Inklings: No2
Sketchbook page: Berries + Rust.
Inkling:
(noun) a slight knowledge or suspicion; a hint. From the Middle English 'inkle' meaning to utter in an undertone.
Sent as Newsletter January 25th 2021 -Sign up at bottom of page.
This is the time to be slow.
This is the time to be slow,
Lie low to the wall
Until the bitter weather passes.
Try, as best you can, not to let
The wire brush of doubt
Scrape from your heart
All sense of yourself
And your hesitant light.
If you remain generous,
Time will come good;
And you will find your feet
Again on fresh pastures of promise,
Where the air will be kind
And blushed with beginning.
- John O’Donohue
Sloe Berry (Nov. 2020. Barton End, Gloucestershire) and Iron Oxide.
Hello to you,
After days of wind and rain hammering the landscape a low winter suns greets the morning and I follow the inkling that beckons with gentle finger towards escape.
Shaking the still lingering touch of those met in dreams, I dress in too many layers and head out.
Among stirring neighbours and the dull thrum of reprising roadworks, weaving through ivy strewn woods and over stile.
Thinking to sit on the top wall overlooking the town slung through the valley, but I want more space than this.
Less human.
I know just the place.
I head to the field where the Skylarks sing.
They must shelter away on the greyer days but now under the blue skies and lukewarm rays they are flexing their wings and twertling (there is no other, albeit made up, word for it) together.
Landing unseen among the short, blunt stems of last years harvest.
Playfully hovering and jousting one another as they rise in plumes.
Tiny against the steadily flapping silhouette of corvid.
Jet black and unfazed.
Rosehip Ink (Nov. 2020. Barton End, Gloucestershire.) + Iron
I am a few chapters into Katherine May’s ‘Wintering’, after being gifted it for Christmas.
An exploration of the different ways we encounter winter and wintering.
From the seasonal slide into short days as well as the personal ways we encounter the physical and mental often slow, sometimes high speed flips out of the life that we were living and into an unknown, a new yet undefined present and future.
Katherine weaves in her personal account of surrendering to her body’s giving way to an unnamed illness throughout the wider research and conversations with others. She speaks early on about her guilt of thinking about still going away on a long planned holiday during her sick leave from work.
As if any ounce of surplus energy that brought her a notch above flat on her arse ought to be given back to her employer.
To clearly definable productivity.
She sinks further into her enforced wintering and to read her words I am finding a deep balm.
Not a book to be rushed, of course.
Katherine writes of her Finnish friend’s approach to winter preparation, starting in the summer months with baking for the freezer and preserving grown and foraged foods.
Something in the UK we may glance at as an enjoyable pass time with our less intensely undulating climate, but this is serious business for the Finnish who’s winters hold tight and cold for many months.
Close Up: Local Rosehip made November 2020 + Iron Rust.
Talvitelat: the untranslatable Finnish word meaning “the state of being stored away for winter.”
This brought me with fresh eyes to the last years' inks I have stewing, persevering and mutating in their bottles and jars.
To savour and celebrate the winter stores of colour I have, gathered in lighter days from abundant hedgerows.
The more fugitive (quicker to mute) shades still holding their palm-full of life.
Some not so vibrant to the eye but no less exquisite in their state now.
A capturing of a moment, action, relationship.
Some of these ink sketches and meetings on the page you see above and below.
I am reminded to not strive for the technicolour of summer palettes in these slowly eeking January days but to bow in reverence and awe to their unashamed “is-ness”.
Close up of free writing with bamboo and ash pens. Oak Gall black, rusty iron gold and Wild Blueberry purple-blue.
In the stretching of this January downtime, limiting my social media use and spending most of my days in solitude I have been reflecting on my practice (the things I do, how I make work and live, what inspires and feed me) and what it is I am drawn to exploring at the moment.
The wide-angle lens, dreamily a little off-kilter from the day-to-day. Inklings bubbling up in the hours between sunset and retiring for the night when action energy has waned yet something else steps forward to speak.
Wordless and other.
Soft focus.
Some of the words and themes that have landed and recur, that sit percolating in the mix: Process // compassion// the process of practising compassion // seasonality // rooting in the inner cycles// listening to the moon // meditation // alchemy // Carl Jung // the elements // symbols and marks // mapping // the poetry of David Whyte // iron rust // compost and found plants // the practice of staying present to the body // the act of expression // finding voice // creating space.
By no means a bland feast!
How these, and no doubt other elements, all interlink and overlap I am nervously enlivened to explore more on the page, with voice and in space.
To bring them further into the words, ink and work made and to the places of gathering with others.
In serving my own practice and process I grow in enthusiasm for finding ways to support this in others.
More practically rooted details to follow in future Inklings.
As January draws to its end the pale glint of Primrose among the hardy ivy leaves catches my eye, and the Cleavers begin their slow spread around the edge lands.
Yet Spring is not yet upon us.
A little extra light in the evenings here brings a remembering “ah yes, the winter does come to an end” yet we are still in its throes.
If you are pushing your front foot out and forward if you are feeling a little rattled by trying too hard, can you sink back just a little?
Soften into this exquisite body.
Take a moment to look out at the trees with their branches bare and roots hidden yet tending. Can you take a breath and open a little to the part of you hidden below the surface, underneath the thinking mind that is wise and knowing?
That is inherently part of the ebb and flow.
That knows its place in the cycle of things.
You have every right to be here.
You do not need to prove it.
Your spring will unfurl in its own sweet time.
This is the time to be slow.
A note to self, and in writing so to you.
With hearty inklings,
Kathryn
PS: Three good things:
Something to listen to: A Spotify Playlist of new and revisited music that has been getting under my skin and woollens this Winter.
Something to watch: Black Men Walking: How walking hobby became a symbol of identity.
Something for the mind, body and spirit: Meditation, movement and community. Buddhafield's 'At Home with the Elements' spacious month-long journey through February.
