brain photo

clicking

making a mess of the sound scape 

I projected myself into different forms

in my mind’s eye, nothing quite fit

it was night, late, and things don’t always

fit into the words, or one’s mouth

like language, like a concept

too extravagantly phrased 

 

sister was the night sky

soothing breath of lucidity

a moment of time-collapsing rest

years ago when my consciousness was local

the party, when she took the photo

of our friend on the couch, eyes closed / too cooked

sprang to pose as the shutter went // but my brain photo

is of the second prior

Life keeps ticking like a time bomb

Been thinking a lot lately about ancestral trauma. Our genetic coding is multidimensional – within our genes exist all the memories and experiences of our genetic heritage. Sounds intense, but it works both ways - ‘what you heal in yourself, you heal for your entire family line,’ as Chani says. 

I haven’t really gotten personal on here in a long time! Couldn’t tell you why I feel like it now, just do. My poems are personal but there’s an element in the writing style that feels like scaffolding, or layer of mist, keeping things evasive and vague.  Writing ‘journal style’ feels pretty naked, to tell you the truth. I guess I’m doing it for my future self, who I know froths the nostalgia of reading old posts (like I do, indulgently, once in a blue moon). Blogs are weird little time capsules. Echo chambers. 

Anyway. I’ve been reading Big Little Lies. The thought processes the main characters have around raising their children have me all reflective on my own childhood (which isn’t anything new, ha) and the kinds of decisions and challenges that would have shaped my mother's life. But I’m slowly unfolding memories I didn’t know I had – if you’d asked me a few years ago to recall instances from my childhood, I don’t think I’d have much to say. Blank, a few images, sounds – a feeling, or two. Now things are coming back in full technicolour. 

I’ve been thinking about my parents and their health struggles, now that I’m going through my own. I wonder, at what age did they started getting sick, what streams of knowledge around their conditions did they have access to back then? What would it be like now, if they saw the doctors I was seeing? From what I can remember of their treatments and mindsets, I’d say they were very much in an 'aggressive' western medicine stream, and a part of the ‘old paradigm’ of symptom treatment. I count myself blessed to have access to the things I do know, it's an unrivalled privilege. 

I’m of the belief that all our physical illnesses and ailments are manifestations of trauma in the emotional body - whether it be childhood trauma or ancestral. It's a pretty meaty topic to get your head around, and it's not something I'll pretend to be an expert on. But it's something that makes sense to me, slowly, like waking from a nap and recontextualising yourself within your surroundings. Oh, so this is where I am. This is what I am. If you’re interested in this kind of thinking, I’d recommend The Metaphysical Anatomy by Evette Rose.

Separate note, but I've always had the most intense vivid dreams. I dreamt last night that I had various powers, like telekenisis and the ability to fly. I had to summon the spirit of my dad, to ask him for guidance around my powers (I’d inherited them from him, he was a witch). To do so I had to find a magic frisbee in our old backyard, and throw it into the sky. I did so and he appeared above an old willow tree (which had been struck down by lightning when I was a very small child and all my memories of it are ficticious and based of photos I saw later in life) his face glowing like a gold coin reflecting the sun. That’s about all I can remember. Vada thinks it means I have witch blood on my Celtic side (probably true). 

My main themes of today that I’m ruminating on are: Creating. I just ordered a copy of The Artist’s Way, I’m excited to push through some blocks in my creative output. I’ve been making stuff pretty regularly, but every time I put down the pen I have this fear I wont ever pick it up again, that I’ll be stuck. Which brings me to my other main theme – Fear. How do you know if you’re making your decisions from a place of fear? And if so, how do you stop? 

I’ve been doing a lot of free-writing, seeing what comes out. It’s been good to vent frustrations. I’ve been working out, too, which has been good for anxiety. I want to get strong. A pretty ambitious goal when you have cfs and have to go back to bed after a light as hell 20 minute session but whateverrr. Baby steps for this burnt out sag. 

Listening to:

Reading: 

breathe right through me

Been feeling fresh in the mornings lately, waking up with the sun and cooking breakfast and sitting at the table, the morning light glowing up the room like magic. Feels promising. I’ve been keeping a dream journal, writing in it each morning upon waking. You wouldn’t believe the shit my subconscious cooks up for me. I sit and try to piece the images back together, follow the tenuous thread of narrative. Often I’m in a building that’s falling down around me.  This is such a non-post, just felt like getting something out. Word-vomit. Hi to the ether. 

8:26

I go through these periods of intense restructuring. It feels molecular & beyond prediction. Nesting in my room I tackle surfaces laden with material mementos and feel all shades of rawness in regards to my obsession with the past. I sit in my bed eating mandarin segments after coming home from work; some states of fatigue are blissful in their accompanying mental clarity.  

I throw myself into the process of intuitive action so fully that I feel completely stripped of mental scaffolding; previous neural pathways of assisted decision-making now loom suspicious — breaking trust with myself in order to build it anew. We rattle into the physical and form new questions to digest at night. I’m working on some answers.  

smooth like honey

come walk with me. maybe we wont understand each other

but so much truth and beauty in trying. wasn’t it a hard year, isn’t this one

my surface is hard but inside I’m tender 

you’re who you’ve been waiting for. say that to yourself – you’re the one

that you’ve been waiting for. say it again

really think about it, believe it

my thoughts drip out in shades of lavender. found them on the bedsheets

like hardened cascades of candle wax, thought I’d learn something (bout me)

didn’t

the lessons I thought I had learnt spin back round and I learn again

sacred spiral of repetition, but I’m different every time

every time I get closer                                  to me

and I’m jealous of all your ex partners and all the summers

of your youth, and I’m very much still a child and humbled by nature

and embarrassed by my own heart, endlessly

flung out of space, I could say that about you, I’m trying

with all my might to live as authentically as I possibly can

to bid farewell to the pieces of my self(and life) that don’t serve me

you’re such a gift to the world and so so beautiful

our souls are like planets and I’m in 

so much awe of your orbit

the uprooting challenges against my earth body

must be blessings in shadow form

I don’t quite understand them yet but                  I will, soon

the balance of ego, self and other, and the spaces between

that’s where god exists, or some kind of magic

mostly I’m cultivating gratitude, for everything, for you

free write.

I feel the paper skin of the tree near the oval beneath my fingers, in memory, I touch it and it touches back like glad wrap sticking to ones fingers. In this tree I would sit after climbing, it was a story, I told it to myself so that I could learn to listen. It had leaves that glittered like water droplets, they decayed like all things do and they also grew again. I was five years old and I was sitting under this tree with my friend, I had a purple water bottle with fairies on it, the water bottle had a band that could be worn across your body, so as to keep it safe. Keeping ones possessions safe was an exciting possibility to my five year old self, I liked the responsibility and I also liked ignoring that responsibility, I lost my possessions all the time, I mourned them, I experienced guilt - when I did keep things safe I would be so proud, I would treasure said things. Some things were lost to forces beyond my control – an older boy, a bully, a mean kid, he took my small wooden white toy rocking horse and buried it in the sand pit. My friend told me she had seen him once whipping a younger school kid with a skipping rope, someone else told me he killed his dog. Every day at recess for the rest of the week I would dig through the pit of sand, other kids in my class would help me, it was an exciting mission of togetherness, it prepared me for the community experience of grief, one day we found the broken pieces and I mourned the loss of the dignified resignation to a task, the sense of purpose I’d so briefly experienced. We went back to dangling our legs off the thicker lower branches of the papery tree and playing with its strips of skin that we picked at like scabs, the balance in the way it gave in to our grimy fingers (with nails bitten to the quick) and resisted just enough, was full of magical, physical intrigue.

excavation

living like we do on this precipice

of disaster, a wavering truce

with the forces to keep our

cores intact, we start the day a little broken

but there’s all this goodness in it,

in your vulnerability and mine

this weekend and this season

this reality of fragile pieces

            you sleeping next to me

            sighing

            in dream

also, it’s the season to cut people off

no one’s disposable but also

there’s too much toxic

            in the communication

            channels

            she says she’ll write to me in one week. It’s not

            a permanent severing. there’s just only so much energy

            I can give (she’s a taker)

            (or maybe I am)

            (maybe I shouldn’t

            put people

            into categories)

after the sun sets I bide my time

before undertaking the epic rewiring

my brain rolls out untethered

and I flick through its draws

and there’s me, aged 5

locked in the bathroom, internal

compass spinning out of whack

I think what I’m trying to get at

is the way we keep going

or something. waxing lyrical,

seb calls it my trippers logic

but I think

do whatever you can

to find the beauty in it

just do whatever

you can