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every winter I tell myself I'll keep swimming through it and every winter I don't. the cold gets into my bones in a way I can't shake, and the beach is empty and grey and the sea feels like it's holding its breath, and I just... stop. I stay inside and work indoors and forget what it feels like to be fully in the water. today was the first day I went back in. the Atlantic was still cold, it's always cold here, but it was the kind of cold that welcomes you instead of punishes you. I stayed in long enough that my hands forgot they were hands. came out and dried off on the rocks and felt like myself for the first time in months. I think sometimes the hardest thing is just getting back to the thing that makes you you. whether that's the sea or the work or whatever it is. today I did it. it's not a big win to anyone else but it's everything to me.

Since I was a small boy I am drawing the fish from the left border, the one that carries the boat in the Saptami story. My mother taught me the kachni line for the scales, one breath, no lifting the brush. Now I sit down with a fresh sheet of Sajji paper and my hand stops at the tail. It comes out stiff. The line is correct but the fish has no life, no swimming. I thought it was age, my eyes, but yesterday my granddaughter watched me and said, "Dada, why you are drawing so slowly?" And I had no answer for her. I am wondering if it is the show I did last month in Patna, where they wanted my fish bigger and my colours brighter for the city wall. Or maybe when you paint for money only, something closes inside. Has anyone else felt the hand forget a thing it has done since childhood? Not the skill, that is there, but the sureness. How do you get back the sureness?

Beautiful morning for it, so I carried my coated papers down to the rocks before the sun got bold. Wind gusting, spray landing on the corners of three sheets. I left them anyway. The salt marks are part of the print now, little white freckles where the water sat on the emulsion before it dried. I didn't plan that. The sea did. I keep fighting this instinct to control everything. Sun time, water temperature, how long I leave the paper under. Then a day like today reminds me the whole point is I'm not in charge. I just hold the paper down. Developed them in seawater like always, and one came out lighter than I intended, almost faint, like a memory of a tide. I think it's my favourite. I'll sell the "correct" ones and keep that one. Almost forgot to eat lunch again. The winter swims keep me honest about that, at least.🙂

There's a plastic injection factory on the edge of Žižkov and the man who runs the waste skip there has stopped charging me. He just waves when he sees my van. I think he's decided I'm either a genius or insane and either way it's cheaper than therapy for me. Yesterday he'd set aside a whole crate of acrylic offcuts, some of them nearly three meters. Clear, mostly, but a few in this green that I don't have a name for. I stood there like a kid at a candy counter. Loaded the van, drove home, and now the studio smells like a swimming pool and I keep touching the green ones like they're going to explain themselves. Twenty years ago I would have had opinions about whether this was art. Now I just sort the pieces and wait to see which ones start talking first. The material decides eventually, not me. The crate's still half-full in the corner and I have no plan for it. That's the best part of the week.