chaotic office of my brain

After a good day off work, a little note for a future self: 

I'm trying so hard recently to be able to make new rituals, new practices of engaging with myself & with the world, new patterns of behaviour and neuron-pathways. Often it means doing something that grates a little when I try to do it at first -- pushing against a boundary of comfort -- something I wouldn't have expected from myself. I'm finding again and again how hollow ideas of 'personality' are - we all seem messy as.... (on some pause and thought) rhizomes*, mushrooming onward endlessly in every direction, connected to each other in all ways, even the unexpected ones. I am what I think I am, and also everything I think I'm not. You are what you are to me. It's all built on mirrors & the mirrors keep flooding mercury

Sorry I slipped into something else. Something other. I'm floating and spinning, but it's done after a day of tangible work, some of the silly busy-work, all chores of daily living that I must perform, that I am trying to find joy and patience and newness in. So much of growing and so much of learning is just about turning, turning inwards sometimes and outwards sometimes, balancing silence with all the chaos a well-lived life comprises of. Thanks for reading this little note if you migrated here from my Instagram, am trying to find other ways of connecting and looking inward/outward without having to be an endless part of the scrolling-greedy-eyes-bottomless-belly monster that instagram/facebook can be. Shoot me a note if u find words here that you like, email me if you'd like to share your words with me⚡

*from A Thousand Plateaus by Deleuze and Guattari 

september now

time for all the work to begin. yesterday while trying
to hang up tangled wires i slipped a metal disc
too close to my soft index-finger-skin
and sliced right through the white first layer
to inside, wherever it is that blood comes from.

i survived. i survived, but it was frightening,
to suddenly not be a whole body anymore,
to be shaky hands and veins pumping blood
gathering under the skin, pulsing, darkening
while trying to heal, a little raised finger-flap.

it is september now and time for stability.
i am getting used to some of the growth
and it feels less alien to be my own 
unwhole self, somebody who lives
in a place which will turn bloody soon
when the fall leaves come, will survive,
will survive even this year, this blood.

A Saturday

The fan whirrs and

on my speakers

the meditation man

                        gently drones.

Accidentally I enter

 

            a pocket of time

 

            where it is very quiet

 

            it is shaped like a body

 

            and when I am inside it

 

            the small of my back

 

            unfurls like petals

 

buzzes lightly

Notes from June II

I have seen I move in seasons.

To arrive at the season of making
I must first learn to live the waiting.
I must live sticky limbs, heavy spine.
I must live desert days.

In my room I have hung
a gold ring
the size of my cupped hands.
It is what I want to go through
when I am able to be
a column of air.

Its edges reveal dark
wood, no shine, but so
do all edges. No matter
how thin the metallic
slice, how pure your
vision, how sacred
what you made.

I have found hard edges
in recent seasons, and frequent
reasons to complain. I have sat
on a chair and been afloat. 
I have wanted not to be.

That season is passing. Mosquitos
line this new air, leave bruises on my
skin, but look how brown my limbs
when they can dangle free.
I greet summer with fruit
and fizzy drinks. I smell
a magnolia over a fence,
swing across a branch to
somewhere new entirely.
It is pleasant to be.

Notes from June I

Again I break my heart.
Again I spill
ash on my wrists.

A lover leaves. The leaves arrive.

Everything is early, even when long
overdue. I must pay my dues.

My head clears slightly, I open
the maps. I read every language.
I learn new things. I learn that
I failed at everything I did not
know. I failed again.

I want to go to the mountains.
Somewhere with a small river.

If I could go with my mother
and my friend, I would say
      what I feel
and they would hear.
Everything might be easy.
Eventually we might
have to say no words
at all. River silence.

For now, everything fails.

Which is to say
we get to try again.
I get to try again.

The words feel flabby,
all stretchy skin and no insides.
Still I say them, six hours down.
Overdue, but I arrive. Here I am,
still writing. Here I am, loving,
even if wrong. Here I am, all
failed and flabby, all hurt skin,
all the same words each time.

Will something break?
Will something grow here?

20: sleep

these days as i near sleep
i have been travelling far
into the dark rooms

there are some
unexpected pleasures, like
i can hear my grandparents
talking to me, asking why
i came down the stairs
to the chilled study,
if i would like a sprite
or pistachios from a bowl?

b-ma frequents each corner
of the house in my memory.
bottom of the stairs
with cake. in the garden
with a hose, always killing
the grass. in the kitchen,
hovering. her voice on
the phone. & sometimes
she sits in the study with him,
her limca-&-lime iced
her snacks salted
her elbow flesh waxy
and the softest thing i knew.

b-pa is only there, in that
study, often alone. he asks
what i am reading. the last
few years he did not hear
but before that he would
listen. his eyes directed.

it is not only pain
to go there anymore.
i hear their voices
if i concentrate
& it feels lucky.

19: on impulse

i have all days now
to analyse the voices

each little blip
with or without
a word

just the slightest
electric jab
of want

& i try to hear it

where does it
come from?
what does it
want for me?

is this one
i should trust?

should i drown it
& move on? should i
instead dive?

18: meditation

i am trying to turn to
a column of air

i want to shed self
as a season

i will not let me touch
my skin with distaste

i cannot escape
this frame of bones

i will hurt
i will gasp in lust

it is what it is
to be a body

but all this needing
i let stain my flesh

all this jitter fear
this flitting

i must sometimes
remove from me

set it gently beside
it is what i have made

from all the days
i have walked through

it is precious
enough to be carried

but lightly instead of
as a weight

and lightly to remove
to breathe free

as a column of air
within all air

17: shiny & wanting

i feel like the wind
that rushes through a window
when i have a body
to long for

somebody to know
to ask from
to give to
to share a too-big smile with

something akin to magic
that pervades
suddenly
the usual fabric of this life

it makes sense, now, to
imagine my chest
abloom
with air, to float here

to feel alternately
wrung out
damply
and then so new & shiny

all of the unseasonable
wild and askful
want in me
finds a way to turn

instead of dissolving
in the dust
and salt
of daily air

16: breath

the self is so often
tiresome

demanding & unyielding

briefly it acquiesces
when I slow the world all down
& hear the heartbeat in my face

my limbs give up easy
& my will is often weak

one thing that has been listening
is the small magic of my breath