trust

The Design of a Summer Field Guide

| Sheree

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.

Summer Field Guide

| Sheree

I want to be in a summery frame of mind.

No worries.

No stress.

No demands.

Just ease.

Remembering the summer holidays from school as a child – endless and carefree.

I’ve started with colouring in.

As a child I’d create my own shapes and pieces to colour in just for the fun of it.

I love me some colour.

Going back to old skool

| Sheree

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.

I’m excited.

A plot upon a plot

| Sheree

After my day retreat with WOC Azadi I came home with a date in the diary to play.

I’d set it up with Theresa Easton to go play with her letterpress printing gear again. I didn’t have so much as a plan as I did have a word: PLOT.

I rocked up with a number of different subtracts to play with and just wanted to explore what I mean when I use the word, PLOT.

We set up the printing plate with the word PLOT repeated in different type fonts. We arranged them into a neat A5 sized piece and then let the inking commence.

I played with different coloured inks, directions of papers, different papers and got myself into a meditative rhythm.

It was so much fun and I’m so grateful to Theresa to allowing me to play in her studio for free.

It was good to catch up too and chew the fat.

More. I want more play like this.

Plotting is about questioning the scripts

| Sheree

“Plotting, like learning, is about “invention and re-invention…the restless, impatient, continuing, hopeful inquiry human beings pursue in the world, with the world, and with each other,” says Brazilian educator Paulo Freire. Your plot, too, doesn’t have to mean committing to only one thing. Whether digging deep or sowing seeds far and wide, plotting is about questioning the scripts you’ve been handed and scheming with others to do and be otherwise for the collective good of all.”

— Ruha Benjamin, Viral Justice: How We Grow the World We Want (2022), pg. 23-24

The Plot of Our Repair

| Sheree

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.