Posts Tagged with transformation

Published

upside down

Sometimes I feel like grabbing my house and shaking it upside down until the dead bits that no longer serve me all fall out. But some kind of ancient fear keeps stopping me, whispering, taunting, trying to bury me — all under the guise of protection. THINGS are a lifeline that you might need to survive, it tells me. Don’t you want to survive? Piles and piles of protection. Cloth. Paper. Metal. Wood. A thousand ideas written in tiny letters on fading scraps. Instruction manuals for things I no longer remember. Broken glass and pottery from twenty year old accidents. Kitchen utensils someone gave me that I’ve hardly ever used. A stack of black t-shirts with necks so tight I feel like I’m choking. Keep it. Save it. You might need it. Winter could be hard. The war might go on forever. An ancestral desire to hang on to what might keep me alive, what might help me thrive. A childhood habit of collecting and saving for when I might have a someone to share it with. A cultural mantra that more is better. And yet, when I’m away from this place, with only a bag of clothes and books, I feel strong, not vulnerable. Empowered, not impoverished. Rich, not overwhelmed. So, little house, with your closets bursting, your basement overflowing, your flat surfaces all smothered with stuff, it’s time to let go!

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

Published

roaring

Today I am a tiger. Rrrrr! I’m processing emotion before it sinks into my gut and makes tight, hard places that are almost impossible to release. Rrrrr! I’m feeling the deep, sticky entanglement of frustration. I’m noticing it, naming it and letting it go. I’m riding the crashing wave of fear. I’m noticing, naming and letting go. I’m whirling under a cloud of pain, alternately thick and dull or shifting and stabbing. Rrrrr! I’m using my awareness of the present moment (the taste of my tea, the tiny creases in the back of my hand, the rise and fall of my chest) to hold myself tenderly through these emotional storms — the way you would hold me if you were here. Rrrrr!

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

Published

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

Published

waking up

In this shut-tight sealed-in half-asleep state in the first rays of light, my limbs ache from gripping, my brain aches from looping, my heart aches from lack of air. In the darkness that surrounds me, with the blankets pulled up high, I can believe anything — the world is on fire, I live in a house made of ice, my siblings are four-legged, my hair is olive green, no one is starving, we’re all starving. And what I believe (or don’t believe) becomes my reality. It etches itself into my still-impressionable being and colours how my day unfolds. Alone, in this cocoon of a bed, as I wrap myself in imaginings, in futuristic predictions, in half-digested memories, I enter into a powerful transition, an emerging from the other side, the swirling fog of a half opened/half closed mind, the daily practice of awakening.

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

Published

cut open

I’m being cut like a frozen river by the blade of a skate. It stings and seethes — for awhile — then heals over with fresh snow or the thaw and re-freeze of a sunny afternoon. I’m tracing circles through the layers of my life — trying to make sense of patterns that aren’t clear, or perhaps aren’t there. I’m looking at myself in the mirror, on the shiny surfaces of the technology that surrounds me, in the reflective eyes of the people in my sphere. And I’m seeing a crust, a veneer, a peel. But what am I beneath my outer layers — the ones that I ritually put on for protection when I walk out the door, or that I let others slip over me so that my packaging pleases them more? What leaks through when I’m cut by loss or fear — or love? (For when it’s open and deep, love makes a cut too.) Is it emotion? Vulnerability? Honesty? Integrity? The wildness of possibility? And how beautiful would it be if we let ourselves, and others, bleed our glorious life-juices all over the fresh white snow, instead of trying to pretend that we’re perfectly smooth and together both above and below the surface — especially when there’s a vibrant, messy, unruly fire burning in us!

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

Published

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

Published

wind

Wind unnerves me when it whistles through cracks in my windows in the darkness of a moonless night, or slaps wet tree branches against the siding of my little wooden house. It makes a mess of my hair — the long strands stinging my eyes and tangling themselves around my tongue when I try to eat or speak. It pulls the fall leaves down weeks before I’m ready, leaving the trees bare and the ground an unexpected yellow. It moves my emotions as fast as clouds, sometimes in straightforward lines, but more often in increasing and decreasing spirals — round and round until I’ve felt so much, I feel nothing. And sometimes, as it cools the back of my neck, dances through the long grasses on the side of the path, or lovingly surrounds me with the raw scent of wild roses, I’m grateful for the animation and movement inherent in it — for without it, I fear I’d get stuck.

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

Published

untitled

I feel emboldened
by the astonishing courage of plants
as they poke their tiny green heads
above the soil

Is it faith,
habit,
instinct,
that allows them to burst forth
with such boldness?

It seems a mad disregard for safety,
and a deep embracing of vulnerability,
to come into a Northern spring
tender, naked and green

— heidi kalyani, 2017

{Thanks to the lovely folks at Open Heart Forgery for publishing these words in the Open Heart Farming 2017 issue!}

Published

longing

Your eyes are burning with a longing most of us are afraid to see — we turn away, drown in distraction, pretend it’s imaginary, try to protect our own disappointment with the way things are. Your longing is a fire that emits intense heat. It’s raw and visceral and inflames each draw of breath so that you gasp on your inhales and pour out great plumes of fire on your exhales. It’s a longing for wholeness, for depth, for connection, for a kind of beauty you thought was natural until you were taught that no one else believed it was true. But I believe in it. And I’ve been dreaming of finding you. As I drift into sleep, lie on warm grass gazing at clouds, or scratch words into a notebook as fast as my hand will allow, I whisper softly to the universe, “I am here! I am alive! I want to build a new world with you!”

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

Published

being with water

Perched on the edge of the dock, the smallest amount of my flesh possible in contact with the wood, I try to appear casual, as if slipping into the water below is as routine and natural as drinking tea. A thing to do alone or with company. A commonplace activity we all learned to be comfortable with long ago. But it’s not. The tightness in my stomach tells me so. There are too many unknowns, suffocating memories, habitually reactivated fears. There is clearly a way to be with water that I haven’t discovered yet. An ease that exists, is present in those near me, but rushes into dark corners whenever I’m around. It’s not a thing to fake; “Look at me jumping, splashing, diving in!” Choking. Gasping. Drowning. Dead. Not a game of “breathe and push through it”, although I’ve played that one before and enjoyed the outcome. Sometimes fear is fear. The knot in my stomach tells me so. So I sit, chatting with the nearest soul, sunning myself, counting minutes off like elongated years, hoping no one will notice that I’m not yet wet.

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