Open Water Swimming Poem Swim Wild Swim Free by Jenny Meehan
swim wild swim free poem by jenny meehan open water swimming poetry art gifts
I haven’t continued swimming in the river beyond October before, so I am surprising myself by continuing a bit further into the Autumn this year! I do wear a wetsuit jacket as I don’t like to get too cold but all the rest of me gets pretty chilly! A couple of pairs of sports leggings, socks and gloves are also handy. It gives me a real buzz and it’s such a beautiful thing to do.
I have a collection of some of my open water/wild swimming art on my jennyjimjams redbubble artist profile. This includes the poem above.
https://www.redbubble.com/people/jennyjimjams/shop
Poetry
I put my poetry with many of the art forms I use. They have a relationship. I love that relationship. Sometimes the relationship is very obvious. It’s even sometimes there when I am making a work. For example, with my pink cardboard sculpture, when I was making it I kind of knew inside it was going to be meeting up with some kind of poem or writing, even though I didn’t know exactly what it was going to be. And indeed, thankfully, on my return from West Dean College, the writing of the poem fell into it’s place too. They were a pair made for each other!
I can’t say it always works out so simply. Sometimes there is a relationship there, kind of, but it is not a fully emerged one. Sometimes the relationship takes a few years even to emerge. It is not that it wasn’t there… It is just that it was emerging, unclear, maybe only partially conscious.
Poetry
Here’s another past poem, resurrected and re edited!
I AM
When I AM,
I am here… looking carefully.
When I AM
I am here… looking wondrously, around
and within;
without anxiety.
It is better to wait.
It is better to trust.
It is better to risk
living
than to die.
Even in the darkness…
It is better to ask for help.
It is also better to feel.
Better this,
than to live in hiding.
Better this, than to be as before…
when I shut life out.
Life opens and continues to open.
Welcomes and continues to welcome.
Calls and continues to call…
I am listening.
Life has opened. It continues to open. It opens again
in an everlasting flower.
It continues to welcome
and continues to call.
Soft, silent, petals
show in a moment;
a meditation of one still second.
Tiny, but certain.
Green against the grey.
.
My poem often lacks imagery I think. I tend to use my visual work for imagery…Creating an image in a poem is a different and more refined type of art I think than my poetry, which tends more towards a narrative prose type style in the main. However, I enjoy writing it! I would like to experiment much more with my poetry writing. Now the Winter days are here I think it more likely I may succeed in investing more time in that direction!
Low res image Modern art, abstract painting, jennymeehan blog, jennyjimjams artist, original artwork, London Surrey based abstract artist ©Jenny Meehan, Painter-Poet, romantic expressionist Abstraction, emotional landscape art, 21st century contemporary Art, licensable art images via DACS
The Space Between Us is one of my large (approx A1) paintings using Keim Soldalit on paper and thick cardboard. I’m really enjoying collage experiments. Space is such a practical problem for me, as our house is small and full! Now the Autumn and Winter are here, working on larger paintings has had to stop. Not that that matters too much as I play around with collage, whose piecemeal virtues and that little parts can be pulled together starting small and gradually growing outwards, as well as starting large and moving in the other direction. I also find that time spent in contemplation, reviewing the work of the Summer, and reading and writing all needs a place, and this is the season to do that! So there’s a note of humour for me as I look at this painting now… There is not enough “space between us” at the moment!
However, this wasn’t my thinking when I painted this…I was thinking about communication, sharing, and openness to others…As per Martin Buber ” Our relationships live in the space between us which is sacred.” That is the most beautiful quote ever I think. Actually…here’s more of it; ” Our relationship lives in the space between us – it doesn’t live in me or in you or even in the dialogue between the two of us – it lives in the space we live together and that space is sacred space”
Another great quote here:
“Love consists of this: two solitudes that meet, protect and greet each other” Rainer Maria Rilke
Nice.
Yoga Thoughts
Very much enjoying practising yoga again, though I would like to get into the habit of doing it a bit more than I do! It complements my Christian contemplative practice very well indeed, and is helping me recover a sense of being connected with my body which I lost. It feels to me like I am reclaiming my lost body.
I know that sounds odd, but years ago (age 5 to 13) when I used to do Ballet each week I had a relationship with my body that eroded over the years, and I ended up both disconnected, and abusing my body in various ways. I kind of rejected it and gave up on it. Working on the movements in Yoga is very helpful to me because I am becoming aware of my body and connected with it in a way that I have not been for many years.
I find the combination of breath and movement completely helpful to me…to say it is stress relieving is an understatement because it is so much more. The whole matter of being kind to my body and accepting it is also very important. I feel more agile and connected and happier with my body. Paying attention to the present is always a good thing, and I think the combination of focus, attention and breathing, for me, works very well in creating that “flow” experience which I often ramble on about!
This kind of somatic approach to recovery was suggested by my therapist a while back, but I was given a kick start to doing it because of the “ourparks.org” initiative a few years ago, which I was very grateful for. The combination of psychotherapy and the Yoga practice seem to help each other along…
It is recognised that trauma causes the body to be frozen in a state of fear. Hyper-vigilance and fear, and the whole theme of being frozen, crystallised and icy, is something which can be found in my some of my artwork. I sometimes use tiny glass beads to express a frozen state induced in my paintings. This state, experienced in extreme at the time of the traumatic event, also seems to hold itself in the body and mind, and I have experienced this many a time in therapy when we have touched certain points. It is quite strange to experience it when moving my body around when doing Yoga but very occasionally I have noticed it then.
It is my relationship with my body which is the key thing I think. I don’t really trust my body to keep me safe maybe? I sometimes feel unsafe and imagine horrible things happening to my knee (ie images of it smashing against something hard!) This is a little taste of a much wider experience and relationship with fear I have, but, as I was recognising recently in therapy, it is the relationship and the way one sees and relates to the fear (which changes over the course of recovery), not the fact that one feels the fear.
I would like to get rid of fear entirely, however, it is a fact of life, and not to be totally overwhelmed by fear, and to learn to see it from a different position, is a wonderfully liberating and joyful experience. I’m working at it through the Yoga now, as well as the therapy! I seem to be developing more feelings of being safe, and am adapting what I do in Yoga to suit my current physical state/body. What matters to me is that I can develop a nice sense of flow and grace in what I do with Yoga, and get into the breathing with body combination. This seems to be the most beneficial thing, rather than trying to torture myself with a lack of acceptance, sense of failure, and generally torturing my body. Being rather a creative person, I am finding it rather interesting to develop some of my own moves and positions too! I think my swimming, especially front crawl with the head under the water breathing technique, has pretty much the same effect too.
Incorporating body-based techniques into trauma recovery is something which makes a lot of sense for people in recovery from trauma, as trauma is so linked with the body (terror!!!!). It has been my experience that the tension and stress just holds itself within you, and you carry it around constantly. I can be chilled out and relaxed mentally, but still need to make a conscious effort to release the tension in my back and shoulders! It’s just there. My body still thinks (if bodies “think”) that it needs to be in “fight” mode, I think. The physiological effects of trauma on the body seem to lock the body in a pattern of fear.
While I had childhood experiences of physical (and emotional) violence directed towards me via my father, which did have an impact on my development, I think it was being a victim of rape in my early twenties (twice) which succeeded in helping me disconnect and dissociate from my body/mind more deeply. It actually took TEN YEARS for me to be in a place where I could even start to acknowledge what had happened to me!
The power of denial is immense… Shocking. But this is the way the body and mind cope with such things sometimes. You need to keep on living. This denial, I now understand, is not an uncommon experience for people who have been violated so. I feel so grateful to have been able to make a journey forwards in reconnection and self- compassion, and that the work of psychoanalytic psychotherapy I have been engaged with, (and continue to be engaged with), has proved so worthwhile and fruitful in so many respects.
On the body front, my video “Artifact” is an a personal explorative expression rather than a finely honed artwork….(I have very limited facilities and skills in video making!) and is probably quite a stepping stone for me in the rape recovery process. Interestingly “Artifact” can be spelt either the original British spelling way “Artefact” or the American English spelling way “Artifact”!
Here it is:
Revisiting a sense of personal desolation and loss wasn’t easy, but I think it was worth the effort. I used a sculpture I made and cast in plaster, which I titled “Venus de Milo” (related to my “Thelma” wax sculpture series) as the body…a personal relic, I suppose. In the video there is a soundtrack which includes the repeated phrase “I’m tearing myself apart”. The close examination of my body relic is painful to me, for its existence is the embodiment of a catastrophic trauma and its impact within my life. There is something about “tearing myself apart” even by my insisting on revisiting the crime of the rape and making what is almost a forensic examination maybe? Yet in the examination is the necessity to face what a crime it was.
It is a kind of crime scene I think…distressing to admit the damage done…distressing to appreciate the depth of damage and the obliteration of self. It is hard to let go…to leave that relic…yet to face it is vital…to acknowledge it is vital… but facing it is “tearing me apart” because I face the pain and reality of the crime, and in the scrutiny of it I am immersed in grief.
Yet making the video, painstaking as it was, did serve a useful purpose. Some people use relics religiously as they believe in the power of relics… the physical remains of a holy site or holy person, or objects with which they had contact somehow possess healing power. In the Christian belief, the body of the saint provided a spiritual link between life and death and between wo/man and God “because of the grace remaining in the martyr”. I think I have had this in the back of my mind, though with differences of course. I think I have maybe created and used this as some kind of resurrection tool… a way to apply the grace within me to those parts of myself which are dead? A way of re contacting myself at that point in my life, picking myself up, tenderly, and inviting the grace of my Creator deeper into my own life and body now by accepting and receiving more fully myself… all of myself…even those parts which I could not bear to acknowledge.
So in this artistic creation, I am metaphorically picking up/encountering the relic of myself and by doing so accepting what was done fully, which is painful of course. Hence the “tearing/breaking myself apart”? However, also in the process of encounter and awareness, is the grace, which I could not previously access due to the rejection of myself. This can be applied and received. There is life breathed into death.
So it’s not a negative process. Far from it, though it could be, of course, if I did not relinquish and let go of the old. Letting go is also part of the process. We can hang onto hurt, old wounding, and pain because it feels more secure. The letting go of the relic is a necessary part of the process. My poem “Bandage Box” is also part of the video.
The short video has a bit of a clunky visual motion to it…its has a rough, unprofessional feel to it, but I think it appropriate, so I found it acceptable, even maybe a bonus to the communication? There’s nothing smooth or easy about a recovery journey from rape, and the slightly stumbling and unsteady, stilted and fragmented feel to it is fitting.
I have been sexually assaulted in various ways 10 times in my life, to varying degrees ranging from drug rape to sexual harassment. I know I am far from alone in this as I know many women who have experiences like mine… too many. All violence and sexual assault has an extremely destructive effect on a person. The damage done is not appreciated or realised as much as it could be I don’t think, so maybe my experience, which is part of the creation of this video, might help in some small way. I have been fortunate to have the support and help I needed… it came late… this is true… but none the less, it came and it has been transformative.
It’s really important to recognise how much sexual assault there is. Here is some data from 2017, so not new, but still rather shocking:
Sexual Violence Statistics from Rape Crisis England and Wales.
Key statistics about rape and sexual violence in England and Wales.
In the year to the end of March 2017, the Crime Survey for England and Wales (CSEW) estimated:
20% of women and 4% of men have experienced some type of sexual assault since the age of 16, equivalent to 3.4 million female and 631,000 male victims
3.1% of women (510,000) and 0.8% of men (138,000) aged 16 to 59 had experienced a sexual assault in the last year.
In January 2013, An Overview of Sexual Offending in England and Wales, the first ever joint official statistics bulletin on sexual violence released by the Ministry of Justice (MoJ), Office for National Statistics (ONS) and Home Office, revealed:
Approximately 85,000 women and 12,000 men (aged 16 – 59) experience rape, attempted rape or sexual assault by penetration in England and Wales alone every year; that’s roughly 11 of the most serious sexual offences (of adults alone) every hour.
Only around 15% of those who experience sexual violence report to the police
Approximately 90% of those who are raped know the perpetrator prior to the offence
More key stats:
31% of young women aged 18-24 report having experienced sexual abuse in childhood (NSPCC, 2011)
Most women in the UK do not have access to a Rape Crisis Centre (Map of Gaps, 2007)
A third of people believe women who flirt are partially responsible for being raped (Amnesty, 2005)
Conviction rates for rape are far lower than other crimes, with only 5.7% of reported rape cases ending in a conviction for the perpetrator. (Kelly, Lovett and Regan, A gap or a chasm? Attrition in reported rape cases, 2005)
The information above is rather old, but does give a brief idea I think. This may be a better specific and up to date resource:
Click to access Statistics_about_sexual_violence_and_abuse_-_sources_RCEW.pdf
You can also see more up to date statistics here too: https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/crimeandjustice/datasets/sexualoffencesprevalenceandvictimcharacteristicsenglandandwales
The highest ever number of rapes was recorded by police in the year ending March 2022:
70,330
In that same time period, charges
were brought in just 2,223 rape cases.
The text above is from https://rapecrisis.org.uk/get-informed/statistics-sexual-violence
I did not even realise it was this bad until I looked. Part of me wishes I hadn’t. But I guess there is the problem, because the problem is so massive and generally people tend to prefer to look away rather than acknowledge it. We are all the same in that respect… I have looked away myself… even as a victim. There’s a huge reality which needs to be faced and not avoided if society really is going to progress in a positive direction. This is what really needs to change, and it needs a lot of work, awareness, and education, plus open communication to change things.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4491036/
I see my art working as a small contribution to the process of education and awareness. It’s small but it’s important to me that my experience is used creatively. I know it strikes a chord with people and I have had amazing feedback and responses which bring a lot of happiness to my heart.
Painting: Yoga Inhale
yoga Inhale British painting Lyrical Abstraction style by artist designer jenny meehan jennyjimjams colour original abstract artwork to buy and image licensing ©Jenny Meehan
Painting: Yoga Exhale
Yoga Exhale British painting Lyrical Abstraction style by artist designer jenny meehan jennyjimjams colour original abstract artwork to buy and image licensing ©Jenny Meehan
Flow Psychology
I know I have mentioned this before in my Journal, but as a quick reminder, I am very much interested in positive psychology and the ideas of psychologist Mihály Csíkszentmihályi. When immersed in something, and in a kind of mindfulness which is what you feel when you are completely focused and in a state of complete immersion in an activity, this may be described as being in a “flow”. A state of consciousness called flow is a state of concentration so focused that it amounts to absolute absorption in an activity. We might describe it as being “in the flow” of something.
This word “flow” brings me back a bit to the John Wimber days, when at the Charismatic church I was at (YEARS ago!) we all used to refer to “being in the flow” when we talked about experiencing the Holy Spirit. If one sees the Holy Spirit as, among other things, being a spirit of creativity and life energy, then our experiences of the Holy Spirit, (who is part of the Trinity in Christian thought and faith), as well as being welcomed in the experience of worshipping God in a focused way, is indeed the very same spirit that I feel when I am painting…For me, this is certainly true. I make no distinction between the spiritual refreshment I experience when immersed in my painting, or any other creative activities, to that I experience when immersed in prayer or contemplative meditation. To me, these things are one and the same. They have different dimension to them…I need to analyse and assess things when painting in a particular way…it is a type of work which is not the same as praying a prayer which is structured in the logic of words, (unless I am praying without words). But in terms of my own mind, body and spirit, they are both a place of being, of welcoming life and the Creator’s presence into my soul. Of immersion, and depth of being.
As that familiar line goes “In Him (He-She as I prefer to express!) we live and move and have our being” …in it’s context, (from Acts 17 in the New Testament… here:
“Paul then stood up in the meeting of the Areopagus and said: “People of Athens! I see that in every way you are very religious. 23For as I walked around and looked carefully at your objects of worship, I even found an altar with this inscription: TO AN UNKNOWN GOD. So you are ignorant of the very thing you worship—and this is what I am going to proclaim to you.
24“The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by human hands. 25And he is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything. Rather, he himself gives everyone life and breath and everything else. 26From one man he made all the nations, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he marked out their appointed times in history and the boundaries of their lands. 27God did this so that they would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from any one of us. 28‘For in him we live and move and have our being.’b As some of your own poets have said, ‘We are his offspring.’
Anyway, back to Mihály Csíkszentmihályi…
Mihály Csíkszentmihályi describes the mental state of flow as “being completely involved in an activity for its own sake. The ego falls away. Time flies. Every action, movement, and thought follows inevitably from the previous one, like playing jazz. Your whole being is involved, and you’re using your skills to the utmost.”
It’s the ego falling away bit which is interesting me. When surrendered to the Holy Spirit while worshipping God, there is a kind of immersive experience which is both refreshing and revitalising. I also feel this when I am doing my yoga practice, as I focus on the movements and positions of my body. When I look at water, or I am swimming in water, I also find myself getting “into the flow” of feeling alive, and welcoming the Spirit into my life more.
While flow states can be task related, and related to specific objectives, and the performance related aspect is interesting, (I would like to read more about it,) I am also interested in the flow that happens purely as a result of the grace of our Creator God (ie, as the result of God’s workings, through the Holy Spirit without us “doing” anything). This also brings with it a fluidity to our thoughts and a deep feeling of peace and contentment. Our sense is of being just in the moment, ego-free, and feeling alive. I don’t know if Mihály Csíkszentmihályi considers “flow” from any spiritual perspectives at all. I found this…
“Nearly anything, it seems, can serve as a flow activity. The diversity of potentially fulfilling activities directly confronts a culture so often interested in success that can be quantified in financial and personal terms. While flow activities share several common characteristics, Csikszentmihalyi argues, finding the right activity requires a uniquely personal process of exploration and self-discovery. No matter what they are — physical exertion, study, artistic expression or spirituality — flow activities reveal themselves in the way they push the self towards complexity and growth.”
Quote from The subjectivity of happiness: on Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s ‘Flow’
Chase Nordengren | Jan. 5, 2012 (National Catholic Reporter)
Take a look at the whole thing:
http://ncronline.org/blogs/young-voices/subjectivity-happiness-mihaly-csikszentmihalyis-flow
I like this:
“Csikszentmihalyi is skeptical that traditional religious systems, particularly Christianity, can provide meaning to the next century’s children, trapped in existential dread. He might well be correct to assume Christian preaching is quickly consigning itself to irrelevancy on the issue of happiness. An undeveloped faith will not by itself create happiness, nor will liberation from sin. Beyond preaching on moral action, the church bears a special responsibility to project its positive view of human beings and the unique vocation given each individual person.
No matter the strength of our devotion, our repentance or our “positive thinking,” our reality will still reflect a will we cannot understand. Bad things will still happen to good people.
“The most promising faith for the future,” Csikszentmihalyi writes, “might be based on the realization that the entire universe is a system related by common laws and that it makes no sense to impose our dreams and desires on nature without taking them into account.”
Recognition of that reality — the presence of a supernatural power that has brought us into existence and our incredible powerlessness in the face of that power — is the first step on the road toward grasping for meaning in our lives. A relevant, compassionate church ought to also guide the faithful toward the second step: ensuring all work and play, rich and poor, simple and complex constitutes participation in what the U.S. bishops called “God’s creative activity.”
Wow, that’s super. Love that.
The experience of flow could be described well as blessing, I think. Someone at church recently pointed out that the Hebrew word we often translate into “blessing” very much relates to happiness:
esher: happiness, blessedness
Original Word: אַשְׁרֵי
Part of Speech: Noun Masculine
Transliteration: esher
Phonetic Spelling: (eh’-sher)
Short Definition: blessed
In my experience this happiness comes when I immersed in an activity, focused, and I view it as a gift of grace. Happiness is a gift…I think it can be received or rejected. It is a communion, a meeting with the divine as expressed in our world… It doesn’t come from things, but from relationships and love expressed. And when we are immersed in certain things, it seems we gain a sense of the divine, as we let ourselves be just in that moment. For me as a Christian, a powerfully liberating access to this blessing comes from the application in my life of a conception of the Grace of God, expressed through faith in the Lord Jesus Christ as God (one of the Trinity). In my life, Christ is welcomed as God himself, compassionate, and incarnate, (in the flesh). “God with us” in the midst of the deepest suffering, or the darkest night any soul could find itself in. A Creator God who, though powerful, is also powerless. A vulnerable Creator of the world, who understands completely the challenges of living we face, even those very extreme challenges, like extreme fear and doubt. This is a paradox we cannot understand. We cannot understand the mystery of Grace, only choose to believe it.
Yet, indeed, it is the Spirit of God within us, that brings life to our souls…whatever our beliefs, spiritual tradition, or religion. The work of the Spirit may be experienced by any heart open to God, if welcomed. God is a Creator…the source of life, and the giver of life. There is one Creator God, though understood, (in the limited way the human mind understands things!) in many different ways. When we are doing things we feel passionate about, which engage ourselves and take us beyond our own ego, and into a sacred, and holy space where we are being, just being, and taking in life in all it’s fullness…This is just a tiny taste of the heaven; a tiny taste of the experience of being immersed in the presence of God in all it’s (his/her) entirety.
I associate water with life, and life (and truth) with the Grace of God, experienced in my daily life. The whole idea of immersion (and everything to do with water!) can be linked in my own art work to the (continual) experience of Baptism, (understood as a symbolic act of conversion, ie repentance and receiving of grace) and to experiences of being immersed in the Holy Spirit..of being in a place of Flow, and of life (and new birth) which is both here and now, and also, well beyond that. A happiness and grace which is a blessing. A gift, from God. I choose to credit this kind of work to God, in his/her* good intentions and loving kindness, mercy and compassion towards ALL that is created, and understand God not as an impersonal force or “it” but a personal and relational Creator God. I credit the liberating work of continuous transformation in my life as coming from the work of Christ in me, as I choose day by day the path of being a follower of the Lord Jesus Christ. This is a key understanding that underlies my life and work, and what motivates me in my art practice to take the directions I take.
However, whatever one believes or not, whatever one’s personal angle on salvation/enlightenment, or otherwise, we all experience flow times…that feeling of being in your element. Of being in the creative zone. Of feeling truly alive! While I have rambled on passionately, there are countless times when “being in the flow” is a distant dream…When all the opposite could be expressed, just as passionately! When static, stagnant and dead, are more applicable words! But I find it helpful to consider and reflect on the relationship of my faith beliefs and the way that water has emerged as such a significant symbol in my art work, and also how my own understanding of being “in the flow” has moved from something that I used to view as being exclusively situated within those professing to be Christians, to a much wider and expansive appreciation of how blessings are experienced, and how our “Unknown God” is known to us in various ways, through our life experience. It is also the case that God, because (she-he) is God, is well beyond our comprehension, and it does us a favour to always hold this in our minds, even if we are certain of our own perspectives. We may know and comprehend many truths about God’s nature…and it is good to hold onto these things, but also good to embrace the mystery which is also God, and to appreciate the endless and eternal aspects of our Creator. As the old phrase goes “Let Go and Let God”. The two go together!
Sometimes the “letting go” bit might be more of a challenge, and slightly different from simply immersing ourselves in an enjoyable activity. Take a look at the whole article if you will, but I am thinking of this kind of thing:
“But in every case, what “Let go and let God” comes down to is this: We need to let go of our own will. We must claim as our own the incredibly hard prayer that Jesus prayed: “Father, if you are willing, take this cup from me; yet not my will, but Yours be done” (Luke 22:42). We need to let go and let God do what God wills. This submission will lead to peace and joy, even when the way is difficult. “Father, I place my life in Your hands!” (Luke 23:46).”
Quote from: Elizabeth Peale Allen https://www.guideposts.org/faith-in-daily-life/bible-resources/live-the-bible/learn-to-let-go-and-let-god.
*ps. It seems better to remind ourselves by using His/Her that God isn’t male or female…but Spirit. We think “genders” because we are human, but while God may be related to as male or female, it’s good to remind ourselves of how far beyond our definitions God is…I tend to often settle with “Father” simply because the Lord Jesus Christ did but it’s good to recognise both traditionally feminine imagery and masculine imagery when we think of God, imo! (AND to be clear that these are indeed, just images!!!! )
In the Flow Mosaic
in the flow mosaic by jenny meehan
in the flow mosaic by jenny meehan
I am rather pleased about the progress of a recent mosaic…This is the reverse side, and I am excited to see what the other side will look like! It will look a bit different…I am particularly keen to see what the face looks like! There is part of a poem to go with this mosaic.
“Psyche, Body, Spirit
Unbound
She threw herself into the river
Then in an untold miracle
found
unexpected resurrection”
It’s part of a bigger poem. I do find my river swims so helpful at the moment, even though its cold! I am not exactly throwing myself into the water… rather it is a slow and gentle walk into the coldness in order to adjust to the water temperature!
Bye for now… This post is EARLY for a change. Getting stuff sorted now as December is such a busy month if I leave things till then it would be after Christmas I think until I got around to posting!
Jenny Meehan - Art Journal 