Category: on the tree swing

Unicorn space

Most days there´s still a harsh wind, but then there are days like these, when the sunshine is warming my face and I forget about the winter past. With our little one all happy at pre-school now, I´m enjoying these quiet moments at the oak tree. As the blossoms of the sweet jasmine are swaying gently back and forth, I listen to the birds singing all around me. It makes me want to get into the swing of things here at the factory. To help me guard these pockets of time from the other demands in my life, I’m reading Find your Unicorn Space: Reclaim your Creative life in a Too-Busy World by Eve Rodsky. Unicorn space isn’t about getting a hobby or finding your passion, but about the active and open pursuit of creative self-expression in any form that makes you uniquely you. So many of my dreams have come true since I started this quest for authenticity, from writing my first short story to learning to draw. So don’t be afraid to dream big and then start with the smallest of steps. The time is now!

Beyond the pine tree

The town is still asleep and the dark sits quietly around us. It’s cosy up here by the candlelight, a small body pressed against me snoring softly. Looking out the window I can see the Huguenot tower lighting up the dark forest. It is the same view that you see from the beautiful oakside, just from a different hill. It’s our first visit to this little dependance by the mystical pine tree. Out there in the garden is an old abandoned hut, enveloped in the dawn. I haven’t been inside yet, let alone to write. I’m not even writing in my art journal, I’m just scribbling on the back of a piece of paper that I found in a drawer. Life with a newborn is funny that way. Some part of me thinks back longingly to the creative dreams I had for this place. But then I remember what Stephen King said in his memoir On Writing: ““(…) put your desk in the corner, and every time you sit down there to write, remind yourself why it isn’t in the middle of the room. Life isn’t a support system for art. It’s the other way around.”

On not being able to write

Ever since I founded the factory, I’ve always been busy doing something. Over the years there have been ups and downs, but no matter what else has happened in my life, I’ve been squirreling around my workshop. But the past few weeks have been so different. I’ve just been sitting around, watching youtube videos, scrolling through facebook, rearranging entries in my address book, running errands and finding reasons not to be at home. Occasionally I’ve given it another try, but I just end up staring at a blank screen for an indiscriminate amount of time. It feels like all the things I’m passionate about have been stuffed in a pretty little jar on the window sill, the lid screwed on tight. So what do you do, when you ain’t got no flow? I wish I had an easy answer to that question, some magical ingredient that you can sprinkle around like fairy dust and that will transform everything. But there isn’t. You just have to wait until the wind changes. But what if it won’t, you ask? What if it won’t change? That question I can answer. For as the wise Heraclites said, the only thing that is constant is change. So don’t despair, for nothing remains the same.

The spaces in between

To write one needs empty time. Vast open spaces so that your thoughts may arrive from far away places, like white gulls landing on the tranquil water of the sea after the waves have quieted down. Between two jobs, training, the people I love, news feeds to scroll down, old wounds and daily worries, I have found it difficult lately. I live a modest life in my little beach house, away from the busyness of the city, shopping centers, and smartphones – and yet I struggle sometimes. This morning, however, something changed. On a whim I swept my day clean of social obligations and headed out through the flower-filled meadows, taking the long route through the dunes to the sea. When I reached the beach, I looked down and noticed a clivers stuck to my sweatpants. Climbing up from my ankle to my knee like an ivy, clinging to me as we made our way over the warm sand towards the indigo horizon. As I watched her dancing in the wind, I realised that I need to keep trying. That it is up to me to create spaces, to keep still and listen as the world marches on. Because there are stories waiting to be told…

I always knew I was a hobbit

Or suspected it, at least. Ever since reading the first chapter of The Hobbit, in which Baggins is confronted with an unexpected party (making for the most awkward Wednesday he ever remembered), which is one of the funniest things I have ever read – mostly because it is exactly how I would react: head in hands, wondering what had happened and what was going to happen and wanting to hide behind the beer-barrels in the cellar and not come out again until they had all gone away… But it wasn’t until I went into the woods on a particularly gloomy day and wandered off by myself that I discovered that I have more in common with Baggins than I thought…