⊙ The day they let me loose in a paper factory ⊙

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The following is a piece I wrote whilst teaching a group of deaf Nepali girls how to make books a couple of years ago. We shared no common language, I taught by sign language and demonstrating and gentle tweaking on shoulders. The girls had been rescued from trafficking, they were learning to make crafts in order to survive. I volunteered to teach them and spent a couple of months in Kathmandu alternating between extreme home sickness and a propensity to stay forever. I did come home but I have never forgotten.

This is my homage to paper, dry soft skin and thin mountain air.

PICTURE THIS? 

I'm being driven through Kathmandu in Nepal, in a taxi, seats furnished with bathroom mats and a very sweet, earnest driver, we swerve around school buses with drivers glassy eyed and leaning into mobile phones.
School girls with long, once white woollen tights scatter across city highways, over shawled and over wrinkled old ladies wander through heavy traffic. 
Vehicles suddenly go into reverse and one way means actually any way you like?

everyone shrugs and moves over

this would enrage the British, the rules; what about the rules?

A surplus of sadness pills in my stomach, that life can be so fragile, that this is it...here we are, all leaning like dominoes on each others ability to think clearly, to move in turn, to skim over imminent disaster like rice rolling in an oiled pan 
no mans land:
no rules land

Oil and water, I dream of them, I'm inhaling dust here,

this airless, dirtbowl of a city,

my feet are cracking open and I have callouses on my toe pads

I'm becoming old before I'm ready

the dust settling into my lines and widening the cracks,

the thinning and drying of skin and surface whilst everything still boils and rages underneath

I am still a volcano

I reach up and out and in

over and over

feet grinding into ground that could tilt into an emergency

I'm holding on to the sides of my yoga mat in a rush of electrical storm

in a gale of thunder cracks and dry lightening

evening storms canter around the valley like dice in a cup

drying up

rolling up
spitting me out at dawn

wide awake, I recognise a cuckoo's song;

it's Springtime in Kathmandu

I'm here, I'm here

I dream of an oasis, a sea, a pool? a wetness that isn't here

I'm landlocked

I never felt so far from the quench

We survive the journey to the paper factory on a bus racing 
car chasing, 
motorbike ricocheting 
piece of road, 
"the factory highway "

Lots of industry gathered in one place, 
past the Rose Garden Restaurant and the lone petrol pump.. 

I enter through the grey gates held open by a small walk on character part Nepali

verging on the role of oriental doorkeeper of some exotic brothel, a twinkle in his toes

a query in his eyes? He should be in the movies...He is in this one, mine.

And I'm in the paper factory, a huge hanger of a building

Wide open at each end and tables in the murky dark with workers all masked

breathing in paper dust all day. 

I'm glad to see a kitchen, lunch being prepared for workers, this isn't a sweat shop

this is a good business here.

A sign proclaims they do not employ children.


The production manager is a sweetheart, he indulges my over excitement and lets me roam the factory sighing and distracting his workers. I am spoiled, suffocated by choice, overwhelmed by colour combos and size and weight and colour.

I'm here to buy paper for book covers, these are the sewn book blocks that I have taught the girls to make. And below is the first stack that I dare to rifle through. It's too much, even for me who likes nothing more than fanning through reams of print and colour.

It's everywhere, piled high, a laundry of assorted flora.

Giant carnations of pink chrysanthemum, I am high on giant dry flowers.

The garden is the dyeing department, a dip into green then a spreading and a sunbathe.

The paper die cutting department, located in a leaning shed...a huge press and these paper dies looking like architectural room plans. I'm in love with their lines, their ability to cut precise sharp creases. The kiss of paper, the hiss of press.

And ladies applying dots of colour to boxes, labouring under a rare sunbeam that spotlights spots in the dreary dark.

These last sheets are some of my buying decisions. 

They are already attached to books...drying now in the quiet studio.

Here I am
Coating myself in ointments and creams
exporting paper reams and dreams of the sea.



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AND COME BACK AND SEE ME SOON

The PaperLove Blog Hop is a celebration of all things paper! Follow the links to discover more bloggers who love paper and use it to inspire and delight. And if you want to explore a whole world of paper, and stretch your paper passion further with a host of creative projects, why not join the innovative new online course PaperLove (starts March 31). Led by book artist Rachel Hazell, PaperLove is a five week creative adventure for paper lovers. Find out more here.

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