Velvet suits, zen, and eating our pets
Diving into Scorpio season
The sky today is squinty-bright. Yellow leaves glint and glide down into the mud. Yesterday my hair was blowing sideways in a gale, but this afternoon is calm; something crisp and magic in the air.
This weather reminds me of the month I spent living at Heartland in Upstate New York, 2015. Even though I was nursing a bruised heart, I remember potential, and endless conversation. Late night guitar in a frosty garage. It must have been a similar time of year to now. For me, memories come flooding back based on seasons, or certain slants of light; a coldness of breath or quickness of breeze. I find nostalgia at the turning point of one season slipping into the next, and it’s deeply pleasurable to remember layers of life I once lived.
I am taken back to the twin beds Harper and I slept in, up in Paul and Adeeb’s creaky American attic. The Tibetan prayer flags we strung up in the dormer window. The wrap-around porch (all I’ve ever wanted in life)! Our time there was rich and simple and then, impermanent as all memories, it was gone.
Today - seven or so years later - I walk into town (UK now) and spontaneously buy a sharp, black velvet trouser-suit. After six years of breastmilk and nappies I find myself drawn to blazers, and business plans, and recurring days in the studio. Since Holden has started enjoying nursery and asserting some independence, there’s a sense of the next step. My work never totally disappeared during early motherhood, but many times I dropped the threads of inspiration and purpose, lost in a sea of sippy cups.
At the same time, I find any work ‘progress’ is painfully slow. There is just always so much to do outside of my studio, and I have an increasing awareness of how essential self-care and down time is, too, on top of everything else!
This evening I carve up my sons’ discarded Halloween pumpkins - nicknamed ‘Scary Greg’ and ‘Scary Peg’ - into cubes. I cut away the dried pools of candle-wax, then roast their flesh and puree it into pumpkin bread and soup. It feels cannibalistic - like we’re eating the boys’ pets - but incredibly satisfying not to let those massive gourds go to waste.
I am noticing how grounded it makes me feel to get stuck into low-stakes projects like this - batch cooking, appliqué, chopping firewood. Revamping an old, rusty filing cabinet. Something for the skip now fills a hole in my studio, and I hope that soon the ten cabinet drawers will house ten new greetings-card designs for my growing business. All these humble jobs are, for me, a form of self-care. And a reminder to slow down and feel quotidian life as it is.
Getting joy from:
At a time when the world is so unsteady and divisive, the Buddhist teachings have been a bit of a grounding balm for me.
On Sunday nights I co-run a Buddhist Reading Group on Zoom. At the minute we’re reading Charlotte Joko Beck’s Everyday Zen. Charlotte - or Joko as she called herself - is bossy and brilliant and brimming with harsh truth. She is a total girl boss, as I dream to be!
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Latest in the shop:
Larger versions of ‘The Peace of Wild Things’ print are now available.
Much love, and wishes for frosty walks together soon x