I was delighted last week, to come across the rope that Chris used during her clown workshops. I remember her buying it from a small chandlery near Lyme Regis. Designed for nautical use, the rope lies flat and doesn’t tangle. It’s used to delineate the boundary between the audience and the stage, where the everyday world ends and the world of the clown begins.

Stepping over the rope onto the stage is an invitation to embrace the possibilities that come from being fully present to whatever is and whatever happens. Don’t go on stage with a predetermined idea of what to do; don’t try to be interesting or funny. Breathe, feel, explore, allow the world to come to you.

Notice what happens when you don’t try to make anything happen. Be bold and generous (even when showing how scared and small you are). Clowns are whimsical, curious, sensitive, open to discovery, and wear their hearts on their sleeves. They say “Yes” to life and to death and to everything in between.

For anyone who knew Chris, it will come as no surprise that she was a natural and gifted clown. Some of our happiest times were spent clowning together at La Luna nel Pozzo, Robert McNeer’s theatre school in Puglia, Italy. I didn’t mind being in her shadow, it was so glorious to see her shine.

Chris’s genius was that she brought all those qualities that she so brilliantly exemplified as a clown into the rest of her life. She broke the rules and crossed the line.

“Clowning,” she once told me, “is the art of transgressing beautifully.”

Life too, perhaps?

I woke up a few days ago with the word redux going through my mind. It’s not a word I often use, though I was familiar with it from John Updike’s Rabbit Redux and I had a vague idea of what it meant. It was such an odd word to be mulling on as I crossed over the threshold into consciousness that I decided to check the dictionary definition.

adjective: redux
ˈriːdʌks/
brought back; revived.
past participle Latin reducere to bring back

I am reviving, I thought. I am coming back to life. There had been subtle changes in my body in the previous few weeks that seemed to signal such a revival. My hair, which had been dry and brittle for the past two and a half years, felt soft and silky and my fingernails had become stronger and stopped breaking.

“These are good signs,” I said to myself. “I’m doing well.”

But then I stopped to think about the word that had prompted this rather self-satisfied reflection. Redux: brought back. Brought back, not brought myself back. Reducere isn’t a reflexive verb. I didn’t do this to myself.

The truth is that I’ve been sustained by a filigree of love ever since Chris fell ill and especially since she died. So many friends – men and women – have held me in their thoughts; have written, emailed, called, skyped, and visited; have offered convivial company; cooked for me; walked and talked with me; have witnessed my tears and held me in their arms; and have insisted that I have a place among the living. Without your loving kindness I would have disappeared.

Some of you are old friends who stepped forward when I needed you most; others are new friends whose paths have fortuitously crossed mine or who have sought me out. And I confess, there is one recent and especially dear friend who makes my battered heart sing.

Chris taught me that love is manifested in what we do; that it makes itself known in the world not as a noun but as a verb. Together, all of you have taught me that there are many ways to love, even though we are deficient in language to express their various forms, and that they are all good.

Your love has brought me back to life.

Thank you.

Well super-dog fans, it’s the moment you’ve all been waiting for. It’s time to announce the winners of my New Year Quiz which, I’m happy to say, attracted a fantastic range of entries from far and wide.

If you remember (which might be difficult as some of the entries appear to have been submitted under the affluence of incohol) I asked you to help me track down titles of songs which I recorded during the lost years of my Winalot addiction.

For your delectation and delight here all the entries that made it through to the final round (swimwear and personality).

Sheelagh Wherity, Ireland
Hounds of Love (Kate Bush)
How Come There’s No Dog Day? (Tommy Cooper)

Johanna Cornelissen, Canada
The Dog Days are Over (Florence & The Machine)
Black Dog (Led Zeppelin)
Hair of the Dog (Nazareth )

Ron Donaldson, Up North
The Boxer (Simon & Garfunkel)
Hey Bulldog (The Beatles)
Wild Rover (Dubliners)

Margaret Gearty, Ireland
Hounds of Love (Kate Bush)
Diamond Dogs (David Bowie)

Karen Karp, United States
Now That’s What I Call Dog #57 (Compilation)

Special mentions go to Ron Donaldson for best hair styling, Johanna Cornelissen for variety, Margaret Gearty for topicality, Karen Karp for ingenuity, and Sheelagh Wherity for obscure comedy.

Since the clapometer isn’t working and I strongly suspect that the panel of expert judges chaired by Sepp Blatter has been nobbled, I have decided in the words of Lewis Caroll’s Dodo, that “everybody has won, and all must have prizes.”

Actually that might be a bit expensive, so the prizes will have to wait until my lawyer recovers my share of the royalties. In the meantime, let’s just say:

Everybody has won.

Chris bought this sculpture for me from a local art gallery but died a few days before my birthday. Knowing how ill she was, she made a point of giving it to me straight away. “It’s my last gift,” she said. “I wanted to make it a good one.”

About 50cm high, the figure emerges from a rough-hewn base and, headless and armless, ends with a voluptuous tilt of the exposed neck and a hint of angelic wings.

“It’s beautiful,” I said. “I love it. Thank you.”

Chris quickly became gravely ill and I put the sculpture aside. When she died, I hung the mortbrod in the window by the front door concealing the sculpture from view. One year later, actually on my next birthday, I took the mortbrod down and rediscovered the sculpture.

When I looked at her carefully and ran my fingers over her smooth contours, she seemed to represent the many aspects of the feminine: sacred, sensuous, sexual, earthy, powerful – so much of what Chris had shared with me.

A week later, my friend Lycia facilitated a constellation for me at Folly Cottage to help me explore the question: “Who am I becoming?” We used artifacts from around the house to stand for various elements including the broken pieces of Sassy Bear to represent Chris and the sculpture to represent the feminine.

I learned a lot, much of it ineffable. But two things I can say with confidence: first, Chris has moved on and I have to let her go. That’s not to forget her or to stop loving her but to accept, deep in my bones, that she has truly gone. Second, and profoundly connected with this realisation, is that I yearn to re-connect with the feminine, both symbolically in terms of expressing my own creativity and literally in terms of conversation, close friendship, and physical intimacy. The constellation showed me that I can love Chris still and love again.

Then I realised that, wise and generous to the end, that was the real significance of her parting gift. She knew it would take time, but she was both signalling her understanding that I would have to let her go and giving me her blessing to live a full and satisfying life.

Things can happen very quickly after a constellation.

My heart is opening to the possibility of love.

Wherever Chris is, I think she’s smiling.