This is me with my mum. The most restraint I have ever shown in all my 32 versions of a year has finally been achieved by me, valiantly waiting for Christmas day before handing over Mum's present, the felted writing paper wrap. When you have been pouring all of your thoughts into a gift for someone, it is such a bang when they open it, you can almost see little wish birds pouring out of the wrapping paper into the sky. I sat there contemplating that image for a little too long just then, back to the old type writer Kate.
We have moved on from my dad and step-mother's house to my mum and step-father's farm where Christmas was celebrated the way our family does and with great maturity exhibited by all, resulting in an absence of family scandal. I will go into greater detail (of the day, not past scandals) when I return to New Zealand.
At the moment I am in that strange curtain where fatigue meets with creativity and the light becomes a little blocked. Two weeks of not being project oriented has loosened me and the untethering is always a bit (get ready for my new word) uncertaining. This morning I was lying in bed and started to visualise the way I feel, recognising that this state is usually a prelude to a new surge. All of a sudden I pictured myself in translucent green sea-water with a gigantic rock beneath, jutting up from the bottomless bottom. I could see myself plunging down towards it with my broad, splayed feet ready to grip onto its weedy surface and push with all my might upwards, towards whatever direction this rock-bottomed source of all inspiration chose. Ready to burst up into an unknown and brilliant sunshine.
Creativity, it's not a path but a place and even when you think it's gone, it drags you back, turns you around and suddenly lifts you up into an idea so seedless it is an instant new world.
