letters

I am still writing letters to myself as I get up in the mornings, a practice that is helping me very much. Things that are tender and unexpected can come at that time of day.

Here is one, about my work:

Dear Sian

You need to figure out what it is that you are researching here. This seems to be about the magic of turning up in the same place, at the same time of day, being open to what happens when you are there. So repetition, rhythm. Change, sameness. Is it just saying “it gets dark, it gets light”? Is that it?

What do you feel like in the evenings at the mountain? Is it joy? It is a feeling of connection, a profound peace. You feel your aliveness, your mortality. There is a sense of opening of a door in the heart. There is all the beauty, the wide-openness to sky. Sun, wind, rain. There is the darkness, the dusk, the falling light, the fading colour. And truthfully you do love the darkness, always have. Darkness has a comfort and also a mystery. Is the mystery entangled with the comfort? As with fog, darkness makes you invisible.

So partly about seeing and being seen; perception, participation. This is what you felt when you saw D’s boxes of light. The landscape being made on the inside / outside.

When you make the scrolls, you generally made them double-sided, or with the ‘landscape’ on the outside. You generally did this without really thinking it through – as instinct. This seems important.

And the small paintings. They are very much about the dark, the ‘book of the dark’ that you would want to write. And actually, honestly, some are superb. The question of how to show them remains.

Yours for today,

Sian