After a very busy weekend in lots of different random ways, I have needed to be gentle with myself. I have been over in my studio and working in my sketch books. This is definitely my Octopus working. There are no conscious thoughts, I just cut and stick, then get my coptic markers out. I worked away on a spread of about 8 pages and then felt some of them I had pushed too far and they didn’t work. So I cut 4 of them out of the book and then cut into them and added bits of them to the remaining pages.
The whole process is very meditative. I am able to lose myself in the zone, I don’t think about other things at all and there is no right or wrong. If I don’t like the page I can change it, stick stuff on top or cut it right out.
One of my busy moments was spending time with my cousin. One of the things we talked about was the strong link between physical and mental issues, modern medicine having done it’s best to separate them out into different boxes rather than recognising the more holistic view. I for example have migraines, irritable bowel syndrome and sinusitis. Thankfully, not usually simultaneously! My body is sensitive in so many ways to the outside world and over the past few years I have tried to shift from reacting (with self annoyance) to trying to take better care of myself. It’s very much a work in progress though. At present I am waking up regularily during the night with abdominal discomfort. I remember experiencing this as a teenager and a medical student. I don’t have any answers for how to ease it at present. I will have to wait and see, what is my body trying to tell me? (My diet is very consistent, week in week out, so I don’t think it is that, although maybe I need to check if I’ve made any recent changes).
