Fear

Starting to Run Again

| Sheree

Nearly 15 years ago, I put on my trainers and went on my first run. I started the Couch to 5K podcast the January after the birth of Miss Ella. I needed to lose the pregnancy weight as well as claim some time for myself, to decompress and forget the commitments and chores. I completed the 9 week training course and went on to complete 5k, 10k, half marathon and then a number of marathons. My last marathon was 2022 at Loch Ness. And last year, I attempted an Ultramarathon along the Pembrokeshire Coast but I didn’t complete it. I ran out of time.

I didn’t really train for the ultramarathon because my running practice was a bit hit and miss in 2024. I wasn’t feeling it. Wasn’t enjoying it. I wasn’t taking my medicine.

After the school run this morning, I felt the urge to get my trainers on and run. Knowing it’s been months since I have run, as well as considering my recent fall on black ice right onto the base of my spine and mostly my right buttock, I didn’t go running out the door at break neck speed. In fact, I’ve never ran at break neck speed. SLOW is my practice in running also.

I re-started the Couch to 5K podcast again. Week 1 involves a 5 minute warm up, and then alternating between 60 seconds of running and 90 seconds of walking, eight times and then a 5 minute cool down. So around the park I walked, ran, walked. My back was sore, I won’t lie. And maybe I shouldn’t be running after my fall. But this is me knowing my body, caring for my body, healing my body, my way. Back was sore when I ran, so this forced me to engage my core. To shorten my stride, to land my softer, even slow down. Yes it still hit but nothing major. But changing my running style also impacted my walking, as it meant I was engaging my core more while walking too. It meant I’m supporting my back more, all the time, not just when running.

The run went well. I wasn’t really out of breath. It was an easy start to the journey ahead. But I didn’t stop there. This fall has been a blessing, this is how I’m looking at it. As it’s making me more aware of my body and what I can do to keep my body healthy, moving and feeling loved. So I came home, completed a short set of strength training and then finished everything off with some yoga focusing on supporting my back.

In the past, I wouldn’t have bothered to actively support my recovery after a run. But this fall is forcing me to take better care of my body as it’s the only one I have and I want to keep her for a fair few more years to come. The fall made me face how fragile my body can be. How things can shift and change in an instant. I’ve been reluctant to walk out on ice and frost since. I’ve been hesitate but I also don’t want to be holding myself back or moving in fear. I’ve being fearful but I’m learning to breath through the fear and pain. I’d rather have the pain because I’m doing something to strength and support my back, my body rather than the pain through doing nothing.

Anyway, here ends my gratitude for today. I’m grateful to my body for all that she allows me to be/ do x

Sharing some words on substack

| Sheree

I haven’t looked back since I left mailchimp and took Living Wild Studios Notes over to substack. To send out a missive, a newsletter, or even just a hello is so much more straightforward and simple. It makes the task less arduous and much more enjoyable.

So I’ve just spent some time today creating the last note of the year for subscribers. And I added in an audio reading of it too, because I can.

It’s just me musing about the loss of words this year and then finding them again through listening outdoors and within. Go on over there and check it out. Warning: poetry included too!

And sign up as a subscriber if you fancy too. You’ll be more than welcome.

I only saw his shine once it was too late to feel it

| Sheree

In the dream, he comes back to me, whole and young.

He was always young in my eyes. When I used to ask him at each birthday how old he was, Daddy would answer, 45.

He was always 45 in all the years I knew him. All the years I was living, he was dying.

In the replaying of images, I play it differently.

I keep my distance until he asks for me to bring his slippers or newspaper. I offer them with bowed head. I don’t throw them at him as I used to. Escaping his rage, escaping the beats.

I keep my distance, but I want to be close to him. To hold him. To feel his love for me. Then and now, still needed after so many years gone.

To serve, he brought me up, to serve. Instead of getting the vacuum clearer out, he had us on the floor picking up the bits of fluff and crumbs. To hear his pride at a job well done was enough.

When I enter the chapel of rest, it’s like I’m floating on air, light as the flowing curtains concealing a prize. I see him now, as then …

he‘a surrounded by gold satin, his mahogany black skin shines, relaxed and unlined, sea-black lips wave-curled and still.

He looks younger than 45. Even though the plaque on the coffin lid reads 1920 -1981 – he was 61. And the time he was dying. I was living.

I’m thinking of creating a fungi zine …

| Sheree

dark morels

clustering

against roots

of ash trees

moist

in gathering dark

night air leaning

into a textured silence

well-earned through

a receding wall of trees

I have a little series of poems inspired by fungi: mushrooms, toadstools and the like.

I’ve always enjoyed looking at pictures of fungi. I’d draw them from books and colour then in with coloured pencils. I started a collection of them, when a child. In real life, I’m not too sure, I like fungi up close. I think something the way they feel puts me off. And that they are alive!

Also the idea of spores frighten me. Obviously, the fear comes from a lack of understanding and knowledge about them.

What I do know is that they are vital to life. And that whole underground system they have going on of passing nutrients and messages between plants and ecosystems and other organisms is truly remarkable. And has to be respected.

Anyway, I was thinking of pulling these fungi poems together into a mushroom zine. I do love my zines. What do you think?

Of course I have to find the time to create it. But now I’ve stated it here, it lends some kind of accountability to completing the task.

Anyway, above is a brief extract from one of the poems. I think I have about 5 or 6 of them. So I’ll keep working on them and start thinking of some cool design to go with them.

Of course being here now, saying all this, is me thinking out loud. Making some kind of commitment to a dream and making steps to seeing it through.

I’l share some more of the poem in the next post.

Writing Crime Fiction – one page at a time

| Sheree

I think from the time of my MA in Creative Writing, 2003 at Northumbria University, I’ve had the dream to write a crime novel.

Reading crime fiction is a guilty pleasure of mine from being young. They scare me and thrill me at the same time. I don’t try to guess who’s the killer or kidnapper or criminal. I’m just there in the thick of it; engrossed.

There has been times through the years, where I’ve said, this is the time, I’m going to write the crime novel. Start the reading and taking notes, fleshing out the story. Only to get a few weeks down the line and my patience has worn thin. I’ve lost the spark. I’m hit with the massive FEAR of failing.

It’s like a don’t give myself the time and space to crash and burn. That I jump to the end and make it all crap and useless, only after writing a few pages. That it’s okay to fail as nothing is perfect, super deluxe on the first pass.

But I think I’ve come up with an idea. What if I trick myself into thinking all I’m doing is writing a page. Not a whole crime novel, just a page. How would that work out for me?

Page 1

The beach is empty. The sky cloudless, grey moving to blue with the sun being up for over an hour. The usual dog walkers are out marking the sand with prints and shit. Some clean up after their dogs like good citizens. While others never look back.

Littered with glossy seaweed and feathers, as if a bird battle has gone down, the beach is flanked by a rotting pier. Or wooden construction used in the past to mark out bays within the sea for long forgotten trade. Now just an eye sore and gathering point for the bored youth trapped in this seaside resort.

But down there within the shadows and the shallows is one naked white body. A woman, lying on her stomach, arms beside her sides, palms turned up. Her blond head is turned towards the sea, tangled with seaweed and sand. The sun beams down on her bare arse resembling a conch. Her swollen face reveals gaping blue lips around cracked teeth.

It’s a chocolate lab sniffing out crabs around the pier who finds her body. Barking to its owner to come see, gulls flock down to squark the find too. Then they circle, eyes piercing the sea, maybe looking for her missing feet.

Redraft with commentary coming tomorrow!

In the Earth of her Voice is the Remnants of Fire

| Sheree

If I allowed curiosity and love to seep through the wounds, I wouldn’t be here now at the page trying to make sense of it.

A black girl walks through the meadow, enters the dark woods and forfeits her life. And I can’t but think if she was white …

Trust. Always difficult for me to hold, like light on burnt leaves. Like the coming of winter any day now.

The race talk, an accumulation of cautionary tales told through time, she, with earth in her voice, filled the void of rage with what was right for her soul. Joy.

In The Thick Of It

| Sheree
BALTIC commission process journal

“The most effective way to do it is to do it.”

Toni Cade Bambara

I set myself the task of touching the Hinterlands commission every day for the next 100 days from the beginning of July. And on the whole, I have succeeded so far in this task. Day 23 of July and I’ll be honest, this commission is filling my waking and sleeping hours, as I agonise over how to bring my ideas and concepts to fruition. How to communicate what I think, or feel or see to others. How to make that connection of understanding, empathy and solidarity when exploring the Black woman’s body with/in nature.

This is not an easy task. And I think I’ve made the task more difficult for myself by trying to incorporate multiple and diverse art form into the brief. It’s that same old story, that fear of never getting another chance like this so I have to say everything I’ve ever wanted to say on the subject all at once to make sure I get my message across. That I use this opportunity to it’s limits as this might be my only shot, my only slot, my only opportunity to speak and shine.

Of course this is not based on fantasy. This is based on fact. Did you know that just 2,000 artworks in the UK’s permanent art collections are by Black artists – most of which aren’t on display?

And even though over the last couple of years, there has been more visibility and opportunities for Black and People of Colour artists to be part of the British art scene/establishment, for example with Sonia Boyce winning the top prize, the Golden Lion as she became the first Black female artist to represent Britain at the Venice Biennale. This is still a rarity and not the norm.

“It seems almost ridiculous that it takes into the 21st century for a Black British female artist to be invited to do Venice,”

Sonia Boyce

We are still operating in a highly racist, discriminatory system. FACT. I can continue to keep chipping away at this. And I will. But …

For here and now, I think it comes down to confidence and belief in what I’m doing. To silence the outside noise. Ignore the internal critic and just do it. Do the things I want to do and move on.

At the end of these 100 days, I’ll have a collection of items, products, creations that I will then pull together into a whole. Into saying something about something.

We will have to wait and see. But I’m enjoying the process.

So already I feel as it I’m winning.

Spirit of the South

| Sheree

As mentioned at the beginning of this month, when I declared that June was the month of the Mixmoir, going forward I plan to use Mariëlle S. Smith, Fleshing Out The Narrative: A 31-Day Tarot and Journal Challenge for Writers in conjunction with The Earthcraft Oracle Deck by Juliet Diaz and Lorriane Anderson and illustrated by Daniell Boodoo-Fortune in order to get the creative juices flowing.

Using these tools and prompts, not only allows me to create content for the mixmoir but also allow me write around the subject, explore the process and progress. This bit excites me and keeps me engaged. Working out what I’m trying to say at the same times as holding up to the light the rituals and practices I have around writing, is enlightening as well as encouraging. One way of working might work well one day but the next not.

I’ve been using the pomodoro technique with Abao in Tokyo on YouTube. Writing/ working/ practicing for 25 minutes at a time and then taking a 5 minute break, helps with the concentration and productivity. I’m really enjoying the process sandwiches into neat sections of time for a focused amount of time each day. It’s a simple practice which I look forward to and really get engrossed with during the allotted times for writing.

I found it interesting today that I pulled the Spirit of the South card when I was exploring the fire within yesterday and how I’d rather allow it to burn outwards and accept what ever backlash it may bring rather than living in fear of the fire outside consuming/ canceling/ destroying me.

This card came along today, I feel, to reinforce what I’ve been thinking of late, that is to not hold back and to stop finding/ making up excuses for not doing the work/ practice and to crack on and just do it. To follow my dreams, tell my story and to hell with it all.

And here ends the daily cheerleading chant for Sheree and the Mixmoir.