Can’t sleep. Body hurts everywhere. Left hip, lower back on the left hand side, shoulder, wrist, chest on the left when lying flat and breathing. Looking for the reason. Maybe it’s because I haven’t done art in a week and I’m feeling like the family is overwhelmingly needy? I planned it myself: kids dentists all day and haircuts to get everything sorted before we leave. Husband busy but also mentioning how I spend so much time on my art and thinking about it it might be good to take a break and spend some time together as a family on holiday, without me constantly thinking about doing art. Does taking a knitted red teardrop on ma forest walk and photographing it hanging from trees count as art? It counts enough to make family notice and get annoyed for not being focused on them. Is it their fault I’m in pain for focusing on them and forgetting myself? Or is it my fault for letting them get to me and abandoning art for a few days? Either way it’s someone’s fault amd someone needs to feel guilty. But there’s this duality of me and freedom and time for myself and to create and time for/with the family. I realise the more I want to do my art the harder it sometimes seems to just be with them. Why does loving someone need to be so hard and painful and overwhelming? Shouldn’t it all just be pure joy?
uploading these photos from the walk made me realise I actuallly did some art this week, that somehow I was able to combine a family walk with doing something I wanted to experiment with as part of my practice. Feeling slightly better now
Nature. Forest. Knitting. Crocheting. Hugging the trees, crocheting tears and hanging them on trees. Hanging my lamps on trees. Closeness with nature seems the only solution for us. Grandma loved her garden, she tended to it with such vigour and love. Great grandma loved the forest. She bought land with a little house where we used to spend summers with mum when I was little. Mum was not happy at that time but I remember those times as happy memories. Mum grew carrots behind the house, she wanted me to eat healthy soups. Great grandmother Bronia had bees. She tended to them with such care. Her white strong hair, like a helmet. Glistening in the sunset when she was sitting in her usual spot at the end of the garden, watching the sun go down. We have a photo of her in that spot, white short haair like a crown or halo in the setting sun. Why am I crying? Mum loved great grandmother Bronia very much, she always says Bronia was the hardest working person she ever knew. I loved her messed up neurotic daughter Krysia, my grandmother. Mum wanted me to travel, was she just excited about Poland opening up in the 1990s or ws she trying to save me from grandma’s neverending sadness? My children will never have such closeness with their grandmas.
Great grandma Bronia liked hugging trees
Grandma Krysia liked hugging trees.
Mum and I still hug trees sometimes.
(Find a quote from “Zla na zielono” about hugging trees)
It’s this thing that grows on trees, the tree mushroom, min polish Huba, great grandmother used to make beautiful candle holders out of them.
There’s something beautifully sad in the tangled bare branches and roots of these trees. The entanglement of being. My own entanglement in all the family relationships. Feels like something I can’t get out of. There’s no escape.
Is the pain in my body/in the joints, a reaction to the fact that there’s no excape? Is it possible to feel so entangled and so part of everything and everyone in my family yet at the same time so lonely and invisible?
Why do I feel like I carry the weight of the world and why does my body need to suffer as a result?
Will I be able to go to sleep now?