Lately;
things i've absorbed this week(ish) #3 + notes on gratitude & fluidity of self
My heart feels its fullest in the fall/winter. This week I’m headed home to visit family for the holidays, i’ve shared abundant meals with people I deeply care for, and I embraced community in a way that feels reminiscent of what i’ve longed for since moving to Los Angles years ago. In direct contrast to this, I had a rather internally hostile plane ride home that has made it hard for my mind to calm down long enough to write a coherent thought.
This week’s inner turmoil centers around my proclivity to feel either distinctively enmeshed with or separate from something— within or without — whether that be an idea, a group of people, a career, an identity, a desire, etc. As a writer, I am able to easily lean in and embrace the grey, but this nuance does not always translate into my everyday. I find safety in binaries and bounds regardless of the fact that my lived experience exists just beyond them.
I keep thinking about this thing [purposeful ambiguity] I wrote a while back that expresses the opposite of the either/or-state I am currently stuck in. A surreal depiction of universal oneness; interdependency; collective amorphism:
TIME (NON-LINEAR) All time collapses onto itself and buries me in the process. Your hand, my hand, perfectly unclear who is reaching and for whom yet we sit here, lying, leaning against the pull Who are you if not also I and an ambiguous self? Depersonalized and alien– I, narrator, equal parts muse, artist, and audience You? here Then and now Memory and rememory and rememory again Blue bleeds into purple. I, us, together– Encaged in a mess of what once was and will be and always is Your hand, my hand– one in the same What matters not is who but why And that I cannot say I, love You, love Or need Or petulant desire I, want You, want Or can’t Or maybe someday All time collapses onto itself and buries me in the process. You, I, here, there– memory and rememory and rememory again In these moments we exist; in these moments we are I
The fluidity expressed above is how I feel at my most grounded. When I am here and feel my feet below me and trust that they will carry me forward. To stray away from this knowing is frustrating; anxiety-inducing; natural. Hoping to gravitate back toward my ink-blot center soon. In the meantime, here is a peek into this week’s inspiration;
Peripeteia— a sudden and unexpected change of fortune or reverse of circumstances (especially in a literary work).
Everything about this series feels like my heart is dripping, pooling into my stomach. By that I mean; i’m melting. By that i mean; i’m aching from the familiarity of this passion and sudden shift and the memories painted red with longing.
Hands are a common thread in all mediums I express myself with. In my writing they are grasping, pulling, reaching, fingering through. In my paintings, they are holding invisible weight, tracing another’s skin. In my photography, they are intertwined with others, with books, with sunbeam and shadow. They are the eyes we all use to experience the truth of the world. Where the soul leads, hands follow.
The tension expressed in these interwoven fingers feels like the mutual inability to let go. Red that once painted passion now foretells mutual destruction— a shift that neither set of hands is prepared to give into. There is anger; not towards each other but towards circumstance. At any moment they could let go, and at some angles, it seems like at least one is trying to, yet they remain—bloodied and holding each other hostage.
My Father’s Mariannes by Aisha Sabatini Sloan
This essay is an intimate account of a daughter and her father’s return trip to Paris. Lester Sloan, Aisha’s father, is a renowned journalist with a lifelong career working in both written word and photography. Aisha describes her father’s character through the stories and videos he has shared with her, as well as drawing parallels between time spent with a stranger together on this trip and rendezvous he had in the past. Her writing is stunningly articulate, evocative, and steeped in a sweetness known only to father-daughter relationships. An endearing piece to bring some light to a rather bleak newsweek.
Ikebana (生花)
Ikebana is a Japanese floral sculpture practice that functions on the core principles of movement, balance, and harmony. It is meant to symbolize the beauty of the natural world working in consonance. At the teahouse I host at, we have a few Ikebana sculptures around that, far after the flowers have died, sit as breathtaking sculpture pieces nearly everyone that comes in to the space comments on. The patience and precision it must take to work with live flora as a medium reminds me to slow down and appreciate the cocreation of beauty found through the recognition of individual traits. Also they’re, like, really pretty.
Lemon Rosemary Olive Oil Cake Recipe
I spent eight (8) hours baking this cake for it to turn out half its intended height and shaped more like a dodecahedron than a circle. It was baked with love and many moments of almost throwing myself off the back porch. But, alas, she was a star. So, so yummy I definitely recommend. I was told it tastes like “a family gathering”. The color of the blackberry curd is one of my new favorites. My attempt pictured below:
On repeat this week:
Better Now / Proxima Parada
Everything Belongs To You / Joesef
Boys / Indigo De Souza
Dreams / Common Saints
Importance / infinite bisous
