Obviously I am an addicted ponderer. It is the beating heart of this blog and for me is both creative and endlessly fascinating.
Mulling on the other hand is a much less lightweight, pleasurable task. Mulling however is every bit as essential for me.
The two thinking techniques are closely related. I have always been a ponderer, I started young, in Reference Libraries. As I edged into adulthood, worries and problems could not always be pondered into a solution. Sometimes more serious and better targeted thinking is required. Mulling moved into my life.
Recently, away from this blog I have had to do a lot of mulling on the behalf of an organisation that I help to manage.
My Mulling team, confidentiality guaranteed.
All organisations, whatever their title are essentially about people. My recent mullings have taken me to places I never imagined I would need to explore. Despite the importance of mulling it uses much the same mental muscles as pondering. And for me the creative, familiar places where I choose to ponder have proved to be equally suitable for mulling.
1.Dull domestic tasks.
2.Dog walks
3. Yardening in the yard.
Staring at the laundry whilst thinking.
Just one stark difference between pondering and mulling.
Summer Breeze makes me feel fine, blowing through the Holly Hocks of my mind.
Early summer is a fragile thing, a million things need to come together, in June, to create fragrant blooms and buzzy bees, with legs and fluffy bottoms all dusted with pollen. I love a Hollyhock but growing them eludes me. A minor success this year in the yard was quashed by the voracious appetites of our slugs and snails. Not for us the gentle hum of bees going about their business, just the inexorable chomp of a chorus* of slimy mouths feasting on our tender and tasty single Hollyhock survivor.
These Hollyhocks survive proudly, on the edge of a busy roundabout. Cared for by volunteer urban gardeners, they survive where mine cannot. Despite slightly obsessive attention. And yet, crazy, wild self-seeded Hollyhocks look down on me from cracks in rock walls and cliffs by the sea. Seemingly immune to the chomp of slugs and snails and happily hosting buzzy bees with dusty bottoms.
You may wonder where this ponder is going. The * is the answer. A recording of a single slug having a chomp, imagine what a choir of them would sound like in a back yard.
Four early cucumbers from the yard. But these are not the big-ticket items of the day. When I tipped them out of the bowl there was a tiny bead, in my favourite colour of verdigris. As I rolled it in the bowl it grew legs.
Our evening walk is never without a boat or two to look at . I have never had the opportunity to be a boaty person but there is something in me that loves to see boats all moored up and safe in their safe harbour.
Just for a moment, last night, the clouds, heavy with imminent rainfall, parted and let a shaft of setting sunshine illuminate these boats. A golden moment at the end of a day that has been filled with small and large golden moments. Chores achieved, chatter and cake. We went to a garden party, birthday celebration. The sort of party where guests contribute food to supplement the host’s main contribution. A glorious home-made version of an all-you-can-eat buffet. Conversations at this type of event are also as random and delightful as the food. Some are somewhat deep and others are fleeting and joyful, mirth making. Leaving you/me wanting more and chuckling randomly later. An all-you-can-talk-about conversational buffet.
Both the food buffet and the conversation buffet within a comfortable community, felt like a human safe harbour, a good place to be.
I have been feeling a bit nostalgic this week. I can pinpoint the exact moment it started on Monday. I was shopping in a local supermarket and saw a dress that looked like the curtains in the kitchen of my home when I was 3 or 4.
I didn’t need a new dress, and out of choice I try to only buy a tiny amount of new items of clothing. Adopting a recycle, repurpose and reuse policy as a small act of saving the planet.
This dress was certainly fast fashion, everything I choose not to engage with. I bargained with myself that I would not buy it because I only wear dresses with pockets and this one, being cheap, would not have pockets.
It had pockets and it came home with me. Nostalgia won.
That started the undercurrent of my week. A slight longing for the past. This very bland set up in my bathroom is nostalgic too. My dad was a man of the seventies and loved his electric razor but he too had nostalgia in his bones and used this shaving mug on rare occasions to have a wet shave as the fancy took him. I use his shaving mug as a regular soap dish, a small act of daily remembrance. And beyond that I don’t really pay it much attention. But because the dress triggered kitchen nostalgia the shaving mug joined in and I pondered how very different my bathroom is from the one the mug lived in during the seventies. My parents bathroom fittings were bright blue, their towels, and facecloths were in bold bright colours and in the iconic designs of the era. Unbelievably, soap was a curious shade of red. Lifebuoy Red.
Lifebuoy red shaped my early life, every part of us was washed with it. I hated it, my face was as dry and tight as the worst sort of sunburn after every face wash, noses and other orifices burned and stung if the lather or suds of the soap got anywhere near them. I soon adopted an independent washing and bathing routine that actually avoided the use of any soap. The only time the soap met water was at the end of my ablutions when I tossed it in the water after I had finished so that I could, in truth, say that I had used soap when my parents questioned my cleaning regime.
During my bathroom nostalgia I pondered that red soap, and wondered if I had just been a bit dramatic about the stuff. Being over-dramatic is always possible, I was an only child with a vivid imagination.
Dr Google has an opinion on Lifebuoy Red ‘ Health’ soap and that opinion is that Lifebuoy Red contained Carbolic Acid.
Which exactly explains why trying to rinse off the soap seemed to make things so much worse. Nobody mentioned rinsing off with alcohol
I may be being overdramatic, but just thinking about that soap gives me the shivers when I recall the lather of that soap going up my nose or south of my belly button. And the effect on my four-year-old face was certainly a mild chemical burn.
Kitchen curtains are one thing, but I can’t imagine a seventies bathroom ever making me feel all warm and nostalgic.
A cheap dress with pockets is so much more appealing.
Yesterday I tidied away my JMW Turner project of the last 4 months. Delivered 4 prints to an art lover and have just one more to deliver. Thank you Linda and Andy. I also did my exhibition accounts and give thanks and a mental back-flip to the art lovers, unknown,who bought some of my work at Cotehele. Even if it was ‘just a card’. Every little counts. Especially when I have the urge to buy some new brushes and I have declared 2025 the year when art sustains itself. Who am I kidding!
Onwards to the next project. A commission for a flower portrait in the style of something I did for the Spring Exhibition a few months back.
The flowers will be mostly fantasy with just one or two real ones thrown in. Hence my morning flower grid taken from my photo archive. I may even throw in some bees!
Hump Day* is better with flowers and as I am thanking people both known and unknown who buy my art, I would also like to thank anyone, known or unknown who read this blog.
I hit 500 subscribers on WordPress this week. Added to followers on Facebook, Instagram and now my return to Pinterest. That gives me 500+
Thanks for giving me 2 minutes of your time to share a ponder or ponders.
Hump Day because it is Wednesday and Hump Day because it is the day JMW Turner is tidied away into a corner of the studio and fantasy flowers begin.
I would like to squeeze a little more out of every day. The candle is burned at either end, and most days have a little more content than capacity.
Life swirls and dips like murmurating starlings at dawn and dusk. But my murmurations are not confined to either end of the day. Any unfilled gap in a day can be easily filled with some mental, domestic or creative murmuration.
Murmurating is not always the most economic use of time. For the economy of time there are lists and routines. Dull but essential.
The missed meeting.
I’ve had a busy extended week and in an attempt to squeeze more out of a day I started on some routine tasks at 11:30 pm. I worked through my lists and hopped off to bed. Smug that I had achieved.
A quick note to a friend to plan a meeting ‘ tomorrow’ was my last point on the to-do list. But I had failed to realise that when I wrote it tomorrow had already become today and thus my meeting ended up as a coffee and a hot chocolate for 1!
I spent an hour happily waiting, murmurating creatively.
All sorts of odd jobs were done on my phone. But the planned meeting did not take place and has been bounced into an as yet unspecified gap in both our schedules.
Would the luxury of more time helped? Maybe not.
I fear I will always fill all of my moments rather too full for comfort. Until I don’t.
I don’t believe there are many days when I don’t walk on the Salt Path. I went to see the film yesterday.
Two actors whose work I admire and a beloved landscape. Versus a book, that I was never quite comfortable with.
People who love the book often question why I don’t love it.
For me, many of the scenarios are implausible. The book seems to straddle between fact and fictionalised ‘fact’
I didn’t love the film either despite the landscape and the actors. Although I thought both the acting and cinematography were subtle and beautiful. The straddle of fact and fiction discombobulated me.
So one book done, one film done and I still need to be persuaded.
This photograph straddles fact and fiction on the Salt Path.
Two evening photographs taken about 5 seconds apart and with a shift to the west of about 2 degrees. Digitally stuck together as a double exposure and then tidied up.
Photography straddling fact and fictionalised fact on the Salt Path.
P.s What is to be done? Apparently I need to read the second and possibly the third book to gain enlightenment. Let’s see how that goes…
While stewarding last week I talked with Iain, another DttV artist. We talked about both having an initial reticence to get going on the Turner project. But after several months at it, we both wondered if we would ever fully give up some of the things we have learnt by using the techniques of JMW Turner. As mentioned in another blog, conversations like this are invaluable.
I didn’t expect to be back with Mr Turner quite so quickly but yesterday evening nature created a Turneresque sun in the early evening at Mountbatten.
Three quick and ‘bad’ photographs later and I have the beginning of one of my ‘ Turner ‘ images. Just some pencil sketching and a watercolour layer to add.
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