A moment and then another

I have this fascination with the body being present and, at the same time, the mind being somewhere else.

Whether that’s through heightened attention on something particular or completely lost in a haze of euphoria, without any thought - all feeling and passing.

Completely in tune with the body or completely absent - one leads into the other. A passage or portal.

Transparency - there and not there.

What is this look?

It’s either a blank, deep stare directly into the camera, as if staring through or beyond.

Or a look that is unresponsive to the viewer’s gaze - they are elsewhere, focused, tranquil.

It does not seem performative. It looks like oblivion. It sounds like silence. It feels like peace.

It’s exactly how I feel. I want to be present and elsewhere - lingering between awareness and awayness.

This is what I want to make. This is how I want to be. Slipping in and out with but a breath.

Dear SSR,

I know you haven’t been around in a while. I think you are busy with all the wonderful things. You have just been on my mind. I sent you a love bite from afar. Did you feel it?

And I bought the book. Because I’m still on that journey and will be forevermore. Reconciling between these inner and outer worlds.

So much has happened, so much struggle - but in a good way. The joy is blissful but it’s the adversity that really makes me shine. That being said, I am in a state of peace, kind of readying myself for the year to come, trusting in the process and what I have built.

A new job - challenging, draining but very rewarding. I am a deep end kind of girl 😏

And a new location - close to the ocean.

Before leaving, I had the most incredible exhibition that encapsulated (or attempted to) some of the deepest, most beautiful, and vulnerable parts of my soul. I will share it with you.

I hope to make more space for nurturing my creative and sensitive self. This last year, I was caught up in the external demands of life. So, my intention moving forward is to reclaim and recalibrate.

I just wanted to send my love and tell you I am so very well. Although I may not speak regularly, and we both disappear at times, you are with me.

From the playlist ‘Where sky meets the sea’

💛🐷🌻🌊🌫️

sweetly awkward 

We keep crossing paths, move in circles. You are interior, easily overwhelmed, sensitive, one who is socially awkward but equally needs to be out in the world. Cute, so cute, and so individually contained. Couldn’t be anything else but… a sovereign landscape.

Quietly inviting exploration.

With little known and conversation so basic, inferior to the real words shared silently.

Who are you? Who are you really? I know you. What is this pretence we perform? It is all the feelings of anticipation.

You feel like my people. Someone I want to know. Someone I want to discover.

I find you at the back, in corners, or close to the doorway, out on the street, in the dark. You dance, you drum, to the beat of your own. And yet, so ironically timid, so brave, so beautifully sovereign, and so electric.

So sweetly awkward, I wonder what it’s like to unravel you, to see you shed, raw and free, to bring you some peace and a little escape from this world.

I wonder.

The practice of being in the world, of listening, of awareness, of creating.

The intention to remain open, an instrument to receive - a vessel. 

‘The Creative Act: A Way of Being’ by Rick Rubin

“The object isn’t to make art, it’s to be in that wonderful state which makes art inevitable.” Robert Henri

“To live as an artist is a way of being in the world. A way of perceiving. A practice of paying attention. pg 2

“A practice is the embodiment of an approach to a concept. This can support us in bringing about a desired state of mind. When we repeat the exercise of opening our senses to what is, we move closer to living in a continually open state. We build a habit. One where expanded awareness is our default way of being in the world.

To deepen this practice is to embark on a more profound relationship with Source.” pg 43-44

“Take a moment to marvel at the feeling of our heartbeat and the movement of blood through our veins before sleep.” Pg 45

Sensations are our conversations with the world. A language of practice.

Ah, to revel in the dreamy space of anticipation without allowing expectation, gratification and ego to take over.

To sit, be still and wait

Wait

To walk with purpose

And endless time

To wait

Intentionally with grace

Slowly, slowly 

Bare, stripped

The constant wanting, mostly denied, and the struggle of acceptance. A nurturing of gratitude for this absence. A constant and meaningful prayer - to live without, to be satisfied, to be focused.

Slow Burn - with such patience and beauty.

There’s something extraordinarily powerful wearing the invisible leash out. And by wearing, I mean shrouded in ownership, confidence and sensuality.

It breathes like magic - every position held, every movement, every chest heave, every glint and every smile - magic.

This is the magic of invisible ownership.

Limitations become departures for creating utter beauty in slow motion. Tethered by the mind, she carries the scent of quiet confidence, contentment and sensuality. This embodied ownership, this crafting of feminine art - in mind, body and spirit - beguiles.

Poised, still, deliberate - an enigma. His alchemy coursing through her veins - and all  at a distance, with the ever so subtle conditioning. It is birthed and nurtured with care and honour. This power, created together, is a secret power, symbolised in a collar few recognise and understand, and it is embodied in everything we do - my dress, my movements, my shine.

It is so…

Because He is a Star Boy,

I am a Star Girl

And we make magic ✨

There is a place beyond where we meet, because He knows me and I feel known; that is our secret power. The questioning awe in their gazes. It is written all over me with invisible ink,

“Not of this world. Taken.”

The distance is a barrier but it’s also a tool for harnessing such depth of being, such depth of soul, such depth of chemistry.

Listening to the song ’Starburster’ by Fontaines D.C. on repeat, learning the words and feeling the aesthetic, my interpretation lay with this idea of becoming real, the devotion and relationship one might have with a higher power - the spiritual plane.

The momentary blissness being one found in the release from overcoming trials and tribulations - an escape earned. When stars seemingly align, complete surrender is found and freedom is felt - nothing matters, the brain recedes and sensation takes the foreground. Oh, the bliss of transcendence. For a moment.

Then, when looking into the meaning of the song, I discovered that the lyrics were inspired by a serious panic attack that Grian Chatten had at London’s St Pancras Station. The singer and band are notoriously aloof when speaking of their music and any associated meaning. There is suggestion that the song is somewhat criticising the modern condition of excess and instant gratification, leading to intense overwhelm and misplaced fulfilment. I believe this to be so…

And yet….

There’s such duality in the song. Undertones of acceptance and hope weaved through the debilitating condition of modern society. A way out, released from anxiety and empty, false existence to find momentary blissness - not the ‘blissness’ of gratification, but the beauty of nothingness, complete spirit and nature, when the tangible world melts away, completely in the hands of what may come, without control: limply floating.

There was one conversation with Chatten where the interviewer described a feeling from the song as one of finding light in the darkness. I think this is an apt description of the emergence that can take place after a harrowing experience, such as a panic attack, where you might find your Azrael - your guiding light. Momentary blissness - released from the world to escape, for a moment, to the invisible hands/rope/chains/control of an incomprehensible force.

A reminder of what you are and who you belong to. Duty to the Other. A reality check found in non-reality, in the recesses of your spirit and the whispers of the wind.

The lyrics read like a prayer and reminder of returning Home, staying true, falling outside of perceived needs - ‘rightness’ - and leaning toward a profound level of acceptance and grace.

“I wanna move like a new Salamander

I love the carrion who’s a real Scavenger

It’s moral tyranny keeping me from thee

… Hit me for the day

For the light

That you suffered

To come by

Take to my sky

Never wanting

Only wonder

To live out of reach

Sloping family

Short to tall

One to three

Swallow the key

In their footprints

I will follow”

It’s so easy to fall into the everyday traps of participation. A never-ending calibration across the spectrum - a little less, a little more, stay focused, let go.

And my questions to myself are:

What do I need, what do I do, to embody wonder, and not wanting, through much of my day?

Where do I push and where do I let go?

What rituals allow me to transition easily from state to state throughout my every day?

I have this aching soul,

restless for freedom, a desire to be taken lower

for the sweet taste of release.

Now, maybe complacent:

too much striving to move forward.

Just sit… stay still… be okay with nothing…

less not more.

Remember meaninglessness…

in that humbling kind of way,

not in the way of absence of something, 

but in the way of presence in nothing.

Cease to yearn for what you do not need;

it is okay just to be,

like your cat.

Just be present

    … and cute

             … and you are so cute

                           … divine and cute

         
                                           … and soft

                                                         🐈‍⬛✨

I had a moment of doubt.

My life increasingly got heavier this last year, all with good things, but still with expectation stacked on top of the pursuit of ‘more’, better’, ‘growth’ and ‘not enough’.

And then a thought, a feeling of neglect, for the One who cherishes me, takes care of me, walks with me, holds my hand, is so steady and patient, inspires grace and does so with a word, a whisper, a gesture.

Is it enough?

Am I doing enough?

Yes and no.

I wrote it down, what we do. And it’s all so subtle and organic, built over time. That I needed reminding.

And in simple gestures, thoughts and actions, it’s there in focus, spaces reclaimed and made sacred. Just a little more careful attention and intention. Not drastic.

More pauses in the music, an adjusting of tempo and harmony.

Such beauty, so soothing and so grateful.

Wonderstruck ✨🖤🤍

Something beyond comprehension came and took over me. I know it happened, I know when it happened, I know how it happened. The remnants of it still remain, and yet, I cannot recall it or explain it, not in in any way that shows how it was, why it was or how it can even be. It apparently only existed in my mind but then didn’t – it was a timeless (or timely), universal thing of complete connection, complete submission, complete transcendence. Not hours, not days, but months of pure pain and bliss – automaton and acceptance, love and light, armour and silver hearts to guide the way, walking in a dream of wonder. Still wondering.

I know it’s a blessing few experience.

It came from the darkest depths of my life, swallowed and washed me clean. I asked for it without knowing; it came like the ocean, building for a lifetime and crashing down on me in an instant with continued ebbs and flows, taking me down – drowning – and then lifting me up – floating.

Music is what speaks of it. I hear it there. I know other’s experience of it in music. That’s how I best remember.

And my journal.

I miss the euphoria, the complete abandonment, the depth of letting go into complete trust of the universe, the knowing.

I made art, I wrote, I was found, I promised myself to make so much space so it would stay, right there, all around me, this other way of being – me, walking in both worlds always. But it faded with the tipping of the scales. When the time came to do what I needed to and rise to the challenges of everyday. This is where I am, in the everyday, mostly mundane, tame, getting stronger, proud.

There’s a pause, a moment to catch my breath, regroup and reflect. The longing is fervent and nostalgia creeps in. I want to escape, be taken over, but my duties remain and so must I. For now.

But I must not be wanting; I will take solace in the minute, the simple, and the everyday wonder.

Remember.

“Not everyone is lucky enough to understand how delicious it is to suffer.”

“Only the really plain people know about love – the very fascinating ones try so hard to create an impression that they soon exhaust their talents.”

-              Katharine Hepburn