Notebook With Legs

Colours and circles and tears, that's me. I feel like the moon goes through me and leaves little bits of light on my blood. There's so much to learn about moons and myths and I wanna know everything. I wanna recognise every plant and every constellation. I wanna know a lot of weird horse facts. But at the same time I wanna spend all that learning time making things. Patterns in still ponds, organised spills, warm thoughts. I wanna rip apart real stuff and fill all the planets with stories that don't make sense. I wanna see imps and insects scatter in people's heads. I wanna run through fuzzy, young perceptions and twist 'em into spirals. I wanna scoop up autumn leaves and write poems on them, about omelettes and bouncy castles.

I made these scanner collages with old bits and pieces and new painted textures, to remind me what I want and what I am. A magic little goblin. An elf with a box of crumpled paper. A dream with a person-shaped wish. A notebook with legs.

Paint & Blood

I got suddenly hit with all the reality of creativity again. All the things I know about making things, and journalling, and existing when I'm working on things. It's confusing how you can forget almost anything. I figure out the best way to do things and how specific modes of being and making make me feel, and it's all so important and empowering and personal, and then I forget it again until a sudden clarity bubbles up. I feel fizzy.

It's like how you forget your ideas or dreams unless you write them down, or when you have a series of errands to run or things to buy at the shop and you know you'll forget something unless you make a list. It's the same. The same way I forget how to journal, and the right way to collect things, and the ease and flow of making notes and arranging collage pieces together or making observational drawings. I keep catching myself trying. Trying to do something or be some way that I know only really comes when you're not looking. It's like looking through a kaleidoscope, you can't expect the pieces to fall a certain way. You can't force the pattern. So why do I keep catching myself trying?

I have to keep reminding myself to release that grip, that attempt at control, that consideration that ends up stifling things. Life is about accidents, and art follows that path too. It's much better to flow with them. It reminds me of blood. Our always flowing, always moving life force. Mimicked by so many things. I'll try to remember that.

♡♡♡

I painted a bit and printed out some webcam pictures to cut out and alter, and I remembered old projects and all the little experiments I've done with printed pictures and water. I remembered all the notes I made at art school, and the depth of the journals I kept for assessment. I think the journals were the best part of art school. The way they made me record everything. The way I had to come up with new things to try out all the time. They way I was forced to relinquish all preciousness to keep up with the work load and necessary experimentation. Now I can do it exactly the way I want to.

My pictures against the paint palette and jumbled around in front of painted colours and textures look so perfect. It's so simple, but I feel like it represents everything I want to be right now. Same with every blob of glitter and scribbly pen line. I am in every little piece.

P H O T O S N O W

Make a snowstorm with images and memories. Dandruff glass fields of fractions and fragments of little somethings. Squares and points of hormones pressing down into dirt and skin and dried blood. Old photons reconfiguring to make new moonbeams, delicious and glowing. Cut and crumpled feelings falling. Photosnow.

My School Certificates

Schools love certificates, apparently, and I've still got some of mine. Please look at them with me. I promise they're very interesting.

When I was at Wimbledon Chase Middle School, we had these incredibly fancy merit certificates that were rarely handed out and were considered a really special prize.The headteacher, Mr Hardy, would write your name carefully with his italic pen, and you got to take a mint from his office. It was quite ceremonial. It was like meeting the queen. I suppose the fancy border and heavy card stock helped to carry the mysticism and wonder of it through the school, but Mr Hardy hyped merits up a lot, and we loved him. When he left the school a lot of is were crying. He was an amazing headteacher. No school certificate ever held quite as much gravitas as this one did.

At my high school, Ricards Lodge, we had a system of gold slips which we got for being good and stuff. This would vary massively by teacher, so some would give you loads every time you farted and some would give you none. Ever. At the end of the year you got a different certificate based on how many you'd managed to collect. I only ever got as high as forty, but you could go quite a bit higher.

Key stage three is a distant memory, but I still have my results. None of these reflected my GCSE results whatsoever, though. Apparently I wasn't very good at music then. I don't really remember.

I also have this 'good behaviour award' from Ricards. Now I know what you're thinking.
'Lil, this isn't signed, it's all a sham, you filthy liar!'
No, I'm sure I was legitimately given this by a teacher who just didn't bother to fill it in. I promise I did a good behaviour at least once.

Back at Wimbledon Chase, I shared a little garden with three friends for my two final years. In 2001 it was commended, but in 2000 it was highly commended. That's how I learnt the word 'commended'. These certificates were quite precious to me because I really, really cared about my garden. We either had an intuitive talent for gardening at ages nine and ten, or we were lucky, because our garden looked great.

I think I kept this certificate because it was given to me in creative writing class for being good at creative writing, and creative writing was my absolute pride and joy at middle school. I read a million books and I wanted to write a million stories.

I always used to wish we'd done swimming more at school. I missed it so much at high school, the evil place that forced me to attempt netball instead. I might as well have been trying to make soup from rocks. That's how successful I was with netball.

Football, though, was a sport I loved playing when I was at first school. I continued playing at middle school, but I didn't really fit in on teams there, so I stopped. They just weren't playing the game in a way that I enjoyed then. I remember playing for Hollymount (my second first school) in the football tournament, and it was the best thing ever. I played football for fun and wasn't that into the competitive side, but competing in the tournament was great. I also discovered that the team from my old school, Benedict First School, had two of my best friends playing on it: Troy and Amy. Seeing them again after leaving them behind when I moved was amazing. It's so weird remembering that, but it's one of those rare, crystal clear memories. It's strange to know that there are now two adults out there, two strangers out there who might be sharing that memory with me.

Diary: Witches & Green Tea

It's the beginning of October and I already have a head full of witchy, spooky thoughts. This year for Halloween I wanted to dress up as a traditional spook of some kind, and I settled on a witch because I love the pointy hats and I want to wear one. It was a hat-based decision. Witch hats are the best. I also kinda wanna do that thing where you cut two eye holes in a sheet and call it a ghost costume. It's unacceptable that I've never done that.

Honestly, I think Halloween is such a favourite holiday to me because it has some excellent elements of Christmas, but is much more relaxed. Besides which I have always liked cats and bats and spiders and skeletons, and the Halloween theme doesn't feel quite as inappropriate across the rest of the year as Christmas stuff. Cats and bats and spiders and skeletons are around all year, after all.

In unrelated news, I have been drinking a fair bit of green tea and rummaging through old school stuff. My salted caramel green tea does feel pretty natural to be drinking a lot of at this time of year. I also pressed a rose between some pages in the back of my diary, and its moisture seeped all the way through to this last page. A cheeky rose that just wants some attention. Well you got it, rose.

Listography & How Lists Keep Me Going

Lists are so important to me. They turn me from a weird tangled up thought collection into some neatly labelled and categorised master chest of drawers with a special section just for photos of moths wearing pyjamas. I feel like around 64% of my mind is syphoned off into lists at any one time, freeing up more space for those all important snack decisions.

I keep lists on paper (daily to-do lists are a big help), but I like to keep a hub of lists on Listography because there are many lists I find helpful to keep that are either more long form or more changeable. I keep lists of films and books and music I want to check out, as well as ever-changing to-do lists. One of the most satisfying things ever is consolidating old paper lists into a nice, neat new one on Listography. I feel extra organised if I can meticulously edit my lists and store old ones without worrying about losing bits of paper.

I like keeping a general list of things I've thought of on my main page. That's my main list, the one that gets edited indefinitely as I do things and dismiss others. I keep a slightly more focused to-do list in the private lists section for things that are boring and won't get done for a while, or just things I have to remember. Otherwise, lists are more focused, and I can use them as easy inspiration boxes or to spark some inspiration or memory.

I guess lists feel like a natural extension of my brain. I know it's way too easy to lose ideas and to forget about things I need to do and then remember them in the exact moment I get into my warm, cosy bed. Writing something down means I can't forget. It's an immense power.

I also love looking at other people's lists on Listography, because it's so interesting and gives me lots more ideas and things to look at. Maybe I should make a list of lists.

Black & White Glow

It's been a while since I've done black and white scans, so I thought I'd do some. I also made these with a lot of sunlight pouring into my room, which is unusual (I usually scan in the evening, although I don't purposefully do so). They look so fresh and bright with all this light. I like how weird and glowy they are like this.

It's funny how a little change can totally alter your feeling. I hop around a little within the framework of my scanner adventures, just to keep it fun and dynamic (without straying from the general concept), but it's nice to have a different phase every so often. It feels a bit like cleaning, everything feels new and clear. It's so good.

Black and white also just feels classic. It feels like it captures me in a more fundamental way sometimes. I think maybe it's nice to be a cloudy, colourless slice of myself.