Another workshop weekend was done and seemed to have gone down well. We didn’t have to worry about the next one, as Steve is organising the December weekend on the Druid’s isle and, in any case, we were hungover.
Not, I hasten to add, from imbibing too much wine. We may have had an odd glass to celebrate… or we may have stuck to coffee. To be honest, I can’t remember. I don’t remember much of Sunday evening at all except that, as always, we talked, going over the events of the previous days and beginning to unpick what we had learned.
I don’t remember much about the Monday either, except a vague recollection that we needed provisions. We may have gone out for a drive and had lunch somewhere, but all I can recall for certain is that we talked a lot more. I don’t seem to have any pictures to remind me… which in itself tells me a lot about the state of mind we were in.
It is an odd feeling and a hangover is the nearest I can come to describing it…but a hangover without the physical side effects and with benefits. The French have an expression that always comes to mind at such times…marcher à côté de ses pompes, which means to ‘walk beside your own shoes’, and the image this phrase conjures of the dissociation you feel is about as close as I can get. It takes a while to assimilate what has happened, what it might mean and what you can learn…and a while until you feel yourself reeled back to earth and such normality as you call your own.
It is for this reason that we try to take an extra day after workshops. I would not care to have a drive of several hours immediately afterwards, though I have done it after attending such events with a mind whirring faster than the engine. This time, however, although my companion would be back at work the next day, I had more than just an extra day to look forward to… I had a week.
What with one thing and another, I would have had to be back north in a couple of days, so it hardly seemed worth going home. I would get time to do some practical research…and time to play out. And this time, I would use the camera…
France & Vincent 