journal 11: fire
Sunday, June 1st, 2025
January 4th, 2025
I did love the ease of being together. That will always feel special to me. I miss having him around. It was simple how we settled into each other and it happened effortlessly, both in October and one month ago when he arrived on a Thursday afternoon.
Tomorrow I will wake up to a Sunday morning. My first one alone in a month. I am excited for it. I am excited to write and compile photos and reflect and light a candle and continue to welcome January. I love this month. To observe what arises. To sow seeds for the year. This year I will do things differently and work with more passion and more balance. Pursuing dreams and imagining new ones. That are all mine.
January 24th, 2025
Friday afternoon. Did a shoot with sweet little Bram in blue denim. Wrote the nieces letters with Peter Rabbit stickers.
Reminding myself of dreams and how they can be present if not fully realized or “reached”. I am finding people with my writing. A couple of kind messages on Instagram found their way into my inbox. I’d like to go farther with this, but that doesn’t make this moment any less worthy of celebration. I feel grateful to help others and aim to be of service with positive, loving, passionate energy.
I sent Taylor a text that said: I’m on fire. In a nice way.
He wrote back a little song. With an audio recording:
I’m on fire
(and it feels okay)
I’m on fire
(what a lovely day)
I’m on fire
(in a nice way)
February 19th, 2025
I’ve flown to the coast from somewhere landlocked and it feels different to be on an island. Disconnected, as though the physical distance was so great it spread into the emotional realm. To be here is to be separate from my old life, practically incapable of inhabiting both.
It feels special. Briny and damp, the salt water in the air curls my hair at the ends. Moss takes over the stone here, the driveways and the sidewalks tinged with a verdant resiliency. Even in the winter.
Today it is windy and I am endeared to the way the poor weather suits this place. By the sea, the clouds can be grey and the wind can inspire the rose in delicate cheeks. We are better for it. We are better for the churning salt.
My boyfriend was the first to notice this woman in the white house facing the sea, though he wouldn’t have taken a photo. He is no less curious, but his interest peaks at a distance. He prefers to observe without intervening too much, if at all. He could live by the sea and submit to it and be changed and hardened and softened by it. He has chosen to lay beside me every night.
Where do we go to feel like ourselves? What if these places are not like us? Are we in harmony or discord? He has always loved the sea and he chose a woman with the same wild. And I chose him, all rock and root. And we could live on this island of both and tether ourselves to each other for what the other brings out in us. And we could have eight windows facing the sea and fill them with wood and trinkets and he would be sitting in one looking down at his book and I would be in another looking out to the horizon. Eyes glued on the inevitable change.
March 2nd, 2025
March! New month! I am writing this from a fisherman’s cottage in Deep Cove. Earl grey tea in a white cup and saucer that is tinged blue in the early morning light. The birds are chirping and every so often the seagulls signal that they found something in the salty water. I asked Taylor to get a photo of this little moment in the writing nook.
He told me this cottage was offered to me by its owner because I made an impression of warmth and kindness. A special one. I like that and think it is sweet.
March 15th, 2025
Every creative process is unique and this is mine. Mulling and reflecting and getting absorbed by my own mind, until I absolutely need it written down right then. This afternoon has been a whole life in the making.
April 2nd, 2025
Don’t prove anything externally. Prove it to yourself! Show yourself how accountable you can be. Show yourself that you mean what you say. Show yourself how you go after exactly what you want. Practice being loving in this way to yourself, with responsibility and integrity, and watch your relationships flourish.
May 8th, 2025
All of these examples of growth and yet, you don’t even realize how far you’ve come until you’ve done something completely different, without a moment’s thought.
I wished for that. I worked at that. Now it feels so automatic, so natural, so reflexive. That is growth.
How can we inspire people to believe this change is possible? To live a certain way without changing much externally, if at all? The dream: to take people out of survival mode long enough that they begin to tune inwards, gradually forging this deep communion with self. I see so much commerce online, so much escapism, so many quick hits of dopamine. But these are all disconnecting. Distracting. Short term hits of empty pleasure from things promising lasting fulfillment. What we need is to be nourished.
It’s the time of year when the trees outside my apartment window burst into bloom. This attracts the little birds that sing the loudest two times a day- around 5am and 7pm. A long day bookended by song. I haven’t a clue what they are saying and I don’t need to know because I know how it feels.
Last year it felt like longing because it made me think of a man whom I had wanted so badly to love. This year it feels like joy, expansively so. It feels like self-expression. It feels like sharing with the world the gift you are lucky enough to hold. It feels like a long day, filled with the sorrows of the world and the suffering of its people, bookended miraculously by a generous creative outpouring.