Issara Simone Edwards's Blog, page 3
January 7, 2023
Let’s Clear Away…
Saturday 5th of August 2020
What’s that phrase, “you can’t go home again”? Or is it, “leave the dead behind you”?
I’ve been questioning everything, as usual, feeling like I can’t trust myself, not listening to myself because I’ve forgotten how to, and begging for someone else to come in and give me the answers.
I’m throwing stuff in my own way. This is what I decided at about one in the morning when I had the thought that I should really get back to the task at hand of finishing my novel, I’m practically finished, why can’t I just finish it? Which lead to me writing until two in the morning, which was annoying because I was actually tired and would have liked to sleep. Why am I like this?
Everything feels difficult, but I make it difficult. Is it something that was taught to me, some generational curse that was passed down to me because I think my whole family do it? We struggle because we’re supposed to, all those old ideas of struggle breeding character and strength, forging you into a better person. There are enough struggles in the world, we don’t need to keep making our own. But, I’m not sure how to stop. Maybe it’s as simple as just stopping.
I have a path in front of me, and it’s clear…ish. I can do this. I have to trust myself. We can do this.
December 18, 2022
Why I Feel Useless.
Friday 14th of August 2020
I don’t feel productiveI don’t feel confidentI don’t feel as though I have anything valuable to offerI don’t feel like I provideI lack the money to do or get the things I want without borrowing or sacrificing.The coming Winter Solstice is supposed to be a big on, signifying the end of a turbulent cycle and marking the start of a better one.
So, I thought I would save up some money and spend a long weekend in Glastonbury. I didn’t want to go alone, so I asked my sister if she would like to come. I should have known that she would have plans, why would I think she wouldn’t? Anyway, I’m sure the money will be needed for something else so it’s probably a good thing.
But, it still leaves me with an issue, what should I do instead?
I came up with putting together a visual poetry book, releasing it in time for the Winter Solstice, and that freaked me out. People might read it, people might not read it. It’ll be judged, by everyone. I’ll just end up embarrassing myself.
But there’s that whole thing, isn’t there? Go where the fear is, that’s the true path. But, I’m sure that saying doesn’t hold true for everything.
I have all these poems that I’ve written, and putting aside whether they’re good enough or not, putting them together, in a book, publishing them, would be letting go. It would free up space in me, and what would I do with all that space? What could I do with all that space?
It would be one less thing to hold on to, and I could move on. I want to move on. What will I do when I finally move on?
‘Oceans and Dust: Poems for Loneliness’ – available now from Amazon.
December 17, 2022
Deep-Rest
Monday 10th of August 2020
Depression is anger with no outlet.
Depression is frustration with no release.
Depression is the emptiness of a problem you can’t find the solution to.
Depression is a symptom, not the problem itself.
What’s not working?
What needs to change?
What’s the actual problem?
Depression is a chemical imbalance in the brain.
Depression is genetic.
Depression is built into the structure of your brain.
Depression can be treated with the right medication.
I thought I’d share some of the things I’ve been told over the years.
~
I had three days of feeling okay, so of course…
I’ve been full of energy, writing, bouncing about aimlessly. Went for a walk outside barefoot at 1:20 am, finally went to bed at 2:00am. Then, woke up at 6:00am and couldn’t get back to sleep, I just felt… everything. But, this will pass, it always does.
Last night we had a delivery of plums from a family friend so today I chopped, heated, added preserving sugar, some blueberries from the fridge, a few other secret things (gin, cardamom, damiana) and made a lot of jam.
I hadn’t made jam in so long. It made me happy.
Victoria plums, they reminded me of when my aunty would bring us bags of plums from her garden, driven down from London. It felt like love, like ‘I thought of you.’ This was before they cut down the tree, before they got tired of plums, and tired of us. Anyway, I tasted one of those plums and felt love, like part of a family, and not a singular anomaly redesignated as… nothing.
Off topic, slightly, but really not at all. I’ve been reading, skimming, ‘The Secret Doctrine of the Rosicrucian’s’ by… why do I want to say Walt Whitman? Hold on. By… William Walker Atkinson, practically the same. Anyway. There was this part in there about children suffering from a kind of anxiety, trauma when they develop consciousness enough to see themselves as an ‘I’, as an individual. Apparently, a sort of dysmorphia takes place when the child realises and subsequently comes to terms with the fact that they’re no longer a part of a oneness. They’ve been disconnected from the collective conscious and shoved into a human body.
They basically realise that they’re alone. Even if they have love, comfort, support, everyone around them is still separate from them, they’re a me, not a we. I thought I’d bring that up.
I set myself the task of reading 36 books this year. Why 36? Why not? Last year it was 33, I failed, so naturally I went higher.
My point was, making jam made me happy, why did I stop? I used to make everything, pickles, jams, chutneys, every year. I’d go berry picking, foraging, see what I could find. Why did I ever stop?
December 3, 2022
Escape to the Country
Thursday 6th of August 2020
I want to get back to myself. Who can relate to that? I’m not listening to myself, to my surroundings, I’m not in flow.
I want to create art and beauty for the sake of creating art and beauty, I don’t want it to have to mean anything more that that. I don’t want it to have to meet someone else’s approval or understanding.
I want to be able to do nothing and not feel like I’m wasting time, or feel guilty for not achieving, for not taking advantage of the time I have.
I want to sit an watch insects crawl through grass and not see myself as a waste or a failure.
I want to be in nature, sift soil through my fingers, write poetry and not worry about whether it’s good or not.
I want to move with not against, in flow with the universe, time, place, life.
I want to tell people who are fake to just shut up and stop, be who you are, it’s okay. I want to tell people who judge others to stop judging, and let people being who they are.
I want to tell the people chatting loudly outside to take it to their own house, it’s late, go home, seriously. I’m going to need to sleep at some point, without your terrible chat up lines ringing in my ear.
November 27, 2022
Dark Goddess
MedusaTuesday 4th of August 2020
I feel like a caged animal. There’s a buzzing under my skin, trapped energy that wants to escape. Can I stick my hands, arms, deep into the earth and let it flow out of me, let it escape and grow into some wild tree, twisted trunk, spindly, black branches? Can I write my soul out, write it out so it isn’t in me anymore, but an external thing? Can I give it wings and let it fly?
My mouth feels filed with clay, a stone mask that covers my lips and stuffs my mouth, blocks my throat like a clenched fist around my vocal cords. Can I claw it out of my body, thick clumps of tar, until all the tension and hardness, harshness, in my body is gone and all that’s left is soft and yielding?
There’s a sensuality to feeling everything and a shadow there too, a long one, darkening pathways, a brimmed hat and long trench coat, standing tall over me.
‘You don’t want to be the weird one.’ It says, ‘Weird moving creature, that feels everything, wild knotted mass of muscle. You’re supposed to know you’re place. Sat still, hands folded, ankles crossed, knees together, poised, waiting for my instruction. Controllable. This base creature that you’ve allowed yourself to become, is not.’
Is that what it is, control? Does the world need us to be controllable, kept in a box, catalogued?
Which box do I belong in again? Which set of rules apply to me?
I’ve found that when people break out of their boxes, they’re only put into new ones and that mostly, we do it to ourselves. I haven’ found a box that fits me yet, and in this state I feel… alone.
November 19, 2022
Aurora on the Floor
Friday 31st of July 2020
How do you break out of a time loop?
How do you jump off a moving train that only travels in circles?
How do you get off the path you’ve been walking over and over again for years and forge a new one?
I’m two glasses of wine in and anticipating the long shadows of winter. It’s not that I won’t miss the summer heat, just that I miss the cold crisp of winter more. The invisible clouds of cold steel that linger in the air, the pricking at my lungs when I breathe it in, a thousand thorns kissing my insides, raspberry blistering cheeks and the wait for snow. All good things to me. I miss my season, but I feel it nearing…
November 8, 2022
20 books that will alter your perspective.
~
What books have you read?
What books would you add?
What books would you take away?
November 6, 2022
2am.
Sunday the 26th of July 2020
What do you believe? Really? I’ve spent so much of my time keeping things to myself, hiding so that no one would think I was crazy, whilst genuinely thinking I might be crazy. What if I’m not?
What if I allow myself to believe every ‘crazy’ experience I’ve ever had? What if I stop doubting myself, embrace instead of dismiss? I suppose I should provide some context.
It started at 1:45 am.
I was out, looking at the stars, seeing what I could spot, Mars, Sagitta, Cygnus, and I had this sudden, sweeping feeling of swimming in the ocean, of swimming through space, the universe. I was part of a flow, and this flow wasn’t about swimming against, it wasn’t really about moving at all, it was motionlessness, the flow of everything was around me.
I went back in the house, and caught my reflection in the hallway mirror, and the face I saw wasn’t my own. It was almost like seeing myself for the first time and being amazed by it. I was stunned by the fact that I have features here, that I’m a biped with two arms and two legs, that I move, I move through the world as supposed to everything moving through me. I was fascinated by how everything here is about moving through, by how dense my body felt, by the fact that I had a body, a form. I have a form, I am form, but I’m not, or at least, I wasn’t. I was formless, living energy.
I started to question myself. Why did I choose to have form? Why did I choose to be here? Here everything is in motion and it mutes everything, dulls everything. Before everything I was motionless and the universe moved through me, everything was experienced as moving through, not against. Experience wasn’t external, it wasn’t filtered through senses, through a body, through a brain, I was the experience and the experience was me, and it heightened everything. Why would I come her for a duller experience?
I realised I didn’t come here for the experience, I came here with a plan, I just don’t remember what it was.
I walked up stars to my room and looked out the window, a star winked at me like a car flashing its headlights, then disappeared.
At 2 am a new universe began, a big bang, the world began to shift, to be reborn, an evolution into a higher density marked by the sound of cannon.
I fell asleep and dreamt of swimming under water, about running to find people, about staying behind and running to catch up. When I found the people I was looking for they were marching towards a cave, towards the start of a new beginning.
October 30, 2022
Barbie’s Dream Journal
Thursday 23rd of July 2020
I’m tired. Maybe that. ‘Are you getting enough sleep?’ comment the other day was a prediction because right now I’m not.
Yesterday it was a park maintenance guy cutting down what sounded like a forest. Today it was the neighbour getting a new bathroom fitted at eight in the morning. This isn’t what woke me up though, this is just what prevented me from getting back to sleep. What woke me up was a demented seagull mourning its dead lover lost at sea. I’m telling you, those were not normal wails, those were banging on the coffin, let me join you wails, and that was at six-thirty. So, I’m tired. It also didn’t help that I stayed up late watching Netflix. I need to make better life choices.
But I had an interesting dream before I was rudely awakened. I know, interesting, dream, it’s an oxymoron. So, I’m sorry that this has become a dream journal, that’s just life I suppose. I’ll keep it short.
I dreamt I was this creator, witch, god, and I was being visited by these two other gods, who were kinda also me. Anyway, as a gift I gave them these forbidden tools of transformation and instructed them to keep them a secret from the other gods. I gave the first god a long spear, and told her it wasn’t a weapon but a tool of sexual power, the power of transformation through sexual energy. I gave the other a breast plate and helmet and told her it was the power of the soldier, the power to transform through brute force. They said that they understood that the power of witchcraft was forbidden and that they’d keep these gifts a secret, and then I was woken up by a seagull.
October 29, 2022
A Purpose is Defined by…
Wednesday 22nd of July 2020
I wanted to write this down so that I wouldn’t forget it, so I could return to it if need be. There’s also the idea of solidifying something through words, through the act of writing it down, making it clearer, less abstract.
Sometimes we need to be clear on the purpose of something in order to focus on it, to appreciate what we’re doing and get it done, to find the will and motivation.
I decided to ask my oracle cards what my purpose is for writing ‘What do the Nightbirds Sings?’, I’m still not sure if I’m keeping that title, what do you think?
Anyway, I feel like it’s coming across as though I can’t think for myself and that I’m asking you, and inanimate objects for advice, but it’s not that at all. Using oracle cards or tarot cards is a cheat sheet, yes, but, it’s accessing the subconscious without sitting with your own thoughts for hours on end before you get to something real and deep. It’s not picking a card and then reading the creators intent or interpretation, well it can be that too, but mostly it’s looking at a card and seeing for yourself what it means for you.
Try it, ask anything. See what gets triggered, what rises in you, what it makes you think about.
So, the answer comes from within, not without, it’s your answer, just with a little nudging.
So, this is what my answer was: Writing is my souls gift, it’s what I want to do. I’m writing this novel because I’m angry, and conflicted, and in pain, and so are so many other people out there. It says: this is what the world has been like for us, this is what we’ve moved through, let’s transmute our pasts and learn from them, see what we can become.
So often I feel depressed and frustrated, like there’s no point to what I’m attempting here, but maybe that’s just the writing process. Maybe it will all be worth it in the end. But then maybe that’s a lot of pressure to put on a book I haven’t even finished writing yet.
