Pushing an Elephant up the Stairs

Nine and a half weeks...

I have not been around.

That statement is more true than you can possibly imagine.  I have been home for almost two weeks after spending nine and a half weeks in hospital.  Three of them in intensive care. I am lucky to be here at all.  My family were told to expect the worst on more than one occasion and when it seemed I was going to live there was still the risk of organ damage, brain damage, stroke, etc. 

Yes. I am very lucky.  There has been no permanent damage. I will make a full recovery and be back to the way I was before eventually.

If you have read this far then you must be wondering what I am talking about, what happened to me. A couple of entries ago I was complaining about the delay in having my gall bladder removed.  In January I went into hospital via accident and emergency because I was in so much pain and a couple of days later I had the operation I had waited for for so long.  Within a day or two of coming home I was in an operating theatre fighting for my life.  Unfortunately, I developed a blood clot on my right lung.  Multiple complications followed its removal. Around 15 hours in theatre, 56+ units of blood and an Ecmo machine, and especially the dedication and skill of the surgical team  gave me my life back.

I will probably talk about this a lot when I have enough energy to use the computer. For this I apologise in advance. But the traumatic events of these last couple of months have left me grappling to come to terms with what happened.  I have been home for almost two weeks, roughly 8 weeks ago I had just left intensive care and could not even feed myself.  Now I can prepare a simple meal and am mobile within the house, although I cannot manage the stairs.  Carers come in every day and a nurse visits every other day to change the dressings on wounds left by the Ecmo machine.

I hate my helplessness.

I am grateful to be alive.

I went to the doctors on Monday  and was given antibiotics, more painkillers and something to stop me from feeling so sick. Dratted gall stones!  I shall be so glad when the surgeon finally gets around to removing my gall bladder.  While I was there I asked why, when I was supposed to be on the emergency list I had heard nothing since May.  Apparantly the surgeon is reluctant to operate without input from my orthopaedic specialist.  He has written to him but so far no reply. Lets just hope they both hurry up and get their act together.

Its supposed to help you get to know people...

It feels a little odd to be back at university.  Familiar and unfamiliar at the same time.  Several of my friends from year 0 have gone on, like me, to do Fine Art, so not every one is a stranger.

During the summer the powers that be decided to remove and replace the roof  on the studios. Of course the project has taken longer than it was supposed to and so we are currently working in long thin 'studio' belonging to a local company. One more week and hopefully we will be back where we belong and I can settle into a space that will be mine for the next year.

I dislike the uncertainty of this time of year.  The not knowing quite what one is supposed to be doing. The projects that are not really projects but time fillers.  Or 'ice breakers'.  With the idea that it would help us all to get to know each other, we have each been given a part of a painting to copy/interprut.  The idea is that we then have to talk to each other in order to make the pieces fit together. Below is my effort.  The small image, top right, is my little bit to copy.

(Mixed media, acrylic paint and soft pastels on  board)

So far the project has not worked out for me the way my tutor expected it to.  Far from helping me to make friends, it became one element amongst others that triggered a panic attack.  I sat, staring at the 'puzzle piece' I had been given and at the blank board in front of me, paralysed, heart racing, hands sweating and close to tears. I could neither talk to other students nor begin work.  Suddenly, the room seemed to be filled with strangers.  Talented strangers who were producing the most amazing work before my eyes.  How could I, with my poor drawing skills and clumsy painting technique even pick up a pencil? I felt sure that finally, I would be exposed as a fraud who had some how managed to get into university by accident.

Foolish thoughts, I know. But sometimes knowing does not help.  I spoke to the tutor, packed up my things and left. I have not been back since except for the trip to Liverpool.

I had deceided that today I would pull myself together and go in.  Unfortunately the gall stone problem has raised its unpleasant, nausiating head again and instead I am off to see the doctor this afternoon.

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Another water colour from my Kos sketchbook.

I came across this today and it made me smile...

'We can learn a lot from crayons.  Some are sharp, some are pretty and some are dull.  Some have weird names, and all are different colours, but they all have to live in the same box.'

There are posters around the campus with the name of the university and the phrase 'Adventures in Education'.  I made a joke of it with Emily.  I don't know why I should have felt this urge to mock.  Studying something that I feel so passionately about at degree level is an adventure.  An exhilarating and sometimes daunting adventure. 

This week has mostly been about administration matters and dozens of photocopied pages of information.  Information that often gives teasing glimpses of what is to come.  It has been difficult to sit still, listen, maybe take notes.  I feel like a diver perched on the very edge of a diving board.  Muscles tensed, poised to leap into the water.

I want to leap.  To immerse myself in the fulfilment of promises made on bits of paper.  Lectures, seminars, workshops and most of all the actual process of working in the studio.  Ideas swarm through my head, stimulated by the project outlines and conversations.  My hands itch to be let loose with paint and metal and cameras.  I long to learn new techniques, to experiment with media I have never used before.

I want to make.

I'm still musing on the idea of location and identity.  A subject that came up because of my experiences this summer and was then underlined by the first project we were given at uni. 

Being at university feels different this year. This could be because having done year zero I am not a fresher. This place is familiar to me. I know, or at least recognise the tutors and many of my fellow students from last year have returned. It could also be because I have changed.

I have not sat alone even once this week for more than a few minutes.  So many people have said 'hello' and appeared genuinely pleased to see me.  I, without thinking, have joined groups at their table during lunch or in the classroom. The feeling of being a misfit or merely a shadow has been momentary. And tonight. Tonight, I am going out!

I feel even more claustrophobic than usual since my return home.  Walls, house, traffic surround me, holding me fast in their brick, concrete and metal grip.  Outside or inside makes no difference.  There is no space, no distance, no further shore.

Last night I shut out the cats and opened my bedroom window as wide as it would go.  I lay on my bed shivering slightly in the cool air as I tried to breath in the sky.  Reaching beyond the roof tops, beyond the smog of street lights, up, up to the stars and the moon.  I slept.  Restlessly, dreaming quickly forgotten dreams.  Twisting duvet, sheets and pillows.  I slept.

Rain woke me around 6am.  The hard sound of it on the pavement.  The clean, wet, brand new smell of it.  The curtains, the windowsill, even the carpet beneath were damp and puddled with water.  I closed the window reluctantly and stood watching the rain.  Relieved to find something I had missed during my summer away.

I don't know how to hold onto her.  The me people liked and hugged and kissed. The me free of the dark who laughed out loud and swam in the sea.  She is an illusion.  A reflection from the past of who I might have been.  If only... An 18 year old in the body of a middle aged woman. But even she had no name.  She was 'mamma'. 

If I exist only in relation to others, does that mean that 'I' do not exist?

I really must get some sleep..

M and I arrived back home about 3am this morning after the best holiday I have ever had! Seriously!  So much to tell, so much to show, so much to share.  But it will all have to wait until I have had just a little more sleep...

Dabbing it here, dabbing it there...

I am a messy painter.  Actually I am messy full stop. I can't even use charcoal without getting it all over my face and in my hair.  Some times I plan to be careful - put newspaper down to protect the carpet and furniture, wear my oldest clothes - too frequently I simply forget.  The urge to paint or draw is a single minded impulse.  There are few things capable of distracting me once it strikes. Which explains why most of my clothes have acquired extra design elements, otherwise known as paint splatters.  Perhaps the non-existence of a social life is a lucky thing. What would I wear if I did go out?

Speaking of which, I received a text from a friend yesterday asking me if I would like to be involved with an art group that she and a few other students from university are starting up.  My first instinct was to say no.  The habit of hibernation runs deep.  However the lure of other artists to talk to and maybe a little fun, as well as the fact that L had thought to include me, is temptation enough to give it a go. 

I won't be able to go to the first meeting, which is today.  My financial situation is still too precarious to stray from my budget.  Even for bus fare. At the moment the only income I have is Child Benefit and Child Tax Credit, although hopefully, my Disability Living Allowance will be paid into the bank today.  The way the system works I was unable to claim benefit until the 3rd of July, which left two or three weeks with nothing at all.  I had planned for this, but unfortunately the money claimed back by the Student Loan Company wiped out what I had managed to save.  Fingers crossed that the powers that be do not take too long to process my claim.

I have been busy over the last few days working on a painting.  'Not every thing works' has been my mantra.  My experiments this summer are about learning to handle paint and about practising my drawing skills.  As you might guess from those statements, frustration levels have been running high.

I began with a charcoal sketch.  Not great, but the composition interested me.

Nervous about using oils, I decided to underpaint with acrylics.

By the time I had finished the first couple of layers with oils I was aching to take a pair of scissors to the painting.  At this stage, I felt that I had ruined a reasonable sketch beyond redemption.

Oddly enough, looking at the photograph of this stage, I feel less negatively about it.  The high contrast is interesting and I think I could possibly of pursued this.

I worked on the painting until the early hours of this morning and was up again, paint brush in hand by 5.30 am. It looks very different from the previous image and better in a larger size (click on it). I quite like some of the transitions, but it is still far from the image i wanted to make.

Oil paints frustrate me.  I find them so difficult to handle effectively. Yet I love them.  The smell, the texture, the colours. Their versatility in the hands of someone who knows what they are doing.

I think that today I will put away my sketch book, my paints and do something else.  Leave the painting to dry, avoid it for a few days. I doubt that it will improve with keeping, but perhaps I can learn some lessons when I am able to look at it with a more objective eye.

Sneaking out...

On Thursday, I went out.  Out of the village, onto a bus and into town.  When I say village, please do not imagine cottages with roses around the door.  No, this is an Urban Village.  A place where miners once lived to be close to the pit. A place now absorbed by a near by town, surrounded by vast housing estates, yet still, somehow, managing to cling on to  something of its individual identity. The high street remains ( my house looks onto it), so does an old church. A patch of tradition and green, side by side with heavy traffic, blocks of flats and the older, Victorian,  terraced rows.

I could write more about the village.  About its community, its facilities and its reputation.  About the affection I have developed for this place despite its faults. But  not here. Not now.  Today I want to write about Thursday and going out.

It must be two or three weeks since I last left the house except to scurry across the road to the shops.  On those occasions, skulking beneath a hat, I slide from my home and then back again like a fugitive afraid to be recognised. I know the right times to chose.  Times when the street will be quiet.  Just after 9am, when those going to work or school have already collected newspapers or chocolate bars.  The point in the late afternoon/early evening, when the day has ended but the teenagers have not yet emerged from their hiding places. If my children are available to run errands I can avoid even those fleeting forays beyond my front door.

Last Thursday I had reasons to venture further.  A need to purchase more cat food. A particular brand, only available from a particular pet shop.  And a promise to a friend to see her photography, displayed as part of the student exhibition at the college I used to attend.

As though to encourage me, it was a beautiful day. Warm and sunny after a rather dull week.  The bus was crowded.  A small child in a pushchair cried and squealed throughout the short journey.  I felt sorry for his mother who looked tired and embarrassed at her inability to pacify her son.  I smiled at her and she smiled back.  When we reached my stop I waited until the bus had come to a complete halt before standing up.  Experience has taught me that to do otherwise risks finding myself loosing my balance and landing on some strangers lap!   New passengers began to board the bus and I had to push through them to get off.

From the stop to the exhibition was only a short walk.  I was surprised by the rush of emotion I felt as I entered the building.  Familiarity, nostalgia, memories of the friends I had made here. I realised that, happy as I am at university, there is much that I miss from my year at college.

There was a lot to see.  Fine art, photography, design, fashion, crafts and all of it impressive.  This is always a good exhibition and this year is no exception.  As soon as the web site goes live I will post a link. 

I did not see any students that I know, but it was lovely to be greeted by various members of staff and to realise that they still remembered me.  Even my name. These people encouraged and supported me as I took the first steps on the road to fulfilling my dreams and I owe them a debt of gratitude. 

The one sad note was to discover that J has taken the redundancy package being offered by so many further education collages as they go through a period of upheaval.  She is one of those for whom teaching is a true vocation. Who has a special talent for bringing out the best in her students.  I have seen this before, in schools.  Where the need to make financial savings too often results in the most experienced and valuable members of staff being lost.  I promised to stay in touch with J and she says that when I graduate she will come to my exhibition.

That seems like such a long way off.  Three years.  Too often I wonder if I will get there.