Day 3: Thursday, 27 August 2020
Weather: damp, light breezes
For today’s drawing meditation. I wanted to think about the outside of the tree in relation to the inside (the elder is a sort of bush-like tree). Today’s ink was from last year’s batch of elderberry ink which I added vinegar and salt to so as to intensify the colour, not realising that elderberry is very susceptible to changes in acidity and that this would change the colour from a bluey grey to a browny-red/purple colour (depending on paper). Chinese calligraphy brush on watercolour paper.
With thinking about the differing colours of the elderberry inks, and spending so much time with the tree, I’m finding I have Opinions on what colours I want to be wearing for these meditations. I’m favouring neutral colours and veering slightly towards the ink-colours. Forest green is OK, sea-green is out; ochre is fine, bright yellow SO wrong; deep red works, but pink doesn’t really.
It was nice to have a wet day, seeing the effect of falling raindrops on the leaves – it’s quite violent but doesn’t really affect the branch. How to interpret this in the tree-meditation? My tree is quite sheltered (it’s under an immense sycamore) and its location changes so much when it rains. It always feels quite hidden away but whereas in dry weather it all just seems scrappy and a little unloved, in the wet it feels rich and exciting.
I’m still doing the tree-meditation with feet together, loose knees, arms, elbows, hands, fingers, head. Need to work on keeping shoulders loose too. Getting more of a sense of breathing in there with the little breezes and thinking about how this affects the whole tree-body.