I’ve been coming later and later to my creative sketchbook practice this month.
It’s day 123. 123 days since I started this practice of play within my creative sketchbook. Daily.
This piece tonight is significant because it chimes with my word of the year/ focus of the year being AFROSURREAL.
The right now. Capturing the now.
AFROSURREAL has been bubbling below the surface all year so far. I’m thinking it’s about time to share my musings and thinkings here in a mini series of posts.
Everything is overlapping and I’m fixing to gain some clarity knowing fine well that the practice of writing it out will only throw up more questions than answers.
The Matterings of (ordinary) Black Life is the practice. The push back against the colonial, historical categorisation of black people as subhuman. As stereotype as no life beyond the construct.
Right now. Black life. Black aliveness.
I’m living a/my reality which isn’t acknowledged or if is then it’s challenged/ denied/ erased.
It’s important to storytell, mythmake, historicise and archive within these liminal spaces. Centre the margins where these matterings happen.
Through the reconstruction and recalibration, healing and reparative processes challenge the exclusions and colonial impulses to conquer, control and exploit.
Expect to read more around AFROSURREAL and the overlaps with my other obsessions as through my research and readings and writings, I attempt to come to some understanding of myself and my creativity, moving backward and forwards between the now and beyond.
My works are propositions, meant to create alternate pasts and potential futures, questioning history and culture in order to provide a space for reassessing the present. – Firelei Báez
I hope you are well. Or as well as you can be, as I know you have a tendency to fall out of love with yourself. Waste time on not looking after yourself and beat yourself up for it too.
I just hope you’re learning because, at the moment, I think you’re doing remarkably well. You’re still here aren’t you? You’re still smiling? So you must be doing something good.
And even if you’re not, just remember that you are good. Good enough just the way you are. For reals.
And I know you have your current worries and concerns. No doubt worrying about where your next pay check is coming from and do you have to compromise your integrity to get it.
But listen, I know you and I know you always find a way. Because you are a fighter. You’re resourceful and determined and you love life far too much to just give up on it. To just give up on yourself.
I just love how you’re living your life on your own terms not being worried about what others think about you or what they might say.
I just love how you’re striving for what makes you happy to hell with everyone else. This is inspiring. This is you.
This year has seen you really lean into a morning routine to set you up for the rest of the day. And it’s been rewarding to see how this has helped you to move forward.
I say continue on this path of making sure your needs and wants are met each and every day first as this puts you in the best position to then help and support others.
Simple small things like enjoying that first cup of coffee. Listening to Love Devotion on repeat in Insight Timer. Small things that might seem insignificant but actually remind you that you are loved, loving and loveable by yourself, first and foremost.
And then look for that love from others as it is there. The love. It’s always there. Love.
Keep following those sparks that reveal joy. Which make you light up from the inside out. Solitude and quiet, just as much as company and music. Getting out in nature and moving that wonderful body of yours.
Someone said to you recently that life is long, instead of thinking of life being short, too short, so seize the moment now. And that still holds true but to think of life being long is to not only savour it now and to be grateful for it, it also means that we never really leave or die. We just transform and transcend into someone or something else in time. Over time. Through time.
This opens up whole new portals and possibilities and is exciting. Therefore, no need to panic or rush or run around like a chicken with no head. You’re okay resting, taking that afternoon nap, without fear of missing out.
Everything goes into the mix to make up this weird and wonderful life. You’ve just got to remain open, baby. You’ve just got to keep that beautiful heart of your open and welcome whatever comes your way. The good, the bad and the ugly.
Everything of this beautiful terrible life is welcome here because it is yours. Your terrifyingly beautiful life.
i try to connect beauty using words as healers of possibilities from the state within, the voice, a teacher, a sage, where my poetry winters, where I can see the ‘I’ like a clearing through the trees, where imagination lingers inch wide mile deep, conjuring for change and connection. i try language, not to trick or demonstrate my intellect, but to spark simple, stretching blossoms into ‘we’ rather than ‘them and us’. from the state without, i’m a beast, caged and muzzled. swallowed. cornered and supposedly cowered, i come out writing, wading into dangerous waters, owning my imagination to practice potential futures.
*“An ars poetica poem is a poem examining the role of poets themselves as subjects, their relationships to the poem, and the act of writing.” —Poets.org
Where is this year going? It is moving fast. The time that is. I’m still knee deep in my SLOW practice and I’m loving it.
I know it’s getting to the point of going back out; of shifting my energies as I’m feeling a stirring. In my gut mostly. And an excitement fluttering in my chest. For what I do not know. But I’m happy to sit in/ with the feeling for now. Appreciating the joy it brings.
I know I’ve got certain privileges. To be able to turn my back on the world, on work commitments for the first three months of 2023 is a privilege. But I also want to make clear, that I worked my arse off at the back end of 2022 to be able to do this. I’m living frugally in order to reap the benefits of rest and self-care.
I’m so grateful for the time and space to rest and breathe deeply. As well as the capacity to dream and envision a future. I have much faith and trust in what the future will bring. I know I will have to fashion some happenings myself, work out some details and projects. But at the same time, I know that the Universe has a plan also. She’s got my back and I trust she will deliver what is best for me. It might not seem so at the time, and there may be challenges ahead. But I trust her, and I’m allowing my tender heart to mend.
I’ve mentioned before how I’m intentionally leaning into my healing journey. With social episodes each month released with The Earth Sea Love Podcast.
I’m just editing the next two instalments to drop next week and I created a quote for myself which I will share here to end.
My tender heart has been broken many times but, at the same time, I know my healing lives and breathes in the openness of my tender heart.
Living Wild Studios 