I feel out of step
again

(not just because I fell over yesterday,
walking)

Dead bird

I am walking down the hallway

from the front room

where the computer is

past the living room

where Charlie Brooker is

(being clever

about the week's news)

or it might be Jimmy Carr

(I can't see him, only hear)

and someone who sounds a bit like Lauren Laverne

or who might be any one

of a number of smart

sassy

women

and in the middle of the hallway

(which is tiled with its original 1896 tiles, some of which are broken)

there are feathers

I am going to the kitchen

(from the front room, past the living room)

to get a new pack of cigarettes

having smoked the last one of the last pack

while trying to make myself on a photo

look like me

or the me I think I look like

when I see the feathers

There's an almost-intact wing

all of a piece

perfectly

beautiful

tiny fluffy down-like whispers of feathers

scattered

(some of which are stuck to the floor

but I don't know this

until I try to

pick

them up)

I think oh wow how beautiful

And then what I do

is

find a piece of white card

(which I have to rip off the back

of a document I was given years ago and is called

Engaging Fathers in their Children's Learning)

and

with it

I scoop up

the almost-intact wing

and

the tiny fluffy down-like whispers of feathers

I take the piece of white card

with the wing and its whispers

through the kitchen

I put it on the table

I spray it

I spray it with permanent repositional adhesive

(the point of

permanent repositional adhesive

being that it sticks things to other things

and lets you move them around a bit until they make a pleasing arrangement

and then you can just leave

the whole thing

alone

and it will stay there)

The permanent repositional adhesive

has an unexpected side effect. It

coats the feathers,

covers them

enfolds them

keeps them safe

It keeps them so safe

(in their dead beauty)

that I go back

I go back to the hallway where the rest of them are

and I scoop them up, too

on a piece of paper that came in the post

and says that from 11 APR 11 the amount of benefit I receive will change

and I spray them

as well

Fuck off

I thought I was doing quite well, but now I don't think I am at all. When my tutor was looking through my sketchbook yesterday and telling me about all the things it didn't have that 'they' want to see I suddenly felt completely out of my depth. Cut off at the knees. As if everything I've been doing and learning and making all this time is actually nothing.

In spite of everything my instincts and intuitions have been telling me, in the grand scheme of things that is the university rubric and 'the context' and 'the theory' what I am doing (and have been doing) is rubbish. Insignificant. It doesn't measure up.

Today I've read James Elkins The Object Stares Back and it's such a beautifully constructed argument about (among other things) how we see what we want to see and disregard the rest (Paul Simon mentions this in his song The Boxer, 1968) and all sorts of other complicated stuff that just blows me away when I try to get my head round it that I have no idea how I'm ever going to be able to deal with it.

Yesterday I read Berger On Drawing and I know that what I've been trying to do all this time is just feel my way towards something and wait and watch and see what happens (and in the meantime possibly create something that's worth looking at and is pleasing and makes people think) and now somebody is saying I have to look at what I'm doing and what it says and I'm not really ready to.

It's a work in progress. I'M a work in progress. It and I are not ready for scrutiny yet, especially scrutiny by someone whose objective is simply to measure us against some kind of wifflywaffly criteria that are hazy but sound good when they're written down until you try and work out what they actually mean.

What I really want to say now is 'Fuck OFF'. FUCK your rubric. FUCK your context. FUCK your theory.

So I have a choice (we always have a choice. I'm a child of the early years of Feminism so I know this. I have also been through years of counselling and psychotherapeutic drugs and the fact that I have a choice has always been both a consolation and a terror).

My choice now:

1 To continue
2 To give up

I am making things

I am making things

things that are beautiful

things that make me cry

things that, when I hang them up against the light,

shimmer

things that other people see

and say

they're lovely

Apparently

it is not enough that they are lovely

They need to be something more

They need to have a reason to be

(other than that I've made them)

They need to be explained

(and I have no explanation)

Why can they not just be

perfect

and beautiful?

Something I learned tonight

(this is a big thing, I think.

a big think.)

The thing I thought

that I thought

I knew

and that

nobody

(except me)

thought it

(or knew it)

I told.

The people I told it to

(the people I loved and who

I thought

loved me too)

thought.

They thought

I was mad.

They said no.

It can't be.

No, they said.

No.

No.