miraculous synchronicity.


But not so long from now, vivid shoots of green,

the fecund growth of Spring, will prove again;

That heaving beneath my feet there lies

an infinite, broiling lake of life.

small stone 8

Should the fact that I, at 42, have made peace with never being able to do the splits be cause for celebration or regret?

small stone 7

The hedegrows and fields,
my wild church.

kissable

The midwinter cold and especially the wind play merry freaking havoc with the face and hair I find.

At the risk of making my skin requirements sound like local council tarmac repairs, this time of year some extra maintainance is required.

Face:
Eve Lom cleanser. I can only afford this once a year (thank you santa!), and every year it is a renewed joy to clean my face at the end of the day. It is strange smelling - not unpleasant at all, just slightly straw-like, and has a paste-ish consistency. But once you have rubbed it on your face and washed it off with a hot cloth, the softening, silkening, super-clean effects are just blissful! At night I put on a bit of rose oil afterwards, and my face loves me.
Garnier Miracle Skin Protector . The wonders of this £10ish tinted-serum-come-foundation has been hyped up all over the web, and I was so very sceptical. Probably because my fair skin gets a bit pasty looking in winter I have wasted more money on gruesome, drying, orangey, are-you-trying-to-highlight-my-crowsfeet foundations than I care to remember. This stuff though - honestly, crossmyheart - it really is light and smoothing and flattering. It doesn't offer much in terms of coverage, but it really does seem to have a soft-focus effect on the less desirable aspects of my skin. Or maybe my hyperventilating at finally finding a brilliant foundation fogged the mirror, it is possible.

Lips:
Lipstick is all very well, and does look astoundingly glamourous on some women. But, I am very fair skinned and quite generously mouthed and frankly bright lipstick just wears me, I feel like my lips arrive in a room a few seconds before the rest of me! My teeth often suddenly look a horrible colour and my other facial features, particularly my eyes, seem to fade into the shadows of my cartoon mouth. Eeek! Plus it lands on any cheeks I kiss (and my husband avoids a random smooch when I wear it which is a downer!), cups I drink out of, clothes I take off over my head and worst of all my own teeth and that really is a grim look! It is just mucky stuff to me. So if I go out I wear lipgloss instead, I think it is subtle and sexy, and when I see other people wearing it, I usually think how great it looks. Loads of brands do fab ones, Juicy Tubes by Lancome are the benchmark for lovely hues but there are plenty of cheaper ones that have a nice creamy texture, not all that wet gloss look of yore. Maybelline cream gloss is a good example. And it doesn't mark your teeth, or your wine glass so horribly. And your partner will risk kissing you.

But for really totally kissable lips, lipbalm is the thing. I have a kind of nostalgic affection for the old chapstix (that smell reminds me of my young teen years), and vaseline, but there are so many lovely lipbalms out there, that properly nourish and smooth. My favourites are tubes of Clarins lipbalm, Kiehls and also Smith's rosebud salve - they just make lips so soft and unchappy, and have a faintest hue that adds that little bit more natural looking colour to the face. I also avoid the tins, they look so sweet and retro but they get so pesky to open, and constantly sticking your fingers in can't be hygienic can it?

The Clarins tube is a bit more expensive, but it stays on really well I find, and is a wonderful texture. For really sore lips Elizabeth Arden's 8 hour cream is miraculous but it is a bit super shiny/vaseline-y for me to choose for glamming up reasons alone. Clarins, Kiehl's or Smith's I wear  pretty permanently throughout the winter, especially walking the dog (much better than lipgloss which does tend to weld wisps of hair to the lips in a wind!), and whenever I am popping out into the cold. Even indoors, when the central heating is pumping, a little regular application never goes amiss, and no-one shrinks from my kisses as they would in lippy. Result. So, wear and be proud. and kissable at all times.

*********

small stone 6 
Unsettled suddenly by that gormless, vacant stare of tv watching spreading miasma-like across my young child's face.

small stone 5

as I lie in bed the west winds howl outside my attic room, 

shrieking through the poplars, wailing in fury, banging zephyr fists against the walls. 

and hurtling along the invisible tracks of surging air, 

the horn-cry of a far-off freight train is tossed suddenly against my window pane.

and i dream my little barn-home is carried off on tracks of wind 

to far off places in the night,

the mournful tones of a train's horn 

leading who knows where?

(ps. this happened last night. i think i have watched the Wizard of Oz once too often!)

Gosh, it's quiet!

I feel like I have landed with a bump into the fresh new year, and suddenly the house is quiet with everyone back to school and work and it is time to snap out of the fuzzy, "what day of the week is it?" mindset of the holidays and jump back into normal life again.

I like this feeling of anticipation, having rested and relaxed, and now ready to plan and prep for the year ahead. I have so many ideas for my jewellery, and personal hopes too, so this morning I am setting out my hopes for 2012. Not resolutions, because just that word makes me feel doleful with the sense of mid February guilt that always follows January's resolve. I end up wearing them around my neck like a medieval penance. But, a shortish list of hopes - that I find more exciting than intimidating. And I'm actually writing them down this year rather than having them tumbling around in my mind. I'm also writing a formal artist's statement for Wild Acre jewellery. Seems as if this is the year I get a little more organised, harness that free spirit just enough to feel there is a good structure in place for what I hope to achieve. Which does all sound a bit like Buzz Lightyear saying "I'm not flying....I'm falling with style!" Well, hopefully not falling, but at least "moving forward with some energy and clarity," (doesn't quite have that Hollywood ring!).

So my hopes for Wild Acre? Without boring you with the fine details:

To get my work into galleries and shops. Just a few ones that I love, and seem a good fit with my jewellery. I have a meeting next week with a gallery that approached me during the holidays which is an exciting start.


To further investigate the possibility of securing ethically mined/recycled  supplies for my work.

To work on the jewellery business 4 days a week and grow the sales.

To work towards  3 or  4  collections to include necklaces, earrings, bracelets, rings in each.

Deepen the link between my wild acre of garden and surrounding wetlands and fields, and the jewellery designs.

To continue building my skills base at the Hopton and Furlong School of Jewellery.

Investigate the possiblilities of exhibitions and larger craft fairs and pop-up shops.

Plan better, a season ahead.

Do my first business tax return - arrrgh!

Grow my gorgeous flowers more for pleasure than business, but enjoy the selling when it happens.

My personal hopes


Savour - time with my peeps. Disconnect and unplug from technology now and again.

Sleep - earlier to bed in the week. 6 and a half hours sleep a night is just. not. enough.

Food - I may not be the breadwinner in this family but I want to be the breadmaker. Every week, it is a no brainer. Make very sure my veggie daughter is getting enough iron. Eat less, eat better. Eat together as often as we can.

Exercise - this is a crucial 6 months for me - I find the discipline to do more than walking the dog, or I buy my clothes a size larger and stop moaning! I will not be whingeing about my muffin top this time next year, I am boring even myself about it!

Prayer. Use it or lose it. It is a habit, let's not be super-spiritual about it. So grateful God doesn't give up on me.

Photography. I got a big girl's camera for Christmas. Now I need to learn how to use it. Maybe a short course, because the instruction manual door stop makes me want to cry!

Time management. Pootling is lovely, it is cosy but it doesn't really get stuff done. Curb the pootling just a little.

Read more. Watch tv less or not at all.

Write my 'small stones' every day in January, and when I feel like it after then. Little poetic scraps that celebrate or investigate a moment in each day. Held and polished a little, a way to slow down and appreciate the small beauties and feelings that occur but are usually obscured by busyness.

Find one special word that sums up my hopes for the year and hold it close. Can't think of one yet, will let you know when I do.


I'm not going to do them all and I am fine with that, but it is good to know what I am aiming for.

Do you have hopes for 2012? Hope is a good thing, it keeps us moving forward, don't you think?

*********

small stone 4
Difficult news makes my ears feel full, as if hearing the words, somehow bungs them up and makes my hearing muffled. 

small stone 3

Last morning of the holidays demands a cup of tea in bed. 

fingers curled around the hot cup, 

wisps of steam ironing out the sleepy crinkles of my face. 

small stone 2

Absent-mindedly ruffling the soft flaxen hair of my youngest son, I realise suddenly how the gentle contours of that lovely head can no longer fit cosily into my hand. His childhood, like his growing bones, is slipping quietly through my fingers, expanding just as it should beyond the bounds of my hands' grasp but not my heart. To love without grasping, to be taught how to be a mother by my son.