The aim is to create a field guide for summer which prioritises play, curiosity and wonder. Dreaming and imagination.
I want to be intentional around who I want to {BE}/ want to do over the next few summery months.
Become consistent in relation to turning up for myself in play and wonder.
Now is the time to prioritise my joy. No responsibilities but feed my inner child.
Traditionally, a field guide is something created to provide information for a reader to identify birds, flowers or trees. Or other aspects of the natural environment.
With this energy in mind, I want to create a summer field guide that identifies areas of play and curiosity that I can explore.
This field guide is an invitation to lean into what lights me up, steeping myself in the mystery and magic of it all.
Sometimes when I get a download, I just have to grab the first bit of paper and pen I can see and write.
It feels as if I haven’t got the time and patience for my visual journaling practice and I’ve just got to get the words on the page.
Like short, sharp, frenzied sex after a drought, a stream of consciousness shit comes rolling out of me. From my body. Onto the page. Words here. Paint there.
And within this pile of words/ marks are glimmers, signs, clues for next steps, moves forward. Invitations.
I’m been resting, after a full on time of exams and work and in that resting time, I did nothing creative except breathe. Breathe a little deeper and longer. Fuller.
There are still times when I have that moment of dread, that I’ve forgotten something. That I should be doing something else instead of doing nothing.
I know time will heal the wound. Time will suture the skin over the rupture and this period will become a memory. A trace left in an ache running down my neck and shoulder. A dull tugging at my soul.
Anyway, I’m back here. And I’m not going to try and fill in the gaps. The gaps are important, these liminal spaces where possibility and potential are ripe.
I come back with plans to share a new series of posts which I’m loosely calling my ‘Summer Field Guide’. My plan to get intentional about the summer ahead ( or here already!) and offer myself space to play, get curious, dream and imagine. No pressure just {BEING} my inner child out loud.
“Dangerous is the woman who can give herself what she used to seek from others. Limitless is the woman who dares to name herself. The way I see it, shame cannot oppress what acceptance has already claimed for sovereignty.” – Tarana Burke
I had the pleasure of gathering with the WOC Azadi again in Sheffield today.
We gathered to share ideas around how to plot/plotting our healings, our liberation together.
Visual journaling was on hand to capture our thoughts, feelings, plans and plots.
It was such a nurturing and nourishing space in nature. It was a gathering of hope and aspirations.
It was an honour to be part of the day retreat. Ideas for The Plot of Our Repair came about from a reading is Saidiya Hartman’s essay , The Plot of her Undoing (2020).
The plot of her undoing begins with his dominion. It begins in the fifteenth century with a papal bull, with a philosopher at his desk, pen in hand, as he sorts the world into categories of genus and species. It begins with a bill of sale, with a story in the newspaper that enumerates her crimes, with a note appended to the file: she answers questions easily, but appears stupid; it begins with a wanted poster that reduces the history of her life to a single word-condemned.
And then towards the end of this essay there is a switch. A turn to explore how we can undoing the plot of her undoing. How we can move against the forces aiming to ruin/ control/ oppress the black/brown woman.
The undoing of the plot proceeds by stealth. It is almost never recognized as anything at all and certainly never as significant.
…
It begins with the earth under her feet. It begins with all of them gathered at the river and ready to strike, with all of them assembled in the squatter city, with all of them getting ready to be free in the clearing.
The undoing of the plot begins with her runaway tongue, with her outstretched hands, with songs shared across the unfree territory and the occupied lands, with the pledges of love that propel struggle, with the vision that this bitter earth may not be what it seems.
The undoing of the plot, the plot developing towards our repair was started before us. We stand on the shoulders of our ancestors. We continue this journey, this plotting together. Today makes me feel that we have already won.
Nakba refers to the ethnic cleansing, genocide and apartheid of Palestine by Zionist militias to make the land clear for the creation of Israel in 1948.
This premeditated military campaign resulted in the murder of thousands of Palestinians, the destruction of hundreds of villages and the displacement of nearly 80 per cent of Palestinians from their homeland.
The violence went on for more than a year, and the result was the creations of the State of Israel taking over 78 percent of historic Palestine.
West Bank and Gaza made up the remaining 22 percent. This too fell into Israeli hands later and remains under Israeli military rule today.
What is also disgusting is that Britain had a hand, still has a hand, in all of this, due to the “Balfour Declaration”.
For 100s of years Palestine was part of the Ottoman Empire. During the First World War, Palestine was captured but the British. The League of Nations then gave Palestine to the British to mandate. Not taking into account the wishes of the Palestine people, the British were given control of the land, making decisions for the native population until it was decided they were deemed capable of being an independent state. How colonialist is that?
Great Britain, didn’t care about what was right. Didn’t care about the Palestinians who have lived within their homeland for centuries. Nope.
The British Mandate incorporated the “Balfour Declaration” that pledged to establish “in Palestine a national home for the Jewish people”, who made up less than 10 percent of the population at the time.
So all the time Palestine as under the mandate, 1923- 1947, the British were working with Zionists to suppress and eradicate Palestinians, through whatever means necessary, to create a homeland for Jews. Facilitating the immigration of European Jews to Palestine, providing weapons for Zionist’s and training them to kill, all increased the occupation of Palestine by Jews and suppressed the native people, Palestinians.
Once Britain announced its plan to end the mandate in 1947, they left it up to the UN to decide the fate of Palestine. The United Nations decided to partition Palestine into two : 55 percent to a Jewish state, and 45 to an Arab state, while keeping Jerusalem under international control.
It sickens and angers me that other states play god over other states. What right do they have to take away the land and home of the Palestinians?
Palestinians were not consulted over the proposal which never materialised. Because once Britain announced its withdrawal, Zionist groups began their attacks on Palestinians to have complete control over all of Palestine for the return of the Jews.
Nakba was the result.
I do not declare to know the full history. I’ve probably butchered the history as I’ve tried to share it here. Please go and read up on it yourself as it wouldn’t be the first time that histories are shared as ‘facts’ and are really just ‘lies’, manufactured to make the oppressors the victims and heroes.
One thing I am sure about as fact is that the Palestinian people have been brutalised and persecuted from time, kicked and killed out of their own country to make way for ‘the promised land’ of a another people, and that somehow makes it all okay?
Zionists called it a ‘transfer’ of people to other places. I call it genocide. Innocent people killed indiscriminately to create the State of Israel, was wrong then and continues to be wrong today.
Living Wild Studios 