Lessons From House Plants

In between fresh flannel sheets, in a clean room.  The scent of candle wicks and wax and their slight amounts of smoke snake and rise in the air.

Today has been one of self love, love,  and slowness.  One of those days when I get up before the sun rises, and am moving about in a hoodie (hoodies up!) and running shoes to all sorts of places to get errands done.

There is an enjoyment in things as simple and basic as picking out the food that will nourish me in the next week.  There is a humbling feeling to it.  To be able to go and gather the food I will eat in the next week from a store a few blocks away with money that I have for it.

I drank coffee while having a long conversation with a friend back in Brooklyn.  It was an incredible conversation in that I learned so much. About my friend, about myself, and about how trust-filled friendships and relationships are the places that we can all, truly and in a lasting way, grow.

There are those moments where we feel we have come so far, and simultaneously recognize how much further we need to go.  Today was one of those moments.

(pause)

I'm really getting into using gouache, lately, in painting. There is something incredibly satisfying about the vividness- the opaque brightness- of the colors as they absorb into a thicker, white watercolor paper.

I have been documenting.

My relationship with writing on a keyboard, writing with ink, painting, and drawing has been fluctuating so rapidly. Different utensils for different moments.  Different mediums for different expressions.

For now, I go back to reading.

It is always suspicious when one's amount of production exceeds the amount of of time spent to absorb, and seek for, influence.



be well; be loved,

k.

(photo via a--t--m--o--s--p--h--e--r--e tumblr)

Just Look Like We are a Married Couple Spanning Time

The crunch of the last dead leaves underneath my boot.

When I come home, I will strip myself of everything I think that I need and submerge myself into hot, almost boiling, water.

Such a strange tightrope, this balance: Keeping connection with love and with fire and with tenderness and with wholeness, all the while the leathers I have made over the years- of metal, of scar tissue, of ice- still hanging steadily upon my coat rack in case I may need them.

I may need them.

I may not use them, but I need to know that they are there.

Like checking your pants pocket for your wallet, or your hands for your keys.

I suppose it is more akin to checking the room for the exits, your keys for the metal file that dangles from its chain.

I've grown tired of those who do not recognize we who sleep with the hands of ghosts upon our shoulders.

The ghosts who shake us periodically but always from a peaceful dream

only to remind us

that we do not live in such a world.


be well; be loved,

k.

(title: Quote from Billy Brown aka finally a character I can relate to in Buffalo '66)
(image: Martin Rak)

It's All Around You

Yesterday proved to be so much of what I needed.  In content. In conversation. In internal guidance. In connection. In artistic creation. In tapping into the invisible things that exist in this world- on all levels and at once.

The people and sources in my life continually inspire and change me their capacity for love.  One thing I am struck by is how much the love that the people in my life show towards the people in their lives, including me and themselves, has the ability to heal things that I never knew were injured or missing.

It truly is the essence of the transformative power that love has.

Pay attention because it is there if you look for it, and if you are open to it.

I may sound like a hippie, but I am more closely related to a robot at times.

With that, I'll leave you with the video for all of this that is somehow fitting in more ways than seven.

Play this , turn up the volume of your headphones, or simply let it surround you
in your room
with sound.

It's all I have for today
and as it turns out
it is exactly what is needed.


be well; be loved


k.


(title: Lyrics from Bjork's All is Full of Love)
(image: via EGOmim Tumblr)