Writing and sketching (I’m beginning to discover) is the same thing from two different views. Both illustrate what we see.
I paint with words. It’s what I do. It’s how I think and dream and see the world. I guess that’s why I’m a writer—I suppose my death will come soon after the words stop flowing.
I took an unintentional hiatus from writing this year. I chose to go back to college and study another area of interest, and while this uncovered parts of my soul that needed to see the sun, I let other parts I love become overgrown and dull with disuse. The couple of poems I did manage to squeeze out were pitiful little things, written on the train in the rain—a side effect of letting longing speak for far too long.
I return now to my pen (I have the time once again).
Honestly, colours seem brighter, I can breathe deeper (have I been holding my breath this whole year?)
All writers and artists know this feeling; it’s the feeling of coming home.
As 2023 starts its decent towards a new year, I come back home to what I love — art and the written word.
You know, when I look back on the last ten years or so, I see the writer in me dying to get out. I see the free-thinker, the explorer unable to see the way forward and I grieve; I grieve for the time I feel I’ve lost, for the stories that still lie patently waiting on the back of receipt paper, written with a bingo pencil. The ideas trapped between pages of notebooks blanketed in life’s dust. They’re friends of mine I’ve forgotten to time—have I lost them completely?
But isn’t this what coming home is all about? Taking out those scraps of paper and ripping open age old notebooks (sneezing, of course, the dust if flying everywhere!) and becoming reacquainted over a cup of tea or glass of wine?
Coming home.
Old, well-worn slippers.
A hug from Mum.
Really, these word images just communicate a sense of comfort and belonging, and for artists and writers, our craft stirs up these emotions in us. We’re deeply connected to these practices. It’s why we’re here on this earth.
I am returning home to my purpose of writing and creating and I am wondering if, perhaps, you have a your own well-worn slippers to put on again? Is there a practice you too once loved that you’ve put to the side? Is there a dream that’s been in your heart for the longest time, but you’ve never sat down for a cup of tea with it? I know, I know, I’ve descended into cliché, esoteric ramblings, but really—are you embracing all that you could be? And if not, why not?
…
I am, once again, sitting on the train and writing—but this time, the sun is out.
xx