January Dumpling Thoughts
This month in Paris has been most curious.
Full of charms big and small from the outside: the external wonders - daily magic in the long swift walks along the Seine, a fresh street corner boulangerie croissant, gazing at the Monet Waterlilies at the Orangerie for hours and then weeping while listening to Debussy’s String Quartet … dinner feasts, champagne and chocolates, treasure hunting for books at Shakespeare and Co. turning into impromptu concert, rehearsals followed by Breton crêpes and cider…
But also, there have been the countless inner discoveries and rediscoveries. Wandering into deep reflection. Fishing for ideas. Asking brave and beautiful questions. Asking random and silly questions. Repeating mantras. Repeating that which brings joy, truthful joy. Building rituals. Practicing rituals through repetition, practicing memory, honouring my own values and promises through each small act. Taking tiny steps. All these moments that have blessed me with much deeper peace and contentment than I have felt in a long time.
The growth isn’t linear. There are good days and bad days and a call for immense patience with oneself to keep at it.
But trust. Remind myself. Write things down. Remember. It’s okay to forget, it’s a practice. Review, repeat, re-practice. Keep at it. Trust in the rhythm of each moment. Dear dear.
So, here are some musings from my daily scribbles. An open letter to friends and strangers, an open promise to myself in a week or year or decade.
With love,
Skye.pianist
Deep breath. make tea.
Little things. Little steps. You don’t have to check off the entire list to ‘succeed’, to be ‘good’, to move. You can allow space. It’s about honouring and sticking to simple blessings. Once you start to understand what you want, need, start making a world for that.
What is enough, what is too much? It’s okay not to know, it’s okay to miscalculate. Be kind. Be strong and soft.
New ways to own our emotions, how alive you can feel in the middle of that, if you’re able to find an environment where you can trust it, be part of it, hold it with a kind of delight. Trust the emotions, trust the change. Trust the relations. Let the natural elemental cycle of your emotions be part of your experience of beauty.
This tells me something beautifully true.
There’s no one thing that’s true. They’re all true. -Hemingway
What allows us to remember? That which we love, which brings us joy. Choosing joy. Remembering only after the blessings arrive. Matcha. Black sesame. The little treasures. The rituals you always did, that are infinitely endearing to your identity, your memories, your continuum of feeling existence as you.
Wandering but not lost.
Today I had a dance party all by myself.
Choose. Trust. Commit.
Repeat, internalize rituals.
What does the way we see the world reveal about us?
Begin anywhere. Write messy. Un-linear. Just write it down. The mother with boy girl on the train. The bite. The irritation, the waning patience, exhaustion. The couple grabbing a book on relationships, laughing, flirting. Date ideal bookstore. Neither will read those books. The single boy demanding the 5 love languages. Who asked him to ask? The extravagance of the mall. Nauseating. The dick shaped sculpture. Salt from around the world. Who goes to a gourmet grocery store? Who’s ordering at the butcher? How to be You. Beauvoir. Beautiful sight. Colette. Duras. Pots and pans. A Canadian flag. Maple syrup.
Dried fruit.
Tastes, gestures that/no matter how long ago/takes us to the same places, people./Large charges of leek./ Always to M./ Poke bowls too. /Vivid enough/ to want to cry. /This boychoy + gochujang + apple cider + sesame oil + sesame seeds/ Really hits the spot. /And miso. <3. /How long since we’ve had /seaweeed soup. / How we forget the things we love until we re-experience them with attention again. Blessings.
Practice your emotional memory.
Dumpling thoughts.
You are the one I seek/And the one/Who seeks me
Yearning feeds yearning itself.
Pleasure. Wisdom. Practice.
The art of making memories.
“Through you I feel seen.” -MM
“Creating and taking my space.” -MM
The second brain. Second heart. -MR
Choosing who to share your vulnerabilities with.
3 down. 4 across, lights on./One by one we awaken./Kitchen, pots, stories./I love your story./Writing to you is the time I need to spend./And speaking./Articulating ideas I’ve already written down vocally through speech, oral storytelling, that is also necessary./We learn the necessity of patience. Rhythm./Write from that feeling. Put it into a poem. Or oatmeal. Or improv./" “Rarely do these poems get shared/But it’s so helpful to see what I’m feeling on a page that makes me feel seen. Help me move beyond and through the experience I’m living with” -PO. Miraculous acts of translation. Sacred companion, witness in the tip of a pen. That’s it. I. I see me. That’s the power of writing something down. My blue ink, my signature font. My care to listen to myself.
Pomelo skin shrinks./Is still fragrant./Smaller, skin wrinkling. Drying./How calm.
The care of doing slowly
Patience within the rush
“Writing functions as a sculpting of the self.”
“You’re always able to learn/and you’re always able to forget”
There are certain memories that we keep replaying in our heads. To make sense of. To re-evaluate as if we can find some perspective, truth. Why. Why did that happen. We pick up, make up, perhaps, details we’ve missed, connections that afterwards make sense, or we draw meaning from and blow out of proportion. A conscience. Morality. That which haunts us. The burden of ourselves onto others.
Ground to rise.
Magic of choice. At any moment we can choose to react and respond differently.
“YOU COME OVER HERE ANND EXPLAIN WHY THEY ARE HAVING ANOTHER YEAR.” - Dorothy Parker, curtesy of AJW.
Shift your awareness. Re. Messie. Trust the rhythm of each moment.
What about sculpture moves us? The 360 degree study of form. Yet expression, time, motion, story, intense emotion in that frozen position. Each curve, each bump, immortalization of ephemeral memory.
It’s nice to have the poet quiet. Or the poet calm.
Are you lost? Sure, but still where I’m supposed to be.
“Literature allows us to relive pleasure and pain”
Infecting emotions/ideas. Emoting creativity.
“We police access to ourselves.”
“To feel abandoned is to deny the intimacy of your surroundings.”
A voice that owns itself
“Reconciliation is an ongoing process/a continual truth-telling/not an arrival/and there is tension in that” PO
“They’re worth believing in just because they’re loved”
“Your great mistake is to act the drama as if you were alone”
Innocence as openness. Receiving. Being found by the world.
Another walk and voice that brought me to tears. White pants, white sneakers, soft cashmere coat, flying through the forest. Everything is waiting for you. A deep memory of innocence. Discipline of remembering. Choosing. Acting.
How do we navigate honesty? Miscalculations. Words we cannot take back. What is responsible honesty? Lines./Between./Honesty and selfishness? ow do we consider other people’s tender hearts and still communicate our truths, what we want and need. Forever learning. How could a beautiful truth bee spun into something unbeautiful by the way it’s received. Variables. Acceptance of unknown variables.
Poetry is asking me to be brave. Go into moments of my failure and to narrate those, not as projects of self-hatred, but as projects of observation. The things we hold against ourselves that prevent us from loving in the moment, because we’re so caught up, perhaps, in the stories of failure, some of them deserved, and some of the not deserved, the stories of failure that we hold against ourselves from the past, or from the ideal version of ourselves that we think we should be.
Learn a mantra/Saying it once isn’t enough. Forgiveness is something we return to over and over again. Self-forgiveness needs to be a mantra/in order to be able to love./ The project of being human/remove yourself from the center of drama
“Sometimes it’s better to leave things as they are”
Write to someone you love, and whom loves you.
We need brains that work
Make your own decisions
Wow./Just wow./The tango of flavours./How each individual spice/elevate each other in/magical chemistry. Saffron. Distinct./Spicy sweet./Sweet and spicy/Mango cashew chicken./Sweet and sour./Umami./Caramelized thinly sliced/onions/Crunchy cashews/Melting mango, juicy chicken./Chili flakes. Sweet corn. Peas. Mushrooms./Fluffy plain rice. to juxtapose. Recalibrate the memory, bursts of flavour. Fresh scallions to cut through. This/Is the daily wonder.
Pause.
Wait. Allow yourself space. You had an experience. Don’t jump onto the next things, the next task waiting for you, demanding your attention. You can exist here a bit longer. <3
The circle is not a trap. It’s an opportunity. A blessing.
It’s the attempt where the art is made.
The limitations you can’t overcome, how can you allow them to become alive with art?
Keeping away is as important as drawing close
Refresh. Reclaim. Defamiliarize. How to refresh that peace you were beginning to find. Why do we forget so easily? How do we embrace change and constantly have patience to reteach ourselves, to remember what worked, how, why, why is it not working now?
Tong, go back and review what you wrote. Actually, write it again. Last Sunday was peaceful and joyful, you honoured your choices, decisions. Use your coloured pencils. Play music. Listen to the silence. Trust the moment. Trust. Everything is with you.
