Posts Tagged with connection

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becoming

If I knew my name, I’d tell you. I’d whisper it in your ear, my lips brushing the skin of your face, my breath warming the space between us. Or I’d yell it from the top of the hill everyone calls a mountain, my voice reaching the top branches of the trees where the ravens circle. I’d tell you other things about me too, if I knew. I’d place words on leaves in the splashing stream, waiting until you’d read one to send another. I’d fold sentences into pieces of scrap paper and fly them to you on gusts of wind. I’d share everything with a handful of dried grasses, light a fire, and let you read the smoke messages that curled through the night air. I’d introduce you to who I am about to become… if I thought I was done.

— heidi kalyani, 2019 
from the *nothing is black and white* project: illustration created out of meditation with a single unbroken line

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resilience

You tried to rip my heart out but I moved too fast. I sealed the gash with worthiness and love for who I am now, and for who I used to be. I used the silken threads of friendship and the reassurance of my own inner voice. I spread the balm of singing late into the darkest hours with a resonate instrument against my chest. I bathed in the warmth of self kindness, of compassion, of hot spicy tea and a fire in my little enamel stove. I breathed deeply into the knowing that my beauty, my courage, my passion for life are inner and eternal. That these few holes in my heart will heal, that I will expand, and radiate, and trust again.

— heidi kalyani, 2019 
from the *nothing is black and white* project: illustration created out of meditation with a single unbroken line

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vastness


When I sit with myself like this, in stillness and silence, I feel vast and impervious. I am a stone that gets wet and dries off. A stem that leans into the wind and straightens again. A curl that bounces back.

— heidi kalyani, 2018 
from the *nothing is black and white* project: illustration created out of meditation with a single unbroken line

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gram

Every time I saw her she told me her heart ached — though, of course, she never said so in words. Born on a cold corner in Winnipeg, watching siblings multiple on the Prairies, growing up too fast on a train ride to Ontario — her father dead before he could fetch them at the station. The play of her hands in her lap, her not-so-gentle smack a “love-pat”. A serious oldest sister, the only one with work during the long depression, waiting for marriage, waiting for children, already forty-six when her baby turned five. Patience and perseverance knitted and twirled into dog blankets, shawls and slippers in colours all longing for spring. Widowed early — outliving family, dogs and flimsy tin houses. Creases at the edges of her lips, a rough tremor in her voice, a distance in her eyes like waiting for things to die.

— heidi kalyani, 2018 
from the *nothing is black and white* project: illustration created out of meditation with a single unbroken line

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rewind

Thank you for helping me end the deep aching aloneness I have known for so long. The kind of aloneness that comes from not being heard, from believing in shades of grey others see as black or white, from being on the edge of no longer trusting my own intuition. The kind of aloneness that permeates so fully it becomes a surface, a skin, something that sheds kindness and human contact even when I want it more than anything. The kind of aloneness that is amplified by large crowds, and the quietest, darkest hours of the night. These are the kinds of aloneness that had become so ingrained, so habitual, so conditioned, that no matter how hard I tried to move forward, I always seemed to rewind.

— heidi kalyani, 2018 
from the *nothing is black and white* project: illustration created out of meditation with a single unbroken line

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burrowing

When the world is too much for me (or I’m too much for the world!), I burrow down, down, down into a place of warmth and darkness with stuffed bunnies and bears. I rub my hands over their soft fur, align myself with their namesakes winter patterning and retreat for awhile from a world that is too cold and harsh to feel liveable. In these moments of quiet conservation of energy, with the external noise of the day at a minimum, I can finally begin to hear myself — my body, my mind, my heart, my internal wisdom. And though not a full hibernation (neither rabbits nor bears actually hibernate either), I emerge from my warm burrow refreshed and refuelled enough to carry on.

— heidi kalyani, 2018 
from the *nothing is black and white* project: illustration created out of meditation with a single unbroken line

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now

After checking levels and pressing record, we settle into a conversation, with me nodding silently, speaking with my eyes and sometimes the tilt of my head, and you pouring your heart out with words that pierce me with their rawness, inspire me with their depth, or warm me with their vulnerability. There is a beautiful intimacy in our eye contact, our shared humanity, our momentary oneness, made more intense by the nowness of knowing the camera is rolling.

— heidi kalyani, 2017 
from the *nothing is black and white* project: illustration created out of meditation with a single unbroken line

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cracker calm

I sat today, on the shady steps of a series of houses that were all for sale, with a five year old who was carefully spreading hummus on crackers with a miniature spoon, then stuffing the little savoury “cookies” into their mouth — whole — and chomping away with incredible focus and devotion as if nothing else mattered. In the middle of the adult-generated whirlwind of questions, decisions, timelines, facts, factors, finances… there was a centre of calm. Spoon. Cracker. Hummus. Crunch. Crunch. Crunch.

— heidi kalyani, 2017 
from the *nothing is black and white* project: illustration created out of meditation with a single unbroken line

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passion for pudding

When did this passion for homemade chocolate pudding take hold? When I finally woke up and remembered the sensual pleasures of the body, or rather, allowed myself to bathe in the present moment again, soaking in every touch, taste, smell, sound and sight? When I remembered to breathe while eating? When I accidentally, but happily, found a recipe using bananas, avocado and honey? When I dreamed of topping it with red berries and coconut whipped cream (the latter being one of the most sensuous foods to have passed my lips in years)? Is it the colour? The texture? The richness of flavour? Or is it something else all together? The idea of decadence. The memory of tingling senses. The anticipation of being enticed, excited, stimulated. The salivating warm flush of knowing something beautiful is about to happen. Or am I simply hungry? Perhaps there’s a nutrient in the mix that my body needs, a missing vitamin or mineral, a purveyor of energy and life. Or perhaps, simply, pudding is a perfect food and my newfound passion means I’ll never want to eat anything else again!

— heidi kalyani, 2017 
from the *nothing is black and white* project: illustration created out of meditation with a single unbroken line

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belonging

Where are you from? they ask. And I reply, gently, I am from here. From this earth. Fed by this water and warmed by this sun. I have knelt on these rocks, picked fruit from these plants, sheltered under these trees. I sleep here and awaken here. I laugh here and cry here. When I speak, the air carries my words in swirls from here to there and back again. I am from here. I am from everywhere. I belong.

— heidi kalyani, 2017 
from the *nothing is black and white* project: illustration created out of meditation with a single unbroken line