# 63 || “It is the time you have wasted for your rose that makes your rose so important.”

It feels like a lifetime since I’ve put pen to paper and scribbled down anything at all, really. But over the last few weeks spent growing out my hair, unrolling my yoga mat in a hot and humid studio every other day, re-assessing my priorities and figuring out where I truly belong - I might even be feeling better than I have in years. Every December writing resolutions for the new year is one of my very favourite things, but deep down inside me I knew this year had to be different than all the others. So whether this entry matches all of the words preceding it, and whether it makes any sense — — — I decided to write and share my reminders, rather than resolutions, for 2 0 1 5 :

i. Don’t forget, through every other emotion - your family will be there for you in the end, if not before or during the deluge. That’s a pretty safe bet and if I were you, I wouldn’t take those odds for granted.

ii. Don’t forget, “if you stay still, earth buries you, ready or not.”

iii. Don’t forget, with a head and a heart and a conscience, that you’re just as important as everybody else.

iv. Don’t forget what Annie Dillard said : “There are 1, 198, 500, 000 people alive now in China. To get a feel for what that means, simply take yourself - in all your singularity, importance, complexity, and love - and multiply it by 1,198,500,000. See? Nothing to it.”

v. Don’t forget, “Beginning is easy - Continuing is hard.”

I’ll never forget that one time I actually did my weekly readings for a class ; POLS2105 or something like that. Genocide Post-1945. I read what Annie Dillard said and it changed just about everything. Before that I was shy out of shame and self-deprecation, not out of some kind of strange humility that reminded me of every other beating heart in the world that might need more attention than me. For many things there are reasons behind them and you should try to understand before you come to your own conclusions. And for the reasonless other things you simply need to accept everybody else for their differences and decisions. I can’t forget that. For disappointment is one of my primary weaknesses. Disappointment in others precipitates disappointment in myself, and if not for apathy and detachment - I don’t know how I would make it through each and every day. But what needs to change this year is replacing indifference for a surrender to my own shortcomings. 

Writing this I am reminded of the Serenity Prayer and perhaps if I should forget everything, I should not forget this :  

"God, give me grace to accept with serenity,

the things that cannot be changed,

Courage to change the things

which should be changed,

And the Wisdom to distinguish

the one from the other."

because “For every ailment under the sun There is a remedy, or there is none ; If there be one, try to find it; If there be none, never mind it.”And with those words in mind, and a mini trip over-the-sea to look forward to, I think this year is going to turn out exactly as it should. Because while I can’t yet sincerely abolish all of the dreams and desires that make me a human being, I can reassure myself that what is real is the intention to be better. Not whether or not I had the strength or courage to be. 

"

How selfish it is
to crave
someone

like they were
yours
to miss at all.

" — Michelle K., But I Am Selfish.

Love,

A

# 62 || THE BITTERSWEET BETWEEN MY TEETH

sweetheart, bitter heart : now i can't tell you apart ( parte deux (( ou trois? )) )   

Sometimes it feels like all the words of wisdom I've ever been told, won't ever stop swimming inside the infinite ocean that is my mind and the crazy imagination that accompanies it. With the most humble intentions, I am offered words of wisdom advising me how to react to the confusion that seems to constantly perplex my psyche. All I want is to learn and understand how I can be the best possible human being I can be in this life, but it seems to be one hindrance after the other : physically, mentally and emotionally.

Lately this reality seems all too much to handle. The power and intensity of people and our unbounded potential is almost petrifying. Power and control lies in the desired outcome from everything and everybody involved. Take away any loss or gain from any situation and suddenly it has neutralised into something so raw and real, a thousandfold than it was before. Imagine if we indulged in everything we desired because, from the deepest place in our hearts, it was as organic as water flowing down a stream. There is no catch, no personal gain, no advantage. I want to eat a banana because it tastes like my childhood and will make me feel the perfect kind of nostalgic. Forget potassium and the fact that it's summer and bananas aren't a million dollars a milligram at the moment. Do everything for a thousand reasons that are just for you. 


If the only motivation I have at this moment is the curiosity of the things that are yet to come, of the future that hasn't happened and the magic that might mosey my way. If I consistently remind myself that the best is yet to come, then maybe that will incite the hope I need to wake up every morning. It's only Day 4 of this brand new year and I'm scared beyond measure.

xo,
A

# 61 || "Look up at the sky. Ask yourselves : is it yes or no?"

( WARNING: UN PEU HYPERVERBOSE )

"This is, to me, the loveliest and saddest landscape in the world."

-- Le Petit Prince.

Over the last twenty-five years ( give or take an hour or two ), I have learned that a lot of things slip through the cracks of clichés and words of wisdom combined. Maybe they’re best-kept secrets for a reason, so you don’t lose your belief in magic somewhere down the gutter : the place where you sometimes lose your hope, your faith, your integrity and self-love. In my wildest dreams ( or nightmares ), I never could have imagined the courage it takes to shine a light in the dark and see all those imperative features of reveries laying there all in a heap. But it doesn’t stop at courage, the strength to pick it up and dust it all off is beyond description. The merit in effort far exceeds the eminence in an effortless A+. Show me a pair of grazed knees, dirty hands and a tearstained pillowcase and I’ll give you five fucking stars. 

Sometimes I feel like I got lost somewhere in the middle of naivety and and this persistent guilt that won’t ever leave each and every crevice of my heart. It’s a mix between a curiosity and the desire to know absolutely everything that ever is and was and will be, combined with a fear that it’s all both frustratingly meaningless, and meaningful. It’s knowing of how to be better than I am, but to act upon it is still beyond reach. Does that make any sense at all?   

What if there was no such thing as prestige? What if we were all blind? What if respect and high regard stemmed from somewhere other than status and station? What if gold coins were replaced with genuine benevolence? I can only imagine a world where relationships arose from the deepest kind of love, the kind that wouldn’t dare make you trip and fall flat on your face in a nasty gutter. Instead I lay here amid red nail-polish soaked sheets, with a black heart trapped inside one helluva mess of a cage that has called itself a body. I only had one New Years Resolution and now it seems I was asking for too much. I’m one hundred and a million percent ready for this year to be over. I want to start try again. That’s all you can ever do, it seems. I only hope there was some kind of silver lining in this motherfucking bitch of a summerautumnwinterspring, and I pray that peace still exists. Bel anniversaire, petit oiseau. It's a new year. 

XOXO

ps. "Let me stand by you, the honour is mine."

# 60 || "When is a monster not a monster? Oh ... when you love it."

"If I find in myself desires which nothing in this world can satisfy, the only logical explanation is that I was made for another world." 

-- C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity.

( photo by emma matsuda )

It was just a fantasy, I have to remind myself of that every single morning. It seems I’ve been lucky enough to have been introduced to a kind of love that I have never known before. Perhaps it is a kind of love you only ever experience when the weather is warm enough to not need a sweater first thing in the morning, when you don’t want the night to end even if you know you get to wake up and do it all over again. If sleepy kittens and soy lattes aren’t enough to convince me out from under the covers, then perhaps the notion that summer even exists at all, maybe that is supposed to be enough. Maybe even a taste of paradise is supposed to satiate you until the end of days. Maybe it's wicked to want anything more than a morsel of something that felt like heaven.   

We dream about things, we conjure visions from the deepest and darkest hollows of our imagination. We dare to hope, we dare to desire, and we dare to lust — all of these seeming indulgences take more courage than you could ever imagine. It is easier to lose ourselves in the delusion that maybe nothing is transient. Especially not love. You don’t realise how the human mind attaches itself towards the comfort of what is familiar, and what is simple, and what is to be expected. It’s scary to be scared, it’s scary to not know what comes next, and it’s scary to even think of losing who or what seems to hold everything together.

I promise you’ll be okay. None of this is fair, and none of this makes sense, but I promise you’ll be okay. Here comes the sun and everything is gonna be alright. George Harrison said so, Bob Marley said so, Alicia Keys said so and I can only pinky swear with my right hand, and cross my fingers on the left, that what they and millions of others say is true. At some point tonight I realised that everything is bigger and better than anything I’ll ever be, and that isn’t something to be sad about, but instead I’m reminded that the capacity of every human emotion is so very powerful, and that power holds the answer to every action and inaction. But if that emotion just so happens to be love, don't ever feel like you need to defend your decisions. 

Question: Why?

Answer: "Because I loved _ _ _," --- that's more than enough. x

( i solemnly swear to be there, especially exclusively when you need it most )

# 59 || Þerney (One Thing)

I once-upon-a-time believed that absolutely everything is a choice, that nobody can make you do anything if you don’t really want to. But as I get older and the days blur into one-in-a-million, I can’t help but notice the norms that exist within society and all that keeps us united as citizens of the insanity that is the world we live in. Sometimes I think it is easier to love than to be loved, it is easier to give than to receive, and it’s all very well to offer advice and an opinion we don’t really believe. Or maybe that’s just me. 

What is self-love? I have never craved an escape like this before. I’ve never wanted to disappear so much. Sometimes whilst trying to stay present, I remain a split-second behind and mistake it for being stagnant. I indulge in the luxury of written illustration of the present moment, which is often misinterpreted as daydreaming. This habit is more of a tendency than a habit, and somewhere in the last decade maybe I’ve lost track of what’s really real.

Dear sparkle, where are you? I think I lost you somewhere in six or seven months ago. Please come back. I miss you. Love, Afifa x 

PS. What a mess !