Psalm 13 cont'd: crossing the line

Psalm 13. Mmm. I was musing further on it and thinking how in representing it, I've given a much bigger space to the last two verses of  'my heart rejoices' than to the first four verses of crying out 'How long will you hide your face?' Was this deliberate? I think it was a case of my hand telling me what is going on inside me, and thankfully it tells me that my life is more joy than of anguish. I feel for any bi-polar-ish person for whom the opposite is the case.

A friend spoke about how the cloud of the first 4 verses can suddenly lift all  by itself, or sometimes by the help of a friend's word or understanding, and she wondered about the theological basis for it. It made me think about how my exegesis of this psalm started with a theological or liturgical understanding - the possibility of the psalmist receiving assurance of God's presence or help - and ended with treating the move as a psychological one. I suppose biological things have to be added to the list of things that can lift that cloud, or make one cross that yellow line of satin-stitching in the cloth version; I remember a very sudden experience like that when expecting our Jez, how I experienced a very dramatic mood-lift, which I knew was heralding the onset of labour, and I rollocked about the place, going for fast walks, and playing the piano with great gusto, and never mind that bit about packing a bag, it didn't seem to matter. If I could bottle that hormone, I'd make a fortune!

Typing stops, as I try to fathom out whether crossing that line is something one can make happen oneself; if only! Sometimes it seems to be just a matter of time, of waiting patiently and trusting that it has happened before and will happen again. (Crikey - it is all in the psalms, isn't it? Psalm 40:1 etc 'I waited patiently for the Lord; and he inclined to me and heard my cry.... he hath put a new song into my mouth...) King Saul, who seems to be one of the Bible's depressives, seems to have used the young David's music to help. If you would like to meet more companions who would nod vigorously to Ps 13:1-4, then just Google for 'accidie' where you will find explanations such as this:
http://mindyourmaker.wordpress.com/2008/10/03/aldous-huxley-on-accidie-aka-melancholy-boredom-ennui-despair/ 
including the idea that this kind of melancholy can be caused by  a demon that has the audacity to walk about in the daytime, unlike most other demons. There's an awful lot of writing on the subject! It's rather good that the psalmist tackles it in this very succinct way, as I don't think  it's a good thing to dwell on it for long. The good old psalmist, who by Psalm 15 (maybe) has us setting off on pilgrimage, where you just have to get on with life; and surely (my mind runs on) making 'stories' (as in 'dismal') rhyme with 'more is' (as in 'his strength the') is surely one of the great rhymes of all time. (See http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HbNbXxQwFws It's not the camino, but I tell 'ee, tha'll like it.) That and 'I will smite 'em - ad infinitum' (Jonah man Jazz: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OZX54yRc-kE  (Ah, the nostaliga! I know it word-for-word!)

But God has made us with our moods - this might be the theological angle - and I'm sure that the right way forward is for us to put them to use... I really believe this....

and so to move to something that I must have done in a Ps. 13:5-6 mood, which is my desk. It's just a plain IKEA thing that I hunted down when I wanted something to spread out on. It was plain when I got it, but then it needed sealing, and so I decided that it needed a little design on it too. I was teaching at the time, in about 1999, and reading up on the apocalyptic literature of the Old Testament etc, and I was alerted to a distinction between two kinds of apocalypse: the 'vertical apocalypse' in which 'the "secrets" of the cosmos are made known', and the 'horizontal' or historical apocalypse which is a 'survey of history often leading to an eschatological crisis in which the cosmic powers of evil are destroyed.' (D.S Russell in Metzger & Coogan's Oxford Companion to the Bible). Somehow I got fixated on the first one, the idea of an otherwordly journey, and the desk started to look like a flying carpet. I'm used to it now, but at first I could only use it by covering it all over with books, as it was a bit... de trop. But now I love it, and it is growing old with me. Its slim silvery tapering legs only add to my feeling that it's going to take off at any time.(Oh crikey, where is this blog going???) Come with me!

The psalms to the rescue: Psalm 13.

The psalms to the rescue! I always wonder what exactly it is that people have in mind when they say that the Bible 'helps' them. What sort of help? I can only say for myself that it provides what I call 'mental furniture'. It's the equivalent of the ancient pieces you have, not antiques which have been bought specially to be old, but rather the pieces of furniture which have gone old while you have owned them, that you can't get rid of, however shabby or even ricketty they were to get, because they symbolise too much. And what a burden it is to be a person who lives in symbols! I have known some people who can travel light in that way, just discarding and getting new as they go. But I find it hard to get rid of so much as a sock belonging to someone, as there seems to be something of them in it. It's a burden, I tell 'ee! And also an odd kind of materialism that I don't like in myself.

But I meant to talk about mental furniture, not the physical stuff. So this morning, we sang psalm 13, which is one of those where the music really does have to reflect the mood, and so it is sung in a minor key for most of the time, and then at the end there is the up-turn and it swings into major. It's really the BP's psalm, the cry of the bi-polar, who feels forgotten by God; 'he takes no notice of me at all'. It's as though he has something like I have on this blog set-up, a 'stats' facility, thus I can count how many 'hits' there have been in a day, i.e. people reading my blog. (I try not to be obsessive, of course.) It looks as though the psalmist is doing this with God; he feels to have had no 'hits' from God at all, and he wants God's consideration, both for its own sake, and also because he doesn't want his enemy to be gloating over his cast-aside status.

But then there is a change in the last two verses of this six-verse psalm, and all of a sudden it's about trusting, rejoicing, singing, because of what is really non-information - God has 'dealt bountifully with' him. ??? There is no indication at all as to why this mood change happens; some of course speculate that the psalmist has been lamenting in the temple, and a priest has stepped forward with words of assurance of God's blessing, whose words are not recorded here, only the psalmist's response. But we don't know this; all we know is that a psalm has been written which is full of misery in the first 4 verses, and then in the last 2 there is a complete change of mood, a cloud is lifted. I think it's much better that we don't know why he feels different all of a sudden. It means that there is a psalm which reflects the experience that I sometimes have (and don't we all?) of feeling 'out of sorts' (oh I love these English understatements!) and then of feeling the start of the cloud lifting, for no apparent reason. There is a psalmist who shares my experiences, even shares my character.

For some reason, finding ourselves (and I mean that almost literally - like in an old photo - 'oh look, that's me!') in the Bible is reassuring. Why? Perhaps because when that 'me' is reassured by God's presence, I can share in the reassurance he experiences there and elsewhere.  John Rogerson says of psalm 22: 'It was the cry of someone who could pray, not in a general way to any God, but to my God, who was sustained by the memory of past mercies and nourished by the traditions of a community of faith; the cry of someone who had experienced God's faithfulness and who had come to the inner assurance that that faithfulness would never prove to be an illusion'. (The Psalms in Daily Life, SPCK 2001.)

Collagraph printing: Where now?

Kitchen table, first wave.

I began today determined to clear up the kitchen table, and it happened, but then a second wave hit it and that was that. Like the pilgrim rucksack, it contains one's entire life of the moment. The new wave was on return from the Ropewalk with my creations, my first ever collagraph prints. I discovered what I already knew, the difference between relief printing, as in linocuts where only the surface is inked, and intaglio printing, where ink is pressed into the depressions as well as the surface and then sucked out into the paper it's printed on.

Printing plate, pilgrim's progress.

Second wave: my first-ever collagraph prints.

The plates we made today consisted of mount-board, cut into and scratched, embellished with foil, wallpaper, carborundum, permanent PVA glue, French polish, and embossed with sandpaper and cloth to give texture. There's a lot of potential in this technique, it's even quite addictive. There's a lot of control in the preparation side of it, then when it is put through the mangle-press as I call it, there's an element of surprise when the thing is unveiled.

The pilgrim returns

Naturally my subject-matter was pilgrimage, but fortuitously I forgot to reverse the image I used, based on the paper camino representation of the metal sculptures on the Alto de Perdon. Thus, like it or not, the pilgrim is on the return journey! Going W to E! But on the plate, the pilgrim is still progressing. In many ways, the plates are more pleasing than the prints, as the shellac varnish gives a lovely warm tone to it reminiscent of Samuel Palmer's prints. It's a start anyway.

Having a little time left over, I worked very fast to scrawl out whatever came to my mind, which was 'WHERE NOW? which is the predominant pilgrim thought a year on. Perhaps it even says something about the mood of the moment we live in. I don't feel very optimistic, do you? Does anyone? Is it just me, or is there a mood of gloom about just about everything? There are plenty of blessings to count, but somehow the bigger picture seems sort of sad. The back garden view analysed is a picture of calm, all stately horizontals and verticals, and no riot of colour to disturb the peace. But things never stay the same, do they? I can't help but feel that the world is waiting for the next thing, and I'm apprehensive, and to me the picture looks menacing. What has happened to my hula-hoop moments? My pink-brolly mood? Reader, if I have ever made you laugh, help me out now.

The back garden through a kitchen window pane

Such simplicity.....

A closer look

The "mangle-press"

I can't be cheered up tonight, not to pink-brolly degree anyway. But two things seem to embody hope. Firstly the wonderful "mangle-press", smoothly feeding the plate and paper through, with a handle heavy and Victorian in feel. Even better still is the simple way in which the prints were held in the drying rack. Just look - see how that marble drops and gently holds the paper without causing any claw-mark or buckling. Just the force of gravity combined with the brilliance of the human mind in thinking up something so simple, effective, and above all elegant. Someone must have invented it, probably way back in the mists of time, with no name now known to us. Will someone be telling me that this unassuming piece of technology was first used in war? I do hope not.

I thought about why I felt like this; am I just being a Luddite, or a computer dunce with a tendency to favour the mechanical and the physical? Or am I right in thinking that it is 'simple ideas [that] change lives forever', as the charity Practical Action proclaims? http://www.practicalaction.org As it says on their website:

“Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius – and a lot of courage – to move in the opposite direction.” – E.F. Schumacher

Corpus christi 2011: Stow Minster.

The sculpted front garden. (Not my miserable laburnum in the background)

Home alone for a night! Midsummer! This can only mean one thing, and that's - clear the kitchen for dancing! Haven't flailed for ages, could I still do it? Best to have a go unobserved. So that meant trying 'On the Way to Bethlehem (Music of the Mediaeval Pilgrim)' http://www.amazon.com/Way-Bethlehem-Music-Medieval-Pilgrim/dp/B00000144X. Golly, those pilgrims, if they sang or danced to any of this, must have had a good time. Probably most of them slogged along in painful contemplative silence, but if you were lucky enough to be a member of a party with a band... this kind of music makes sense when you've been on a trudging pilgrimage over many miles, as some of the pieces last for about 15 minutes; but sadly now I have to make do with the kitchen floor and not the whole of N Spain from E to W. I'm the kind of person who can really get into repetitive music too, not always deliberately; I have to mow the grass for an hour and a half, and that sets off the Monty Python song 'Eric the half a bee' http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F_-vxAFcQIU in my head (click on this link at your peril) for the whole hour and a half. That's because I'm regretting with every step the fact that the bees on the clover... well.... I do try to avoid them, but I think that lawnmowers ought to have a kind of horn on them only audible to bees. But out in the sculpted front garden, I'm pleased to say that the ladyblackbird who formerly lived in a block of flats and came home to a bungalow seems to be doing fine, and I have apologised to her and promised to try to help her feed the babies when they start to appear.

But where was I? Ah yes, thinking it was Corpus Christi last night, and that a year ago I was sitting in a sunny garden in S France with my pilgrim feet in a bucket of warm water as we didn't have the energy to drive to Poitiers as planned. But last night we went off to Stow Minster to celebrate the festival with solemnity at the invitation of the Lincoln branch of the Society of Catholic Priests http://www.scp.org.uk/work/chapters.html. This is an Anglican organisation which tries to preserve and develop catholic spirituality and practices, while being wholly behind the ordination of women to the priesthood. I am a little concerned that loose-fitting clergy garments are not as loose-fitting as they used to be; it being the 'big society' (or am I thinking of the nanny state?) I see there are now public warnings out. Of course, I couldn't be expected not to wear a hat, and despite all the men in long black dresses, it was my funny headdress that provoked questions in the pub afterwards by curious onlookers, and so I had to explain its liturgical significance: a) I'm a clergywife who takes her duties in this respect seriously b) Rose petals are traditional for Corpus Christi, often scattered along the route of the procession (though most of mine stayed on my head; from a lovely climbing rose called 'Fairy'). I mean, what is it about church these days that brings out a rash of anoraks in people who certainly do have other clothes to wear? Why wear a navy blue anorak when you can carry a pink brolly? And anyway, t'owd man was wearing his lace alb, so I had competition. He wins on hair though, and ringlets really do suit him. He did all the catholic bodily things, and yet managed to come home with his alb still clean, which is an achievement for someone who aged 9 months always ended up in the coal bucket so I'm told. He didn't splosh through that puddle either. Nothing at all happened to remind me of this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x7wc55oXWf8

But I must away to bed. Tomorrow I'm going to be learning how to do collagraph printing  http://www.artistterms.com/collagraph.htm  at the Ropewalk http://www.the-ropewalk.co.uk/
I might take the paper camino for inspiration for subject matter. My plans for the cloth camino are really coming on too, and as soon as I can afford the time and the money, I'll be off......

It's late, and really I need to be up early every day getting myself to a condition I call 'camino-ready', even if I can't go till 2013.

Small and portable things, including Bibles.

Oooh DEARRRRRR! I thought I'd better drag this blog back to the serious, or t'owd man'll go ballistic! He said to me: "On Facebook you go very, very very VERY silly. You must concentrate on your blog, where you tackle serious subjects in depth." So I thought that this being the year of the KJV I ought to give a little nod in that direction. So I start by reminding you of the new Transetto Bible:

http://www.cambridge.org/bibles/kjv/transetto.htm

Blank notebook: all my own work

To an amateur bookbinder, this version is an interesting innovation, a concept even:

 http://www.dwarsligger.com/

Are you a dwarsligger? 

dwarsligger (from Dutch dwars – crossways, transverse; intractable, contrary and liggen to lie). A person unwilling to cooperate, who is stubbornly resistant to everything; obstructionist; troublemaker.
I don't think I am, really; I tend to co-operate. A bit of a yes-woman, which is why my diary is full of things that get in the way of My Life's Work, and is also the reason why I cannot play tennis, because I tend to send the ball back as obligingly as I can to the place where my opponent can reach it; this also comes from learning to play in back gardens where you didn't want to have to keep hopping over the fence to retrieve a ball. But back to Bibles - (I know - how did I get there?); I started looking at stuff on the Eden site, as they said I had a voucher for £3, and I'm fascinated by illustrated Bibles, children's Bibles, basically the whole way that Bibles are packaged and presented, and I found this:

http://www.eden.co.uk/shop/icb-mary-janes-bible-lthflex-1245514.html

which rather reminded me of the ancient girdle book idea (which tended to be books of hours, prayer books):

http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=girdle+book&hl=en&client=firefox-a&hs=YuO&rls=org.mozilla:en-GB:official&prmd=ivns&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=M2IETtSQAYmY8QPcqdU5&ved=0CDUQsAQ&biw=1280&bih=615

The way to make sure you get 5-a-day

I'm drawn to small portable things, for some reason; you can see it in the fact that apart from when I go to church, I carry a small chopping board, a veg peeler and a small sharp knife with me most places, all kept in a little cloth bag. I might be bohemian, but I have some sense of priorities, and a degree of personal organisation. For a bit more on the girdle book, see:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Girdle_book

But I end with a bit of a bling Bible. It really appeals to me, but then I am trying to find a wetsuit in a pink-and-black tiger print neoprene, if such is made; if not, why not? Let me know if you see one.

 http://www.thomasnelson.com/consumer/product_detail.asp?sku=1400317037&dept_id=230000&TopLevel_id=230000&title=Sequin_Bible_-_Pink_ICB

Is this OK, David? It is serious, isn't it? It's all about Bibles! I did try!

Camino bore: What the camino has done for me! Plus household hints.

That word! Camino, I mean! I said I wasn't going to mention it! But up it pops into my thinking again, and while in the bath I'm getting all excited at the thought that 'the camino has done its work' - some of it - and that maybe it is 'hidden', even from me! Oh I do HOPE so! Aaaaaaanyway, I was thinking of doing a page of household hints based on my own experience as a BBP. That's Bohemian Bi Polar. You will need a definition of Bohemian to go on, and in my case it is something I heard some time ago:

"Bohemians are people who wash up before a meal rather than after it." 


Simple, isn't it! I hope you know just what it means! Of course, it is about much more than washing up; this is just an example of the kind of behaviour that comes naturally to me. I was going to include a pic of me eating the main meal of the day in the bath at 2.30pm, but in the end I decided that poppadums didn't play well in the bath, so I got out to eat.

Anyway, my discovery is that I have achieved full and total acceptance of my condition, which is BBP. I'm going to work with it rather than against it. I say! I find that depressive people, as opposed to the manic depressives now re-named bi-polar, tend to be very sniffy and see me as a person with what they call 'mood swings'; the way I see it, I'm pretty much like THEY are, except that I'm not miserable ALL the time.

OK then, what is the first household hint? It's about vacuuming. I recommend that you have one of those see-through ones, a Dyson. That way, you can see how much dust & fluff comes up each time you use it, and preferably you will not use it very often so the amount will be substantial and very satisfying. Added to this, you will never have to say 'My vacuum cleaner has worn out'. This hint is suitable especially for bi-polar people. Did you know that they, we that is, tend to favour writing articles rather than books, because we need constant and regular feed-back, preferably saying how marvellous we are? Thus, if you write one article a week, you get a lot more out of it than writing a book every 18 months. Writing a blog every day, well..... I must say, I am OVERWHELMED by the support I receive! (Ummmm!) Anyway, this really IS about housework, as with one of the see-through vacuum cleaners, you get that reward of actually SEEING the dirt, without which it might never get sucked up at all.

The second hint for today is that you make a resolution like I have done to do about half an hour of housework a day, on top of the washing up you do before a meal. As much as that! I'm afraid so. But you will do much more housework if you plan to do half an hour of it rather than an hour, because then you might actually get started.

All this takes me back to me as a newly-married dewy-eyed young housewife, doing my best. One day, t'owd man (t'young 'un, then) told me that he really didn't like women who were 'obsessed with housework'. I can claim that ever since, I have been the perfect wife in this respect! I admit I started with a challenge, which was that shortly before marrying him, he had his stuff sent home from uni by means of one of those large trunks you see in films (his dad was a railway man, so it was cheap). The last time it was sent anywhere, he had packed it with some marmalade and some soap powder. What he didn't know was that when trunks got to Durham station, they were sort of rolled over and over like barrels. Thus when the trunk got to us... I don't need to explain why some of our books still have their pages stuck together with marmalade and smell very clean.

Look, no pictures today! I'm dashing off now in my other role as furniture woman, driving a big van.... Oh, OK then, the big van....

Midsummer: Psalm 121

Mmm, how to celebrate midsummer's day? I didn't have any trouble: it came to me that I must do a bike ride, though it didn't help that I fell asleep in the evening until 8.45! But I set off, thinking 'I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills; from whence cometh my help(?)' which no doubt is a bit of a mishmash of versions. But that '?' is crucial: it is not found in the KJV, but the revisers of the 1880s decided that it ought to be there, as is correct. The difference it makes is huge! (Actually, my help comes from an 18-speed gearbox on the boybike.)

1) KJV, no question mark: implies that it's the hills that are friendly, that help comes from there. "The ramblers' psalm."

Catbells across Derwentwater

2) With question mark: If one wonders where help comes from when one looks up to the hills, it implies that the hills are to be feared.Some think the psalm is relevant to pilgrims to Jerusalem returning home through mountainous terrain.

 I think my recent experiences have a bit of both in them! Lake District hills do bring help, refreshment etc; but they are also to be feared. As someone said, there are old mountaineers, there are fearless mountaineers, but there are not many old, fearless mountaineers: mountains are rightly feared, however friendly they may seem. That pointy bit at the top of Catbells had me worried when I got there.

It's the top of a hill, honest!

I got down the pointy bit!

But tonight in North Lincolnshire, hills? Well yes, actually! We have our little bit of the Wolds tapering down to the Humber bank; an excellent ride if you like puffing to the top of a hill in order to ride down it. Psalm 121 was probably in my mind because I'd done the talk on my Psalms Skirt last Wednesday, and one of the ladies present said she was hoping I'd have done a square to illustrate Ps 121, as she tended to fall a lot, and that psalm comes to her mind. I haven't got to that one yet, but I assured her that I would do one that made some reference to her. It was so easy to think up how this will be done, as it will depict hills, with a zig-zag path that makes a 'Z' shape, and her name begins with 'Z'; look no further than to the right! I hope that everyone who sees their path through life in any way as forming a zig-zag will see it as for them too. Praise be for the zig-zag path that gets us there.

The Ruth 'object' awaiting fleshing out.

It was one of t'owd man's perpetual joke-themes that the only contribution I made to preparing for the camino was to work out which coloured pencils I was taking; in fact I didn't take any! But next time I will. So the sign to the pencil museum is not to be sniffed at by me. Some of us find coloured pencils essential, and tomorrow I'll be colouring in a printout of the book of Ruth in order to illustrate its symmetry. There are so many echoes of that book in the here and now, for example in the recent news that funds do not allow all old people to receive the care they need, so that carers sometimes have to make a hard choice as to whether to wash them or feed them. But see how Ruth and Boaz both make sure that there is plenty of food for old Naomi, even though they are busy courting one another. How to get across that aspect in the Ruth 'object' I'm making... a challenge to find generous-looking colours, shapes and textures. I'm thrilled to be participating in a symposium '7 Strands: Challenging the Boundaries Between Fine Art and Making" at "Grimsby Minster" (the re-vamped Grimsby St. James; and doesn't that phrase just remind you of the catchphrase in that Tony Hancock episode '"Grimsby pilchards!" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ja4gHvDKEwM for background see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strand_%28cigarette%29) in July in which I hope I'll gain some extra oomph to help me in all of this psalmic and Ruthic enterprise. See http://www.womanwithafish.com/Home.html and click on '7 Strands'. Witty Jewish Netherlands textile artist Tilleke Schwarz http://www.mrxstitch.com/2009/07/23/the-cutting-stitching-edge-tilleke-schwarz/will be taking part; I'm soooo excited!