bridget martin

After being away from the boat for a couple of months we were a little anxious about what we would find on our return, especially as storm Eowyn had torn through Northern Ireland and the west coast of Scotland whilst we were away. But other than damp and cold and a leak in the usual place Wendy was absolutely fine and it didn’t take long to warm her through. A few days of cleaning and filling her with fresh cold air and she was home again. And now, several weeks further on we are nearing the end of February, a month that ushered in Imbolc and the promise of spring, gave us the beautifully bright Snow moon which lit up the harbour and turned the water a silvery ink. Today we are battered by wind and rain, the boat shivering and groaning, pewter sky and sea. But there is brightness at the edge.

It is taking me a bit longer to find my way again, to pick up my art supplies and gather the threads. I’m in the process of unsticking the stuckness. It’s not always possible to resume where we left off and why would it be? Human beings aren’t a paused film or a bookmarked page in a chapter. We are bundles of contradictions and questions, constantly moving, forever unsure. We have to allow time to catch up with our changed self, unravel if you like and come unstuck. The threads are loose and wild, the fragments are scattered and there is magic in the chaos. Coming unstuck offers the possibility of discovery.

The unstuckness is playing out on the pages of my art journal and on little pieces of mixed media mess and muddle. It is yielding to uncertainty and unknowing, trusting instinct and the opportunity of ‘maybe’. It is embracing the idea of our true wild nature, the wildness that Jay Griffiths calls the ‘universal songline’, that which ‘cannot be bought or sold, borrowed or copied’. The modern world does its best to erode our wildness with its insistence on efficiency, productivity and conformity but all life is inherently wild, our wildness will prevail. And if we are to silence the raging right wing rhetoric we need our wildness more than ever. With its compassion and playfulness, its empathy and music, its mischief and grace, the wild will drown out the lies with its elemental exuberance.

Our wildness resides in wondering and doubt, in curiosity and questions. But never in the answers. It hovers at the edges of our dreams and hides in the shadows of our thoughts. It is elusive and increasingly unfamiliar, pushed to near extinction by capitalism and consumerism. But still, however faintly, I think we hear its call. It whispers to our soul and reminds us of our true nature, like finding something we’d forgotten we’d lost. Like noticing the brightness at the edges. It seems to me that coming unstuck is a conversation just beginning. And what is usual does not have to be what is always.*

Thank you for reading this jumble of thoughts.
*  What is Usual is Not What is Always by Jane Hirschfield