Be still, Heart

Everything is fine in my life but there comes a quiet moment when my heart starts to ache and I have to stop what I’m doing and figure out why.  It’s only slight at first, but then more heavy, until I have to search out the source of its sadness.

_{A Rainy Day in Burgos, digital photograph, N. Nazir, 2019}

Something lovelorn lies in me that I can’t put into words.  I thought I was done being lovelorn.  I’m over my last relationship, I practise forgiveness wherever I can but something else lies unresolved in my soul.  It uncoils and wriggles and awakens me in the early hours.  It urges me not to rest too long, to keep moving, keep pushing upward.  There are so many places yet to go, to search for it – that thing, whatever it aches for.  It’s pining for something, that’s for sure.  

_{View from my balcony, N. Nazir, digital photograph, 2020}

My heart knows things my mind doesn’t.  It always has.  It’s so much more psychic than my mind.  Trouble is, it leaves my mind befuddled in trying to piece together the mystery.  My heart speaks in art and music and poetry and delicate essences of intangible notions and I find myself, at times, besieged by emotions I have to untangle and comprehend.  My mind is doing fine and then my heart unearths a sadness, like the ocean throwing up an old boat, empty of it’s captain, abandoned.  Silently, it moans.  What is it, Heart?  How do I fix you?  Where do you want me to go?  What should I do next?  I’ve done everything you’ve asked me to.  Why are you still crying?  Give me a clue as to what you’re searching for.  Mind will always help you but Heart, you must first open up.

_{Doggie in the window, N. Nazir, digital photograph, 2020}

Art-making soothes the ache, just making big all-consuming art that swallows you whole.  Many, many multiples of me in art form born of my hands, my perception, swooning colour and glorious space.  This helps.  Heart still smarts but is calmed and reassured by the release.  It thanks my body for setting it free.

_{Afternoon shaft of sunlight and dust motes. Pre-thunder breeze but humid. Siesta.
N. Nazir, digital photograph, 2020}

Another thing that heals the ache is performing on stage.  Even though I never get past the nerves, there’s something about that sharing that is the most freeing exorcism.  My heart is thumping a staccato but throughout it all my senses are in the moment and I feel alive. I’m left feeling so light.  Especially when people laugh, oh, especially when they share the journey with me, and howl.  My work here is done, I think.  Tonight I will sleep well.

_{Incidental heart shape I discovered inside some broccoli I was preparing to cook. Good omen, heart chakra is green, after all.
N. Nazir, digital photograph, 2020}

One other thing that calms Heart is playing the guitar.  Simple shapes, and clumsy, as my fingers trip over the strings, but those quiet moments of spilled notes are solitary riches.  A late night summer evening a song may will me to play.  Sometimes, it could be first thing in the morning that I awake with the song that wills me.  Playing music is like gentle waves of water running through you.  It leads you to oneness, the bigger ocean.  Soothing, like stroking a frightened snake until it’s calm again.  I think that’s what Heart is asking for.  More types of oneness.  When Mind has taken over and led Soul all over the place and Heart has been ignored, it pipes up and steals Soul so Mind must obey because Heart knows best.  Like a mother, it always knows best.

_{Untitled, N. Nazir, digital photograph, 2020}

© N Nazir 2020

Stream of Consciousness II

Divorcee. What a funny label. I have divorced myself from matrimony. I am matrimonially removed. Keep your ring finger away from me. You won’t take me up the aisle. I don’t care how big your rocks are. Let’s play a game of truth or dare and let it play out to a good ripe conclusion. That would get my rocks off. So would a party that breaks all the rules, it would be just the tonic everyone needs. A celebration that spits in the face of tradition and makes a ceremony of the ridiculous. Where both prim and proper and coarse and obscene must reside as neighbours, for the party is always so much better when the prim and proper are there to shock. Send me an invite or I will gatecrash anyway.

The Kama Sutra of kissing. Even if you wrote a book about it, it can’t be taught. It’s sensuality and artistry and timing and taste and all kinds of other things in between.

* * *

The winner takes it all. But when they lose, the thing they lose really hurts. Or it hurts them that everyone else loses because of them.

Why do people eat shark’s fin? What is it about the fin? Those motherfuckers need to leave sharks alone.

I don’t go for blonds. Or brunettes. Or redheads. I don’t have a type. It’s something that shines outward I go for. I can’t explain it. Something sparkly when the light catches their eyelashes or something. It’s an essence or a spice. Like coriander or lemongrass. Subtle, sharp, pervasive, perfumed. All that and more.

Hast thou the flower there? Welcome, wanderer.

* * *

Who says meal worms can’t climb out of their bowl? They’re desperate to be a new thing, not just fodder for the dragons. But the blind lazy ones don’t mind being food, because the dragons need to bloom. Their warm chubby bellies as they wriggle up your forearm. Their bright little eyes as they regard you sideways and lick you for recognition. Their sharp little spikes and darkening scales when they get annoyed. Melt. Dragons are love.

I can feel the whispering ghost of winter’s beauty in the air even though summer hasn’t yet grown ripe. I love winter’s whispering beauty, it always comes upon me at this time of year. It hints at something intimate and loving just out of reach but attainable at a given time. The ghost of this wish has always been with me. It excites me and I have no idea why.

You need to deal out a different medicine for different people. They all require an individual remedy. Some need to swallow their own bitter pill to meet the transformation they are so ardently seeking.

© N Nazir 2020

*photos taken from i-stock and film stills off the internet

The text to each image is deliberately jumbled up so you have to piece it together at the end. I don’t know why I chose to do it that way, it just felt right.

Lockdown in Spain has been…

…actually a time of nourishment for me in many ways. The world has literally been toxic with a virus but quarantining has been a time to detoxify, psychically, from other’s auric energy fields. It’s a relief. Okay, so lesson planning every day and teaching online has still consumed my time but it has been more wholesome. And my job I’ve come to value and enjoy, not least because I’m good at it, because it means I come into contact with some hilarious humans I’m delighted to have as students, but because it’s my bread and butter and supports my everyday needs. So the rest of my time can be spent seeking refuge in all the other art forms I’m obsessed with, that I need in my life to quite simply be my healthiest liberated self. Like photography. Trying to capture a beatific glimpse of the eternal.

_{View from my terrace with last week’s full moon, Digital Photograph © N. Nazir, 2020}

I rent a roomy attic flat above a bookshop on the main plaza in Aranda de Duero. It’s airy and spacious and open plan with lovely light to write, read, draw, sew. It’s big enough for two but perfect for one, I love having all this space to myself, I revel in it, it allows me to think and clear my thoughts. It allows me mental replenishment, a great place to self-isolate.

_{Plaza Mayor, view from my terrace, Digital Photograph © N. Nazir, 2020}

I’m lucky, I know. I enjoy solitude and the artistic life, it suits me fine. It’s freezing in winter and when the spring storms come a-blustering, the wind whistles through, the rain pelts a tattoo and leaks through in various parts of the flat, but now I know where so I always have strategically placed bowls here and there to catch it, and there they remain. The ceiling creaks and groans constantly, involuntarily, particularly in the dead of night, at times jolting me awake with the snapping sound of wood shrinking back to its former size. I find all these idiosyncrasies comforting. I’ll miss this place. It wormed its way into my heart. Sloping ceilings and wood, so much wood, huge terrace with a view of the plaza, just space everywhere. I’ve spent wonderful hours just lying on my bed and thinking, overthinking, realising, cogitating. It was perfect for the time it was mine. It nurtured my poetry and song and art. It’s still mine for a few more weeks.

_{Last week’s full Strawberry Moon, Digital Photograph, © N. Nazir, 2020}

I’ll be leaving soon. I’ll be sad but glad to go. It’s been great but it’s time to move on. How many countless times have I been here in my life, another chapter finished. Part of me even enjoys leaving. The casting off, the removal of dead leaves, the pruning, the breath of new shoots, the excitement of it. The world suffers but brings fresh hope. I want to be part of its hopeful future.

_{Zoomed-in view of the back of Santa Maria Church from my kitchen window, Digital Photograph © N. Nazir, 2020}

_{Santa Maria Church (a tiny stroll away), Digital Photograph © N. Nazir, 2020}

© N Nazir 2020