Missing Out (by sarah)

Saturday night there was a reunion etc... that I really really wanted to go to. It was full of lots of the people I'd worked with at the campsite (the one where we got married). But... when I went to check up on the details it became apparent that it was going to be a giant disco type thing and I hadn't paid on time. I wasn't too worried about the payment deadline, I know they would have let me in anyway and I could have given them cash then and there because they aren't nasty people - I just might not have had a meal as they were catering etc...

However, I was still exhausted from my nuerology appointment and just with the general business of everything - I'd also been out recording poetry and doing business networking events etc... and as much as I was desperate to see everybody I just couldn't.

I couldn't because flashing, blinking, swirling lights cause my speech to slur and my coordination to go and I don't want to fall again, I don't want to hit my head again, I don't want to be slow at functioning for at least four days afterwards - potentially two weeks and though it shouldn't be - the main fear of wetting myself publically if this happens because that seems to be a thing as well.

Now I have been to events and lurked outside a lot etc.. and these days disco lights tend to either fall into gentle changing fuzzy lights which I am fine with or all singing all dancing lazer lights swishing and flashing and looking glorious - these I can not cope with.

I probably should have asked what the set up actually was but I don't like saying "I'm awkward please alter your event and make it less pretty so I can come" it feels destructive but also there is another side to it - I fear asking because then I find out if I am worth such a change to the person/people/organisation and though most venues and events managers have been fabulous - this was a social event and I found the thought of asking parralising. I could not have coped with the rejection if it had come so I did not ask.

Fatigue is a big risk factor for the seizure things so where as I probably would have risked going and spending all my time outside - I knew I was too tired plus I would have been even more tired once I got there due to travel times etc...

Another issue was cost - if I could have taken Al without it costing a whole extra ticket then I also would have gone. It is pretty much the sort of event he finds hard but he would have taken me incase of seizure, he would have been my safety net but it was too much money for that (because I'm a skin flint because I'm an artist and without Al I would be a starving artist so I just actually did not have enough money for a second ticket!).

So I am sitting here jealous and bitter, feeling increadibly sad and isolated, looking at everyones photos of them having a fab time and feeling angry at myself and the world and causality and rocks and well everything.

CampNaNo April 2017 (by sarah)

I love writing challenges - they are a bit trickier these days with my limited time window of working brain but it is still possible. One of the things I like about them is not feeling al on my on 🙂

And so me and Alaric are signed up for one of the Nation Novel Writing Months add ons... CampNaNo. This used to be Script Frenzy and is where I'd work on my comic book/graphic novel stuff. Pretty much I still keep it as a Screnzy and work on my graphic novels and Al's role playing game. There is also a poem a day writing challenge NaPoWriMo in April so I bung things up on the WoPo site and the FB page and things to help others. I myself take it as a time to look over what I am doing with my poetry and spend a little time each day on it.

Both girls are doing their own CampNaNo - but me and Jean are having a writing race - known as The Stubby Challenge!!! This is how I did my first actual written and not voice to text stuff after the head bang (I think but to be honest it's all a little foggy back there!). It doesn't involve screens and I can write as big as I like and Jean loves it and... it works - though obviously it means that at some point there is going to have to be a lot of typing up!

The way it works is that we find funky pencils - this time it is catapaults to go with the camp them, last year I think it was dolphins and bats?

We have the ream of paper and our pencils and we write! Then when you are scratching the paper with wood you sharpen the pencil - the first to end up with a pencil stub wins! We even have a special Octarine pencil sharpener from the Discworld Emporium!

I'm slowely lurching my way through a novelisation of my first comic book script about how The Punk ends up being apparently immortal. It is slow progress but that is fine 🙂 Jean is working on her project from last year too - The FoodVerse - we typing up and editing chapter one An Apple Pavlova, now it is about about carrots.

Mary on the other hand is dictating a set of stories about a rainbow jungle and the sparkly creatures within 🙂 When the rest of us are working on our books she sits and colours in the picture she has chosen for the front cover. Interestingly they are quiet Roald Dahl in nature.

Of course I am still managing some typing so am kind of working on multiple projects - this means that I have to have check lists to keep myself on track especially as the time I can concentrate for is actually so small - I can't do hyper focus and I can't fall through the page - my brain just shuts down and I fall asleep! But I think I am getting there and producing good stuff.

So yeah CampNaNo is go and I am prodding people to write and create!

Cyber Punk London (by sarah)

Years ago (over a decade actually) Alaric tasked me with illustrating two Role Playing Games he had written. I have been steadily working on them and part of that is finding suitable visuals to construct the very specific images needed. So I often trail around cities taking images of cyber punk type stuff and the fanciful - the weekend allowed me to sneak some pics 🙂

Our cities are full of unexpected finds like this ciggy bin face - it is obviously a droid from Alpha Centuri and is fed up with people putting burning leaves into it's eye sockets!

Little micro structures hide, clinging to the larger buildings around them as if we truly are creating a jungle of a different type - covergent evolution, lies at the heart of this one 🙂

There were so many great shapes and geometries but I had limited time as we were lit. rushing from the station to meet our friends. I want to go back and spend another creative weekend in London, catching as many of the little hidden textures as I can!

As beautiful as the buildings are, there is also something menacing about some of them, they loom in and block out the light. But if you look hard enough it is still there, defiant of the giants that rise on metal frames.

Parasitic towers cling to their host buildings gloaming in reflected sunlight, the light was sunset light and was thick and golden, tinged with surrealism as the cities lights mingled with it.

The city is a labrynth, including confusing and distorting reflection. They buildings are glass coated, they shine and reflect and capture each other's images, it can be hard to tell what is a building, and what is a reflection of a building on a building or a building within a building.

The steal and glass and light created metallic rainbows and an eye rolling husband who was trying to make sure I did not walk off of steps or in front of cars as I was so captivated by the scenes.

The building vary, some are angular and sharp and others are soft and curvy and some are curvy and angular but modular and it is a landscape of geometry.

Again the shapes and angles begin to suggest something organic - in this case back bone and central nervous system - it made me think on what would happen if metal suddenly became alive - what sort of creatures would our cities spawn?

Many patterns, textures and ornamentation where present and just waiting for me to capture them, the gerkin looks like glass scales, arching off into the distance. I am also starting a photo study of texture this spring and the buildings were a surprising source of such imagery.

And of course hidden in this new glass and chrome London is an older London, and it cries out for stories and contrasts and has a kind of magic realism. These pictures scream... write us into a story, a poem, a piece on heritage and art... and that is indeed what will happen to these images, they will be appearing on my writing and art blogs in various guises as well as being used for drawing practice 🙂

But really why are there giant marshmallows in these trees? And they were not the only strange and fantastical thing we found - a steampunk macarbe sat in the pub where we met our friends just before heading for curry on Brick Lane - there were clusters of young people preaching or goading or occupying London. There was a religious zing to them and they dressed in threads that were bare for aesthetics rather than worn to unravelling. I could not hear what was being said but they had followers with glassy zeal in their eyes. A passion pulsed in the underbelly but it was a safe fire, a cold fire.

We had a great meal and catch up with friends but as always I am reminded that my London is erroding, disappearing, I can not say weather this is a good or bad thing but London is bright and over whelming, like a million pieces of brain fire. Confetti of glitz and glam that may well tarnish or burn out in the blink of an eye. The markets are gentrified and hipster zones, interesting but no longer mine. Consumerism as always drives the city forward - this has not been lost on the natives living in all the envrions of London - a city of villages and zones.

Extra-Ordinary (by sarah)

Today I feel like a failure, today I feel fat and not ugly so much as plain with frizzy hair and glasses. Today I looked at the things I make and think... they are all a bit naff. Today I am the failed scientist and the untrained artist, today I am FAILURE.

Today I am the stuck at home, non housework doing, burnt cooking mum, I am the can't spell, can't concentrate hack filling in forms to apply for events/jobs that I know wont want me, not daring to apply for the acting roles as I'm too fat, too old, too short, the wrong physical gender, I am the failed to get my kids to the things they want and need to go to, I am the fail parent with a trail of failed careers.

Today I finished knitting DNA, and worked on a mermaids tail, cut out and folded a micro-zine I drew and scanned and made, I helped Mary write a story and she made a cover for it to be a book, Jean helped me find my unfinished knitting projects and I finished the basis for some little easter rabbits. I typed up a poem and ordered polymer clay to make little creatures with. I put away a giant papier mache sculpture I made for the visually impaired and checked that the brain I am making is drying ok, there were piles of paintings I had to move, piles of my paintings - I can't see them as good, I can't compare to the other artists that I see locally, my stuff just... does not quiet cut it and yet... it is the headline picture for the group.

Today I feel like a fraud, I feel like I am pretending to be good, to be amazing, when I am not. I am just me, a lost, lonely little me. A few days ago I performed at a launch event, people came to tell me how animated and full of energy I was, they said they liked my work, the world was full of chances to grab and take and I did... but... I stood outside the venue looking at the door, wondering if I was truly supposed to be there, weather I was an interloper, I had to battle mind doubt dragons to go in and whilst I talk, whilst I feel alive at the creativity around me, I look at the crowd of amazing people and think how wonderful they are and how drab I am. And I feel the press of eyes and the expectation and I want to run, I want to hide, I am the extroverted introvert or introverted extrovert and sometimes I think I have wasted my life.

Today I sit writing this drowning in craft supplies I need to put away, this week I have designed many new workshops covering science, art, writing, specific themes and the environment. My old injuries ache with the clammy cold weather and I long for summer but know I have much to do but I can not stir, my head still rings from the head injury I had coming up to two years ago now and I feel thick, stupid, clogged, my c-section scar is hurting, skin burning and sinus pain is king. It is nothing to the physical pain and discomfort I have suffered in the past, I'm a little inflamed and virally that is all. I fail at not moaning, at not feeling used up and rung out.

Today I think of all the people who have helped me and I know I have failed them and worse I have not always passed the buck, I have been too busy or distracted or lazy. I walk past the homeless and realise that it more than two years ago that I did any proper charity work, even though an event I acted at this month has just raised over £400 for charity, I had to claim my expenses - I have a loan to repay and things I need to get to - I failed at money management - I struggle with numbers now, I did not used to. I had to take the money but not because I would starve because I wouldn't and that makes me wither inside. Am I greedy?

Today I told my husband - I told him how when I write down the things I have done they sound fantastic and great, or brave and selfless - when I know it wasn't like that, it was clutching at straws, it was trying stuff, it was itself often failure. My life has twisted and turned and looped da looped and I am giddy.

Today he told me I am extraordinary and that most people - are not. He told me that people are in awe of my work but these words hurt and puzzle. He gave examples and I am like "no that is just because they have had to survive differently, they want to do stuff, creative stuff, science stuff." And then I was angry about how their potential is being lost, how my potential was lost, about how my husband would be the better home maker and can't be, how society traps people in rolls and classes and demographs.

Today I survived, I live and so does my family, and for that I am truly in awe and fearful of a harsh and unrelenting world. But sometimes... sometimes survival is not enough and that is only because I am lucky, I have capacity, I have safety nets, I have family and friends and love and food and shelter. I am higher up the triangle of needs - but that should not be the case. Potential maximium should be achievable for all, with no judging as to what that is, no expectations of what a successful life is, no squinting and muttering when a sideways corse is taken. Failure should not be seen as well... failure. It is the experimenting, the living of life, it is were the discoveries are made, if you don't try you can't fail, but if you don't fail have you ever really tried?

Today is not today anymore, today is now tomorrow and I feel the ideas scritching in my brain, they have been gone a long time, I have to rest lots to let my brain heal - it healed enough to give me ideas again. Proper new fresh ideas, but my health has always been shoddy and I have lost so much time, and I can't go fast, I can just be. So I pool and collect the ideas, and hope they will get their day. Somedays they erupt into the world and the world laps them up, other days... not so much and I gather them back in for another try, on another day.

Today is new, I still feel hollow, but that will pass, it always does, and the void will be filled with colour and patterns and thoughts and then I'll accidently create a thing or things or a thing of things. Until then there is hugs and coffee, and admin.

Ripples… (by sarah)

It's the anniversary of the author Sir Terry Pratchett's death, I have been working my way through the Discworld books, it is taking time as I still struggle with reading since the head injury. I've started with what I think of as the Rincewind Books.

The Colour of Magic The Light Fantastic Sourcery Eric Interesting Times The Last Continent Science of the Discworld The Globe

I've probably missed some out - I'm currently reading The Last Continet 🙂

Rincewind is one of my favourite characters, he reminds me a lot of my dad, being an accidental hero - thinking he's a coward etc... being a nice person, having issues with inanimate household objects that refuse to actually be inanimate (in dad's case it's coathangers).

Then I plan on reading the Death Books as I think of them. Death and Susan are again characters I love, especially when Susan has wild hair she can not control!

Reaper Man Mort Soul Music The Hogfather The Thief of Time

Again I am probably missing titles! If you see a glaring omission please comment!

Then The Witches Books (including the Tiffany Books as a subset - this is slightly unfair as Rincewind should count as one of the Wizards but the character sets are all so over lapped that there are many different ways you could divid it all up ie Hogswatch could be seen as a Wizard book as well as Death), followed by Vimes, The Services Books (De Word and Moist), Maurice and then Pyramids, Small Gods and another other miscellany I have missed!

Alaric bought me the graphic novel of Small Gods and I want to work my way through the graphic novels as well, I know there was a copy of The Last Hero that I gave to my brother but I'm not really sure where it ended up!

After that it is time for non-Discworld Terry Pratchett including the Long Wars books.

As you can see from the photo, Ada Lovelace the Puppet is relaxing with one of her favourite book - Equal Rites. This is most apt for the Victorian Maths genius who made the fist computer programme (or would have been if there'd been a computer to actually run it on!). She was educated but that was unusual for a women in her era, especially with maths and science but she excelled at it and this bought (and still does amazingly) a lot of hate.

She had to fight to be accepted academically, Equal Rites is about a young girl who ends up being a Wizard but is initially denied entry to the Unseen University. It seemed apt.

I actually took the photo for International Women's Day but I have included it in this post because apart from the issue of gender equality etc... it represents something else...

Ripples - "No one is finally dead until the ripples they cause in the world die away" - this is a quote from the Discworld series.

And Ada in many respects represents a ripple and the on going legacy of Terry Pratchett. Of course it is only one element of how she came to be but it is none the less still an element.

The story begins with me at school - my Chemistry Teacher Miss Scudder tries to explain the Discworld books to me and writes it down in my leavers book. It was given as an example of Sci-Fantasy that I would love - she was right.

So my science teacher introduced me to Terry Pratchett's work, again she was not the only one but she was the most authoritive? If that's the right word.

The books sustained me through my A'levels and stupid amounts of stress that we poor on our young adults in education. Then to university where again the mirrors and parrelles with various books helped me.

And finally the point at which I really felt like jacking the whole science thing in... Science of the Discworld appeared where they look at the geology/formation of our planet (our universe is accidently created by the Wizards). This book reminded me why I was damn well studying rocks!

Then of course things went catastrophic health wise but JK, Pullman and Pratchett where there as my comfort reads (along with the three Annes and "coughs" the point horrors). Reading them took on a slightly more abstract purpose, they showed twisty corkscrews of lives, not the nice neat progressions that is expected.

In short they helped me reform to new paths and to climb around, under and sometimes into the obsticals that got in my way. They showed me that other routes are not wrong routs just different.

In many ways the books helped me think outside the box as it were - Cuddly Science, the art, the craft, the writing etc... all of that and how I use it and fuse it... is a little bit off centre as it were. Terry Pratchett showed me with his mirror worlds that that was great, that was how the world gets changed for the better... little by little by little.

So my science teacher introduced me to the Discworld, the Discworld, sustained my and kept me interested in science, taught me to think squiggly, squiggly thinking lead to me making puppets to teach kids science.

These are RIPPLES.

GNUTerryPratchett.