Curiouser and curiouser ... 🐰
The desire to write. The capacity to notice. The space to receive. All blessings. Ever more curious, ever more moved, touched, awed.
Noticing facilitates more noticing.
February, train to Den Haag, the next chapter of adventures begin. But what is an adventure. Always, I come back to the realization that the greatest discoveries, the most profound magic is closest to home, in the simplest daily moments. The week in Basel ‘resting’ with my Swiss family has been like that, with moments of the most intense, charged, wondrously bizarre connections, telepathic dialogues, wordless exchanges, interactions with the universe around me. The thrilling conversations that arise from more and more noticing, more awareness.
And the remembrance.
Everything is strengthening. I feel it and I know it through proof and belief and trust. Memory strengthens. Emotional memory, intellectual memory, muscle memory. The roots of peace and calm are nourished, through care, attention, repetition of rituals. The smallest rituals, routines. They add up. They are the home you can return to.
Writing hones the memory. Writing sculpts the self. Writing as processing, reflecting, self-care, self-listening, honouring time.
Time spent reflection allows time to actually slow down, thereby stretching and expanding time and reclaiming meaning in each moments lived fully, thereby bringing more fulfilment, more purpose and intention, more groundedness in the memory of how we have lived, are living. All with a curious amusement of magic, of blessings, of the ‘natural’ flow of ups and downs. All of which we can trust more and more honestly.
Simple things need reminders.
Write down things I love. Repeat them. Do them. Re-read, re-write. Muse at your scribbles. Discover that person, the puzzles and secrets they tuck in the most unexpected corners. Tell a story to someone who truly matters to you. Send a letter, make a call. Cook for someone. Listen to poetry. Read Chinese. Start the day always with eggs toast avocado coffee and the infinite possibilities of creativity in the alchemy of a stack of pancakes.
Laugh at how a greeting with a stranger suddenly moves you to tears.
So, with that, here’s to reviewing whatever mysterious energies channelled through my heart and spirit and pen the past two weeks. A selection of quotes and scribbles and inspirations and randomness.
Still with love and kindness,
Skye.pianist
“the exile we call home”
Romanticization of nostalgia. It seems better there. But no. There is truth to our objective-subjective fluctuations. We remember the truth we desire.
“Moving. Settling. Moving and becoming nostalgic. Pain for home. The home you were happy to leave yet now long for. Romanticization that has a function to tie things together so you can look from a new point of view, and hold you together through the story of your life and its places.”
Places.
Loosen the knots in your heart. You can’t untie them by pulling harder.
Pain. “Good” pain. The sting, fresh tingling sensation of scrapped elbows. That remind us of what, childhood, falling on cement, biking, rollerskating maybe, or volleyball, old sticky bandages. Why do we like to self-inflict wounds? Curious.
Emotions as visitors. Sometimes announced, sometimes unexpected, sometimes staying too long./So how do we receive them? How do we respond as patiently and generously as possible?/ Sometimes we want our space. We want to be left alone. How do we still coexist with our emotions?
Learning to backflip.
Orienting oneself towards love.
Tense silence in love.
Not all sadness comes from you.
“Wearing” the word sadness.
I remember better./More clearly. More vividly./Because of practice./Because of habits, reflection, action, re re re, because of the mind and pen connecting./And that clarity is empowering./Not just feeling and knowing but articulating those feelings and knowings. Find out how to pronounce the names. Repeat if you can’t remember. Your language of the world will expand.
Nonchalant tenderness. Sweet colours with melancholy.
Brahms. Magnificent power. Dance of the body. Freedom. Simplicity. The silence speaks volumes. Looking up. The architecture, sweeping, circling. A sense of space and awe as the notes float up into the air, embraced by so many people inhabiting the same space, time, held, sustained by the same energy. Suspension of magic calmly strolling by. Sparkling light.
“Desire can be many things at once.”
What else can we do besides saying “I’m sorry” after the fact. Why choose something we we know we’ll have to apologize for.
Why won’t my fingers move? Well, don’t blame them. They won’t respond to being made disappointments. They’re trying their best. They want to belong, make proud.
Taking on other voices. She. She observed this, and that.
Calming mantra./Setting up patterns. Recognizability. Music. A map. All of these things in relation to each other./Recognize./Pay attention./Observation. Noticing./”Being where you are. Not letting your feeling about your feeling be the only thing you’re paying attention to.”
“Seeing what is at home in the place you call ‘lost’ might be the thing that helps you realize you are not lost. That there’s a way forward.”/I love./Here.
Look up./Enveloped by the magic of colours, mystical creatures, dancers, spirits of the night. The elaborate ornaments glittering around Chagall’s masterwork. The chandeliers, the velvet read seats, the magnificent floor ceiling windows, the murals that cover the sky./Foam sizzling. Shaver buzzing./Along with memories of the dueting flutes, the weeping violin, the drum beat. The wash of ocean colours.
The simplicity of yearning for kindness.
To be closely read by a poem.
Courage. Are there ‘good’ and ‘bad’ courage as well? “Good and bad” honesty, sincerity, patience, kindness. Courage to eat, stay, speak. Or courage to lie, run, hurt.
Find new ways of honouring routines. As long as in the heart you repeat, remember. Prepare. Keep repeating your joys. Write them down again. Week by week. Copy. Memorize. Dedicate. Choose time and commit. Use your coloured pencils. Observe.
Time stretching in impossible ways.
It feels thrilling to be free from the page. We repeat to be free. Let’s know by heart. What are the beautiful questions to keep asking? Live, trust, repeat.
You are beautiful.
Knowing./By heart./The streets, the entrances and turns in the metro./The aisles in the Franprix, the shape of the keypade code. All the tiny habits that speak a sense of belonging. Embodying a space./The relationships that can only root with time.
I write: Today is sunny. Why does that matter?/Because I noticed it. And brought this moment to life. So many simple wisdoms we could dissect with our intellect that we could really just…trust, and smile at their truths.
Why are you Tong?/”Because that is what I am.”
The whole universe in a grain of sand. You can see the whole universe, the whole story of time in anything, everything.
“Learning to live, with the heart. Its ‘true’ desires, its fears and doubts, idleness, but most of all, being grateful its paradoxes mean ‘good, you’re alive.’”
Trusting heart and mind to find some elegant equilibrium.
“A lot has happened.”
***
“It doesn’t matter/(everything matters)/if you can recall it perfectly/or if you just record a single snippet/or half a line/or two lines/Poetry is alive to what it means to be alive/and it helps us pay attention to our world/and to our relationships./That is the gift of it/(the gift of art - calling, whether gently, subtly, violently, aggressively, shockingly, lovingly - calling our attention)/*The Gift of It/(a relationship, reciprocal)/it’s our gift to the poem too: to bring the poem into new places/where it hasn’t gone yet/(like every concert, every audience, fresh perspectives/on notes we’ve repeated millions of times/gifted back by the world, in relation/in all our relations)
fishing for ideas
Again and again. We realize/”It’s about listening”./Noticing. Everything is waiting for you./If you allow your mind, heart soul to be discovered with a curious innocence. Everything holds time and magic and infinity./Why not live like that.
Love our choices, our commitments. Be part of this symphony.
Allowing her voice, her resonance, to heal, enliven. Both of us. The gleam in the voice and eyes. As we wield our vocal chords. Feel the rhythm and resonance in our bodies. The sharing of a love for ideas, story, fantasy. Time travelling.
“Living in conversation with -/poetry of music/music of poetry”
Expanding understanding. Capacity for more perspective, more noticing./Being able to be at once inside the thing and having a distant perspective of its magnificence in the larger scheme.
Alchemist. Monet. Freedom in repetition.
I’m proud. I’m really proud. I kept my promises.
I choose. I decide. I act and follow through.
Every little act builds the habits.
I honour. I smile. I am confident. I made a gesture. I held my ground.
***
Taking time
poetry, heart, music/needs time to
breathe/decay/change/snarl/
relationship of everything too time/language to time
memory to time”What is a time when you took time before saying something? What was the effect?”
Why do we want/like/desire/to ‘measure time’/Through rhythm, pulse, poetry/food fermenting/travel/writing/drawing dancing/To grasp perspectives/to ‘measure’ time/time/dancing with/music of language
“A poem seems to meet you just at the right time, almost like it was written or you, or it’s been waiting for you to discover it”
“Poems come into our lives and seem familiar” (this sense of familiarity, the collective memory) “like they knew us already”
That blessed feeling. To be known by someone, some art
Art: the Lifeline
Creativity helps us live
it makes time. it allows time to expand.
“Go make something.
when you forget again/when you go below again/when you carve that hole n your own chest again/
begin again” -Pádraig Ó TuamaHere we go again. Why. Creativity can be the first thing to be forgotten/caught up in ‘oh, I’m never going to change.” But art, creation, can be the first thing to help you recover yourself.
Constant REMINDER: creative is an element. See: you participated in that. In creating that. A relationship with yourself.
Listen, stay attuned to something (magical) you have no control over.
Lines of poetry as portable rituals
Words as rituals
You work with them, they work in you.
A poem’s move: naming, noticingRemember to breathe. Remember how to breathe. How to breathe. Space within.
Capacity to hold (embrace) ambiguity.
8am. Sky still dark. She sees
a cleaner at the end
of the hall way
garbage bags rustling
that could be someone’s
mother tooIs memory a privelege?
Tiny and deeply aliive all at the same time
***
Rediscovery of parts of ourselves - that delight. What memories and meanings objects hold, the joy of remembering, sensing. Finding yourself in moments. Making space. The calm and peace and tempo of a home. Here it is warm.
Trusting the space. There is so much beautiful space full of room to breathe and ask beautiful questions and live all at the same time. There are beautiful reminders I cleverly planted everywhere for me to find myself and you and the world.
It’s the most deliightful game.
Hide and seek, lost and found. Play. A play with myself. Leaving trails that lead to all kinds of surprising discoveries, my own treasures. That lead me back. That finds myself. Remembers my path. Catching, noticing. My own treasure hunt across time and space. /The infinite joy of being. Play, breathe, trust. Repeat.I so ^^ look forward to my morning rituals
(building rituals/practicing them/repeating/honouring
they clear up my headspace and prepare me for a day of beautiful
beautiful questions, noticing, receiving, existingWriting to a loved one as an opportunity to discover again - hey, this is my story. Want to join me?
Distance that doesn’t need to be closed, but rather - believed in.”
What images are imprinted in our memories? Which ones do we store, why? The seemingly insignificant moments, the idle ones, just looming around, how do they so powerfully mark a sentiment?
How can you exist anywhere in magic, beauty.
***
10AM Ah yees
that’s what touched me.
suddenly made m cry.
The tenderness/eternal infinite tenderness for strangers
Everyone, really at their hearts/their core hearts
don’t they just wish to be -
kind.
Kinder.
Kinder children.
Be better at being kind.
That’s so moving.
The repeated attempts for tenderness, for someone, from someone, for oneself, for the worldThis hairclip has meaning. Everything. Stories, memories, place time, a whole epoch. As we give it life, it becomes - from a mass produced discount item from the grocery store, to a time capsule. Which tables it has sat on, which dates it observed, each morning bearing witness to me washing my face at the sink. Waiting wandering loitering along the aisles, trying on hairclips; and then - this one. You.
I love sitting in this tiny chair.
Elementary school joys…that sentiment, a classroom, sitting on the floor, raising our hands/the first time volunteering to read English aloud in front of the class…the assemblies…the sentiment of remembering that/that? Norwich/Norwich
Secret codes. For yourself.
2.3.23
Roar of laughter in the car.
Cleaning up, emptying. The empty/hall/tears in your eyes/a story, sometimes reaching, sometimes reached, sometimes not, sometimes listened to but not heard. Where did she go? The infinite ways language fails us.
But we carry on.
This mysterious play between warmth and hollow breeze, not piercing icy chill, but a quiet melancholy. Yet, now, at the root, there is a healthy deep nurtured, nourished anchor - built from the practices, the rituals, from the trust and peace and reflections in daily repetitions. Now there is preparation to embrace all these different gifts. I am proud. I am immensely proud. We do need comparisons to measure. To understand and give perspective to our growth. Say - before, sitting or standing frozen there alone in the green room, a dark empty hall, waiting for no one, the foreboding awareness of that intrusive voice - ‘all this effort, and for what’. Why bother. A whole day, whole days before carefully crafting this experience, and all for whom? Nobody. No gratitude. No reception./But wait. Actually, these people are not nobody.
There, friends, family, a few strangers smiling with glittering eyes. The room is too cold, too echoey for this sparse but mighty crowd. The candles too short, the incense imperceptible. The silences don’t fill the space. Strange./But wait./That was before. Now? You were in this calm down. You instinctively respond differently. And it’s beautiful to observe. If ‘sadness’, then not cynical, not self-deprecating, not melodramatic, as you might have before.
Now, just peaceful. Quiet. There is poetry, there are nuts and fruits and coffee. There is immense immense immense privilege of time and space. Such freedom and clarity you’ve made space for in your mind and heart. And now is where you are, now here is where you are. Be here.
If irritations, resentments arise, greet them and allow them to stay their length. If you respond too shortly, too bitterly, to detached, annoyed, impatient - breathe, remind, adjust, bring back trust to the moment. Right in this moment of you noticing, you can still choose.
Proud.
Because you can let go of what needs letting go./Hold on to what needs to root to grow./Not about possession. Not about consuming.
Measuring rhythm, not some perceived ‘fairness’ in exchange./It’s okay to be the one giving more or less. We all pay and receive our dues, blessings.
Proud.
What is measured is your heart as you grow from each of these memories. How to receive the reactions? How to respond when people don’t share or are open to experiencing that which you love. The desire to share - needs to be passionate yet somehow easy-going, not forced, not insisted upon. Offer with whole-heartedness. But embrace any close-heartedness or dismissal, close-mindedness, lack of attention, rejection, biases, personal differences, preferences, values, habits, beliefs.
We don’t have to like the same things. We don’t all have to try new things. We wish we could share. The love, the joy of discovering. If only you could try, notice, listen, hear, see. Show up. Just fucking show up. But those are not the hopes to fixate on. It’s okay to have hope for yourself and the world. But first build from within.
Trust your needs. What are the true needs. Who to trust, when to trust, how. When to question, when to accept and commit.
Trust is not blindness or naivety.
There is more wisdom in your derpy steps.
Repeat, keep at it. You’re stronger and more blessed in every repetition.
The delight of ever more noticing. Sight. Clarity. Seeing infinitely within. The smallest particle.
Today’s pancakes. Bring awe. Another moment of borrowed creation. A discovery gifted. Chestnut flour. The aroma, the subtle sweetness, the texture, the watercolours of winter curb-side stalls of roasting chestnuts, wafts of open fire, coal, campfire. Flakes? Stories of memory, mom, childhood. Bee. Honey. Strength. Hexagon. Imprint of nature’s divinity. Patterns of connection. Infinite variations of combining flavours just in a hour long ritual - breakfast. Making bite-sized sandwich upon sandwich.
What surprise. What individuality within harmony.
A period to reflect upon with such blessing. Waking up with a peace in your heart. Light, but not lost or invisible or floating away. There is such space here, to enjoy embody all that I have. Remember, repeat. Write it down.
happenings. ponderings. in my mind. that spark. beating, hearts
All these privileges. The time/time/time/So grateful to have/the time to explore a whole day to practice/discover new messages from familiar friends/where freedom of memory take you/(freedom can be terrifying/sometimes we feel more comfortable in our confinement, limitations)/a whole day to practice/a whole evening to work peacefully at this big desk by the heater - after a spitting rain walk along the farmlands./Dancing, again./Under the lamppost./Little dirty white sneaker./Shuffle step. Skip. Bounce.
10:04AM
Skipping down the hill, Up
Blue skies, fluffy clouds
‘these are the same skies Monet saw’
outer inner
that profound rush of bliss when it bursts through - you
tears suddenly pooling
heart most courageously boldly untethered, open/the joy, remembrance and absolute trust/belief/comforting thrill that:
i could end here.
continue yet forever as one with the universe and be absolutely perfectly content, fulfilled and blessed.
I feel the mystery of the world and continuum of time. At any moment I have lived
am living forever joyfully, in grief celebration
codes and secrets for Tong
and notice -never before: fire hydrant MINION!
yellow and blue
I can take up space/without having to defend myself
We take a look at the time/And then instantly forget.
To observe the mysterious journey of our ‘mood’ throughout the day. How curious. The exuberance, inspiration, charge of creativity and life and hope and understanding and connectedness of the morning - to an increasingly complex stew of sentiments pushing squeezing each other, trying to dominate or make some kind of harmony. Absolutely curious.
10:55AM
Infinitely curious.
How to repeat to notice.
This loop. Again, blesses.
The sweetest morning air, crisp, fresh, after the rain the earth’s thirst is quenched. Everything breathes.
Feeling? Feeling. Strong. Bounce in my step. Muscles tight, light, slightly sore, rush of post workout energy. Step out and the whole world amazes. AWES. The tiny bird is magnificent. The ‘ugly’ beautiful squawking of ravens. The different aerodances of soaring creatures, eagles, tiny red-beaked blackbird, plop of poop right beside my step.
Everything move. Hi minion.
And then, at almost that exact spot down the hill - a most curious encounter. An asian mom, mom’s age, slightly panting, a half-asian boy skipping beside her.
A half smile nod.
Respect.
Something like family or kinship that only the shared culture can speak know feel undertand.
And instantly the tears pool again.
This incredible power/of memory strengthening.
*like dreams. If you write them down immediately after, you start to get better at remembering. the most powerful muscle. Muscle memory. Memory muscle.
Look at your writing. Lists. review. When you drift off course. When you are lost, find your grounding, steer back through rituals. Re-read. Re-write. Repeat. Trust the repetition. And then, freedom.
People greet each other here. There is a rest, a peace, a soundscape. Realizing, if Paris is Montreal, then Binningen is Airdrie. Mountains, farms, family. Simplicity in calm blessings, recharging, space, slowing. A most warm recharging energy. How curious. Places.
You will remember:
the way we hugged and laughed and sung this melody again and again
sitting around the table commenting on the delicious bursts of flavours of each bite, exchanging glances at the ignorant insensitive remarks
you are glowing
magic beautiful joy
it’s a privilege to have someone to come home to cook for on a weekendOkay, now.
Time to do nothing.
It’s that joy of/the weight/of a yellow backpack/packed/with a well-packed lunch/salmon quinoa apple
sneakers/the feeling of going to school, skipping/heading off to a day at school/that charges the heart with a particular energy
yellow/transport/delivery service/the DHL is bright yellow/taxi yellow/my hair is yellow
Hello sunshine messy bedhead
And to deliver magic/gifts, surprises, time capsules
that’s a blessed role.
The trust is growing. Re re re remember to water, give sun, give nutrients/but mostly, time care attention, love in noticing. Remember with your heart.
12:05PM
I am crying. Blessed are these tears.
A sentiment
epoch
We can never return to
How beauty in that/faintly remembering to keep alive again
a combination of sounds, smells
temperature
solitude
’mama’, rain, soccer in the field
our consciousness then
etude no.1
just travelled back in time
thank you.
to be so deeply moved.
Follow through with what you promise to do. Thank yourself.
I will.
Today, my heart remembers it wants to speak to mom.
remember. remember to do the values. the joys. Knowing is not enough. take action in tandem with rituals of the mind. Practice heart through action. You will be proud. And grateful. You know. Repeat. Trust from repetition. Then, freedom. right? You start to remember better, clearer, with more intention, voice. These thoughts mold you. These muscles give you strength. Light soaring but rooted.
Cuteness. The rush of ‘sour’ at the nose tip, teary eyed/The untranslatable infinite/endearment and [tenderness]./”That’s it”.
Small, precious/a touch of the heart, at first, most delicate, most innocent, attentive, playful
What triggers the softness within us/and all the dangers and demons and/fears and warmth and vulnerability and honesty and simplicity/of that softness
Curious, What a wonderful world. Word.
Pick anything. Re. Re read your list. Make anything. Colour.The most tender moments of the heart speaking in dialogue with some distant universal past future of “us”.
Through noticing and capturing each day is deeply honoured, remembered in full. The practice of remembering. That’s precisely where fulfillment comes from. Why I feel grounded, content. The spiritual emotional fuel, nourishment of moments of deep connection in conversation with myself and through myself, the world.
