patch

I lost my way.

Filling my time with distraction from what, I do not know, from finding my path perhaps, I spot a flower dead in the gloom, here, that I have lost. I cannot find it again, but I found my own on my wall, embroidered when I was sixteen/seventeen, finally framed last year.

My grandmother taught me when I was nine.

I had only one year of art at school, and peering at the worn thin hole where the cloth disintegrated faster than I could patch, I hear my art teacher's voice as he laughed at my obsession. I used to sit quiet in the empty classroom and make up something to do, try to drown the doubt: crash-course Higher in effect being no course at all. And he would mock, in that arch Glasgow stylised way, take the piss, of everything that I did. Especially the embroidery and the orange hair extensions.

I gave it up in the end of course. Took the place at University.

On reflection though, he taught me to use a darkroom, wangled me a place on a cultural exchange to Berlin and put my pictures in the exhibition afterwards, he borrowed a video camera for me, and decided that I would design the school's entry for some mural competition in the park, and generally gave me free run of the place. It must have meant something.

And now. I have lost my way again. When my friend writes that she has loved her class, is so inspired by the creative buzz, I am happy but it reminds me.

Like this reminds me.