The Flux and Flow of Objects and Thoughts

I am thinking a lot about the cover of my forthcoming composite novel Happiness Comes from Nowhere. And as I’ve been thinking, images of Annemiek’s bowls started springing to mind. I passed by a shop full of fabric the other day and again, I thought of the bowls.



What was it that I was specifically thinking about? It was all about movement. Yes, the bowls are static in themselves .... Or at least when they are finally created they are static, but during the process of creation, they are dynamic, in flow, in flux even. And also – and here is where it links in for me with the cover of my book-to-be – when they are “produced” they return to some sort of flux.

It’s the equivalent of the writer/reader relationship that theorists like Roland Barthes talked about. In the selling of the bowls and the transference of ownership something new is created – many multiples movement and of newness – which is captured most wonderfully by Annemiek’s image of butterflies.

It is nearing autumn again and even if Annemiek can’t make a trip to Ireland I will take a walk in the Botanic Gardens and write a little piece or two...

...and start a new challenge of flux and creation.

Bath and Butterflies

I wondered what Annemiek would make of my daring challenge.

I thought about the fact that we had adopted an unspoken rule of communicating via the blog rather than discussing how we would proceed or what we hoped to get done by a particular time. We let – in essence – the creativity lead the process and the time. And yet, it seemed to take a lot of strength or courage to do this – to communicate via a world wide web. Part of it, somehow, seemed unnatural or at odds with the process of combined creativity. Or collaboration.

And yet, seeing such a surge of response – something tangible, concrete something (unlike how I see words!) real made me realize that yes this to-and-fro business of stabbing in the dark does and is working.

Butterflies are, to many, a sign of hope. They are an emergence of something.

They literally are a growth, a becoming, an emergence of beauty from something which-is-not, which is doubtful and not-permanent in its form – from caterpillar to butterfly; despair to hope.

An image of a hill in Bath, England comes to mind: a circular row of houses, a view of the city, the sulphur of the baths, a movement or shift in the atmosphere, a becoming beauty. It's a memory from walking through this beautiful city in Somerset, something that the butterflies or the idea of butterflies has triggered.....