Out of Sync

Song for today: It Will Become Itself - Whale Fall

Words for today, untitled:

I would like to be understood.

Clearly, without misinterpretation.

So I watch the structure of my sentences carefully,

I cultivate with care the line breaks,

Split my narrative so when I am talking too fast there are stanzas

So there’s no misintention of the meaning behind my words

But is misintention a word? And should I start a sentence with ‘but’?

Or ‘and’? And are you mistaking these questions for insecurety?

Because I tell you, there’s none here.

I am secured, I am grounded, I am

—Did I misspell insecurity? Yes, I did - it’s nothing

Just a slip of a keyboard, a chink of the armour

But I trailed off a sentence, and now I’ve lost my chain of thought,

And now I think I’m forgetting what I wanted to say

And the chain of thought is exposing chains

Or becoming chains - they prop me up, chain me down, and the flowery language can’t cover the gaps -

I am naked and losing the breaks - can you understand me? And was I seeking to be

Understood? Am I growing myself to be easily

Devoured, am I

Deforming my curves to be

Controlled, straight and rigid, tying myself to canes

to grow

The way I’d like, facing away from the sun -

Losing rhyme and beat -

to deaden

The vibrancy in my waves, the cascade of my rhythm,

Irregular and resisting -

I am not consumable, I am not born to be

Easily digested, I am not yours to be bound -

Do you understand?

This is from the shore of my new home. Can you hear the gentle lap? There are hundreds of little spiralled shells tucked between the rocks - I’ll share the pictures soon. I feel tight with apprehension and novelty - this can’t be home yet, this can’t - until I climb the footpath past the trees and to a little windowsill, where I look out at the dying sky and the rising of a slow lighthouse, fading in and out to its own rhythm. Ah, yes, this is home.

I took a month long gap from writing or turning up for myself. I felt bad. I wanted to apologise to someone. But who, exactly? When I thought about who I was apologising to, all of your kind loving faces and words supported me and said I didn’t need to. So I won’t. I did everything I could. This month has been a relative with a terminal illness, saying goodbye to my childhood home, saying hello to my new home, difficult relationships, a large conference and an emergency caesarean. I also finally said goodbye to my grandpa after 9 years, scattering his ashes in my childhood home garden. I missed appointments and commitments and meetups and deadlines, but I’m still here.

I’ve been picking beautiful shells recently. Not to take home forever - I’ve learned enough times to leave the shells at rest at home - but only to borrow. The truth is, they never look at good on the window sill anyway. Something about them dies when they’re plucked from the water. They lose their glisten and stop breathing.

But I did find one beautiful shell that called to be taken. She lives inside my coat, creamy and inviting, while I wait to find my paintbrushes in the tangle of packing boxes. Inside, I’m going to paint some words for my mother. She’s been so strong the past 8 months. I don’t know how she does it. The past three weeks she and I have been unravelling together. I’m going to paint ‘Don’t worry, be happy’, her favourite Bob Marley song.

https://open.spotify.com/embed/track/6A9mKXlFRPMPem6ygQSt7z

Reading: I have been devouring all books recently. ‘Why I No Longer Speak to White People About Race’, ‘The Name of the Wind’, half way through Glennon Doyle’s ‘Untamed’. Recently opened ‘All about Love’ - bell hooks. Struck by this quote at the start of one of her chapters:

“It is possible to speak with our heart directly. Most ancient cultures know this. We can actually converse with our heart as if it were a good friend. In modern life we have become so busy with our daily affairs and thoughts that we have lost this essential art of taking time to converse with our heart. “ ~ Jack Kornfield