Light in August

August was a dream, bringing gifts of rest and softness. After the heat and hectic activity of June and July, I unravelled into the slow, easy mornings, balmy days and velvet nights.

Life necessarily revolved around the needs of others, and if I’m being honest, it was a blessed relief. Without the need for alarm clocks and strict routines, for the first time in a long while I started to feel calm. In the day to day of making camping trips and sleepovers and trips to the park and the beach happen, something curious occurred. I relaxed and stopped worrying so much about everything.

I made time for a spiritual practice in the morning because I wasn’t in a hurry. I got tired of the internet and read a novel. I chipped away at my long project and savoured the sweetness of the season. I made a lot of snacks. I even baked, for fuck’s sake, not with a child but just for myself.

August has been good medicine.

Despite being in holiday mode, there was still this odd nagging feeling that I should be doing more (ah, hello internalised capitalism): posting, sharing, being visible, etc. Pursuing expansion and making noise. The goal, I suppose, is to build a following and capitalise on it, and while this is a reasonable enough business model, I suspect that endless growth is no better for the creative human soul than it is for the planet. At least, not mine.

I don’t have any neat conclusions to offer here, except to say that there is nothing wrong with occasionally taking time off to go deep before returning to the fray. Of listening to the seasons of your soul and changing up the hows and even the whys of your practice.

In the context of an economic machine that pushes for perpetual growth, observing and honouring our inner cycles is an act of creative and cultural rebellion. Sometimes you have to get quiet enough to hear what it is that you want to say. Sometimes you have to disappear inwards and trust that the fallow times are just as important as the word counts and the stats and the dopamine hits. Sometimes you just need to duck out for a while and let the work happen. Creative work takes the time it takes, and writers are often elemental creatures who ebb and flow with our own inner tides. This can take days, months or even years.

“Whether through dreams or ‘gap time’ in our schedules, creativity is something that natures through us when we give it the room it needs.

Originality then becomes the practice of unhindering what’s already there. This work is essential to belonging because your creative offering is like a holy signal to those who carry a similar vibratory signature. In hearing or seeing what you’ve created, they will find a sense of belonging with you and, by being found, so will you.”

- Excerpt from Belonging by Toko-pa Turner

But the dreams of summer never last. Now that the dry, dusty pause between summer and autumn has blown in, I feel the old familiar pull to get back into things. But I will miss August’s peaceful, easy feeling; in all this chaos, it felt like a defiant act of delight, a reminder that I can’t change the world, but I can write my poems, raise my kids, and make my garden a quiet temple.

So here’s to the algorithm anarchists, the ones who honour the ebbs and flows, the ones who believe in the authentic expression of truth and beauty and meaning as a way to earn the title ‘human being’ (because it does have to be earned), and a way to make your life mean love. Quite simply, we haven’t got time for anything else.

What is it that you want to say?

“As artists we are constantly learning. We have the luxury of trying new things, of engaging with strangers, of being vessels for conversation and dialogue. Everything we do has the potential to be art. What a privilege.

Please don’t go into the art world feeling boxed… rail against the rule book, shake the bars, dance on the desk of the oppressors. Right now, more than ever, the world needs your voices, your language, and your openhearted passions.

You are our only hope. Art has influence; it always has.

Your existence is a political act.”

— Paloma Faith

“Remember, remember, this is now, and now, and now. Live it, feel it, cling to it. I want to become acutely aware of all I’ve taken for granted.”

— Sylvia Plath

The light is never more beautiful than it is in August.
The red clover is beginning to turn brown in the fields
and the sea is a bowl full of reincarnation,
eternity reflected in her skin.
I have lived just long enough to know the value
of empty days where nothing happens,
sunsets and small birds in quiet trees.
By nightfall I have usually dissolved into a dream
of gratefulness, passing over into golden silence — 
like a sun always setting, like light in August.

This month, I:

• swam in the sea, refreshed my spirit, wrote a poem about it

• worked on my manuscript, slowly, slowly. Jeanette Winterson’s essay on the difference between clock time and creative time was timely and helpful.

• submitted a poem to the calm-inducing new poetry platform Opol, and was delighted to be accepted as a founding writer. Keep an eye out for the launch in September!

• listened to an interview with one of my all time favourite writers and mystics, Dr Martin Shaw, and basically felt like I needed to write down the whole thing because it fed my soul. If you’re struggling to create or even to just get by in the current climate (and I mean, who isn’t), you could do worse than lending your ears for an hour or two.

  Here is an excerpt:

“When you’re facing darkness, if you’re facing a dragon, if you’re facing a gargoyle, if you’re facing a monster of some kind, work with its reflection on a shield. Stop looking directly at it, because you will become hollowed out by it.

I would ask you to think symbolically and metaphorically about the conditions of your own life. You never defeat demons by talking about them constantly. You focus on the opposite. I suspect in the end we will get cultural fatigue of that kind of commentary. And I think there is a difference between being timely and timeless.

As humans, we sometimes need what I call pinpricks of eternity. Because if we don’t, life becomes growingly more thinned out, and we lose our way.

To experience beauty is an intimation of eternity. That’s a big thought… it’s a glimpse of something. And these are the breadcrumbs that get us through the darkest of forests.”

— Dr. Martin Shaw

Thank you so much for reading 🧡