Dab Dab Splodge Splodge

Dab dab splodge splodge: here’s how I remember and forget all at the same time.

I copy the locket I wear for her. I collect soggy leaves, muddy berries, mossy bark from near her tree and string it together with fuse wire. I carve an ‘I’ into an apple. Dab dab splodge splodge. 18 marks for 18 months. Do we all think in multiples of nine these days? Nine months here, twice that gone.

Art Every Day Month. Or, as David would have it, Argument Every Day Month, as I fend off my terrorizing three-year-old from dab  dabbing her marks on my work. I call it Iris Every Day Month. Part of my quest to remember and be happy. The inverse of the Christina Rossetti poem:

Remember me when I am gone away,

Gone far away into the silent land;

When you can no more hold me by the hand,

Nor I half turn to go, yet turning stay.

Remember me when no more day by day

You tell me of our future that you plann’d:

Only remember me; you understand

It will be late to counsel then or pray.

Yet if you should forget me for a while

And afterwards remember, do not grieve:

For if the darkness and corruption leave

A vestige of the thoughts that once I had,

Better by far you should forget and smile

Than that you should remember and be sad.

I don’t fancy living a poem. So I’ll just keep dabbing and splodging until I make, if not art, then maybe a tiny bit of joy.