family

The Family, the cosmic, transcends our realms of humanity.
Your mother
         father
         sister
         brother
         stranger
         lover
         friend
         and enemy
The birds
The bees
The flowers
The trees
All interstellar entities
Everything that lives and breathes
We are all family.

--Zoe Bedeaux from i-D Soul

saturday poem

FAMILY

The Family, the cosmic, transcends our realms of humanity.
Your mother
         father
         sister
         brother
         stranger
         lover
         friend
         and enemy
The birds
The bees
The flowers
The trees
All interstellar entities
Everything that lives and breathes
We are all family.

--Zoe Bedeaux from i-D Soul

saturday poem

Home

no one leaves home unless
home is the mouth of a shark
you only run for the border
when you see the whole city running as well

your neighbors running faster than you
breath bloody in their throats
the boy you went to school with
who kissed you dizzy behind the old tin factory
is holding a gun bigger than his body
you only leave home
when home won’t let you stay.

no one leaves home unless home chases you
fire under feet
hot blood in your belly
it’s not something you ever thought of doing
until the blade burnt threats into
your neck
and even then you carried the anthem under
your breath
only tearing up your passport in an airport toilets
sobbing as each mouthful of paper
made it clear that you wouldn’t be going back.

you have to understand,
that no one puts their children in a boat
unless the water is safer than the land
no one burns their palms
under trains
beneath carriages
no one spends days and nights in the stomach of a truck
feeding on newspaper unless the miles travelled
means something more than journey.
no one crawls under fences
no one wants to be beaten
pitied

no one chooses refugee camps
or strip searches where your
body is left aching
or prison,
because prison is safer
than a city of fire
and one prison guard
in the night
is better than a truckload
of men who look like your father
no one could take it
no one could stomach it
no one skin would be tough enough

the
go home blacks
refugees
dirty immigrants
asylum seekers
sucking our country dry
niggers with their hands out
they smell strange
savage
messed up their country and now they want
to mess ours up
how do the words
the dirty looks
roll off your backs
maybe because the blow is softer
than a limb torn off

or the words are more tender
than fourteen men between
your legs
or the insults are easier
to swallow
than rubble
than bone
than your child body
in pieces.
i want to go home,
but home is the mouth of a shark
home is the barrel of the gun
and no one would leave home
unless home chased you to the shore
unless home told you
to quicken your legs
leave your clothes behind
crawl through the desert
wade through the oceans
drown
save
be hunger
beg
forget pride
your survival is more important

no one leaves home until home is a sweaty voice in your ear
saying-
leave,
run away from me now
i dont know what i’ve become
but i know that anywhere
is safer than here

-- Warsan Shire

friday cartoon

far

"Leaving home and loving home don't have to be at odds with one another. Despite what our grandmothers' rib-cracking hugs lead us to believe, our families never intended to keep us-only to   make and teach us, and to love us enough to let us go...

...our secure base is our people, not a location. Those relationships can stand firm among the zigzagging, sling-shotting trajectory of our nomadic lives."

-- Kelsey Snell (for Kinfolk Magazine)

feel things

The first person who saw your face was delighted by you. Isn’t that something? You managed to bring joy only by breathing.
Your mother will occasionally peek through the cracks of your door when you are sleeping, even now, to make sure that she can see the movements of your chest.
The boy who kissed you in the park last night isn’t in love with you, he won’t even stay, but he meant every second of those minutes.
You’ll walk a city street that your feet have never touched before and you’ll be terrified of getting lost and that feeling is what’ll help you find the way home.
You’ll give your money to a homeless man and he will hold your hand firmly between his and he will say ‘thank you so, so much’ and isn’t that something?
There’s a piece of music that makes your heart feel like it’s bleeding. Listen to it. Listen to it again.
When was the last time you paused to stare at night time?
Did you know that there is at least one person in your life who will jump in front of a hail of bullets for you, without your asking.
Your entire body is made of nerves. Feel things.
Take walks in places you’ve never been.
Take photographs of people not everyone considers beautiful. Find loveliness in them.
Let go of the things that are killing you from the inside out.
One day you’re going to be part of the sky, you’re going to be that beautiful and that necessary but not today. Not today.
--Azra

(Source: thirlie)

Zashiki-warashi

All images belong to Carolina Silva and you find more here and here.  

Carolina writes about these watercolours on here website...

'The appearance of this spirit is that of a 5 or 6 year child. Zashiki-warashi can be found in well-maintained and preferably large old houses. It is said that once a zashiki-warashi inhabits a house, it brings the residence great fortune; on the other hand, should a zashiki-warashi depart, the domain soon falls into a steep decline. As the zashiki-warashi is child-like in nature, it is prone to playing harmless pranks and occasionally causing mischief.'

Sarah and Joshua

♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡

lean on me

Photographs by Bertil Nilsson for Kinfolk Magazine

family

"A family is a network of people who care for each other. 

You can be born into one or build your own. It can contain hundreds or two. Real family values have nothing to do with where we live or how we know each other -  they're about how we treat each other. "

-- Nathan Williams and Georgia Frances King
Kinfolk, The Family Issue

The Forces With You!

One of the books my Dad wrote with my Aunty way back when.
This was always my favorite,  it explains (to kids) how forces such as gravity, friction, elasticity, and inertia and agents of force such as leverage and balance affect our lives.

The Forces With You, Tom Johnston and Sarah Pooley, 1987

I WISH YOU ALL a Merry Christmas, a wonderful last few weeks and a prosperous New Year!

I'm spending Christmas with my family and plan to eat well, take baths and let my body settle into winter. Oh and listen to songs about snow, naturally.

Excitement! I can't wait.

Blog posts will resume in the New Year.
x

Image by Gary Simmons
I Wish, I Wish…Forever (2003)
Charcoal on vellum

tis true. Found here

Love.

For gentle Joe.
The brightest lights cast the biggest shadows.

Portugal

Two weeks of joy and a funny kind of sweetness with my family. I enjoyed every minute of it.

All photos by me. 

Holiday

The North East coast is stunning...and the sea is bloody cold!!!!!!
I enjoyed time with my family and the space. I love places that make you realise how tiny you and your problems are.

(photos: bamburgh castle and my cousin eve and me)

Happy Mum Day!!!!

Family

The Family, the cosmic, transcends our realms of humanity.
Your mother
         father
         sister
         brother
         stranger
         lover
         friend
         and enemy
The birds
The bees
The flowers
The trees
All interstellar entities
Everything that lives and breathes
We are all family.

--Zoe Bedeaux from i-D Soul