1. Crack of Dawn
For the last week or so, I found it so easy to be joyful and productive. I’ve been waking up at 6.30 am and doing my physio exercises – the kind of behaviour I always WANTED, but never managed to do. If you’d asked me, I’d have told you that I like winter and don’t suffer from Seasonal Affective Disorder, but it’s hard to explain the recent lift in my mood. The early mornings are my favourite time of the day right now, I’ve been packing my lunches immediately and with no complaining, I’m just beautifully organised. Since the last blogpost, when my mood was conversely shitty, I’ve been able to clean up my room (with the support of Manbear) and more importantly keep it clean and that is probably the only other reason of this inset of blessed joy. I do not seek to question it, really – except in hopes of understanding how to keep it, and/or bring it about again….
2. Cracking On
This week I met up with a friend to do something we talked about for LITERAL YEARS: a twoprov.
What is a twoprov, might you ask? It is meeting of two minds on improv stage. My friend and I have a very particular chemistry and I’ve been wanting to explore it. We set a rehearsal for every second Wednesday and just had our first one this week and I am so very excited.
3. The Story of the Cracked Mug.
Once upon a time, I bought a mug.
I bought it from my then-workplace, Pylones – a quirky French brand of colourful everyday items. It was yellow, in a pattern we called Dahlia and I really liked it. And then I broke it.
That would have been in 2016 the latest, maybe earlier.
I still have that mug. It broke in such a way that when I looked at it, I thought immediately that it would make a great candle holder. I figured I’d Superglue the two separate parts together, and the tiny hole where some smaller bits of ceramic fell off will be fantastic for creating light.
I held onto it for at least three years.
When I first came up with this blogpost, I figured that I would either write about completing this long-awaited project (and that would be powerful) or letting go of this long-held-onto project (and that would be powerful). But I didn’t account for creative process. Yesterday, when I pulled out my precious ceramic friend and a small tube of Superglue, I had a sudden thought: is Superglue flammable? Is it heatproof? The corresponding answers turned out to be yes and no. It’s hard for me to evaluate the precise risk, but I decided using this particular glue would not be the safest option in my room full of wooden furniture, books and papers.
Stumped, I called in reinforcements (a.k.a. my flatmate) and asked them about different kinds of glue. We stared at the mug for a bit and had a conversation about making it a vase (I vetoed it – I wanted a tealight holder!) or piecing it together with various means. And then the realisation came: the mug was already a functional candle holder. It just needed a base, so that one part could be stuck to it and another secured in such a way so that it wouldn’t easily fall apart! So the mission parameters changed: I am now hunting for a base. But my mug is already functioning as a candle holder and it’s BEAUTIFUL.
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Amongst my struggles with “I Own Too Much Stuff” and “I Do Too Many Things”, there are moments like this: when I dared to ask for help and got some, and suddenly life gets a little bit easier. I can’t say how blissful that feels – like a heavy weight, lifted. In wading through my general problems with executive function, I want to take this time to be happy because This Week Things Worked. The work is slow, but I am reshaping my relationship to my body (physio! pilates! swimming!), my space (declutter! cleaning!), my creativity (play! blog! comedy! improv!), and it’s all beginning to show results. I will write my play this year. I will start a Polish-language blog this year. I might yet publish some essays, this year. I broke some things apart, this year, to put them back together. Slowly, slowly, slowly, things are becoming possible.
“There is a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in.”