The fullness of time

(Looking through the Drafts folder on this blog, posts written but unfinished, unpublished, I found this had been written almost a year ago. For at least a year I've been sorting and sifting and revisiting and binning and liberating and regretting, mostly on a micro level ... all those little bits of "important" papers...)

Taking time and having time and spending time - these and similar ones are phrases that we use without thinking, and perhaps we shouldn't think about them too much - especially when pressed for time.

This morning I have a pressing task which relies on finding some information, just a name or two jotted down ... where? Not where I was sure it was (though I keep looking in that notebook, just in case I missed seeing it the first half-dozen times I checked!) - but I'm sure it's written down somewhere....

You know how it goes - self-recriminations of "I should have done this last week/last month/last year"; "I really don't have time for this today"; "this happens to me all the time!" - not very useful when you're running out of time.

Going through heaps, drawers, files, and bags and finding handwritten notes with snippets from the past brings on the meditative mood. How much time has passed since hearing this story (and who told it??): 

"There are things I don't touch - teddy bears for instance. Teddy bears are a minefield. I was at a sale in Suffolk when I saw a teddy bear literally torn apart by two bidders - one of them a vicar."

Whereas this snippet is quite recent, taken from a TED talk, the seven rules of successful artists [can't find the exact reference]:

1. work every day

2. volume (not perfection)

3. stealing from your idols

4. conscious learning

5. rest

6. seek criticism, get feedback

7. create what you love

Snippets du jour

Just one desk drawer has yielded 

- "memorable tickets" - from Art of the Stitch at the V&A, Friday 15 and Saturday 16 March 2002 (cost £56);
   -Mum's the Word at Kings Theatre Glasgow (my cousin Barbara Pollard is one of the writers and performers), also in March 2002 [and I took the sleeper to Glasgow to go see the performance];
   -and from 2001, Chelsea Flower Show - £12.00, "no babes in arms or under 5s admitted" - hmm, the price has gone up since then!

- a bundle of poems from 2002/3 (oh my, she was not a happy bunny!) - though this made me smile:

baggy maggie is gone
her bottomless bags are empty!
maggie hops skips jumps
hands free
baggageless! 

maggie was baggy;
now maggie
      IS

- a notebook from 2010, 'twixt art foundation course and starting the MA at Camberwell; it includes notes from courses on star book binding and cross structure bindings (neither of which I've done since) and these desiderata/advice -

-finding the essence as quickly as possible
-pursue to end of idea - don't let these things interfere with each other

Also, ever useful and never to hand, the drawer yielded some pads of blank, small sheets of paper - just the sort you want for jotting something down, but never have to hand. But but but ... current experience shows that it's best to write EVERYTHING in just ONE notebook... jots, scribbles, and all... consecutively on dated pages. Saves so much time when searching for the info later!!

Let us halt the digressions and get back to the title of this post, and consider "the fullness of time" - at this time, when I have little enough time to wallow in the memories that are being turned up, sifted through, recontextualised, whatever - just now seems the right time to do this. It's hard to get started, I need to trick myself into starting. It's hard to be at home, though I love my flat and its tranquility, that serenity is on the surface, there's still something troubling that makes me want to escape, to be Out Of The House. Most of all I want to escape this kind of sifting, but the fullness of time has led me to think that now might be the right time to face up to this. And gradually it gets easier, the burden gets less, the bags get emptier. The fullness of time lets you be in the moment.