Let us linger here in this room with the curtains closed with our other lives forgotten for a little while longer.
Let us not use words when our hands, lips and tongues can communicate our needs, our wants.
Let our breath be silken on our skin, let our bodies entwine still able to promise bloom and ripple.
Let us slow it all the way down, slowly, slow, so we can feel each stroke, each gliding smooth folding into each other.
Let us hear each others moans of joy, of wonder as our bodies wander together away from this room, this bed into our happy place where we can ride out the rest of our time here on earth.
Let us dream this lushness as we reach for each other, conjuring connection beyond the here and now, in the here and now.
Let us linger in the lingering light and just enjoy this afterglow, this pleasured pain like passing ships never to traverse these same desire lines ever again.
I’m practicing how to show up in spaces, alone and with others, in fullness.
I’ve used wholeness before. Striving to get back to that sense of being whole, as we enter as already into this world. And then for the rest of our lives society and culture pull us away from our wholeness. When we realise, usually when much older and not giving a fuck, we spend our time and energy attempting to get back to that wholeness. This is a practice too, but to be whole sounds final and also out of reach.
Fullness. While fullness seems something that can be embraced now. In the present, moment to moment. Fullness for me gives the middle finger to those who have criticised me by saying I’m too much. Too Black. Too fat. Too loud. Too enthusiastic. Too Alive. Too much.
Fullness is me embracing my too-muchness and giving off that ‘don’t care less’ energy.
March is nearly over. I spent a lot of it getting ready for a trip that didn’t happen. I’m still sore around the wound but will share here at some point.
The journal above which I share is the journal I created for my travels. It’s an Elle Decorating Magazine which I’ve repurposed. I pulled out the images and text I wanted to use in my visual journaling and then painted over the remaining pages.
It’s rough and ready. Messy and grungy and in the process I didn’t realise how much it has reflected my mood.
It’s not perfect.
I’ve been all over the place in terms of my moods these past few weeks. Serene and blissed out to stressed and anxious and angry.
And this messy, at times ugly, journal has captured it all. And I am grateful for its space and non-judgmental welcome.
I’ll be back here over the coming days to share the spreads that have been created in this journal. Just so you can see a bit more of my process and practice.
One more thing. The back of this journal was converted into a mini guide book to take on my travels with me. Since I didn’t make that trip, I haven’t been back into the back of the journal. I was also contemplated chucking the whole thing and start a new journal as I felt it would be painful and annoying to continue to use the journal as its purpose was for my time away.
But instead of avoiding the pain and frustrations and disappointments, continuing to use the journal has meant I haven’t run away from the feels but have allowed myself to sit with the feels.
I’m not sure if that means I’m a glutton for punishment or if I’m just all in with this life, my life of attempting to thrive rather than just survive.
Still showing up in this journal, just created from a magazine man, has given me the time and space to work through my feelings and come through feeling grateful for my life and the people I have around me who care about me and love me.
Visual journaling, it kills me in how it’s such a powerful tool for staying present and connecting with the self. Amazeballs!
I’ve got a chapter to write and it’s going nowhere fast.
I hate it when I think I have all the time in the world to complete a writing task and then I procrastinate.
I know I procrastinate because it’s important to me. Very important to me and I don’t want to get it wrong. So I do nothing instead.
Well not really nothing. This is my bedroom wall, where I’ve started to put up post-it notes to help me with the chapter on fugitivity.
This makes me feel as if I’m doing something. Seeing this everyday also, I hope, makes something go into my creative brain subconsciously. I’m hoping that living with it makes the wheels start turning and connections being made.
What I’m learning with fugitivity is that is’s not linear. Not a straight line from captivity to freedom, from unfreedom to freedom. It is argued that fugitivity performs freedom ‘as a constant struggle’ ( R. Slavitt cited in Davis, 2016).
This I hold close as I attempt ( struggle!) to write this chapter around fugitivity as this is not going to be a linear chapter from A to B to C etc. This chapter with its content and structure and form will be dancing with unfreedom and freedom, constantly struggling to convey meaning around fugitivity at the same time as remaining free from the academic frameworks and restricts and expectations.
In order to write about fugitivity I need to take on board fugitive methods and practices.
I’m spiralling and circling back and forth in a good way, in an honest way and hopefully the chapter will be the result.
Living Wild Studios 