negative space

Steps walked: 8904.

Furthest point travelled to: 1 mile – North Mid Chapel.

Face to face non-household interactions: 0.

Track of the day: ‘Titanium’ – David Guetta ft Sia.

So, I kept yesterday’s post pretty brief because I was feeling low and not in the mood. I’d rather been hoping that I’d have perked up a bit by today, and would be writing something distinctly chipper and upbeat. No such luck; my emotional weather is still overcast, dreich. However, I’m conscious that if I was actually in the middle of a pilgrimage across Scotland, I wouldn’t have refrained from posting just because it had rained all day, and so I suppose this lockdown pilgrimage blog should be no different.

I’ve been reading about composition in relation to photography; don’t expect to see any great improvements imminently. There’s this thing they call ‘negative space’. (Very) roughly speaking, it’s do with a shape being defined by an absence; the image is formed by what’s missing. You could say that it’s to do with the creative potential of voids.

Yesterday I was missing Mum a lot. I spent a large part of the day gardening, and Mum loved the garden; this was her favourite time of the year, with all the potential that gardens possess in these weeks of Spring. As towering weeds were chopped back, flower beds dug and hoed, plants potted, I kept wanting to phone her to let her know what I’d been doing.

This morning I was setting up the Lady Chapel for our small family celebration of the Eucharist. It was when I lit the Paschal candle that I felt the weight of the weeks that had passed since we’d locked the doors of the church. As I stood at the altar praying the Eucharistic prayer, I found it hard to look towards Susie; to see her standing there alone seemed to underline the absence of all the people who would normally be there on a Sunday morning.

Negative space – feeling defined by all sorts of absence.

I suppose a hope to hold on to is that the very concept of negative space is all about the creative potential of absence. In this time when we’re all feeling different kinds of ‘lack’, maybe we should listen carefully to those feelings and hear what they can teach us about what matters to us, who really matters to us, what we most value.

I guess I’m learning just how much I miss my friends from All Saints, and my Mum.

            There’s one more reason for feeling a bit depressed. Since the safe arrival yesterday of a new ‘ant house’, I’m living in a home where we find ourselves shouting with genuine excitement, ‘I’ve caught an ant’. When the successful capture of an ant becomes your main source of joy, you’re most definitely not in a good place!