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
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
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
I love you — all of you! You are energy and potential and beauty. I invite you to breathe with me, sing with me, dance with me, cry, laugh, splash in puddles, build big fires and watch the sparks fly, read with me, cook with me, take care of bleeding hearts with me, awaken sleeping souls, ignite forgotten dreams, celebrate everyday miracles. I invite you to believe in yourselves, to believe in each other, and to love, love, love.
— heidi kalyani, 2017
from the *nothing is black and white* project: illustration created out of meditation with a single unbroken line
The road I walk is not straight, but rather follows my heart. And I can see that sometimes ― from the outside ― it seems to meander in unpredictable ways. But my heart has never lied to me. Has never steered me into a situation I couldn’t eventually handle. Has never forgotten that u-turns are a valuable and viable way to travel. For it’s not indecision or lack of conviction that encourages me to double back on myself, but rather a desire to revisit something beautiful, something I hadn’t fully internalized, something bigger than I was able to absorb the first time around. My heart is not interested in the efficiency of direct routes, or getting somewhere quickly, or at a certain time. Instead it craves the quality and depth of connection, the willingness of another being to slow down and engage in a full sharing of attention, the courage and humility of opening to each other in every way we know how.
— heidi kalyani, 2016
from the *nothing is black and white* project: illustration created out of meditation with a single unbroken line
I wonder, as we walk on the dusty dykeland path in the still warm sun of late summer, if you crave human touch as much as I do. If you also want to reach out across the invisible but, sadly real, societal boundary between us ― to take my hand in yours, to feel its warmth, its alternating roughness and smoothness, the history of its microscopic scars, the story of its aliveness. Each day, in a multitude of ways (some tiny, some huge), we buy into the myth of separateness, of us as isolated islands, unconnected to each other, to our surroundings, to the visceralness of life around us. And each day, we starve a little more, our hearts shrinking, our capacity to reach out to each other evaporating, our collective memory of the power and naturalness of connection decaying like roadkill. Who will step up and offer the courage, the trust, the simple open-hearted compassion to reach a hand across this destructive and manufactured divide?
— heidi kalyani, 2016
from the *nothing is black and white* project: illustration created out of meditation with a single unbroken line
The container you’re trying to put me in is not even big enough for my baby finger. For I am not just this body, but I stretch way beyond the edges of the known universe. I am sound. I am light. I am energy. I am the vastness of everything conceivable. I am all of us. Our pain. Our wisdom. Our needs. Our desires. Our collective ability to be courageous and heal, and after we’ve healed, to grow, to create and embody the kind of future we truly want for ourselves. I am that huge, because I am not alone, not separate, not in competition. So, you see, I am too big to be stuffed into the little bag you would have me inhabit, too multi-limbed, too connected, too free. But you have a choice, you know. You can strain yourself, draining your life-force trying to push me down so you feel bigger, or you can let go and allow the universe to fill you, the way it has filled me… And then you can be big too.
— heidi kalyani, 2016
from the *nothing is black and white* project: illustration created out of meditation with a single unbroken line
“The most important decision we make is whether we believe we live in a friendly or hostile universe.” ― Albert Einstein
What’s happened to you that you wake up every morning believing you live in a hostile world? Who doubted you? Harassed you? Demeaned you? Took their anger out on you? Who didn’t watch your back or offer to help you when you fell down? Who silenced you when you asked questions that hit too close to home? Told you that your curiosity was dangerous and inappropriate? Was threatened by your energy and intellect, your unique way of digesting the world? Who shut you down?
It could have been anyone of us, or all of us. Our fears leak out all over the place. We’re afraid we’re not smart enough, not energetic enough, not beautiful enough, not fill-in-the-blank enough. We separate ourselves from each other, and sort ourselves into divisive binaries; “that side yucky, this side nice”. We compare. And compete. We create top-down power systems where most of us “lose”. And in the anger and frustration of our loss, we start believing that we live in a hostile world, because in our suffering, it feels like one to us. We are islands of unhappiness. Islands of powerlessness. And because we don’t know how to break the cycle of despair, we act out. As if for our survival, we kick, we scream, we push other people down.
But what if we start believing that we actually live in a friendly, benign world? That we are not separate from each other, or from the planet that sustains us. What if we believe that co-operation makes us stronger, connection makes us more resilient, love helps us envision and accomplish anything? What if we are gentle with ourselves, gentle with each other? What if we wake up each morning ready to embrace and support each other?
Could we change the world?
— heidi kalyani, 2016
from the *nothing is black and white* project: illustration created out of meditation with a single unbroken line
I’m learning that when I feel “lonely”, I actually need to be alone. Really alone. No books. No crowds. No electronic devices. No animals. No distracting or absorbing tasks of any kind. I need to just *be*. For the “loneliness”, I’m realizing, is a result of being separated from myself. From my inner workings. My intuition. My senses. My heart. And when I’m separated from myself like this, I begin to look for what I need in other places, in other people. I search for an external “fix”. But no one, no matter how connected we are, knows me like I do. No one can soothe my aches or dispel my confusion like I can. No one has the energy or attention for me that I do. And so when I come back to myself (with respect and full commitment), my loneliness melts away and is slowly replaced with a familiar and deeply rooted confidence, a knowing that has no doubts, no fears, no shame, only a sense of vastness, and timelessness, and profound reassurance.
— heidi kalyani, 2016
from the *nothing is black and white* project: illustration created out of meditation with a single unbroken line
When I’m with you I see a being that is leaking out everywhere, trying to express itself, trying to resist the pressure of conforming to someone else’s comfort level or some artificially manufactured idea of happiness and beauty, trying to ignore the message that it’s somehow not good enough just the way it is, even though in the deepest reaches of your inside, you know you just want to be heard. I too have often been made small by a culture that is afraid of love, afraid of difference, afraid of colouring outside of the lines, afraid someone might speak a truth so simple and radical that their power-over dynasty would fall like a stack of wooden blocks. Like you, I’m tired of living in this limited reality, this old story, this one-way power game. As Rumi said, “There are lovers content with longing. I’m not one of them.” Let’s use our energy, our synergy, our whole beings, and create a new world!
— heidi kalyani, 2016
from the *nothing is black and white* project: illustration created out of meditation with a single unbroken line