Felt so untethered during the day, very liminal, but nighttime saved me. Long walks, double yoga, scallion ginger soup, night air, it’s true what they say.

I have been mourning the baguette morning ritual. Deeply. There’s something about it that I really really miss, very specifically.

Have a desire to make something bodily, grotesque, intense. Take something to its edge. I hate teetering. Push it.

So many synchronicities in the past few weeks, or maybe days. One month back in la and I’ve been in a strange dream for at least half of it. I’ve woken up between 3:00 - 6:00am every day since being back. Usually it’s 4am. My body still is still connected to the past and its future memories.

I felt my creativity return, in an almost scary way, maybe 10 days ago. I made a video piece that felt so strange and unsettling yet true that I felt dizzy and nauseous when I watched it. I’m not sure when I’ll be able to look again. Nausea has been dipping in and out all month. The body is remarkable with its signals and processes. When I was a kid, I would get so sick on every plane. I am still a kid on a plane, inner child flying through the air. Travel is a portal and I don’t mean that in an abstract way.

Winnie has been “writing” recently. She writes random combinations of letters that she knows, but the other day she wrote:

Mimi Mini Moi

Earlier that day my grandfather told me he was sending me several of Mimi’s paintings that he had in storage. Sacred mail.

Mimi is my angel and my ghost. Mini is what Winnie used to call me, before she could say Emery. It is also her great grandmother Domenica’s nickname. Wynn Domenica Harrington. I always know how to find the magical people. And they know how to find me.

I think of Paris, of how my heart felt there, and of walking at night. I think of the beautiful hands at 4am naming something special, and of artists inviting me to intricate perfect fresh dinners in their homes. I think of 10pm blue hour.

In my mind I am calling everyone bg.

Dreamt of the beautiful hands helping land a plane I was on. Dreamt about missing a funding window for a big grant. Dreamt about having an affair with someone I met once and then discovering a frosty glass floor that led into the ocean. A dog-fish leapt out and bit me.

I had an ice cream tonight and it was perfect. The la light was so golden and formed a perfect halo around a girl walking in front of me. It was 19:27.

Last night I sat on my balcony for what felt like hours listening to my on repeat songs. I had a vision of past lovers disintegrating into kinetic sand, they were all flashing in and out until they dripped away like tv static.

I feel so open it’s overwhelming, but I have pink shimmering nail polish and giant sunglasses, and they’re helping.

All I want to eat is fruit. Stone fruit, cherries, dates. I love listening to Future right now. It brings me back to a very specific feeling / moment in 2017. Both parents for a sliver of time. I was crushing on a Leo. And I was learning how to paint for real. Time is spiraling in a familiar zone.

This time last year I was working on a big painting and feeling for the first time how much literal pain my heart was in. Sharp stabbing pains after seeing someone for the first time. That feels like 5 years ago.

I have so many ideas right now. But they’re so clear they don’t feel like ideas, more like decisions.

I’ve been meeting interesting people. All with very intense eyes. But intense in a good way. I had almost given up on eyes like that existing in la. And I got a strong sense that these eyes would be helping me. That we’d be helping each other.

Had my cards read the other day and she said this is a moment of relating to myself in a bold, passionate, almost dangerous way.

Suddenly I am in love with the Paris x la continuous looping dynamic.

The most attractive thing you can do is make something.

I’m in the exact middle of an 8-week self-directed residency in Europe. It is something special to walk and work on art all day. I walk and meet people and try on beautiful clothes and eat baguette with butter and drink natural wine and write and dream. My dreams are extremely intense here, but I’ve known for a long time that your dreams shift depending on the place. 

I met a woman, maybe in her 60s or 70s, an artist, who now lives in the French countryside. I admired her roses as we talked about Jungian dream imagery, water, and the goddess of hinges.

I love people who go very deep inside what they love and hate and want to make better — diving to the depths of a problem or interest or feeling in order to create from that place. It’s always so obvious when this method is behind what they make, and they never have to state it, it’s so clear. Ugh. I love it. It’s all around me here.

I bought one book my first week here. Happy Waiting by Dominika Hadelova. I’ve read it cover to cover twice so far, and have picked it up, turning to random pages, several times. The author is able to go so deep inside a feeling, paired with a well of references that never feel pretentious, just truly interesting or poignant to her. I cried both times I read it. Once, as blue hour set in, and I missed somebody. And again, in a coffee shop on a rainy day with a sudden feeling that I will have a baby sooner than I imagine. Maybe (likely) it’s a symbolic pregnancy. An artwork one. My body seems to be registering them as the same thing. I feel an intense proximity to my work (as in, my film) here, I literally feel it existing so close to me. In other cities, I know it is present, but it feels further away. In Paris, it’s so close, right in front of my chest, looking me straight in the eyes, ready to kiss. In LA I could still access it, but energetically I felt a greater distance between us, so there was more of an effort and reach to work on it. It feels so easy and fun to work here. A new part of myself is activated, free. And what is that. I really think it’s important to talk about. That different ideas or artworks are closer to you in different locations. Maybe it's because a drastic change unchains you from habits and patterns - or it can - and that clears the hallways for the idea to run closer to you, right in front of your heart. It’s so sexy and intimate. I wasn’t expecting to feel the change in proximity so clearly. And so in line with my physical location. I just knew I had to come here. And now I see it was because I could hear this work calling me over, closer to her. 

I’m meeting people, people who are so interesting and interested. And it’s so nice to just have time. And a 9pm sunset. A limitless day and limitless night. Walking until 10 pm and then coming home at twilight to work. My god. Heaven. Baths in the middle of the day and conversations with gorgeous people who work at my ideal restaurant. I love being a regular. I love that the bartender, after a few hours of me hanging at the bar, said “We’ve seen you before right?” And then offered me a shot. To be recognized is really something. It is really something. I like recognizing myself here, and dressing and moving in the way that feels so recognizable. So me. I was explaining to a new friend how I love the way Parisians move, with a sort of slant. He was amused by this. His pisces eyes seemed to understand what I meant, while also finding this observation a bit funny. 

Paris is like a house of mirrors. Clear and dream-like at the same time. I feel an urgency to be myself, and to trust myself. There are pink flowers blooming everywhere, and I’ve been eating the most delicious cherries of my life. The rain bounces on the street and I think about the word precipice. 

I was so moved by the Hilma af Klimt paintings, The Ten Largest, that were about the different phases of life. I could clearly feel how they correlated with birth, childhood, adulthood, old age, and death. And I saw the point where I am right now, transitioning from orange to violet. Thank god. On the opposite side of the veil, I got my period while looking at another painting. The blood arrived one day late, as it desired,  activated by this painting that felt both holy and violent. Girlhood has been a theme of my time here, both the pink of it and the red, black, sharpness of it. And of course, the blue of it. The complex, fascia-like, underwater-and-in-the-sky web of girlhood. The axis of disgust and trust. The understanding that as I get closer to myself, through the vehicle of desire, I get closer to my art, mind, ancestors, my heart. They rely on each other, and they are the same. They require a sort of active attention though, and I am nothing if not activated here. 

I walked into a store and Official Girl by Cassie and Lil Wayne was playing. In 2024 I started listening to love songs as if they are between my art and me, and I really recommend doing this anytime you feel like being in an amazing mood. My art is my Official Girl. In Paris she is sooo here and we are holding hands and making out by an open window. 

Something about halle berry lilac oscars dress. 11:11. Labyrinth of memory - carla del forno on nts, nts hitting recently. Chasing echoes. Perfect. Annual derm trip tomorrow. And a new moon in pisces. 7th house. Full cycle.

I am so grateful for my best friendships. There is a mutual enchantment. We both love each other. And we share, not for lack of seeing flaws, a deep deep loving and inspired experience of awe for each other. Our work gets better for it. This doesn’t require physical closeness, actually it might get richer when we are far away from each other. There is a big spaciousness in my heart right now, it feels so good and warm and cushioned but also expansive. Like I’m looking out across a wide beautiful vista, ready to go.

I went on a long walk in the heat last weekend and I felt it clearing the foggy, heavy, dusty feeling that had been building inside me, especially around my heart. Everything was opening. The breeze was so beautiful and in the shady parts the temperature was perfect. It wasn’t too hot to walk, like I had been telling myself it was. The smells were so amazing, I felt high with pure love and I could feel all the flowers and trees and plants there with me. It felt like it was just us in our special la world. The only parallel I can find is when you are newly in lust or even love with someone. You’re past the uncertainty phase and you are in your own beautiful beautiful bubble together. Hazy and clear and glowing at the same time. I’ve been missing that feeling, and I got it. I wanted to tell everyone and share this feeling and let them know that even though there’s a heat wave it’s actually totally ok to be outside and walk and go as fast or as slow as you feel like and wind up and down the streets of your beautiful neighborhood. God I love my neighborhood. I felt so gushy about it yesterday. I eventually made my way home. I took a cool shower and got dressed to go back out. This is not my norm, I would usually need a break and want to stay home for a while after that, but I wanted to be out in the world. I went to one of my favorite places in la. It’s in beverly hills which is kind of funny. But I was grateful for a reason to go west, I had spent so much literal and emotional and psychological time on the east side, I was ready for something else. Also not my norm. Usually a drive to BH is a soul killer, but I was almost giddy to have the 45 minutes in my car. I think I was listening to a playlist of my favorite lana songs. Burning desire.

I went to see an exhibition I’ve had flagged. I didn’t like it. But I was so happy to be there. There was this small stool set up outside one of the doors of the indoor-outdoor space, it was underneath a vine full of beautiful pink flowers. I kept noticing the stool as I walked around, until finally I knew it was the time. I’m not sure how long I sat there, on that little stool time felt limitless. I was so content sitting in that space between the house and the garden, so peaceful inside myself feeling the beauty of the moment waving through me. I felt so myself. Beautiful strangers all around me. On my way home I stopped at an opening I was curious about. It was a group show and most of it was ok. There was only one piece that I really loved, and I spent a lot of time with it. Strangers were socializing around me, and I was in such a zone with this strange sculpture in an acrylic box.

I am really glad I didn’t waste time pretending to look at the art I didn’t care about. I want everyone to know you don’t have to do that. There’s this idea that you must be a good little art viewer and spend 20ish seconds with every piece of art in a museum or gallery. Stepping silently from piece to piece, maybe reading the blurb, maybe feeling something, maybe seeing something, but probably feeling stiff and conscientious. I’m more into spending 20 minutes with one piece (or view) that moves me, seeing something that helps me get somewhere deep inside myself. I want to be moved and I want to see. There’s always something that I know I’m supposed to find in a show, and I’d like to think it’s alive, and that we are mutually enchanted. If I’m drawn to the show, I know there is something there for me, it might not be the show, but there is something I need to see. Seeing requires a loosening, either of our expectation, or of our own performance. No more performative art viewing. You don’t have to look at things that don’t make you feel anything. It’s a waste of time. I do think it’s good to look at things that you strongly dislike though. Not that you’re simply disinterested in or bored by, but if you hate it, there’s probably something interesting happening, and the art could be a tool for understanding or uncovering a part of yourself that the artwork is bringing out.

**

One week later and I am having a different feeling. I feel so jostled, watching the logistics of a trip crumbling in the hands of other people (and my own bad habits). It’s really taking me deep down, and the harshest critics and deepest grief inside myself are currently loud and clear. Cried a lot today and ate sushi at dusk. Sat in beautiful light as my annoying neighbor yelled to himself. Remembered things get shaken up to clear something necessary. I was due for a spiral. Spring cleaning.

As I was recounting what shifted in the past week I realized, a few days ago, I re-downloaded an app that actually makes me feel sooo blah. I’ve been looking at things I don’t care about, swiping through this app. I forgot my art wisdom applies to everything……..there is no enchantment for me on h****.

Cannot forget my own visual morals.

And at the end of my spring cleaning spiral I stayed up until 3 am with my brilliant crystal clear friend who I am 10000000% enchanted by. Talking with … and simply looking at her reminded me what it is to stay in line with what you need and love and must do and see and say. Saved once again.

These are the final four words of a New Year poem my sister and I created by randomly selecting 13 words with our eyes closed from a book I keep on my coffee table.

Recognizing a pattern is like candy. Dazzling and pleasing and addictive. I love to use my eyes, and I love to uncover the symbolism of what they show me.

The Spiral no. 4: Dreamsicle began with an experimental video I made as a way to visualize a part of the script I’ve been working on for the past ~~~year (+++). The video is of Sloan’s hands on ice. It’s so erotic and mesmerizing, haunted and otherworldly because it is so here. It’s what I know the film is going to be, and I really wanted to share it beyond the frame of my MacBook.

I experimented in my studio and tried projecting the video onto a large window. I’ve always found the conversation between windows and paintings magical and confounding.

A painting is a window. And a window is a reflection. It is also a threshold. It’s where I see myself layered with my view of the world outside me. A painting is a window. And my installations (video, ice, mirrors, glass) are paintings.

Projected onto the glass screen of the window, the video piece became more abstract. Its forms reflected and refracted across the walls and floors of the room. I was suddenly inside the piece, cocooned by the looping narration of the video.

I was curious to see how it looked from outside. And oh my god. It was crystal clear. I wanted to cry. I wanted to cry because it was so true. It felt so right to see a video on glass, clear and in motion, with bodies occasionally altering the image.

When you are inside something, it feels abstract, looping, harder to see, but more immersive. And when you let it exist outside of you, it becomes more comprehensible. As a part of Dreamsicle I invited viewers to do both several times: to enter and exit and repeat, to witness their perspectives shift with the outdoor clarity and interior absorption.

I wonder about my desire to oscillate between here-ness and there-ness. To feel something very intimately and then suddenly pull back until I am ready to go back in. Art is usually a way for me to work through something difficult, like the grief and relief that comes with accepting a change of state, a projection of my own consciousness. But this felt like me simply being honest about a thing that I do. And I don’t love that I do it, and I wonder about how it affects my relationships, but it did feel truthful to show it in this installation. To push the form of portraiture, narrative, painting, frame to something with movement and aliveness where various inner and outer events collide.

Dreamsicle reminded me how much I love my audience, my community. The people who complete my artworks by viewing them. The viewers who literally change the piece by walking inside it and looking at it. Everyone who came to Dreamsicle stayed for a while. And they really looked, and then looked again. They understood it in a way that I didn’t have to explain. This is the most rewarding thing to me. For the artwork to be honest enough to not need a spiel from me grasping for the words to communicate the meaning. The art can just exist and the viewers’ eyes can tell them what it is - to them.

And they can be inside something intense and personal or simply interesting to look at with other people, who are doing the same, and their collective observation creates a collective reality. Their observation makes it real.

Prints imprint. Fort recognized.

All photos by Madeleine Rose.

***

There is a French saying “J’ai du vague à l’âme” and it doesn’t have a literal English translation, but the closest they have is “my soul is in the waves.” My soul is in the waves. It really is, all the time, not just riding the waves but existing inside them. There’s a power here, a power I recently learned comes from surrender. Surrendering to the waves, saying to them, I am opening myself to you, I am giving you access. Take me to this depth.

The thing is, it must be a decision. And in making a decision, truly choosing something, I become protected.

I’d like to think this protection comes from desire, from My Self. If I choose to eat a certain thing, someone else disliking it doesn’t bother me at all, because I made a clear choice to eat it, and I know I like it, and I know it makes me feel good. Desire fueled my choice. If I thoughtlessly eat something, not necessarily thinking about whether or not it is the thing I desire or need most in that moment, then someone else saying something negative about it has the potential to destroy me, because it mirrors my own lack of care.

Food is a simple example, but this carries over into …….. everything. Dating, getting dressed, moving to a place, making art, saying something true.

When I ask myself, “is this the choice I want to make?” the answer often reorients me in a much clearer direction than the hazy non-choosing, passive place. Even if it is not the “healthiest” option (I hate this pop-psychology term as a way of categorizing decisions as good or bad), it was necessary, and opened me to something important.

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Films about water and death framed my scorpio season. These films each held a gorgeous amount of prismatic light and hands and obsession. 3 things that pull me in like nothing else. Obsession is such a force, and the way it bends and lures souls into convergence really interests me. The way two people intertwine and mirror in relationships can be beautiful, and haunting. And I am left with the forever question: was it the other person or me? I know everything in my life reflects some part of myself back to me, but obsession has a way of magnifying certain people or ideas, drawing the mirror much closer.

I find myself interwoven with other people, or art, or spirits often, and easily. It’s an overwhelming experience. And I crave it. But when I look at this craving, this desire to be overtaken, in my hands and acknowledge it, and then make a clear choice to open myself to the waves (or not), the surrender becomes a power, rather than something I accidentally slip into and lose myself inside of.

When women become overtaken, are they allowed to explode, to let their feelings spill out without fear of others rejecting the passing emotion? My friend called me the other day from an apartment in Milan, where she booked a trip to come back to herself for a weekend. During our call, she recounted a memory from a day on set during the production of her film. There was a moment when another woman on crew was angry, and was getting hot, as was my friend. While my friend knew that it would be best for each of them to “explode a little” (brilliant), and then talk through the moment when the heat settled, she couldn’t. She knew that if there were two loud, expressive women on set, people would panic, unable to hold that level of uncontained emotion, let alone understand that it was temporary. Souls in the waves. So, she kept it in and just had to swallow this indigestible thing.

My own relationship to anger is complex, ie: I fear and suppress it. I cry when I am angry because I don’t know what to do with it. I bonded with a curator over this and it led to an exhibition, Spleen Spell. I’m beginning to understand that anger is also a force I need to surrender to. I need to let myself explode a little. I don’t really know how or when to do this, but I’ve been experimenting. And I can see that when I stop rejecting it, and instead let it be a part of me, I witness a recalibration, both internally and externally. New opportunities and ideas come in, because I let myself be inside of that wave, rather than pretending it isn’t there, drowning me.

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Working with water and facing the tragedy and enchantment of its slippery nature helps me with this process. I’m working on a new installation, one where I cannot escape the soul-in-the-wave-experience of watching melting ice and a video about incomprehensible desire, but I can view it from both a very interior and very externalized pov. I wonder what happens to a person when they see something inside, and then outside themselves.

The Spiral no. 4: Dreamsicle will be December 14th, featuring a new video and ice work by me and sound piece by India Jones de Mello.

Today was meant to be another spiral dinner, a gathering where the ritual of preparing and sharing food, traditionally one of nourishment and relation, unfolds into a stage for new narratives, reflection, and exploration. There would be a video piece and conceptual menu by me, but due to a mystery sickness I had to cancel, and I will be writing here instead.

10 2025

The month of endless synchronicities. I said a prayer to an orange opal and received a mirror of it in the sky that evening. I write for a character named Jane and then meet her in real life. I learn about a breakup the moment I am writing about that exact person. I notice a friend’s post about a piece of art at a museum and realize it is an artist (Na Mira) who was in a show in 2023, with an exhibition text I still read several times a year. I re-read a journal entry from that year and see a quote from a director (Trinh T. Minh-ha) who I only recently came to “know” and obsessively research.

This all means nothing to you, but I write about it as a way to describe the moments of witnessing your future self interacting with your past. In these instances, I could recognize the glimmer of remembrance I had for something that was not yet consciously locked in, but now is. I know my future self was there, whispering in my ear.

I think of the angry whispers too. The caged feelings are the ones I’ve been most devoted to in (and outside of) therapy this month. I read an incredible book about 40 women trapped in a cage, who then escape. They do not know how or why they got there. Or where they are once outside of it. Who are we outside of known systems? Is everyone familiar? Or is that just in our dreams?

I am suddenly quite ill and had a 13 hour medicinal night of dreaming that was so dense I woke up thinking I had gone through a full day, and that it was the next night rather than morning. Time becomes itself in dreams. It took me several minutes to sort time back into the linear frame and to understand I had not lived an entire extra day.

I feel like screaming to a man “you stole my time from me”!!!!! But everything is a reflection.

What really made me angry was to see yet another event that was aesthetically copy-and-pasted from the algorithm. I am visually exhausted by the events / dinners / shoots I constantly see with no Art - just amalgamations of instagram-coded decisions. Organizations etc. need to hire visual and conceptual artists as consultants to aid them in fresh, considered decision making. Because that is what visual artists know how to do. We have a depth of training in making the subconscious spiral of an idea into something visual and affective, yes Affective. Rather than copying artists’ old ideas, hire them. Imagine how invigorating and emotive life would feel if we did this. Imagine seeing a table scape with a conceptual scope beyond whimsical abundance or minimal chrome.

And it is great to see this being done, brands / producers / writers at places like Tibi, Paloma Wool, or electric blue are hiring Artists as a part of their team - not just an art director, an ARTIST (thank you halleta for trusting me, in this case). They understand the value of having an artist there to guide them in ideation and visual execution. Now, we just need more of this.

I constantly hear people discuss their frustration with the fact that everything looks and feels the same. That is because everyone is sourcing their ideas from the same trend bank. An artist brings a certain depth and shimmering understanding that cannot be accomplished otherwise. The artist needs to start being valued as a necessary consultant. If we want to create meaningful and memorable experiences, we need to hire eyes and minds that have an intricate understanding of how to accomplish visual resonance. The eye of an artist is a gift, and it is not one to steal from.

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Right now there is a point of tension. We are craving art, real Art, I know we are. But many are mistaking art for algorithmic trends. Art needs TENSION, so we are actually inside of something quite exciting - if we choose to lean in and make some interesting decisions.

What I mean by art needing tension is most easily explained in the way a painting made up of only beautiful marks and colors is essentially nothing. But next to a strange mark or off-putting color, the beautiful one becomes interesting. The painting as a whole is more dynamic, more nuanced, more felt. What makes artists like Anne Imhof or Pipilotti Rist or Charisse Pearlina Weston so good, so evocative, is their ability to push something to, and then past, the edge of its intensity. They’re not afraid to make you feel something.

I’m still learning to take my work to this edge, to not fear the drop-off. But the edge is where the action occurs (I will repeat this until the day I die, which maybe is the ultimate edge). Sometimes I wonder about my capacity to feel inside that edgy, active place. Because when I go there, it is so much, I catch myself preemptively cutting it out, or distracting myself from what is begging for my attention, holding myself a few safe feet away from the threshold. But this only leads to a festering nuisance that haunts my dreams and blocks the creative process. And when I do let myself really feel something, to spend some time in the underwater depths underneath the easy glittering surface of the ocean, I enter the darkside and everything becomes so powerful. An integration happens and I emerge from the water, now in my studio, soaked in a kind of love that pulses through me. It reminds me of a love I first discovered a few years ago, the love that translated intangible things, and made me feel known. It was also known that there is so much more to know and so much that we will never know. But inside of that unknown, everything is so ok. I am invincible in this place, with this invincible love inside me. Everything is water, a mirror, a reflection, a projection, a dream. Constantly changing, and always there.

***

Invincible love inside me
Absorbent mirror until I break the glass and the fragments shatter
There is space between the love now, I ask if I can borrow some
The mirror just looks at me
I am you
Shattered, invincible, never-ending love
We have to break sometimes
But I am always yours

Continuing the conversation:

• Follow The Spiral and upcoming events here or here

• To talk more about my consulting work, reach out here

• I Who Have Never Known Men

Water is the reflector. of what we cannot see. of what we feel. the ice does this further, showing time and reflecting / changing in response to its surroundings. does the warmth of a person show itself in the ice? what about their coldness? sadness? the literal mirrors the poetic. every time I watch the ice melt a new truth emerges. often emotional. sometimes more theoretical or socio-cultural/political. isn’t that what art is there for. to bring forth what we already “know” but could not yet see. water is always changing, always moving, we know this. we accept its aliveness and its cycle. we are aware of its ability to calm and to destroy. it can be both. all. and its power is amplified because of this. it is not subject to one entity, to one tone, to one form. its movement becomes spiritual. clear and our greatest mystery. in its frozen form it is cloudy, sharp, heavy, cold, dangerous, hard, crystalline, atmospheric. it is less apparent that it is moving, it looks like it is more of an object. but our early education and understanding of what ice does in non-freezing temperatures reminds us it is moving, changing forms. we know that if we look away, its form will have changed when we return / in our absence. it is responding to us, but it does not need us. we need it. to see it, we need the ice / art. but the art does not need the viewer to exist or to change. it is responsive to its environment sometimes including a viewer, but it will eventually melt and evaporate, cycle, on its own. I wonder if the ice is happy to be watched. if it enjoys performing. if it enjoys interacting with other beings’ energies. is it more likely to collapse if there are people around? or less?

I can’t help but think something emotional happens to the ice if it does the viewer. or is the power dynamic too strong? does the ice adhere to its true power, its force and its cycle beyond the presence of the human viewer? does it enjoy being a teacher? does its feelings extend far beyond the linear ideas of “like v. dislike” that I am trying to place upon it? “the submission to chance that love demands.” is that the ultimate point here? submission. and an acceptance of change. that the action occurs at the edge. so then what is inside? memory? the future? ice is both. a memory and the future. we see a future memory. and a memory of the future. even in an attempt to freeze time, a memory, it will go through a transformation and change. a memory is never static. what we see and what we know are never static. never not responding to the environment. with the potential to collapse at any point. but even in the collapse, the cycle remains, fluid and knowing. how incredible to see something solid shatter. a reminder of its slippery edge. precipice. mostly though, it moves slowly. what happens when we watch something long and slow. what do our brains / bodies / spirits enter? our sense of time? calm? fear? apprehension? widening of vision? or does it narrow? water reminds us of the roundness. the cycle, the hurricane, the spiral, the wave. we live in the round. does water miss its frozen container? does ice miss its fluid freedom? does vapor miss its visibility / form / tangibility?

This was technically the 3rd official Spiral Dinner (the first was on 11.11.24, then another on 02.05.25), but these dinners truly began in 2022, on the terrace of my studio in Lisbon - with my best friends, lighting candles surrounded by chocolate and blueberries on the solstice. It felt right to bring back the tradition, to honor the seeds of what now is the part of my practice I am most excited about.

I love cooking, I love thinking about flavors in relation to the space and time in which we eat them, and how what’s in season will make us feel best in the moment.

For late June in Los Angeles this was: plums 2 ways, cucumber and melon with halloumi and lemon pickles, shishitos with lime, Weiser potatoes and herbs, spiced chickpeas and labneh with chive flowers, butterfly pea tea jellies, and vanilla ice cream with sprinkles.

When people gather in my studio, surrounded by art and fading sunlight, eating food that I made for that specific moment, in response to the art I placed around them, something happens. I notice an inspired tone and an ease that I often miss in american social circles. I don’t see this with just food, and I don’t see it with just art, but when the two come together there is a synastry that seems to carry people into another state. I’m too observant to write this off as coincidence.

Food is historically a symbol of connection, and art is historically transportive. The two can come together to create an environment that is nourishing, opening, dynamic. But food and art also carry the weight of scarcity, inequity, exclusion, wage gaps, racism. I wonder how something so simple and so abundant (like art and food) can be transformed into a means of control and insecurity or a means of connection and inspired conversation. The atmosphere in which we consume things matters.

The social practice of cooking for people in my studio is one I take seriously. It is very fun and deeply satisfying for me to do this, but everything must be considered. Art placement, table set-ups, flexible seating, menu order, playlists, lighting, temperature, books set out for people to look through, extensive food-prep and planning to ensure I can both cook and be present with my guests, timing, timing, timing. I’m learning as I go. Setting up a container for the intrinsic spirality of the dinner to become what it needs to. I remember to be open to surprises. Like an impromptu poetry reading or dream analysis or new friendship. And people seem to be enjoying it, savoring it, staying inside of it for a long time. Each Spiral Dinner takes on its own tone, quite different from, yet in conversation with, the one that came before.

The 4th Spiral Dinner will happen this fall.

***

All photos by Ciara Mendez.

“When we are in the right place at the right time lost memories seem to find us.”

I wrote this quote down at the top of a doc for a secret project I’ve been working on for most of the year. It has to do with secrets, unraveling ancestral mythologies and truths, desires overlapping, timelines blending in the ocean.

This summer I am melting, and lost memories are falling out of me. A piece of myself shatters to the ground. I pick it up and can now clearly examine the inside. I see what has been haunting me, but the ghost is outside of me now, I look at it, with distance and observation between us. I see what it always comes back to. I see the fear of loss. If I hadn’t lost it, I wouldn’t have been able to see the fear of loss. See?

The thing about a hidden memory is that it is always there, but once it is broken open, out of the murkier subconscious, it becomes malleable. It is no longer the director, but the directee. I will eventually melt fully, with this shard. We will reunite and find our new form, once again linked. Recalibrated.

*

I used to find secrets very sexy. Even the sound of the word was alluring to me. I loved to ask people, “do you have any secrets?” As enchanting as it felt to ask this question, something in the aftermath always fell flat. It never quite landed. As I continue working on my secret project about secrets, I am learning they are not as sexy as I thought. 2025 is showing me that the actual sensual experience comes from naming something and seeing what else is there with it. And I see it in my work. An entire world opens up once you see something. If it stays hidden, so does everything it is attached to.

I began working with water four years ago, at the same time I was living out what would eventually shape my secret project, which I feel like I need to say now, is a short film. :)

I am still working with water as a medium, primarily in the form of ice. Water is a mirror. Water can also function as a projector, literally and metaphorically. So, to highlight its poetic functions I create installations with the ice (water) situated amongst literal projections and mirrors (projected video and drawings on reflective mylar film). These materials alchemize to create new forms for the viewer to interact with and see themselves inside of. In my show since soon after, (installation video above), I explore the life-cycle of memories and how they live inside us.

Deeply inspired by the Mono-ha movement and Heidegger’s philosophy, for me the medium is not about object-hood, but rather a representation of the relationship between art and viewer, object and being, and the fields of resonance between them. Viewers told me that while inside since soon after, they really felt this. The resonance resonated, and I was moved to hear this. I think it had to do with the process of projection that we (Dave Harrington, Ben Benjamin, Tamara del Rosso, and I) programmed. A live-stream of the ice melting was layered with past live-streams from the night, so the viewer was able to witness both the moment and a memory of it. If you click on the link and look at more text/photos/videos of the installation I hope you imagine yourself there and consider your unique relationship to the Art.

I am curious what memory can teach us about presence. What secrets can teach us about openness.

*

Carrie Mae Weems says, “We cannot rise to the challenges of our times without confronting the realities of our own past.”

This feels like an important moment to do everything we must to rise to the challenges of our times. To imagine and live out new structures, with connection and truth at the center. I am realizing this requires facing the realm of hidden secrets, and letting them breathe. Creation requires clarity. Or maybe, with creation, clarity is inevitable.

I imagine a future of artists. Artists know what it is to make something that bridges the dream and the tangible. We do it all day long. We translate an idea into an object, we create new ways of thinking and looking. We bring strangers together and present a shift in perspective.

We, as Trinh T. Minh-ha says, “live in the round.”

*

And for a hint of what is to come from my studio: the 4th phase of water.

And a 4th spiral dinner with it???

02.05.2025

The room was lilac and silver. Warm and cool, pieces of mirror, a beeswax candle, and lilies set the table. Each person walked through the door and a new spark lit up. The anxiety that sometimes emerges from a new person entering a group was nowhere here. Everyone that stepped inside made the room feel more at ease, more itself. 9 women. Cauliflower and fennel with preserved lemon, fresh trancio, pea dip with mint and dill, burrata with capers, hibiscus tea, the most delicious wines I’ve had in a while - one was described as having good “bone structure “ - dates and persian cookies, fresh rosemary.

The beginning idea for The Spiral emerged from conversations with Halleta, I had a desire to make work about spiraling, but I imagined it as a project centered around food and conversation. An experiment to see what happens when I set a certain scene at a precise moment in time, and invite a group of artists and thinkers to eat food surrounded by art. The experiment got to play out Wednesday night. Sitting in The Spiral (my studio, and a secret art space with a spacious and non-linear program of events and exhibitions), 9 women - some strangers, some friends - came together. It was fun, social. Different bubbles of conversations happened at once, the music was loud and so was the talking. It was so beautiful. People drifted in and out, around. Some stayed tucked into their spot on the couch or a chair or the floor. Then something shifted and all 9 of us were talking together. Halleta asked everyone, what is it that brings you back to your inner precision? We talked for two hours about this. And each person spoke so generously and truthfully. It felt like the best part of church, profound and present and necessary. I was thinking a lot about Glissant.

I’ve been spiraling hard this month. The fires in la created a type of destruction that shook something inside me so deeply, trembling, a piece of me broke off. Shattered on the ground, I was able to examine these pieces that had once been invisible. Like a shard of broken glass, I could see the insides of myself. I could hold them, but the edges were sharp. I cried so much. It is difficult for me to lose things.

The pain of loss is one that overtook me for weeks. That is what happens when something happens to a community, we feel it together. We are always feeling together. The invisible threads of hope and despair and ingenuity and desire are there. And Wednesday night proved it. As my friends shared what brings them back to themselves, to their clarity, it became apparent that our conversations had been overlapping all night. A spiral is an ever-growing web of connected points, expanding, lifting, or dropping depending on your perspective. We are all inside the spiral right now, and that can be an incredible thing. But it only works if we talk about being inside it. We need to know that our thoughts are not occurring in isolation. We need whirlwinds of encounter. As someone who has a tendency to veer towards alone time, all the time, I constantly need this reminder. If there is anything to hold onto right now, it is each other. These morsels of connection are how new systems form, or as Evelyn reminded me, they are how better systems are reincorporated.

Since first reading Federico Campagna in 2021, I have been interested in the fiction of the image, the unreliability of the structure, and the truth of what we cannot see. This was when I began working with ice, looking to the poetry of the water cycle to grapple with the trembling and chaotic world of change. I have hope that Earth will help us transform, to reincorporate her wise systems to form a new standard way of living in contemporary society. Streamlined with technology, expanding like a spiral. I see it. I have to believe in it.

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One week after my last show, I went to New York. While there I went to a screening of a short film by Mati Diop and Manon Luthanie, scored by Devonté Hynes. It was called Naked Blue, and hearing the three artists speak about the project and the balance of decision-making, trust, and transformation that went into this work affirmed everything I had been struggling to believe within my own practice. The thing that stuck with me most was Diop’s advice to “Set things up and see what happens.”

One of my favorite parts of making art is seeing what happens. I spend hours researching, writing, creating, curating, editing, and shaping artworks in and outside of my studio - but the real Art is in the spontaneous happenings and dynamics that occur within the container I set up. I arrange the artworks in a certain way, with certain ideas of what will happen, but the most interesting part of it all is watching the Art create its own meaning, its own entanglements, outside the bounds of my consciousness and decision-making. I place a mirror here, to hold a reflection of an ice sculpture and a projection of a video. I place glass there, to reflect light on translucent drawings. I place a chain inside of liquid, so I can freeze a gesture. But it is only when the exhibition goes up, and everything exists together on a specific night with a specific audience that I get to see what the Art truly does. An angelic, cellular moving light shape occurs. The ice collapses. The sound piece overlaps just so with the video. I set things up, but then I let go and see what happens.

It’s difficult to be an artist at your own opening, because sometimes you miss this experience of seeing what happens. I’ve noticed that I tend to disassociate. It wears me down to tell everyone about the work, because I am experiencing the installation for the first time in that exact moment. And I just want to watch. When I am looking at art, feeling it, the last thing I want to do is talk. But somehow talking about your work has turned into the artist’s job. I always tell myself this time it will be different. I will not fall into the loop of repeating the same tired repeated explanation. I will not try to remember what this work is about. I will simply ask the viewer a question about how it makes them feel or give everyone a different answer when they ask what inspired the work. I have yet to follow through on this promise to myself. My fear of being misunderstood and/or letting people down weighs too heavily and I fall into art spiel mode. Maybe next time will actually be different, I will learn from my Art and simply set things up, give just enough to the viewer and then let them go. My hope is for the viewer to find their own place inside the Art. They are a part of it now.

I capitalize Art because I am referring to something different than an artwork/art object. An artist makes an artwork, and an artwork makes an artist. They rely on each other. Capital-A-Art, however, exists beyond these two things. The Art is about the process. It is about the energies the artist puts into their studio time, and how the spirit of the work interacts with new spaces and new viewers. It is very alive, very felt.

I’ve always known art is alive, but it is easier to synthesize this knowing into an interdisciplinary melting, looping, echoing, morphing installation than an oil painting. The ephemerality of my installations speaks to the aliveness and the tenderness I am interested in. The melting allows me to practice letting go. As the ice goes through its cycle, it loses its form and what is inside inevitably becomes visible. Structure is traded for nakedness, and the chance of collapse, of breakage, of loss becomes inevitable. But so does the possibility of something new and unexpected to take place.

and this interview

and roni horn

and sun halos

Oops 6 months passed. I’ve been working! I’ve been resting. I’ve been spiraling. I’ve been spleening. I’ve been spending time with beautiful people in Los Angeles. Angels are all around me. I’ve been looking at the sky (re: angels). I’ve been reading (mostly Clarice Lispector and Sheila Heti and Heidegger). I’ve been listening to Tirzah and Duval Timothy. I’ve been eating stone fruit and walking to yoga every day. I’ve been witnessing a not-yet-two-year-old make mind-blowingly advanced abstract drawings. I’ve been thinking about prisms and volcanos. I’ve been going to Malibu. I’ve been trying to tune in. 

I’ve had two shows since I last wrote here, and they have given me a lot to reflect upon.

These shows have been about visibility: layers of visuality, windows of perception, and witnessing the invisible. These themes emerged as I was working with reflective paper and custom-cut mirror pieces, along with video and, of course, ice. 

As I literally stared at my reflection while making this work on mirrored surfaces, I had to face my own visibility. It felt almost violating to do this - it was too close, too true. My drawings are led by my hand, and while I’m working, suppressed memories and emotions come to the surface. I’ve always known my work functions as a self-portrait of sorts, but seeing my actual face layered with the gestures compounded the self-exposure. I decided to lean in and began more obviously including my body and tracing my features. My reflection is in the majority of the video I made for Travel to an Unknown Place. My eyes are all over the Spleen Spell drawings (but for the viewer to find them, the mylar surface requires them to see their own reflection as well).

While working on these shows, it was as if I unlocked a new level of connection to the art I was making. Due to tight timelines, I had to be immersed in my studio, with the art, with my self. The whole process felt very raw, true, and intimate.

It felt so good to be fully devoted to my work. I spent every spare hour I had working, and in consequence, I entered a new dimension in my studio. Internal secrets revealed themselves: buried memories traveled through my hand, insights clarified, new parts of myself come to the forefront. The invisible was something I could see through the lens of what I was making.

So when the shows began and ended over the course of just a few hours - this is the reality of making ephemeral installations - and the work was exposed and then no longer physical or visible, that left me feeling off-kilter to say the least.

A part of me, of course, wants the work to be seen. It is an honor to have a solo show, and I think the art is happy to share itself with the audience that gravitates towards it. Bringing the work outside of the sanctuary of my studio / inner world to the public sphere is exciting. And it is heartbreaking, violent, depressing, destabilizing. To watch it disappear only heightens all of this.

A show is a bit of a tragedy, and every time I go through the whirlwind of having one, I ask myself why I put myself through this. And even further, why am I making it disappear?????????

But I am understanding it is about the Art, not the Show. By capital-A-Art, I am talking about the dynamics the artwork creates, not simply the objecthood of artworks in an exhibition. By making work that disappears, I am reminded that the invisible dialogues swirling between the work, the viewers, and the environment linger long after the work is visible. I am learning the ephemeral and the eternal are, in their truest sense, the same.

Xin Liu says, “as artists we tear ourselves apart and reassemble it in every piece we are creating.” The reassembly saves me, always drawing me back into this process of art-making. No matter how destabilizing it feels to install, witness, and de-install a show over the course of a few hours, days, or weeks, the process of making is irresistible.

I think, despite the buildup and yearning for it, the most important part of A Show is not actually the show but what comes before and what comes after.

Below is a web of reflections that emerged before and after my past two shows about reflection (some contradict, others answer) :

~~~

The glassy surface of a mirror is silver, it is clear, and it is a vivid image of its surroundings - all at once. A mirror not only reflects, but when light pierces it, a mirror also projects. It takes in varying perspectives of its surroundings, shifting with the angle of the viewer’s gaze, flashing reflected images and glimmers of light. The mirror is not just a passive surface, it is quite assertive as well.

Are mirrors my new water? ( are mirrors my new fixation and poetic obsession?) (are mirrors my new way of processing something personal and internal?)

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I don’t often ask for signs, at least not so directly. But today I took a walk and I was surrounded by green and cars and the sun was so bright. There was so much life flashing around me. Even in January. 

I asked for a sign on this walk because I felt my head becoming tight while my heart bounced around. There was a feeling that something might explode. Like blown glass. 

A few hours prior to the walk, I revealed a secret to myself. The clarity of this confession cut open something inside of me that was not used to being exposed. The secret started screaming, it was liquid and bright red. Blood streamed from the cut, what was once contained became visible, visceral. But the blood of a cut also needs tight pressure and elevation before the new, healed skin can form. The secret craved both spillage and constriction. I needed to hold the freshly opened secret inside myself for a moment, despite a desire to let it bleed out. I am learning about healing wounds. 

I went for a walk and needed a sign, but I did not know exactly what for. I just knew I had to ask, there was no time to calmly and thoughtfully figure out the specifics. I was bleeding. 

This lack of specificity felt pertinent. Everything I am working on and feeling and thinking right now feel so intertwined. Love and art and death and winter citrus cut through my logic, making it impossible to individualize all that spirals around me. 

I took the cloud arrows as a sign to move forward. To travel to the unknown, to enter fully into all of the things I typically choose to experience from a safe distance, somewhat detached. Will Rawls speaks about a distrust of the image and his craving to find something that throws the body into question in his installation [siccer]. Where does one find freedom inside the constraint of an artwork? A freedom that throws the body. I am learning that in my practice, I must continue working with materials that are dynamic and transformative, holding and piercing and questioning time in each moment they exist. 

It is so easy to dip my toe in the water, to watch the little ripples, to observe the interaction of skin in water. But what happens when I dive, cutting through the water? The ripples would be much larger, more like a whirlpool and my gaze would be from inside the water, not outside of it. 

What is it to look at two things interacting while inside the alchemy? 

The Spiral no. 2 is coming. 

*

Some good art I cannot stop thinking about:

Lulu Wolf, Ebb and Flow

Donna Huanca, Ice Chrysocolla

Nikita Gale, Blur Ballad

I deeply, deeply love the notes app. And I have since the beginning.

That 2008-era glowing yellow legal pad opened me to a new part of myself. I’d stay up late, typing little secrets to myself. It was like texting my inner world, communicating with myself in a way I hadn’t known was possible. My preteen angst and longing felt protected inside my notes app. My thoughts and unspoken feelings were respected yet private, existing outside of myself but still held in our (mine and my thoughts) shared world, for as long as they needed to be, safe inside a markerfelt haven. 

15 years later, I am still a lover of the notes app and all that it holds - movie suggestions, grocery lists, quotes from friends/artists/novels, dreams, random thoughts, connective timing, words I encounter, questionable texts, feeling dumps, potential titles, reminders that I immediately forget about.

Re-reading my notes feels like looking at the scattered yet cumulated pieces of a self portrait, an alternate way of seeing myself as I reflect on the past year. A recent review of my 2023 notes reminded me of all that has unfolded this year, in a subtler and more nuanced way than a re-read of my physical journals. It was so fun and funny and endearing to read about these last 12 months via my iphone notes. There has been a lot of change, many expansive conversations, and a new wave of love and devotion to my work and relationships. I stay enchanted inside the notes app, it’s what holds everything I want to say.

Scroll for a glimpse of my 2023.

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Fall often brings a rush of momentum. I don’t know why, but the double-digit months typically carry an inherent swell of excitement to work. There are artworks to create, proposals to send, plans to make. This month however, that autumn surge ran up against and eddied around something else. Something like a stone or a block asking (requiring) me to pause and to open to cooler spacious waters. 

This figurative stone literally hurt when I hit it, I spent most of October either sick or injured or close to passing out. The block was so painful, probably because I had a certain idea of how my October “flow” would look. Upon returning from an enchanting and generative time in Lisbon, I was excited to continue working on the next iterations of the project I began there. This became increasingly difficult - the ideas were simply not coming in. I kept searching, eagerly (desperately?). On this hunt however, I was repeatedly crashing against a block, determined that with enough force, I could get over it and keep swimming in the current to find what I wanted. 

After a few rounds of forced rest due to sickness and injuries, I re-adjusted my position and leaned against the stone. I could simply exist in the tension, sitting in the current of two opposing feelings - a flow and a block. Rather than “finding” what is next, I could sit and watch for it. 

In my new position resting against the block, I spent a lot of time looking out my window, witnessing the communication of two separate spaces. Outdoor life touching at life indoors. Light passing through leaves, filtered through a glass window, glimmering on a drawing that I was working on inside my room. 

The stone began to feel necessary and grounding, facilitating rest that led to activation and clarity. The flow required new direction that only the block could offer. There is strength in resistance, and this message feels especially pertinent now. “Business as usual” is rarely the path to new ideas, to freedom.

Interaction occurs even in moments of rest. Pausing led to watching. And watching led to recording. My work keeps transforming, and I suppose I don’t have to fight that either (a glimpse of what I am referring to is below, for paid subscribers).

Speaking of watching, I cannot stop thinking about this exhibition, specifically the pieces titled WATCHERS. There are so many ways to see. 

“There is a suggestion of clarity if we get close enough.”

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I made 5 new drawings after I got asked out at the grocery store. 

I was wearing red, watching my hand move. Scanning a cucumber, making a mark on a fresh sheet of BFK paper. On both occasions, I was listening to something invisible. It is a form of listening that doesn’t require my ears (ie: doing what I feel like - like going to the better store even though it isn’t on my direct route or drawing outside in my favorite top even though it might get ruined). Listening in this way always guides me towards a necessary action, to a physical manifestation of something that was once transparent, percolating in the air around me. 

I look at these drawings and I feel their aliveness. They are their own entities, and they were just waiting for my hand to find them. Waiting for some opening that they could pass through. 

Did the date or the red shirt or something bigger and less specific spark this opening? Maybe these are all related, or even the same thing.

I look at these drawings and I also see that they came from inside me. They translate what was once invisible. A kaleidoscope of dreams, interactions, wisdom, and memory swirling inside me, felt but not seen. 

And it is a thrill to see. I love seeing. Surprises, secrets, veils of clarity and obscurity - they are all there. I see these drawings, and I see that the action is important.

But I also love feeling. And now these drawings exist outside of me, like an echo. I wonder if their visibility makes them more or less felt. Is an echo more impactful than a whisper? 

The echo interacts with the world, reverberating and resonating. Eventually it becomes a wave, moving in the wind - something felt but not seen. 

One echo action becomes a wind whisper, and the chain continues. 

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All drawings are Ink on BFK, 22x30 in.

Available at Claire Elizabeth Gallery

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It is a traffic light, that red glowing burst.

But from where I am right now, that structural label is irrelevant. I don’t need a learned definition, I need red desire data. And this red north star seems to know me. It beckons and holds my gaze and lights up every cell inside me. I am in a new state, something beyond presence - grounded, open, buzzing. Ideas come. The red told me they were within reach.

I know there are many ways to see one thing. Because I woke up and opened two gifts this morning - my eyes. Ceci n’est pas une pipe.

Clinging to one idea of what something is no longer feels important, in fact it feels ... lazy and removed. Two things I have always feared people labeled me as. I am understanding now that it was my truest self and my truest sight that was feeling lazy and removed from my daily experience.

Diving in to the sea of my art is what has to happen. For so long, I thought I had to keep one foot out of the water in order to not get lost. Now some of that haze has dissipated and I can see more clearly. Devoting myself to my practice (to my desire) is not an escape into fantasy, but an allowance for exploring a necessary vision.* The red light was a reminder to notice what my eye gravitated towards. To follow the desire and unveil the vision.

Seeing can be a frame of mind that leads to truth.

To look deeply is to dismantle the ideals and structures of life that other people have imagined. Learned meanings unravel, and a spacious yet precise-to-you way of navigating the world unfolds.

What the eye notices is very specific to the body that interprets that visual data.

And I think - I know - that my two eyes see a different story in a red light than yours.

Fill in the visual apertures with your experiences and desires to find what resonates. Find what is true. Find what you want and need and require. Find what lights you up. Be it a star or a traffic light. 

Cooking has been a very helpful tool in understanding what I desire.

I am most easily able to identify What I Want when cooking for myself. 

Today I had: heirloom tomatoes, market melon, halloumi

It is juicy and chewy and salty and if I had a garden it is what I imagine it would taste like. Sweet umami perfection. And with some olive oil and vinegar and capers I am in summer morning heaven. 

*excerpt from my favorite, the cargo newsletter

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On Connecting

A line connecting two dots can take many forms. Straight, wavy, tangled, folded, spiraling. There are many shapes the journey of connection can slip into. But ultimately, the two dots end up linking because the line, the journey, desires and requires connection. 

This is a newsletter about connectors and finding the links between all the little dots. Art, recipes, observations, poems, dreams, drawings, internet findings - they will all live here. And I will find (and sometimes point out) the ways they interact and interweave to paint some larger synchronous web.

This summer, life feels especially full of repetition, synchronicities, cosmic timing. I think this is (mostly) because I have been spending a lot of time just … looking.

Look up. 

Look up at the clouds or the varying shadows on your ceiling. What would it be like to walk on the ceiling? What would it be like to paint the ceiling in varying tones so the shadows disappear? These are the earliest questions I remember thinking to myself as I experienced the glorious 3 pm “quiet time” I was secretly allowed to have while my younger siblings napped. I still need 3 pm quiet time. It is my addiction and it is delicious. 

The most delicious thing I’ve fed myself today is a plum I picked from a tree, stewed with cardamom. Two flavors that remind me of summer and of returning to myself. 

I wrote a poem about it.

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