Cactus

When did I become so content to be a loner? Did I consciously pass the gates of no return, flipping the bird to the doorman?

Sola

I am so greedy with my time, so selfish. I am languishing in a hammock enjoying a beer and a book, looking to the blue sky thinking that I have had a perfect day. To realise that I have spent it all on my own, my way. Yes, I have interacted with others but most of it impromptu and all of it on my terms. And I wonder if I have always been this insular and only now have the opportunity to truly enjoy it. I worry that I have been spoiled with too much time alone and that I may have difficulty should I have to share again. But I love it, I love it so much. And it takes me back to Argentina and the peculiar notion that I felt the urge to have a “me day” at the end of a three week solo holiday - could you be more self-indulgent? This is okay, right?

Lavar

When I need to reset, I take myself back to the moment I was getting absolutely drenched under Iguazú Falls. Cataratas so furious and beautiful and humbling. The ultimate shower.

Shards

Maybe we take things personally because we wish we could assume responsibility, gain some control. As if then, perhaps we could fix everything.

Huxi

Always allow another's joy to overflow. Itch as it may, make no attempts to stem it, no matter how compelled you might be to shake free of its exuberance. Such fun and laughter are infectious for good reason, after all. Let's instead turn inward and ask: Why does this light shine too brightly for you?

Cells

I am learning to fill the spaces with nothing at all. Words better left unsaid eventually lose their meaning; time is your friend.

Science Fiction

This song turns my psyche inside out and leaves me so unsure but more certain all at once. I guess if (when) I ever finish Infinite Jest, my next read will be Frank Herbert's Dune.

I am such a shameless Grimes fangirl but whatever...

Journey

Cribellate

A sharp glint of memory leaves a metallic taste of rot in my mouth. Too unsavoury to speak of in all but the most candid of confessionals. Every so often I remember that this happened, happened to me. I know it's not my fault and yet it's a shame that I will never shake. I can't. I am still a little girl inside, maybe I stopped growing the day my innocence was taken away.

Frames

The roof has been blown off and the blue sky is blinding. Freedom can be terrifying for those who have never been able to comprehend it, or contemplated it. I finally get my breath back and turn my face toward the sun. Was it actually just me holding myself prisoner all this time?

Paper Wasps

It pays to remember that nothing in this life is permanent. Not even sorrow.

Sygenetic

It may not be flawless, and yet it is still perfect.

Vapours

On forgiveness:

(Excerpt from an article by Tim Adams for theguardian.com)

The first piece of art that Karen Green made after her husband, David Foster Wallace, took his own life on 12 September 2008, was a forgiveness machine. She is standing in the neat, white studio at her house at Petaluma, north of San Francisco, explaining to me how the machine worked and how it didn't.

"Before David died," she says, "I had been working on some machines, with a five-year old – the son of a friend who had a gallery down the road from mine." There had been a recreating-a-pig-from-bacon machine, and a prototype for a machine that cleverly pitted dates. The day that her husband hanged himself she had been working on a political machine that involved a bright-coloured circus tent, elephants and donkeys. For a long while after that, she says, she couldn't make any art at all, wondered if she ever would again, but eventually, tentatively, she developed the idea for her conciliatory Heath-Robinson. "The forgiveness machine was seven-feet long," she says, "with lots of weird plastic bits and pieces. Heavy as hell." The idea was that you wrote down the thing that you wanted to forgive, or to be forgiven for, and a vacuum sucked your piece of paper in one end. At the other it was shredded, and hey presto.

Green put the machine on display at a gallery in Pasadena near the Los Angeles suburb, Claremont, where she and Wallace had lived in the four years they had been married. She was fascinated by the effect that it had on people who used it. "It was strange," she suggests, "it all looked like fun, but then when the moment came for people to put their message actually in it, they became anxious. It was like: what if it works and I really have to forgive my terrible parent or whoever."

The visions I endure, are simply entertainment

Apocalyptic nightmares have me killing fathers in my sleep as I gouge rivulets across my palms. Did the fog of the dream chase the memory away, or were we ever unsure of exactly what we were running from? Vivid however, is the strength I found in separation as I led a brutal coup that bought a few more precious seconds of safety. Only to snap my eyes open and clean the flesh from under my fingernails.


Title lyrics taken from Tesseract - Dystopia

Eschaton

On occasion she is reminded that she ought not to play with the big kids for she does not have a poker face to wear. And so decides anyway that she prefers herself hotheaded to calculating.

Pirate Piggy

Family comes in all shapes and sizes but it always fits.

Foldaway

What other items can you dismantle for storage? Surely not just furniture and knick-knacks and other objects of similarly cold inconvenience. How about people, thoughts, and feelings? Ideas? Can we not also tuck them away for a season or two?

Oceania

COLLAB

Another of those "I cannot believe that I only just found this" moments.

The original is beautiful but something about this mix featuring Kelis is all the more compelling to me.

Flow

The river is there to remind me that we need not be turbulent in order to be dynamic.

Downcast

A spotlight borne of resentment tends to be less forgiving. Flaws now apparent can no longer be adjusted with a flattering filter. What is done, is done.

Bustle

I love to be alone in a crowd while others curl and unfurl around me in what appears to be some kind of organised chaos. I bask in the interactions of others, the gentle hum of hearts connecting as I centre myself in my own company. Something about this simple symphony reminds me that we are all one and the same.