Journal
fragments
by Lauren Kayes
Morning session was our intros–really interested in everyone’s work and the threads
between.
Walked St. Magnus Way from edge of town up to the seals. Cormorants, dead bird during Moon hour as Moon conjoined Pluto on the Ascendant.
What does it mean to feel my body in place? To feel belonging or unbelonging? To be a guest? To be a good guest? To be welcomed?
Holy and whole
“It’s got lots to do with magnets and the pull of the moon” – Frightened Rabbit Walked the shore at high tide
What encounters that may have nothing to do with us become part of our mythology? Or do they have to do with us because we’re there, witnessing?
Puppetry of plants beneath outflow’s surface
Watching the seals watching me
Grass structures looking like massive slumbering creatures with their hair blowing in the wind
Feeling of trespassing everywhere I go–like someone will tell me I can’t be there Runes/tarot as language bridge to other than human
Walked St. Magnus Way from edge of town up to the seals. Cormorants, dead bird during Moon hour as Moon conjoined Pluto on the Ascendant.
What does it mean to feel my body in place? To feel belonging or unbelonging? To be a guest? To be a good guest? To be welcomed?
Holy and whole
“It’s got lots to do with magnets and the pull of the moon” – Frightened Rabbit Walked the shore at high tide
What encounters that may have nothing to do with us become part of our mythology? Or do they have to do with us because we’re there, witnessing?
Puppetry of plants beneath outflow’s surface
Watching the seals watching me
Grass structures looking like massive slumbering creatures with their hair blowing in the wind
Feeling of trespassing everywhere I go–like someone will tell me I can’t be there Runes/tarot as language bridge to other than human
Emily’s Prompts
- grounding: fish and waves and something circling in the dark
- Time as structure: Aquarius
- Choose place and sit with it as object of study
– Rabbit warrens by the beach (Orpheus and Eurydice)
- Feet of rabbits and humans and birds and the weight of them, the heaviness and lightness and awareness and unawareness and fear and care and lack of care–and
alighting and touching down from flight or leaps, the imprints in sand and blood
and feather and bone–wholeness and fragment
- Sand and dark opening and unseen labyrinth and fleeting fear–and who lives there
and who has died there under the earth and in the wind-blown grasses and
whether they are picked at or examined or churned by weather or left to rot and
become the earth and sand and grass and the dark dark doors
– How much is under-earth and how much is sky and how vast or small, and the shed hair and flake of skin that leaves me in and among the warrens, that says I was there and am not there at all and becomes the distant touch of us to soft small bodies that should never know a human hand or the quiver of our breath against their quickened heart - Emotionally charged day–injuries and illness and interpersonal stress. Walked to the Brough with Rosie/Giovanna and Anna and Polly also met us there. The rocks and tectonic evidence were incredible–and the winding underwater path to the Brough. Found big fossils. Walk on the way home was miserable from the rain and wind
Smell Exercise
- Pretend you’re a sommelier or perfumer: top notes, undertones Nagasawa Kobe Ink Wharf Blue
- Wet hide–the slick flank of a horse in summer heat but above the animalic, a wash of chemical–wood lacquer cut with still water. On skin it warms and fades to the intimacy of old letters and a night library.