The Shape of a Puddle

Reflections on Joy

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It will not stop raining, which is possibly why the word puddle keeps inserting itself into my thought-stream, disconnected, appearing as I walk, or sip coffee, or stare out of the window at the rain. If you’re from the midlands or north of England a word like puddle can reveal your origin in an instant. It’s a vocal thud. The word is nothing like the thing itself, which is a shame, it should at least have the letter O in it, after all an O is a puddle.

I have a photograph on the wall of my study of my son Lewis when he was about 4 years old levitating above a hill track that had become one long puddle, and about to land gleefully in it. It’s my favourite photograph. I have a card placed near to it, a quote from Jack Kerouac reading: “Because in the end you won’t remember the time you spent working in the office or mowing the lawn CLIMB THAT GODDAM MOUNTAIN.” The two prints are about the same things - wonder and joy.

My mum wasn’t happy for my sister and I to jump in puddles. Wet clothes were an inconvenience, and she hated mess. So my own kids were urged to lie in puddles, to find the deepest, muddiest pools, dive bomb them, soak them up like sponges, come home shivering and dripping.

I think puddles are calling to me because of their simplicity. Now I’m older I’m trying to let all the complicated things in life fall away. I’m drawn now to anything which requires simple input. I love chopping wood, building fires, filling tea pots. I love the one room simplicity of life on my narrowboat, never travelling far and getting there at walking pace. I’ve given many things away - clothes, gadgets, hoarded objects I’ll never use. I’ve stopped spending time on the things which drain me. Mostly I paint and write, but I also make pots, an incredibly simple process little changed over millennia. When you throw a pot you must keep the clay wet, sprinkling water over it as you shape it. Its interior contains a puddle of milky water that you have to remove with a dibber, a little sponge on a stick. When the water is soaked up it leaves a pale ring of sediment, soft as a baby’s fingers. All puddles leave this softness behind for a little while when they dry out, the shape of their brief existence and a promise of their return. When it rains they reincarnate and take on the same shape as before. It’s a type of alchemy.

Puddles are almost always simple in shape. A child would draw one as a circle or oval. But their shapes can be tricksterish. In illustrations a puddle can suddenly become a hole into the underworld; in animation the eye of a giant; in film they can be unexpectedly deep and hilarious - Oliver Hardy falling in up to his neck in the closing scene of Way Out West. Our eyes are drawn to the outlines of things long before we focus on what lies beneath. We evolved to detect silhouettes in the forest, to resolve fleeting shapes - deer or wolf - before we make meaning from them. I wonder if this is why logos are so powerful as decoys, why those so-simple outlines can hide the truth so well. I found myself recently mourning for the little blue bird which once represented Twitter. It was a generous, happy thing, a symbol of optimism for the technological age a decade ago. It’s been replaced by a black X, a symbol so weapon-like that if you tried to pick it up it would cut your fingers. Meta have produced something almost as sinister for its new network, Threads, a tangled rope, a noose being tied. At least now they’re being open about their aims.

There’s a small puddle on a high hill I walk often, which I’ve never known to dry out even in drought years, the location of a spring pooling up from the rock below. The water is barely visible most of the time. Instead there is an almost perfect oval of bright green, like light filtered through an emerald. I drink from it when I go there, kneeling on the turf and putting my lips to the wet surface. This process of stooping to drink may have been the original act of bowing, a reverence for water which is perhaps the only thing we need more than love.

The word puddle is both a noun and verb. As a noun it was once used also for pools, ponds and ditches. As a verb it’s related to the German pudeln which means “to splash in water”. In early industrial metallurgy it was used to describe the stirring and turning of molten iron in a furnace which removed carbon, creating a malleable material. So puddling is an act of agitation, a process that happens to change the state of something. Where I come from, which was a place of steel and coal, to say someone was puddled meant that they were confused, or even mad. My 88 year old mum still tells me I’m puddled whenever I say something she doesn’t agree with. Puddling is what happens in order to make things flow, a preparation for the creative act. All artists, therefore, are puddled at times.

A puddle can be a source of inspiration. They literally turn the world upside down. They show us things we’re missing. Sometimes out walking I get lost in the mind chatter. I stop noticing my surroundings. I pass redstarts and ravens, completely oblivious to their presence, staring down at the blur of the ground beneath my feet. And then I walk over a puddle, a hole in the earth containing a perfect piece of sky. It says: “Look, it’s still summer, there are skylarks up there”.

The place I walk to most often these days is a puddle on the summit of Hergest Ridge. It’s about 50 feet in diameter, and it’s known locally as a mawn pool. To me it’s a puddle. If you walk across it your feet get wet but your ankles stay dry. It has a little conical cairn of pale stones in its centre. I’m sure they were put there in recent years but the cairn looks ancient, part of the myth and mystery of these lands.

I walked there only yesterday and watched as the mountain ponies gathered to drink, walking up to the cairns, mares with their foals, fidgety and fascinated by the man sitting watching them. Two foals stepped nervously towards me, nodding their heads and huffing. Then, a step too close, they turned and ran across the water, bucking and kicking out their back legs. There were rainbows in the spray.

Puddles are of the wild and loved by the wild, a source of sustenance and joy. Ravens and eagles bathe in them. Wolves stare into them and snarl. Deer walk out from the trees at night into the centre of motorways to drink from them, not caring about the approaching headlights. Our children, little wild things, are the proof. Is there anything more joyful than a puddle?

Recommendations of the Week

Each week I recommend things that have inspired my creative practice. Paintings, poems, novels, films, illustrated books, podcasts, pots, found things, and anything else I think is beautiful.

This week I’m recommending 2 children’s books. As a writer who draws (or an artist who writes) I love illustrated books. The Folio series of hardbacks are all works of art, and there are several illustrated poetry books which I love. Robin Robertson’s recent Grimoire, illustrated by his brother Tim is special, as is Alice Oswald’s Weeds and Wildflowers, with etchings by Jessica Greenman. Children’s books are in a league of their own though.

My favourite picture book is Oscar and Hoo Forever, a lesser known book which I loved rather more than my kids, because of the amazing ink work of Michel Dudok De Wit. De Wit is a multi award-winning animator who went on to collaborate with the legendary Studio Ghibli, creating and directing the masterpiece The Red Turtle. Oscar and Hoo Forever follows the story of a lonely boy who is best friends with a cloud. In the story Hoo the cloud, almost becomes a puddle (I really must be careful about this puddle obsession!).

Recently I came across the picture book The Most Beautiful Story by Brynjulf Jung Tjønn and Oyvind Torseter. Torseter’s illustrations are minimalist and moving. The writing matches the aesthetic perfectly. It’s a sad story about the death of a sibling, but it works like a fairy tale, a deep woods piece of magic. “Tell me the most beautiful story” says the main character, Vera. “The one I like best. The one where there is so much pain, but everything is fine in the end.” My kind of story.

Thank you for reading, J.

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