Hopping Mad Today

May 2, 2022 | Sheree

Morning pages: visual journaling/ journaling done for now.

I like to get to the page first thing, the first thing I do each day after going for a pee and brewing some coffee. This is the ritual that is in place. Not every day can I fulfil this ritual, but most days, yes.

I find when I come to the page in this state, my night dreams are still hanging around me. I can still grasp onto them and explore them on the page. What do they mean? What is causing friction in my subconscious mind?

Today’s ramblings where not difficult to decipher as they relate to an email I received yesterday evening. I must bring back the ‘no email checking after a certain time’ rule. It just disrupts my calm flow state of mind when I do read an email late at night and allow it to work it’s way into my brain just before bed.

Anyway, I dreamt on it and was trying to find people who were in agreement with me about it. Hence waking this morning hopping mad as I’m not sure anyone did eventually agree with me. But I stand my ground this morning and go with my gut as she’s never seen me wrong.

It’s just tired really, having to point out yet again how the way someone is treating someone else is not okay. Maybe it’s okay to them and maybe no one has mentioned this to them before and so they continue to treat people this way. But common decency man, it costs nothing but goes a long way.

And maybe I’m taking it personally, maybe they act this way with everybody and not just with me and not because I’m a Black woman and viewed as less than. Maybe maybe maybe. This is how I’ve spent years making allowances for other people’s behaviour and treatment of me. Giving them the benefit of the doubt at the detriment to my sanity and my treatment of myself.

But no more. No one owes me nothing and no one owns me. I do not have to pussy foot around worried about causing offence because they’ve already caused offence to me so that shows me that they do not respect me and they do not see me. Therefore, you do not deserve my allowances, my excuses for your behaviour, or me trying to make you feel/ remain comfortable.

I’m not going to be rude or disrespect them but I will be speaking plainly to them. It will be interesting how they respond when I tell them my truth.

But all in good time, as another one of my practices is ::SLOW:: . Just because it suits someone to send an email at such and such a time, it doesn’t mean that it suits my timeframe and mind set to reply immediately and engage with their requests now. On their timetable, at their sense of urgency.

All in good time means all in good time for ME. Which isn’t at the exact moment as I think it’s another coffee for me and another few pages of visual journaling as I’ve got some shit to work out still.

Ah the beauty of visual journaling. Welcome to my world! See you tomorrow!

We’re Moving Into May!

May 1, 2022 | Sheree

My oh my! How this year is flying.

Things haven’t been going as planned over here in Sheree land and as such I find myself trying to reset my year. Each new month becoming my New Year.

But what I’m finding with each reset is that I’m disallowing the experiences I’ve had each month. I’m ignoring the progress I’m making each month, if any I may add. And I’m denying myself the joy and the pain of just living here and now.

So now we’re in May, I’m not resetting anything. Time is flying by but I’m living with it. And most of the time I’m happy within it too.

I live a blessed life really because most of the time, I’m in control of my time and how I choose to live it. Lately, I’ve been prioritising myself and my needs and wants. and I’m not even going to apologise for if this sounds selfish as I know when my needs and wants have been met on a daily basis, I turn up in the world for others and Mother Earth in a much better place. T

his means I show up with more love, patience and compassion for others. And that has to be a good thing for them, me and the world.

So I’m here at the beginning of May to thank myself for turning up here every day for the last two months, stretching my creativity. First with March and The Healing Properties of the Seas and then with April and a poem a day.

I’m also here to thank you for turning up here too and reading this. Liking it and even commenting on it. Thank you. You are appreciated.

I think I’ve gotten into some kind of groove now with posting daily and I don’t want to stop the momentum now. So what is happening in May? What’s going to be appearing here?

I think it’s time to share more about my visual journaling practice, hence today’s image. I partake in this practicing daily almost like breathing. And it sustains me just the same. So let’s move into May celebrating this life giving practice.

I hope through my sharing and discussion of visual journaling that you’re inspired to dip your toe into the practice also. It doesn’t have to be grand and it’s certainly not planned. I turn up to the page and remain open to what unfolds.

I’ll use the month of May to share what does unfold with you here. Hope you stick around for the journey. Thank you.

When you want to be so much like your mum but fight the urge

April 15, 2022 | Sheree

as the day comes to a close,

and the house settles in for the night,

the clock ticks-clicks into the thickening

silence, a breathing silence, you claim as your own.

You’re reminded of late night conversations

with your mum about everything and nothing.

How sitting across from her, you longed to be as kind and giving as she but not as lonely.

You’ve witnessed how she never had a chance once everything

shifted and drifted off course after

her one and only love died. You witnessed their love

desiring that kind of love for yourself and grabbing at any given at times in desperation.

Now you realise, their love was conjured up in a child’s mind to be all

and festered in a woman’s heart to be nothing.

Seaweed

April 14, 2022 | Sheree

between their toes seaweed mushes
it comes out of nowhere
squeals and screams
wet, cold skin meets cold, wet skin,
pods pop, bones crack, the sea rolls in

The Terzanelle – The Gaze

April 13, 2022 | Sheree

Too often we refuse to gaze
on something unpleasant to see.
Rubs against us all the wrong ways.

I don’t like to see an oak tree,
feel my neck snap. And my heart breaks
when there ‘s something unpleasant to see.

My words, a soundtrack for those taken;
blackmen whipped, flesh-eating scars, pain,
felt my neck snap and my heart broken.

Dead eyes and flashbulb smiles at the slain.
Who wants to look at these photographs?
Black guys, whipped, flesh-eating scars, pain.

Who has to deal with the aftermath
of bodies reshaped by tragedy?
Who wants to look at these photographs?

Callous grins surround,
too often we refuse to look.
Their bodies reshaped by tragedy
rubs us up the wrong way.

La Jablesse

April 11, 2022 | Sheree

After Zak Ove

Come, follow me, young man, into the forest. Come. You like the sway of my hips, and my secret smile?

Then come, follow me, if you want to see more, to touch more. I’ll be all yours in the hidden forest away from the waging tongues.

Pay no mind to my necklace of antique nails or the weathered ropes I wear like a scarf or shawl. It’s just my unique style.

Come. Not yet. Don’t peak under my wide brimmed hat or under my long skirts. Patience, you naughty boy.

Come follow me and I’ll be all yours in time. Brass horns and trumpets I adorn because I love to make merry and dance.

African mask I wear because I know where my people come from. Smelling of jasmine and rose with a hint of decay. Come.

Pay no mind to the way I walk, one foot on the road and one beached tree trunk for a cow’s hoof in the grass. Come.

Come into the forest, deep into the forest where the trees are tall and thick and no one will hear you scream as you are lost and fall down a ravine.

Listen, I need you, handsome young soul, to keep my own beautiful. I feed off your fear and lostness and fall.

Listen I’m happy to own my own narrative again. They call me La Jablesse- she-devil.

Listen, I say, I’m a woman in control of who she be and who she chooses to take to forest, to bed, and to death.

The Black Man

April 10, 2022April 10, 2022 | Sheree

After Keith Piper

The Black Man (body) projected with fears and fantasies never owning it’s presence

The Black Man (body) an object a commodity to be possessed and used and abused

The Black Man (body) traded for trinkets and spoons and guns then for sugar and cotton and rum

The Black Man (body) black mountain conquered claimed and reduced

The Black Man (body) once a boy breed as stud broken in like horse

Part 2 – Exploring Rituals To Be More Present in My Life, Never Mind Writing

April 8, 2022 | Sheree

A poem can start with the sound of water falling onto my body. Allow it’s curious wet teeth to sink into my flesh, to pull out chucks of questions to fuel a conversations with myself, later.

The ability to be present was a luxury my mother never had as she worked 3 jobs with her hand down toilets and fixed smile for the men with keys and brutal laughs.

I claim the ability to be present. To allow my yearning for a past to awaken a future I will imagine, as I salver my arms and legs and belly, housing a familiar homesickness I’m not sure where from, with coconut oil.

Turning cold hard oil, soft and warm against my skin, I reconstruct fragments of history, lost in colluded archives, and turn them into bleeding scars and pickled memories of somethings rather than nothings.

When I’m ready to forgive and understand, I’ll conjure Dad back from the dead, sit him down, and ask why he never ever mentioned love, in all his administering of disciplined care.

Dressed, hair twisted and walking across green fields, and under cherry blossom, I swallow doubts to turn a phase over and over against the roof of my mouth, rewriting with each footstep. Slide stepping cliches, kicking around experimental metaphors.

Or the poem could hit me full force when I walk into the coffee shop. Glasses steamed, journal in hand, eyes on drinks board, but already knowing my order by heart, the table I’ll take – number 13, my lucky number.

Acting like the fugitive from my life, here, I steal time to soften my gaze and repurpose the image of the sea into an open window that will startle you, dear reader, into a new perspective, into a new way of holding your mind and your heart towards yourself.

Bound up with Memory*

April 6, 2022April 7, 2022 | Sheree

After Marcia Michael

My body has a yearning for the past. In this country, I am duped to believe and live as if we were nothing .

Nothing until they allowed us into existence. Nothing until they opened their arms, and allowed us to carry on being their slaves into the 21st century.

Search and recovery, my body reclaims her history.
My mother transported it on her skin, buried in the stomach of the ship, boat, truck.

My father carried it in his voice, trapped in the belly of the ship, train, coffin.

I cannot rely on any colonial archives for finding me and my people. Now or in the future.

Colluded, concealed, constructed, the archives have fabricated the narrative that sees we as other.

Reduce us to a footnote, a scar, a tear.

My body is my archive.
My presence is a testimony.

My imagination will do the rest.

*Quote from Toni Morrison

Living Wild Studios

Sheree Mack

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