Alien life

I am sitting here at the computer, and have the feeling that my body has been taken over by Aliens. Did they arrive with the Christmas presents? Where they, or it, wrapped in the pain that knocked me out about 10 days ago?

According "Dictionary.com" an alien is:

a resident born in, or belonging to another country,

who has not acquired citizenship by naturalization

A citizen from the world of pain? The world of M.E.?

I am in a daze, sleep between 12 and 14 hours at night, and then still require a rest in the afternoon. My legs are worryingly weak. The Alien in my head makes conversations difficult. I can not find the words to describe a thing or an action. Writing seems a little easier although the job is laboursome. (& spellcheck essential!)

So why write?

Because in this Zombie/Alien state, my creative brain is making a comeback. It wants attention, and comes up with ideas for the year ahead.

Over the past few days a handmade artist book has been formulation in my mind, and I have played around with its possibilities. Exciting! Watch this space.

Yet again, I see creativity as a way forward. The first benefit is selfishly mine. I can experience my world through words and images. Words I am not always able to speak, but do flow out of my fountain pen, or through my fingers on the keyboard. My camera has me observing the birds and trace the life of plants, flowers, and insects. Creativity is the one gift from the world of 'Aliens' which I truly respect and have immense gratitude for.

It is also a way in which I can communicate my thoughts, fears, loves, and desires with others, and if these creative explorations have a positive effect on others, I am honoured.

Through the Alien's visit I also became aware again that I am not able to take part in the world like a citizen of the world we know. I enjoyed a few 'normal' outings over the past few months and am still paying for the 'privilege'.

This realization is painful. The fear of having to live my life forever in this way makes me sad. It can be so lonesome at times. Yet! Most of the time I value my space, the silence in my house, the time I can devote to my creativity. As long as I can construct a healthy balance between the much needed social contacts and the life I can live. The life I can live well. The restrictions are many, but managed well, I do experience my life as a good life.

Creativity being the main key to my well being, these are my wishes for the year ahead:

I hope to finish writing my novella: "The Shadows of an Invisible Octopus", work with my artist friend Spark on the Family Tree project, and unearth more about my ancestors, especially my Great Grand Mother Maria. I believe that in this lies a key to my writing.

I aspire to republish Hatched and create limited editions handmade artist books, and to get my hands dirty with clay again.

A lot? Maybe, but I have 365 days and more to do it. No rush!

All this does means though that I doubt I will devote as much time and energy on networking on Facebook. I'll pop by now and then to see how my Facebook Friends are all doing. (*)

The Alien's visit had me re-evaluate how I spend my time and energy. Computer time- I have to use more selfishly- creatively; jobs in the house (for which I am going to apply for more support again) and use my energy the way I know is best as long as the Aliens are in the vicinity to make it's present known.

Maybe this is all a way of sticking my head in the sand, live a life in a dream state, not in the real world, but then again, maybe deep down I know to which "country" I belong and can aspire to live there within my best abilities.

If you like to keep track of my creative explorations, please sign up by clicking on the button "follow". And if you have a blog or website of your own, please let me know!

Best wishes to all my readers for the year ahead.

Health and Contentment and hopefully a lot of creativity!

X Corina

(*) You might like this post :Editiovultus Phobia

Day forty-nine: Shadows

shadow of the 'people in my family tree'

It might be a strange notion, but I like shadows.

Shadows can create images at times more wonderful and interesting than it's original.

Take a plant in the windowsill at nighttime. Illuminated by a streetlight, the shadow on the wall takes on a completely new identity. Spidery- Spooky- Ready for Halloween

Walking in the low hanging autumn sun, my shadow is long. I am TALL! And my walking stick is not recognisable as a stick any longer.

(...may I divert a little, I was walking on a beach a while back and my shoes left an imprint in the wet sand. For some reason, my stick did not. This REALLY excited me! No stick!)

Anyway shadows. The shadows of the telephone poles over the field in this same autumn sun, stretch out to the end of the field.

Distortion. Beauty. Intrigue.

Last night I was sitting in my study, under a wall light. My Family Tree sculpture - on which I am still working- stands across the room. The shadows of the 'people' I see in the tree-stump were clearly visible on the wall.

I 'found' a new figure in it too - a dancer- only visible because of the shadow.

Day Twenty Seven, Ballynelligan (2)

As I wrote in yesterday's blog, the walk to Ballynelligan fills my mind with all sorts of creativity and gratitude. No more so then a few weeks ago, when during a walk, I was thinking about the Family Tree Project I am doing with fellow artist Spark Deeley.

During the last time we worked together, we talked about possibly using a real tree branch as part of our project....

There it was. Lying on the side of the path!

I dragged it across the path to hide it, just in case anyone thought it to be a nice piece of firewood.

Days later I drove my scooter over the path... a painful, bumpy ride... and of course had the misfortune to be greeted by a group of about fifteen teenagers. All laughing at me.. Ok it must have looked funny, to be carrying this rather large piece of wood, in between my legs, bumping over the path on a scooter...

I am now working on that piece of wood and am creating our 'ancestors' that I see hidden in the branches and twigs.

Day four - All I desire

Saturday night I was listening to the RTE radio Poetry programme... In true fashion I have forgotten the name of the poet that was featured. What I do remember is that this American poet sold his house and pretty much all of his belongings in search of the 'Poetry Life'. A life where he and his wife are fully immersed into poetry; the writing of it, and the publishing of it. They lived in an army tent on a small island and set up a printing press there.

They have all they need. Poetry. A quiet life. A life in nature. Not materialistic. Not so much money, but happy.

I can identify with that. I have all I need. I have all I desire. I live that quiet life. Within this, I would like to focus more on my writing, and creativity.

I wrote, and worked on the 'Family Tree' project after the program was finished.

Happy.

My handmade family tree book (to be).

and the page about my Great Grand Mother

(fabric, threat and text)

Kneading the past and present together

I love the way chance meetings grow into something special.At the start of the year, I was told about Cork artist Spark Deeley. (see link to her website) As we both had self published books, I suggested that we swap books...
In February Spark wrote: "I am taking part in an exhibition of artist's who work with books in the UK in October. Seeing and reading your work made me wonder if we could organise something similar here? Would you be interested?"
"Of course!"
We talked, and talked, and talked some more on the phone. We met. But what will we create?

The start of the idea, the SEED if you like, came from me having purchased a greenhouse and spending all my time there. "I will be growing roots here soon!"
'Seeds; growing; planting; trees.'
My fellow artist is involved in researching the FAMILY TREE, so am I, to a lesser degree.

SEED ... TREE made sense...

During further phonecalls the seed grew.
Last weekend we finally started to work.
First more talk of course... before we created paper-mache from news papers, letters, photographs, and snippets of diary entries.

I loved watching Spark as she put her hands in her bucket of news paper snippets and came out with a thought, which in no time resulted in the sketches of ancestors and sheets of words.Her paper-mache miraculously became beautiful seed podsMe? filling my bucket with scraps, I read previous diary entries: 'family toilet tissue.. why not 'singles-toilet tissue' or 'bachelors'? and disturbing entries written under the influence of medication. I looked at photographs of parents, grand parents and great grand parents. It felt 'odd' to tear them up. I did.
After a lot of thought, I kneaded it all together.
The image of the tree I was creating, suddenly became a hand... signifying the huge tree that nearly killed me over 12 years ago.

Over the weekend, I added daffodils that grew on the roots of the uprooted tree: survival; a bird to fly over it: healing; a wall to hold up the tree: love and support.
Having both left over paper-mache we created a base to hold the REAL TREE we will create at a later date.

The exhibition of this?
...When the paper-mache dries... probably in about 12 years time! :-)

I Will let you know!