writing is remembering

and i must write my way back to myself

It’s been over a year that I’ve written in this space, and a year since I’ve been able to still my heart and mind long enough to trace lines back to myself. It’s been a foggy year, but a productive one.

As a brief update, Tenderheart Studio now exists primarily in the remaining product I have yet to sell. I’m glad to let myself put down a project that was feeling stale for some time. I’m now focused on tattooing full time. There’s lots to say about it but in short, it’s been a very good move and I’m so grateful to have this career.

Emotionally, there’s been a lot of ache in the last year. The more superstitious part of me claims it’s the consequence of unfinished business from my Saturn return. The cynic in me reminds me that it’s always been there, always will be there. The truth of me, who seems to reveal themselves most saliently after a walk through the trees, repeats my own knowing back to me:

“I do not feel alive and belonging by piecing together the endless puzzle of social politics and navigating niceties.”

And yet this is mostly where I’ve found myself in the last year, lost in sea of social navigation, forgetting that this queer body is feral and lusts for the belonging found in the way the tall grass makes room for the deer to bed down, the rock allows the water to erode pools in its surface for animals like us to swim in, the tree roots accept the company of fungi and send messages through networks below our feet. This is the belonging I seek, where I can feel my heart softening into hollowed out coves, my senses attuning to subtle changes in the air and movements in the brush.

My body is animal, and I often forget.

Lost in a fog I must write my way back to myself.

Writing is remembering, accessing the body’s memory, shaping words that convey truth. Something to sink teeth into like ripe peach dripping down the chin, sugar sticking your fingers together.

I woke up beneath a canopy of oak, maple, ash. Following a ravine to the source, watching my feet to avoid the snails and their egg white shell. A flock of geese remember my name. I am ripe in the novelty of new-to-me woods, learning the spirit of the land. I am present and accounted for. My veins pulse and my body hushes. Endless expanse of grey-brown bark and downed branches atop the leaf litter, glowing red mushrooms and spiders gently finding their way through the clutter. The sun was bright on the edge of these woods, but now I’m enclosed in a cool stillness. The fear that rushed through me when I first entered has now calmed. Desire and suffering give way to acceptance.

This is the path. This is spirit. This is the reminder of true self. Who I am without yearning, without trying, who I am when allowed to just be.

I come home and I don’t remember myself. I come home to a dissociated self. My waking self. The mask that I carry to continue keeping this star small and aching and dull in my chest. It burns dimmer and dimmer these days, belly fire a dismal whisper. Missing that link to self, land, air, spirit.

Who is spirit, and how is mine dimmed so fully
when removed from open air
when in presence of dimmed spirits

How the heaviness shrouds me so entirely, I’m afraid others can feel it when entering my home, can feel my bitter smile, my sharp tone, my suffocating the ember.

I guess this marks the beginning of an integration process. The last year has been defined by splitting – true self vs. the masked self, idealization vs. reality – and the need for cohesion is big and heavy. My intention is to go back to an old process, paying attention and finding moments of connectedness, tracing those threads back to the source. I haven’t believed in magic for a long time and that’s dimmed my spirits quite a bit. I hope to begin finding my way back home.