Seeing, seeing, seeing more

The summer sun sits low and new
The heat not yet wide awake
Nor am I

One foot in front of the other
Soft footsteps aligned with heart and breath
An act of noticing
In me, out of me, through me

Good morning magpie
Good morning silver eyes
Good morning white faced heron
Hello to you spoonbill

I see you little skink
I see you swamphen
I see your babies too, strong and swift
Good morning egret, your feathers gleam

Hello tree I touch as I turn here each morning
A smile as I hear cockies leaving their roosts, probably bound for my yard
Good morning sweet raven, my how you have grown
Mr wren, you dashing fellow, have the brambles berried yet?

I see you as I move my animal body
I fly with you as my wings unfurl
I slither with you as I become more grounded
I am strong but flexible as I grow my roots deep

I see you
I see you
I am you

I have been strengthening, prioritising, evolving new habits as I accept and honour chronic illness and mental health challenges and, well, age. No more pushing against, hustling, harried. Only slow, gentle, calm, and kind. 

It is not easy. 

Those entrenched, industrialised systems we have grown up in have seen to that, and I still catch myself unwittingly giving free advertising to a multinational conglomerate: Just do it. Those three words, and words like them, are what got me to here, what kept me feeling a skewed sense of ‘safety’ by moulding to the shoulds. 

But they don’t fit me anymore. 

There is no more room for tight in the wrong places, itchy and constrictive. With

Sally Hardie

in my ear and heart I expand my interoception. With

Jen Carrington

in my ear and heart I expand ease and spaciousness in my work. With the wild in my heart, in all my senses, in every cell of this wild-hearted animal body, I embrace connection.

We cannot know what we don’t know.

But as we learn we have opportunity to embrace the mysteries and magic. And that has been what the simple act of daily sketching has been for me. An adjunct to my larger work, it started in earnest  as a way to quieten a stressed feline family member I adored, and became a practise to ease me through the grief of last year. And now it is an anchor, and a series of secret doors, and a seat under a rose arbour, and soaring on griffon wings above icy mountains, and laying under ancient trees. 

It is everything, because it is simple, and connective, and an act of conscious courage. 

It is seeing, and seeing, and seeing more. 

It is curiosity and it is compassion, and it helps me take the biggest, calmest breaths of my entire adult life.

Because I want it to continue. 

I want to know who will fall out of my pencil on the next page. I want to know more about the being I am conversing with today. I want to see how I can push pigment around to get that talon, that nose, that ear. That eye. 

I want to honour all the messy “mistakes”, all the working lines and incorrect proportions on the way to finding form, to seeing deeper, because that celebrates my humanity, my animal body. I am not a machine, no matter how much I may have acted like one for decades past.

My kin is the stag, the rook, the snow leopard, not the hard drive and keyboard.

Do you see the way her eyelid curls around in a leading spiral to her pupil - drawing you to connect with her wild spirit? Do you see the way the iridescent feathers sweep slowly over his throat in a curve to the dip of his shoulder, where the blue begins? Do you see the seventeen shades of “brown” in that small patch of fur? Do you see the forest reflected in her eyes when this photographer snapped that shot - was that her home? Can I fly there with her?

Seeing more, and seeing more, and seeing more.

Towards the middle of this year I will turn a half-century old. Half the age my grandmother was when she departed her one wild, precious life.

I feel no angst about that number, I have been thinking of myself as that for this last year really. I do feel, though, that this is the time of my seeing. Seeing more about myself, seeing more about the wild lands and kin that try valiantly still to poke through the urban interference of humans. Seeing and understanding and opening compassion and curiosity further and further. Seeing more. And offering an honouring, reverence, respect and reciprocity for the wild beauty, the magic and mystery right in front of us. And knowing, in my heart, if we all took time to do the same, this world would be a much kinder, connected place. 

We cannot know what we don’t know.

We cannot see what we aren’t ready to open our eyes and heart to.

But when we do, when we do see more, it is a gift of more value than can be expressed in the paucity of English.

There is freedom and empowerment in embracing slow, calm, gentle connection. Freedom and empowerment in the rebellious act of being courageous enough to honour your creativity, to revere the self care that is creativity.

I wish for you, dear one, to find time to see more, to be mesmerised and enchanted and filled with the delight of recognition and connection.

I would love to hear and see your stories of connection and creativity.

I see you.

If you would like to embrace your creativity between the magical pages of a sketchbook, if you would like calm, gentle, consistent wonder, come join me for a year of slow and connected in Drawn to Wild.