Connect
Connect is a zine that I began writing in the winter of 2018 after coming down from my experience being a business owner, farmer and mother. I decided at the end of the 2017 growing season that I could only have two; my child, my business or me and chose to leave the business behind. I spent that winter and into the next spring getting back to myself and my creative practice. For me, this kind of deep change usually starts with writing.
I began publishing Connect the next winter, as a four part, seasonal, vehicle for my writing and poems, many of which began during this transformational winter. Each volume is centered around the elements of Water, Fire, Air and Earth and provides insight into my creative process and meditation practice. I describe the lens I write through as 'storybook reality', which assumes nothing as fact, prefers hypercolor and symbolism, and leans heavily into dreamtime, memory, and the subconscious.
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My Mom must have seen them too, from the backseat of her own parents’ car, and my Grandpa, the one who I never met, must have talked about them. I can imagine him telling tall tales about what they could possibly be puffing about. I imagine what he would say would be responded to with giggles, or laughter. I imagine him gazing out the window smiling, holding a cigarette in between the fingers of his hand on the wheel; being his own kind of smokestack.
Imagine there is a small pile of embers glowing at your heart center. As you fill up with breath, they are fed by the new and refreshed oxygen. As you force the breath out, they glow brighter and hotter. Maybe there is a flicker of flame. Imagine your belly is a bellows, expanding and contracting, energizing and stimulating your internal flame.
The full moon is a time to tap into your wildness. Go out into the world and be your most authentically you. Be with the people you love most. Go out and make new friends. Interact with the things you are most attracted to in life.
Your life is too short to be shy during the full moon.
Begin to write, and as you do, keep your pen moving, slowly and mindfully. Let your words emerge matching the speed of your breath.
Think of a place that you know well but haven’t been to for a long time. Maybe it’s the house you grew up in, a place in nature that you spent a lot of time in as a child, or vacation spot that you visited regularly. Begin each line of your page with ‘I remember’ and finish the sentence intuitively. As you write each line let the memories build from the ones before it.
I didn’t track other peoples’ heartbeats until I became a mom. Now I’m always looking for an excuse to check on everybody. I jump at the opportunity to listen to my son’s heartbeat when we’re playing or roughhousing; to press my ear on his back long enough to track a few beats of that glorious little drum. When I pick him up high to blow raspberries on his belly I fake him out and lean in for a listen. Bump bump bump bump.