Thursday 31 May 2018

Life keeps ticking like a time bomb



Been thinking a lot lately about ancestral trauma. Our genetic coding is multidimensional – within our genes exist all the memories and experiences of our genetic heritage. Sounds intense, but it works both ways - ‘what you heal in yourself, you heal for your entire family line,’ as Chani says. 

I haven’t really gotten personal on here in a long time! Couldn’t tell you why I feel like it now, just do. My poems are personal but there’s an element in the writing style that feels like scaffolding, or layer of mist, keeping things evasive and vague.  Writing ‘journal style’ feels pretty naked, to tell you the truth. I guess I’m doing it for my future self, who I know froths the nostalgia of reading old posts (like I do, indulgently, once in a blue moon). Blogs are weird little time capsules. Echo chambers. 

Anyway. I’ve been reading Big Little Lies. The thought processes the main characters have around raising their children have me all reflective on my own childhood (which isn’t anything new, ha) and the kinds of decisions and challenges that would have shaped my mother's life. But I’m slowly unfolding memories I didn’t know I had – if you’d asked me a few years ago to recall instances from my childhood, I don’t think I’d have much to say. Blank, a few images, sounds – a feeling, or two. Now things are coming back in full technicolour. 

I’ve been thinking about my parents and their health struggles, now that I’m going through my own. I wonder, at what age did they started getting sick, what streams of knowledge around their conditions did they have access to back then? What would it be like now, if they saw the doctors I was seeing? From what I can remember of their treatments and mindsets, I’d say they were very much in an 'aggressive' western medicine stream, and a part of the ‘old paradigm’ of symptom treatment. I count myself blessed to have access to the things I do know, it's an unrivalled privilege. 

I’m of the belief that all our physical illnesses and ailments are manifestations of trauma in the emotional body - whether it be childhood trauma or ancestral. It's a pretty meaty topic to get your head around, and it's not something I'll pretend to be an expert on. But it's something that makes sense to me, slowly, like waking from a nap and recontextualising yourself within your surroundings. Oh, so this is where I am. This is what I am. If you’re interested in this kind of thinking, I’d recommend The Metaphysical Anatomy by Evette Rose.

Separate note, but I've always had the most intense vivid dreams. I dreamt last night that I had various powers, like telekenisis and the ability to fly. I had to summon the spirit of my dad, to ask him for guidance around my powers (I’d inherited them from him, he was a witch). To do so I had to find a magic frisbee in our old backyard, and throw it into the sky. I did so and he appeared above an old willow tree (which had been struck down by lightning when I was a very small child and all my memories of it are ficticious and based of photos I saw later in life) his face glowing like a gold coin reflecting the sun. That’s about all I can remember. Vada thinks it means I have witch blood on my Celtic side (probably true). 

My main themes of today that I’m ruminating on are: Creating. I just ordered a copy of The Artist’s Way, I’m excited to push through some blocks in my creative output. I’ve been making stuff pretty regularly, but every time I put down the pen I have this fear I wont ever pick it up again, that I’ll be stuck. Which brings me to my other main theme – Fear. How do you know if you’re making your decisions from a place of fear? And if so, how do you stop? 

I’ve been doing a lot of free-writing, seeing what comes out. It’s been good to vent frustrations. I’ve been working out, too, which has been good for anxiety. I want to get strong. A pretty ambitious goal when you have cfs and have to go back to bed after a light as hell 20 minute session but whateverrr. Baby steps for this burnt out sag. 

Listening to:


Reading: 





Monday 28 May 2018

breathe right through me



Been feeling fresh in the mornings lately, waking up with the sun and cooking breakfast and sitting at the table, the morning light glowing up the room like magic. Feels promising. I’ve been keeping a dream journal, writing in it each morning upon waking. You wouldn’t believe the shit my subconscious cooks up for me. I sit and try to piece the images back together, follow the tenuous thread of narrative. Often I’m in a building that’s falling down around me.  This is such a non-post, just felt like getting something out. Word-vomit. Hi to the ether. 




Sunday 20 May 2018

8:26

I go through these periods of intense restructuring. It feels molecular & beyond prediction. Nesting in my room I tackle surfaces laden with material mementos and feel all shades of rawness in regards to my obsession with the past. I sit in my bed eating mandarin segments after coming home from work; some states of fatigue are blissful in their accompanying mental clarity.  

I throw myself into the process of intuitive action so fully that I feel completely stripped of mental scaffolding; previous neural pathways of assisted decision-making now loom suspicious — breaking trust with myself in order to build it anew. We rattle into the physical and form new questions to digest at night. I’m working on some answers.  

Monday 23 April 2018

smooth like honey

come walk with me. maybe we wont understand each other
but so much truth and beauty in trying. wasn’t it a hard year, isn’t this one
my surface is hard but inside I’m tender 

you’re who you’ve been waiting for. say that to yourself – you’re the one
that you’ve been waiting for. say it again
really think about it, believe it

my thoughts drip out in shades of lavender. found them on the bedsheets
like hardened cascades of candle wax, thought I’d learn something (bout me)
didn’t

the lessons I thought I had learnt spin back round and I learn again
sacred spiral of repetition, but I’m different every time
every time I get closer                                  to me

and I’m jealous of all your ex partners and all the summers
of your youth, and I’m very much still a child and humbled by nature
and embarrassed by my own heart, endlessly

flung out of space, I could say that about you, I’m trying
with all my might to live as authentically as I possibly can
to bid farewell to the pieces of my self(and life) that don’t serve me

you’re such a gift to the world and so so beautiful
our souls are like planets and I’m in 
so much awe of your orbit

the uprooting challenges against my earth body
must be blessings in shadow form
I don’t quite understand them yet but                  I will, soon

the balance of ego, self and other, and the spaces between
that’s where god exists, or some kind of magic
mostly I’m cultivating gratitude, for everything, for you


Monday 26 February 2018

free write.


I feel the paper skin of the tree near the oval beneath my fingers, in memory, I touch it and it touches back like glad wrap sticking to ones fingers. In this tree I would sit after climbing, it was a story, I told it to myself so that I could learn to listen. It had leaves that glittered like water droplets, they decayed like all things do and they also grew again. I was five years old and I was sitting under this tree with my friend, I had a purple water bottle with fairies on it, the water bottle had a band that could be worn across your body, so as to keep it safe. Keeping ones possessions safe was an exciting possibility to my five year old self, I liked the responsibility and I also liked ignoring that responsibility, I lost my possessions all the time, I mourned them, I experienced guilt - when I did keep things safe I would be so proud, I would treasure said things. Some things were lost to forces beyond my control – an older boy, a bully, a mean kid, he took my small wooden white toy rocking horse and buried it in the sand pit. My friend told me she had seen him once whipping a younger school kid with a skipping rope, someone else told me he killed his dog. Every day at recess for the rest of the week I would dig through the pit of sand, other kids in my class would help me, it was an exciting mission of togetherness, it prepared me for the community experience of grief, one day we found the broken pieces and I mourned the loss of the dignified resignation to a task, the sense of purpose I’d so briefly experienced. We went back to dangling our legs off the thicker lower branches of the papery tree and playing with its strips of skin that we picked at like scabs, the balance in the way it gave in to our grimy fingers (with nails bitten to the quick) and resisted just enough, was full of magical, physical intrigue.

Monday 19 February 2018

excavation

living like we do on this precipice
of disaster, a wavering truce
with the forces to keep our
cores intact, we start the day a little broken

but there’s all this goodness in it,
in your vulnerability and mine
this weekend and this season
this reality of fragile pieces
            you sleeping next to me
            sighing
            in dream

also, it’s the season to cut people off
no one’s disposable but also
there’s too much toxic
            in the communication
            channels
            she says she’ll write to me in one week. It’s not
            a permanent severing. there’s just only so much energy
            I can give (she’s a taker)
            (or maybe I am)
            (maybe I shouldn’t
            put people
            into categories)

after the sun sets I bide my time
before undertaking the epic rewiring
my brain rolls out untethered
and I flick through its draws
and there’s me, aged 5
locked in the bathroom, internal
compass spinning out of whack

I think what I’m trying to get at
is the way we keep going
or something. waxing lyrical,
seb calls it my trippers logic
but I think
do whatever you can
to find the beauty in it
just do whatever

you can

Monday 12 February 2018

Spiders and other things.

I think about spiders 
my house is home 
to so many now that when we smoke a joint
out back V doesn’t wanna sit under the decking roof
‘too infested, they might fall on me,’ she says (she’s been dreaming
about spiders
falling
on her)
and I guess that’s a valid concern, but who am I
to tell them to leave / we’ll just stay out
of their way
for now

In the grey light of my morning room I’m
distinctly not-yet anxious. I wake up further
to enjoy this moment. I think about my friends,
I think about all our very different childhoods
that we didn’t spend together

I think about the stars
how I want to know more
I think about P playing guitar in her room (such pureness!)
and I think about myself the other night
sleeping on that top bunk 
in some kinda mortal peril
spinning out on acid, thinking all the bad things
thoughts carry such weight, sometimes

On the train to the gig I think about a call I had
a middle aged man celebrating one year without self-harming
I could have cried through the phone, heartbroken with joy.
Random tethers of kind connection
pull me closer to the earth.
I think about all the pieces of you I carry
around with me (in my head) and the process
I have to go through, of letting go

I think about my new psych, how calm she seemed and how
that enraged me at first (for some reason) – made me interrogate
my own resentment
of calm people, weird glitch 

I think about E and her words
that tumble out so raw, and my own
that must jump hurdles to be born from my internal voice
the effort alone stifling
the need

I think about
Jupiter. Big mama of expansion 
I think about dreams 
I think about you and your child self
I could cry out, from tenderness
I could call you and cry, for an hour
I think about your pain, and everyone’s

The lessons in this haven’t yet presented themselves
I’m still searching for the meaning
but I think I’m onto something – something about love
and fear, crippling
and the constant trying
to be alright

and like a baby I just want to be held, and like a mother
I just want to wipe your snotty nose clean on my sleeve
and kiss your forehead when you go to sleep.
I think about what you might be doing today
while the cogs of trauma whir into function

face of laughter, grinning through the elements
I could fall to my knees from tenderness
it's the resilience against all these impossible odds

I try not to think too hard
about whether you've thought about me

I think about gratitude and awe
and all of us like siblings
waking up slowly across different
suburban
streets

Sunday 7 January 2018

Spat out, again

Spinning through another new years, got a little lost with my
destructive side. As per me, not one for half measures,
caught myself running to a place beyond feeling

Then I was there, spat out on the other end, loose teeth
and no sense of direction. Been crawling on all fours since

I’m reeling at the crazed mechanisms of my heart, again
unsure what its admin is, other than to destroy me

Who wrote this part of me? Crazed coyote howls, literal slobber
Coughing out emotion nonsense, tantrums tiring like a toddler
Waking after lukewarm nap to dark room, repeating

It’s 6am Monday and I’m awake ‘cause I’ve never felt worse
and in these moments sleep is poor relief, plus
my masochistic side likes to relish. There’s that sickening sweet part
to all the dumb heartache

In my lighter moods I like to think at least we’re all learning
(he sat on my couch in tears, told me how many years ago someone had said
 ‘I’ve never met anyone so willing to feel every single emotion,’ oh, darling--)

and on my blackest days I cant help but laugh
at how ridiculously we repeat the same patterns