Things happen in the blink of an eye
I pray to keep him out of harm’s way
I pray to keep him until he’s grown
But there’s a target on his back
And a gnawing hunger in his eyes
No prospects no jobs no hope
I pray to keep him close
I pray against police and gangs
But shots are fired shots are fired
No respect for humanity
This is a visual journal entry I completed a few months ago while continuing with my Creative Facilitator Training with Lisa Sonora
22/04/2017
‘It feels weird coming back to DOP ( Dreaming on Paper) after two years absence. I’ve tried to do it again but just didn’t get into it. But now I’m doing the Facilitator Training, it seems important to get back in. I need to post to the group.
Yes I’m skipping through at a pace as I still do the techniques I learnt back then but it’s good to be refreshed on the techniques I haven’t done in a while -like the stamping as well as the textured page, the wallpaper and marbled effect. I haven’t used a wet one in a while or the stripped effect so it’s good to do this and to not feel any fear but be comfortable with it – like second nature.
—————-
So yes weird but also reassuring that a lot of the habits and techniques have stayed and also how far I have developed since the beginning with flaps* and stuff, and extensions and tearings and pockets and stuff. I’m proud of myself I am, of my progress and practice. I’ve come a long way in the journey and I’m still on it. Thank God.’
*flaps = additional pages added to the journal, see visual journalling post for further explanation.
Technique:
The journals I use most frequently are the Pink Pig pads. I usually pick these up in town, not online, bought three at a time because there is usually a discount on them and they definitely have more pages in.
I prepare my pages with paint ahead of the time I want to use them. So when a journal is coming to the end, I start prepping the next one with paint, so it’s ready with no breaks in between.
I pick the colours that are calling to be at the time. Here for this page the dominate colour is bright orange. I use ready mixed paints, craft paints, kids paint and start with just one drop of paint in the middle of the page. I smear it across the blank page with a disused credit card. I love this part. The spread of colour makes me happy. A simple task, a simple pleasure but oodles of fun.
I’ve gone on to add pink and blue to the orange after this. Using the same credit card for each colour, sometimes all paint rubbed off before a new colour is introduced and sometimes not. I’m not doing this to be neat, to cover away all the white of the page. I like my smearing of paint to be quick and messy.
Sometimes I do right up the edges sometimes not. I prepare three double spread pages at a time and then leave them to dry, sketchbook open with a paint bottle propped between the pages either side so they don’t stick together.
Once dried, I can write on it. Gel pen was used here but ball point pen works just as well. Here I’ve added images of nature and travel and adventure at the bottom of the page. I use glue sticks. I’m not loyal to any particular brand either as long as it does the sticking. These were cut from a tourist leaflet about visiting Scotland.
The images I select usually tie in with what I’m writing, they talk to each other. While sometimes they don’t and this might because I’ve skipped ahead in my journal and stuck in some images to break up the page already. But all the images I include I love, I have an emotional connection to. I’ll talk more about that in another post.
After the writing, I return to the page and use the leaf shaped stamp. See what I did there? I wrote in this journal example about the techniques I haven’t been using in a while and rubber stamping was one of them. I rectified that here.
“She is the wanderer, bum, émigré, deportee, rambler, strolling player. Sometimes she would like to be a settler, but curiosity, grief, and disaffection forbid it.” – Deborah Levy, Swallowing Geography.
When I come to think about it, I’ve always been a flâneuse. I’ve always enjoyed travelling to new places and part of my process of getting to know a new city is to walk it. Walking the streets aimlessly, eyes wide open, taking in the newness, the dark corners, the urban green spaces. I usually have less responsibilities while away so I can stroll, wander really till my heart’s content. And I observe the life of the place, observe from the sidelines; an outsider, an ‘other’.
I didn’t see myself as doing anything special, as someone who gets to know the city by wandering its streets, but apparently it is special. As I am a woman. A black woman.
From the French verb flâner, the person doing the walking is usually male, well to do with time and leisure on his hands. Born out of the beginning of the 19th century, women walking out in the city streets alone was not possible. And if they did so, they would pass unnoticed, to a certain degree.
I’m interested in why I am a flâneuse. Why I do it? What are the benefits? I’m interested in exploring the streets of my neighourhood with these questions in mind. I would like to get lost down streets that I might have taken for granted or never really noticed before. What would I find I wonder while I wander? And what could I stand to lose in the process?
I begin a new photography series around this practice. Why? Because this is a revolutionary act.
“These women came to the city ( or perhaps they were born there,
or came from other cities) to pass unnoticed, but also to be free to
do what they liked, or as they liked.” – Lauren Elkin, Flâneuse: Women Walk the City.
A taster from a new podcast coming your way – Poetry From The Heart. Starting soon the Poetry From The Heart podcast will be a time for you to relax and listen as I read to you a selection of my poetry.
thirst
when the rains come there will be sweetness
when the rains come i will be ready
i am the creature who must survive
without water
my coat and ears and kidneys adapt
to the lack
while blood vessels close to my skin
remain sensitive to sound
during the scorching heat of day
i am underground bent double with grief
every cell of my body calls
out for that healing salve – water
my creamy coat dims
as fur upon my soles cushion
sharp sand pains coursing
through my heart
at night when i should emerge
to hunt i burrow deeper
using my bushy tail to keep hidden
sweeping and protecting my solitude
i wait out the waters keeping cool
slowing my heart beat
some might say i am dead
but i will pad again under the full moon
bark at the moon sing to the moon
once again
once my cracked skin heals
once my parched soul refreshes
as the rains enters and fills my empty pores
with the welcomed sweetness of being enough
After this website went live last week, I retreated from the public realm. Being seem, being out there became too uncomfortable.
I was training in Scotland to become a Woodland Leader and that was intense. But I also felt exposed and vulnerable after crowing about a website in the making and then delivering the goods. I had built up expectations. And even though it wasn’t all that the site will be, it still took a lot of courage to create it and set it free. There’s energy that is expended in the task of creation as well as in the worrying around it.
I know I posted on Instagram about these mixed feelings this week. Hopeful expectations as well as fears and doubts. Hoping that what I created was good enough. Not sure how to handle it if it is good.
Feedback so far on the site has been positive. Thank you.
At the moment, I’m just settling in. It’s like I’ve set out my stall. Showing you all what I’ve done and can do, but not offering any opportunities to buy anything yet.
I’m working on my offerings as I have big dreams for Living Wild Studios. Yes I’ve got to develop them, coordinate things a bit first. However, my fears have created further resistance again. My inner critic is turned up to the max, questioning who am I to think anyone would want to work with me? What could I offer that’s different to what someone ekse is offering?
My inner critic feeds on fear. I recognise her and accept her. For now I know, if she’s screaming loudly, it means I’m on the right path. It means I’m pushing myself out of my comfortable zone, listening to my heart and allowing my soul to shine. Yes it’s scary but it’s authentic.
As Elizabeth Gilbert wrote in Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear, “Fear is always triggered by creativity, because creativity asks you to enter into realms of uncertain outcome. This is nothing to be ashamed of. It is, however, something to be dealt with.”
I’m dealing with it by politely saying thank you to my inner critic for having my back. And then go ahead and create anyway. Watch this space.
“Water does not resist. Water flows. When you plunge your hand into it, all you feel is a caress. Water is not a solid wall, it will not stop you. But water always goes where it wants to go, and nothing in the end can stand against it. Water is patient. Dripping water wears away a stone. Remember that, my child. Remember you are half water. If you can’t go through an obstacle, go around it. Water does.”
― Margaret Atwood,
Since May 2015, I have lived a nomadic life on the internet. I have created two different websites, in addition to Living Wild Studios, since then.
August 1st 2015, saw Wild Soul Woman being born.
I created Wild Soul Woman as a safe place to heal. A safe place to heal after a very harrowing and very public shaming. Wild Soul Woman was a space from which to RISE.
A year on from then, and I felt the need for more space, more room to grow into the wild soul woman I was becoming. Bit by bit, day by day, I have been becoming a better version of myself. I have been becoming my authentic self.
Hence, Authentic SheShe was born as a blog where I shared my practice, lessons learnt, opportunities and love affair with creativity. Running parallel with this site was my site dedicated to ,my photography, presented under the title of Sheree Angela Matthews. I used this place as a showcase for my projects in progress as well as a portfolio.
Living Wild Studios is now my creative home, where I am finally sharing multi-coloured strands of my creativity all under one roof. Finally coming home to all of me. To the whole of me. Living wild, living true.
Please consider signing up for Studio Notes. You’ll find out what’s happening in the studios before anyone else!
You jump on a white minibus. You wind your way through snow covered mountains. Sometimes hugging the shoreline. Other times squeezing through valleys between peaks. On your right are steep sheets of white. On your left white steel sheet reversed. Partly frozen fjords.
Some birds decide to walk on ice while others swim in the small circles of bubbling water. You have to respect ice.
Filigree within ice
beautiful and vulnerable
strong to the point of entry
“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? Your playing small doesn’t serve the world. There’s nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we’re liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.” – Marianne Williamson
This wisdom speaks right to my core and has me throwing my head back shouting an all mighty, “YES”. For the past few weeks, I have been gripped by fear about what I’m attempting to do here, as I develop Living Wild Studios into a creative business coming from the heart. I have questioned what right I have to imagine this, to action it, to even believe in it.
Who is going to be interested in working with me or buying my creations? How can creating stuff just for me to know myself deeper, be of any use to anyone else?
I know my fears stem from what happened to me nearly two years ago ( you can read all about it in rubedo). I know my fears have set up road blocks and excuses. Paralysed me. But I’ve been framing these fears around the idea of failure and never being good enough.
But this quote above has me thinking, that my fears, my reluctance to move forward with plans and creating new work could just as much be because of my light. I could be just as much frightened of my light as of my darkness. Of who I might become, becoming.
This idea is turning around in my gut, like clothes in a washing machine. An idea I hold it up to my light within and it matches. It sparks.
It is easier, more acceptable to play it small rather than take up more space with my glorious light. It is judged as being showy, distasteful and loving oneself, if you claims your full potential and shine.
Why and when did loving yourself, loving your own unique light in this world become such a bad thing? I think when society’s way of operating became one of competition rather than community, oppression instead of equality. When a few decided power would be better in the hands of the few, for the greater good you must understand.
I feel my power. I have a strong, bright light to shine in this world. A light that many have attempted to put out. But this little light of mine keeps on shining. And when it comes down to it, that’s all I want to do. Shine my light. If in this practice it serves others, then so be it. That does make my light shine brighter, so it can reach further, into the hearts of those who might have given up on themselves or those who never tasted freedom.
Naming our fears loosens their grip on our hearts. Identifying and acknowledging our fears starts to take away their power.
Here I am again, showing up, using my creativity to explore myself. If in the process of me exploring my fears has helped you to start naming and identifying your fears, then that’s a double whammy in my book. A result that is well worth showing up, practicing getting through my fears one step as a time for. Onward, with this little light of mine lighting the way.
Land of the Gods
Dry stone walls, covered in neon moss.
Soft hill voices leaking memories.
Brown churning water; a river of lost lives.
Yorkshire, the land of the gods.
The God was my father. A stowaway.
A mahogany West Indian.
Yellow palmed hands, large hands.
In the hot back room of our maisonette,
he tended tomato plants.
Quietly, he let me watch.
I watched his hands as they caressed
shiny leaves, squeezed and plucked
scarlet orbs of sweetness.
I thought. These hands can’t be the same
hands that slice into my legs when he’s vex
when I ask why
when I won’t be told.
These hands create life.
Nevermore( footnote After Edgar Allan Poe)
do I want to hear his last words
to see her last moments captured on film
nevermore
do I want to hear shots ring out
to see her body go limp under undue force
nevermore
do I want to hear murder was an accident
and then see the victim dragged through the mud and blood
nevermore
do I want to hear it was self-defense
and feel injustice gnaw my core
nevermore I say nevermore
should we stand by watching
a generation lost to the shadows
nevermore I say nevermore
should we allow history to be repeated
and rewritten
nevermore I say nevermore
black lives do matter
Bodies
The other day out walking, I see a crushed animal in the road.
At this level of blood, guts and fur, they all look the same.
I work out it was a rabbit just because its ears are still intact.
I wonder if I was run over by a heavy goods lorry if someone, anyone would recognise me?
Maybe it would be a process of elimination. Who lives near here? Who walks this path? Who belongs here?
Or maybe my black skin would be recognised, would betray me.
Racism is a wound that keeps opening. Again and again. Do I open it? Do you? I’m not sure I have a choice in showing you
my pain and suffering. As a representative, I carry such a huge weight. Expectations of a mountain to climb to reach you.
White Finger
I remember one time cutting my finger and leaving the plaster on too long that when I eventually took it off my finger was white. I run to mum shouting with about finally being white. Mum gets angry. Mum never gets angry. She tells me never to think like that. I’m sure what ‘that’ is.
She never explains. She never did.
It is much later that I come to understand the deep shadow of my heart. My deepest longing. My deepest fear. My internal racism.(85)
Childhood
I had a protected childhood. I’m not sure if that was out of love or ignorance. Poverty or pride. All the time growing up in Bradford, I didn’t know about the wild moors surrounded us. We didn’t have a car.
Knowledge opens doors. Shines a light into dark corners and valleys.
Most day going to school I would take a different route. This was freedom and solitude and wild. I walked spirals of pathways from my home to school and back again. Behind our flat was a school, a church, a hospital. I roamed around the buildings inside and out. No one noticed me. I was invisible.
I became visible when I got tits. Andrew Ryan, my first boyfriend, said we should keep us going out a secret. We met behind the garages so he could feel my tits. I let him because at least he wanted to be with me, even if no one else knew.
Thomas Biggins, another boyfriend, said on walking behind me into the Dene, that I had good child bearing hips. I took it as a compliment at the time. Now I’m thinking he was just spouting an age old attitudes towards black women as being hyper-sexual, promiscuous and breeding machines.
Footnote
All that remains are two chimneys.
Two, stark sandy columns that draw the eye.
Up close, they grow green, surrounded
by ancient oaks and horse chestnuts and spirits.
Cotton over water. Water over cotton.
Into gloomy valleys all over this fair land,
I carry a ship in my shoulders.
Alone in the Darkness
Walking down the dark hill. Darkness all around.
Raw wind rustling leaves. Think you sense someone behind. Instant fear that sends sharp waves of prickling fear up your back, up your head, under your hair. Nipping at your flesh, crawling around your skull and cheeks and jaw. It is your own shadow bobbing along behind you, beside you, ahead of you.
Sisterhood
For the past three years, I haven’t spoken to my sister. This stems from finding out via Facebook that she was a grandmother. I called her out about this, asking how come she had told me nothing?
What do you think, I’ve been wanting to talk to you about for the last few months?
Apparently, my nephew isn’t taking responsibility for his son. I’m not to mention it. He doesn’t want to talk about it.
I apologised to my sister, if she felt that I hadn’t been there for her when she needed support. But I can’t agree with what’s happening. I wouldn’t be silenced.
Stop talking to me in your teacher voice, she said and hung up. We haven’t spoken since.
How I can I talk with, about and for my black sisters when I can’t even talk with my own sister?
I confide in white women. I share my experiences knowing that they haven’t experienced racism. There doesn’t seem to be any judgement when I share my pain. Whether I’m black enough. Or not.
What happens to black people, sometimes, is so intense that it’s frightening to share with each other. So many silences, things left unsaid. The language to explore our internal worlds and our vulnerabilities and our fears is missing.
Liminal Space
At the sea shore, I find myself again and again. Like a selkie in reverse, I strip off my skin and dive back into the sea, returning home. Becoming instinct and fluid and free.
Work in Progress
Living Wild Studios 