nothing much happened (37)

something i read, then read again

Face the fact that you just bloody well don’t want to do that thing anymore and blow it the hell up. Cancel it. Resign. Quit. Tell the truth. Let it all come crashing down if it must. You’ll survive my love.

something that i looked up

+ i started reading braiding sweetgrass today. its a book that has come in and out of my orbit for 10+ years but i’ve never felt called to read it until recently. it arrived by post today so i’m sitting down and diving in. i’ve only made it five pages into the book when robin references a painting called “moment in flight” by an artist named bruce king. i stopped reading to look it up and came across a youtube video of his work. colourful and evocative, his paintings are a bounty of visual language depicting worlds and stories i have never seen before.

+ i also looked up the pronunciation of wiingaashk, the Citizen Potowatomi Nation’s word for sweetgrass. the closest i could find was this. it feels important to me, when reading this book, that i not skip over a word simply because it is unfamiliar and i am not able to pronounce it correctly. it has already appeared frequently in these beginning pages and will, i imagine, also become a familiar presence throughout the remainder of the book. now that i have at least a basic understanding of the sounds that create it, my intention is to deliberately notice and say this word in my head every time it appears.

something for self care

i’m gathering together a winter ritual kit. intended to bring small moments of balance and quietude into my life. it’ll be comprised of locally made and sourced plant magic, candles & a ceramic vessel and my own, hand-made, intuition cards.

something plant based

nic is all stuffed up with a head and partial chest cold. he spent yesterday afternoon and all of today either on the sofa or in bed. tonight i’ve made him hover over a steaming bowl of chamomile and eyebright and made him a bitter tasting tea of wormwood, eyebright, chamomile, manuka (and a bunch of other stuff) to help clear out his sinuses. here’s hoping it works as we’re meant to be on holiday tomorrow and i am not sure anyone on our 90 minute flight wants to hear someone coughing and sneezing, even though there’s zero community-transmitted cases of covid in nz right now.

it reminds me if my paternal grandmother, who i distinctly remember hovering over her own steaming bowl of elixir on more than one occasion when she was feeling poorly. perhaps this is a made up memory, but i carry it nonetheless.