'You seem very low, Mr Venus. Is business bad?' 'Never was so good.'

{Friday}


{Saturday}

It was perhaps whilst answering questions for Stephanie Levy as part of her 30 Days of Collage (an online 30-day e-course that Louise and I were interviewed for by email alongside Fred Free, Anthony Zinonos, Brandi Strickland, Kareem Rizk, Hollie Chastain and others) that I realized how others might view the full seesaw pattern of my days. Of all the questions about the working process posed, when asked to describe a typical day I struggled to find firm footing. A typical day is varied and perhaps best summed up in these two recent instagram photos taken on two consecutive days. Never the smooth sea sailor, back-to-back the variance in this quick snap duo sums up my typical day (or lack thereof). One day the view before me is of Omar, the express picture of contented industry, reposing (after a night of galloping, scampering, yodelling). Our Mutual Friend (my current read, my current delight), Omar, fits the picture Dickens painted of Mortimer Lightwood. The next day, it is not so hard to imagine Mr. Venus and Silas "so wooden a man that he seemed to have taken his wooden leg naturally" Wegg casting an eye about in the adjoining room as we pulled up broken floorboards and sent the dust flying as the circular saw chewed through the rotting timber. ("My working bench. My young man's bench. A Wice. Tools. Bones, warious. Skulls, warious. Preserved Indian baby. African ditto. Bottled preparations, warious. Everything within reach of your hand, in good preservation. The mouldy ones a-top. What's in those hampers over them again, I don't quite remember. Say, human warious. Cats. Articulated English baby. Dogs. Ducks. Glass eyes, warious. Mummied bird. Dried cuticle, warious. Oh, dear me! That's the general panoramic view.”) Order one day, chaos the next. Quiet contentment one day, all delicious noise and hard labour the next. This pattern mirrors that of my ego and my moods, which if viewed as a line graph would be spiked. Tremendous high peaks always have and always will be made visible by dark troughs. A spot of brilliant idea basking one moment is followed by self-doubt shadow play the next. This is the typical pattern of long.


{Nonchalant, almost. No, not quite.}


{Who goes there?}


{I drag myself along.}


{Rouen left Odette somewhat underwhelmed; she wrote little.}

(Posting this before dark valley flats.)