report from the inside

collected thoughts xi

1. BODY

is it in the body or is it in the mind? it might be in the mind first, then going to the body.. or maybe it’s the body and the mind is trying to make sense of it. i still don’t know..

thursday at the painter’s house: he mentions the spectacular way we share silence, and suddenly i am back in the room we shared in the south just over a month ago now. our week there was wholesome and simple; we let the noise of our city lives unravel from us, leaving only our pure forms left to each other. time was aqueous and unimporant. there were days where i hardly spoke until the late afternoon, where i spent most of the day cushioned in the beautiful silence of a place that just is, hands in a book or on the notepad, body every so often shifting between leather chair, floor, and outside in the humid Georgia air. it was a glorious sea of silence in which i could watch and listen to how my body spoke to its real wants and real desires, under no pressure. sometimes i’d lay on the floor and simply listen to the way i can exist in space free of any expectation. i’d watch my chest rise and fall with peaceful breath, i’d listen to the blood in my veins pump through my body at a new velocity induced by the inspiration of love.

impassioned moments also often sailed in silence, long, and sumptuously, as we devoted every part of ourselves to the other.

i’ve been thinking of this marathon of pure existence for days now, sketching it in words i am not yet happy with. it may be because it is a memory so slight and so simple, yet one that is so potent, that, even conjured with the slightest recall, i get dizzy.

*
my body last week was not great. i had to take antibiotics for a mysterious cough. the pills scraped at me and i ended up zombied for a weekend. in my stubbornness, i mustered up the strength to go to the Met.

all i could really handle were the marble sculptures gleaned from remanents of ancient kingdoms: bodies, powerful and perfect, symbols of strength, beauty, war, justice. some bodies had no heads, some had no limbs. some were perfect and some were unfinished, emerging from the raw stone with tireless fight. i sat amongst them in the main atrium, making small sketches and thinking about the hands that spent the entirety of their lives devoted to making these figures appear. i thought about the body of the artist, how it must’ve lived in certain devotion in order to bring such work to manifest, and remain ripe evidence for hundreds of years. how the body of an artist must be in motion t some extent; the blood needs to be pumping, the heart rate needs to rise. the body of an artist is a conduit for the transmissions in which it will bring forth, even if it is in the shape of another body.

*
i’m no longer on the antibiotics, and i am now hyper-attentive to what my body is doing. i’m trying to be good; eating breakfast and working out, breathing, exfoliating, hydrating. sleeping, not so much. i’ve also been under a new spell of anxiety i can’t quiet attribute to one specific thing, but it sure has to do with the umbrella of change ensuing. i feel as if a magnet is pulling me down a tunnel, into a new life. as much as i try to resist, i keep sliding down that other path, that one toward the unknown. it is my heart that leads the way, being coaxed out of it’s ice cage and toward a palace of safety and love. adoration. trust? i have no choice now. every ion in my body is engineered to follow this lead..

2. MIND

the anxiety comes from the mind, actually. i'm trying to convince myself out of my needs, out of succumbing to such force. on the train i realise it’s not even the change that i am resistant to, but the perception others may inflict on me after noticing i have changed. who will be hurt? who will tell me i’m better for it? and why can’t i be better, why can’t i be unencumbered? i lived a life of being the stable one, the rock, the anchor holding it all together. i’ve held a lot on my shoulders, but i don’t think i can bare anymore. i fear letting myself be held, but the body says differently. it is nice not to sleep alone. it’s nice to have shoulders to cry on, it’s nice to ask for help. it’s nice to wear silk dresses and walk slow and lightly on this earth for no reason.

*
in dissecting our charts over wine, i discover that my Piscean 12th house is the culprit for unintentional quietness. I have all the words in my mind; sometimes i forget i need to speak them outloud. just this mere fact shifts my entire perspective of my own way of being.

other realisations;

my young Capricorn Mercury still doesn’t realise the weight of its words

being needed and being loved are not the same thing

my emotions are bigger than i let on ;; hiding them can often be more harmful than not

i do my best thinking through the body

am i impatient to articulate what i want?

**

my mind feels a lot lesser than how my mind used to be. it too, is sliding in some new direction. writing has gotten especially difficult. for some reason there is a lot more at stake. i miss when i could glide through writing, when i could wrap around and through ideas like a ribbon in a corset.

i’m trying to be consistent again, even if it’s bad. that’s why i’m here in no caps writing everything as if doodling in my sketchbook. these are all just sketches anyway; sketches for greater paintings, i hope, ones of passion and love and nonlinear time. because the thing is, i have so much to say. so much. i haven’t been writing but i’m getting a lot more honest, and all of a sudden i have thoughts to share. like how evolution has brought me to great love and that could be what fate really is. that every fear i’ve ever had has floated to the surface. that i understand how to time travel, that i understand alchemy, that i know how these things can help, and they can be revolutionary, and that i know my purpose and embracing it is a lot simpler than i ever thought it was.

3. SYMBOLS

on my large, imaginary, to-do list hanging on the ceiling of my mind is to update my lexicon of symbols. in 2021, i curated my own lexicon of symbols and used them fervently in drawings, paintings, and writing. most of those outcomes never made it to the outside world, but the work i put into them helped me reclaim my understanding of artistry i had been down and out on for a while. symbols are a great point of concentration for the artist, providing limitations necessary to channel a message forward. i;ve been spread so thin, without container or direction in my creative work, that i need to go back to the basics. and much of my symbols have changed; it’s been five more years of life, it’s been a maturation of being and of understanding. i talk a lot of shit and have a lot of thoughts but i do know i am an artist, always and forever, as i always have been. i don’t have time to be precious right now. as i said, i’m in the mood for brutal honesty, especially between myself and myself.

**

symbols are showing, not telling. they re gestures just understood. this is why they re effective. they can be used to direct energy, to cast spells, to manifest. i brought love into my life through using a symbol in writing, i am not kidding. the more we pay attention to, and interact with our personal talismans, the stronger our powers are. say it’s witchcraft, say it’s placebo, say whatever you want. it is also the age old practice of art we’ve evolved to engage in, and i don’t think anyone can argue with that.

**

some of my current symbols : eyes, hands, deer, pale yellow, nine of hearts, Gold, trees, angels, a reversed s made of two spirals, the letter S in general, red