mood : wide arse smiling on the inside

i ain’t smiling

i ain’t smiling and that makes me smile from the inside out.

there are tasks i want to {BE} and do and there are tasks i do not want to {BE} and do.

leaning into those take that bring me joy is what i {Be} and do today and the next day. and the next.

that’s all a bear can ask for. that’s all i want. and {Be} and do.

i ain’t smiling. but i’m wide arse, teeth shining, smiling for me – on the inside.

black garlic

Black Garlic

Aged garlic, deep coloured. Dark brown to black cloves. An ancient East Asian practice of placing garlic in a warm, moist environment to allow the cloves to turn black over time. Something new that crossed my path while visiting a garlic farm on the Isle of Wight last week. Something I got the opportunity to taste within a black garlic, chocolate and cherry cake. Yummy.

Visiting the garlic farm has fostered a new appreciation for garlic and all its properties, culinary and medicinal. It’s a remarkable herb which has been showing up in most of what I’ve been eating since.

The next step is to attempt to grow garlic as I start to create a winter salad garden as part of my applied permaculture design portfolio.

Still doing it even if it’s a slow process and I haven’t updated my permaculture blog in a while. But I’m getting back on it as I complete another Permaculture Design Certificate course with Liz Postlethwaite again called The Gathering. And as I start to complete the permaculture teacher training course as well this autumn so I can become qualified to design and teach my own permaculture design certificate course.

Hope Zine

Hope Zine @ Sarah Shotts

A fellow creative called out for submissions for a collaborative, community zine while she took compassionate leave after a death in her family.

Sarah Shott @ The Compost Heap made the call and I answered with a poem. The theme was hope.

You can read the full version over on Sarah’s website.

My contribution is above along with artwork from Nicole Madonna (Pennsylvania, USA)

IG @nikkymadonna

Enjoy.

today’s ponderings while lying on the couch …

liminality

in-between spaces

lingering in the midst flight

fugitivity

nowhere at all

the potential of edges

black captives trapped at sea

zones of non-being

“Wherever blackness dwells—slave ship, spaceship, graveyard, garden, elsewhere, everywhere—those captives accessed what Spillers calls a “richness of possibility.” Hortense Spillers quoted in La Marr Jurelle Bruce, How To Go Mad Without Losing Your Mind: Madness and Black Radical Creativity.

bramble bunches of joy

This is what I love.

My camera is my eye. It helps me see what I see better.

My camera helps me to appreciate what I love. Nature.

My photography is an archive and a mediation. It slows me down.

Going out and taking pictures brings me joy.

I’m intrigued my Mother Nature’s expressions. And my camera helps me to take the time with her.

I do not create for an algorithm. I do not create for likes and approval.

I create for me. I create for joy.

Me sharing my creations is like a ‘show and tell’. Look this is what I love.

take me dancing, dancing in the rain

i ain’t smiling

retro disco. good tunes. way back to our youth. we’re dancing. enjoying the tuuuunnnnneeees.

i kick off my shoes. barefoot in the grass. the cold september grass.

i look around. blond woman staring. pointing at me. talking to her man. me and my bare feet. laughing. i know she’s not saying anything good about me.

i stare back. she sees i see her. she tries to cover her tracks. too late. bitch. i see you.

before. i’d smile. make it appear as all is well. while i bleed from another wound inside.

before. i’d smile. make her feel better. while i die another death inside.

tonight. i ain’t smiling. i give her cut eye. i stare her down. she looks away first.

i continue to dance barefoot. smiling inside.