Writing || The Silence

These days I've gotten very good at finding the silence in the world. It follows me everywhere like a shadow. I spin around and catch it trailing me on sunny days and on rainy ones I can feel it in the way the air presses closer against my skin. Sometimes I stare into the mirror and see it reflected back at me; a friend I used to relish being with but now find nothing but discomfort in their companionship.

I play my music loud, I watch movies and go places that are filled with the noise of people living. I purposefully push my way into the centre of crowds in the hopes my shadow of silence will get disorientated, and I can exist swallowed in the sounds of everyone else.

Writing is too quiet.

Thinking is too quiet.

I tiptoe around my thoughts so as not to wake them up. It's easiest to exist off of primal instincts: wake now, eat now, sleep now, repeat.

I've never been one for noise; always preferring to exist in quiet corners, but where do you go when the silence becomes the most deafening sound of all?

Writing || A Truth

The truth can often be hard to face, even more so when it is one you have successfully convinced yourself is not real. It's just a bad day, a bad week, a bad month. You're okay, you're just lazy, procrastinating, you'll have the energy to do it tomorrow.

Before you know it four years have gone by and you can't remember yourself in any other state of mind. Were you ever truly enthusiastic about things before? Was there a time when you woke you up excited and wondering what the day may hold? How did you get here, how did you get here, how did you get here.

One day you wake up and the very idea of having to make it through the day crushes against your shoulders. All you can do is cry at the absolute exhaustion that simply existing places upon you. You can't sleep but someone has filled your bones with lead during the night and every step feels like a marathon you never signed up to run.

Then it's a doctor's waiting room. You've never been to a doctor's on your own before and you're obsessively rehearsing what you want to say. You've only told one person you're here because despite your rational self knowing better, your mind still tells you that this seems a lot like defeat. You weren't strong enough to keep fighting it on your own.

The doctor's kind, gentle, makes soft jokes that make you smile. She reminds you of your grade 12 maths teacher and that makes you calm down a little. She asks question after question and when she finds your heart rate is well over what it should be, whisks you away to another room where you're made to lie shirtless with wires on your chest, on your arms, on your legs. She wants to make sure your heart's working properly. You want to tell her that it isn't, but that it's not something any machine can detect.

The future starts to fill up with doctors and psychologists and the endless battles of the mind. You're scared, terrified, but with a little less intensity than that with which you just want to be okay. It's been far too long since you've been okay, but you're finally getting brave enough to admit it.

Video || November 2016

November was a strange month, I felt like I was drifting through all of it without existing inside any moment. Nature decided to put on quite the show though.

Writing || Through the Windows

In a house across the street from me there lives an elderly lady. Most mornings when I sit on the balcony while eating breakfast I see her gardening in her fuzzy dressing gown, seemingly in no rush for the day to truly begin. Her house has the kind of windows I one day dream of having on a home of my own; windows to push open and let the sun filter through, curtains dancing in the wind. 

I've never met this lady but over the past couple of months I seem to have invented my own version of a life for her. Whenever I'm feeling anxious I imagine the peace she emanates streaming throughout her house. Her front room must have a record player which is always on, the classical music it's playing following the breeze through every room. Maybe there's a big comfy arm chair there too, positioned in just the right spot to be bathed in morning sunlight, where one can curl up like a cat to read a book or watch the dust suspended in the sun beams. Her kitchen might look like it did in the 70's; the linoleum on the floor the shade of orange and yellow that everyone associates with that time. It would be the perfect kitchen for pulling up a rickety wooden chair and having a chat over tea and cake.

I know none of this is likely true, but that's not what matters. These imaginings aren't about the lady or her house, but instead are a place for my mind to go when it needs to calm down. When things get really noisy up there sometimes the only peace it's able to find is the peace of somebody else, and for now that will have to do.

Poem || The Revolution

Writing || My Fear of Words

I often try to keep my words inside of me. I hide them in some deep dark corner of my gut; pushed one against the other until they're like a constant belly ache. Some people feel their words in their minds, in their hearts, in their throats. Mine seem to sit in my stomach; I feel them there swirling around each other and tying themselves in knots that will take far too long to untangle. I've gotten good at ignoring the heavy feeling of words though, I almost don't notice them unless I stop and let myself be aware of how I feel inside my skin.

Sometimes I try and fool myself into thinking I could go without writing forever. Looking at my collection of notebooks makes me feel guilty; they're relics of a time when words were easy and I wanted to spill as many of them onto a page as possible. Now I get filled with a surge of anxiety just by opening the cover of a notebook filled with my words.

But then there's times when I see something or feel something that begs to be written about. Moments that I can feel aching to be captured and remembered. They crawl under my skin like an itch you can never reach. Stories of thunderclouds shapeshifting before my eyes, of wind gusts that bring the world to life and of people scurrying home like ants toward their loved ones.

But there's stories of darker things too; of the white noise that sometimes fills my mind until there is only see and hear, there is no think or process or comprehend. The story of the months in which I forgot who I was and what I liked, and existed entirely inside this white noise, scared that I would never remember myself again. These are the stories that make me scared to write, as though if I don't write them down it will keep them as something that is a little less than real, and a little less than real is manageable.

Mostly I hide my words because I know they often get read by people in my personal life and I do not like that. I do not like that at all. It's like leaving your diary out and having everyone think that means it's a free for all to read it. Maybe it is. Maybe that's something I have to come to terms with. I've always been more comfortable in front of strangers than in front of those I know, and the desire to share my thoughts with the world is constantly at war with my desire to keep things to myself.

I do not know if this will ever have a resolution. If I'll ever be able to throw words into the world carelessly without carefully weighing and testing each one first. Is this too much? Too little? Is this a truth better kept to oneself?

Will I ever be brave enough to untangle all the words I've hidden?

Poem || Ghosts

Video || October 2016

October seemed to be a blur of sewing, sewing and more sewing (and that one day where we drove to the most gorgeous landscape I've seen)

Poem || Storms

Writing || Life in Liminality

On being stuck in between.

Liminality is an idea I am quickly becoming obsessed with. It is the concept of a threshold, an in between space that only exists as a throughway to get you from where you've been to where you are going. Liminal spaces are not designed to exist on their own; they would have no context if removed from the position they are in, between two other spaces.

Liminal spaces can be both mental or physical, and I can guarantee that you've occupied both kinds many times in your life. Physical liminal spaces have a very distinct feeling to them, an otherworldly atmosphere where reality appears to be altered. When we linger inside spaces which are made for passing through, our minds begin to try and contextualise them and can't, leading to the uneasy feeling they give us.

Some examples of physical liminal spaces are:

- Fire Escape Staircases

- Parking Lots

- Truck Stops

- Tunnels

- Airport Terminals

- Waiting Rooms

Did visualising that list create a certain feeling in your mind? This is the effect of liminality.

Mental liminal spaces can be harder to explain, they are periods of time where you (or a whole society) exist between the person you have been and the person you will be. You feel no longer like you did and not yet like you will.

I now see the irony of my blog title The Halfway Point; the very definition of a liminal space. 2016 has been an in between year for me, where I have constantly felt not at all like the person I knew myself to be. It's like being trapped on an endless staircase, running up and up and up but never finding an exit; stuck in a place I was only ever meant to be passing through. I think perhaps everyone's early 20's are filled with liminality; where you are no longer as young and naive as your teenage self and yet you do not know enough to feel like an adult. You are suspended somewhere in between borders, living on no man's land.

Understanding this concept has given me something to grab onto in relation to how I've been feeling for this past year. Not completely existing inside reality is terrifying, and though I believe my brain's current disorientation is caused by much more than this, it is comforting to assure myself that I am in an in between. That one day soon I will find the staircase's exit, leave the waiting room, and come flying out the other end of the tunnel. It's all just a matter of time.

Poem || This is the Part

this is the part where your world falls to pieces,

the scene where the curtain is drawn,

where the pages that speak of your life fill with creases

and your dreams are all weary and worn.

this is the part where it seems it's all ending,

where the colour is ripped from the skies,

this is the madness before all the mending,

the darkness before the sun's rise.

Video || September 2016

September marked 1 year since arriving home from my adventure in the US, so it's fitting that it was filled with adventures of its own: A trip to Melbourne to visit my best friend and moving out. What a month.

(Also: I've started an instagram for photos I take that I want to curate. If you want you can follow them here: instagram.com/wand.erin.gs

~ Erin

Brain Dump #1

I think one of the reasons I went on hiatus back in March (how was it so long ago already!?) was that I felt this space had grown into one where everything had to be well curated and visually appealing. I'd unknowingly boxed myself into a place where there wasn't much room to express the messy and incoherent parts of me that were just as important as the one that likes order. So here's an attempt at fixing that: brain dumps. Rambling thoughts or ideas that have occurred to me in the past few turns of time. 

1. Why have all the blogs I used to read seemingly died? I went through and unfollowed all the no longer used blogs I once followed and now I'm left with hardly any. Has blogging started to lose its popularity or is it just losing its popularity with me? Maybe I just have no niche community to fit into.

2. Today I locked myself in my bathroom with a pair of scissors and gave myself a fringe. Whether I'll regret it remains to be seen. I've not had one since that awkward 2008 stage but now it just makes me want to wear hoop earrings and denim jackets. I think I might love it.

3. Today I left the house purely to go and buy a loaf of bread and I think that may be the definition of adulthood.

4. Library's are so underrated. LOOK AT ALL THIS FREE KNOWLEDGE FOR THE TAKING.

5. Even though you can leave a place and you can leave things behind, you still carry all your thoughts with you despite how heavy they are. 

6. I haven't been writing poetry recently. To be honest it just doesn't feel like it's in me anymore. I want to do something new and leave that part of me behind.

~

Writing || Soul Shedding

On where we go when we go.

There's a cemetery not far from where I live now and it's been pulling me towards it since I moved here. There's something so fascinating about those places for me; as soon as I step foot inside of one I can almost hear it humming with the stories of all the names it holds.

There's something else that strikes me though, and I felt it last year also when I visited the grave of Henry David Thoreau. The headstone was worn smooth by many hands and around it lay a collection of pens and pencils laid down by people who'd visited before. They came there seeking to find even a sliver of his soul, and I wonder if they left with the same feeling I did; that the place held nothing more than his bones and a place for the living to go to remember.

You see something occurred to me on that visit, an idea I'd not thought through in much detail before but that I now wholeheartedly believe in: We leave pieces of ourselves in every place we inhabit. In regards to Thoreau I felt his presence most at Walden Pond where he had lived in solitude. Even now, all of us are shedding parts of our soul into the rooms we are sitting in; different amounts for the differing times we spend in each place. We do not lose this part of our soul once we move, instead it is more of an impression, a copy of our soul which is left behind and will exist as long as the place encompassing it does.

I think perhaps it is our duty to travel far and exist deeply. To leave traces of ourselves inside as many places and experiences and people as we can. To collect the souls of as many others as possible, so that in our last breaths the world is both full with us, and we are full with the world.

~Erin

Do not stand at my grave and weep 
I am not there. I do not sleep. 
I am a thousand winds that blow. 
I am the diamond glints on snow. 
I am the sunlight on ripened grain. 
I am the gentle autumn rain. 
When you awaken in the morning's hush 
I am the swift uplifting rush 
Of quiet birds in circled flight. 
I am the soft stars that shine at night. 
Do not stand at my grave and cry; 
I am not there. I did not die. 

~Mary Elizabeth Fry

Writing || The Long Way Round

On the importance of doing things the hard way.

Yesterday I stood on a train platform on my way to visit a shopping center, purely to purchase paper that would allow me to write a letter to my friend who lives in Canada. 

It struck me then how much I enjoy the long way round; consciously taking the time and effort to do something which (lets be honest) could be completed much quicker if I really wanted. I could’ve waited until I was going out anyway to get the paper, in fact I wouldn’t even need paper at all if I just emailed her or messaged her on Facebook. So why choose the hard way at all?

I think we live in a society that teaches us to rush. It’s all about efficiency, efficiency, efficiency! Just sit at a bus stop and watch everyone get fidgety when the bus is 5 minutes late, even though they’re still all going to get to where they’re going on time. It’s a side effect of The Rush; the idea that if we’re not hurtling through the day at full speed then we’re wasting our lives.

Here’s the thing though: have we ever stopped to wonder what we’re rushing towards? What exactly is it that we simply cannot wait to reach?

Everything is so easy these days; we don’t even need to leave our houses to go shopping. We can see our friend’s faces without having to travel anywhere and the ability to have every movie at our fingertips negates the need to visit the cinema.

Maybe I’m cynical, or maybe I just think there’s a great importance in going slow. In walking places, writing letters, visiting libraries. In taking the time to step back from the rush and instead just be perfectly inefficient.

~Erin

Writing || A Beginning

I'm writing this from my new bed in a new apartment. I'm a little giddy with possibility and a little scared with it also. I have no safety net, instead just walking straight out on a tightrope I'm not sure I know how to balance on. It's exhilarating.

Usually when a new chapter begins you are unaware of it. It sneaks up on you in such a way that you don't realise it's occurred until you take the time to reflect. Other times, and more rarely, you are aware of a chapter beginning as it's happening. It feels as though all your atoms are being pulled in both directions; backwards to what you've known and forwards to what could be. The very fabric of your soul gets ripped at the seams, creating space for new experiences to seep in.

I can physically feel myself on the edge of something new, despite not really knowing what that something may be. A new state of mind, a new perspective, a new adventure.

The whole world feels brand new.

Dear Diary || September 21

Just a little experiment for a new series on this blog. Let me know your thoughts!

Adventure || Melbourne

In 2014 my best friend moved to Melbourne to start studying at the National Institute for Circus Arts. This month she had her big end of second year show so I thought it was about time I made the trip to watch her perform. I'd been to Melbourne 3 times before but always to compete in gymnastics competitions and never for very long, so it was like exploring the city for the first time around again.

The first thing I found was that Melbourne has a distinctive culture that you can feel and see everywhere you look. The buildings, the shops, even the people have a look which is distinctly Melbournian. It made me realise how cultureless my hometown of Brisbane is. In the mornings we went exploring, going to places like St Kilda beach, The National Gallery and the alleyways filled with graffiti that Melbourne is well known for. Everywhere we went was bursting with beauty.

It was only a short trip; 5 and a half days altogether, but it was definitely worth it to visit a place I've now decided I want to call my home one day, and to see my best friend more than the once every 3 months that we're used to.

Melbourne, I will be back.

Writing || I Am Scared

Photo by Robert Montgomery

Photos || A Misty Morning

   

Photos || Blue Hour

Writing || The Asleep

I've tried to write a blogpost multiple times in the past week but all of my words just feel heavy and wrong. The truth is that my soul is stirring again but in a language I do not understand. I recently looked at the future self I am always striving towards and realised she is no longer the person I want to be. I don't know enough about who I am to know who I wish to become.

 There has been a lot of darkness interspersed with periods of light. Lows that were lower than I thought I could experience. Weeks filled with white noise and little else. There is a tall and unstable pile of books beside my bed which have only a couple of pages read each; my focus having fallen so greatly that I don't want to read those books as much as I wish I'd already finished them. I feel like I've been asleep, walking through fog, everything existing only on the outer edges of my consciousness.

I think I'm ever so slowly waking up into a world I have to rebuild from scratch. I don't know what that means or how to do it. I'm just trying to exist quietly inside each moment and learn from the days that just keep coming, trying to learn myself anew. Life seems so bizarre.

We Need to Talk || A Hiatus

Disclaimer: This is going to be a long and winding blogpost so consider grabbing a cup of tea before beginning.

Dear Readers/Friends,

I've really not got the first clue of how to begin this so my apologies in advance for anything that doesn't make sense; these words are coming straight out of my mind and into this blogpost. Hence why it's not handwritten either, I doubt my pen could keep up.

To begin with you may be wondering why 4 new blogposts just appeared by me within minutes of each other, is my scheduled posting broken? Hardly. In fact it was working so well that my last post wasn't scheduled to go live until the beginning of April, a fact that has been weighing on my mind for over a month now. Because the truth is I've not created a new blogpost (excluding my February video) since January. Every post you've read since then was scheduled back when it seems I was on some sort of blogging marathon. I had originally intended to just let my scheduled posts run their course and then write this letter to you once my last one was published but I couldn't do it. I had something to say and I wanted to say it now, so I published the final lot of posts all at once in order to create a clean slate for this one.

I'm someone who likes lists and order so I tend to look at my life in a very systematic way. For me there are 5 categories between which I try to divide up my time and energy, they are (in no particular order): 

1. Relationships

2. Health

3. Work

4. Passions

5. Self Development

Since the beginning of the year I've had this nagging feeling at the back of my mind that where I allocate my time is all askew. It's not even as though one particular category is getting more attention than the others, rather it's almost as if there's a hole in these metaphorical buckets and over time I've lost the ability to contribute sufficiently to any of them. I don't know what it is that's draining me but I've come to the conclusion that I need to figure it out before progressing any further.

So I'm going back to "basics" and in order to do that I need to start from scratch and build myself back up again. I want to take the time to empty these buckets as much as I can (yes we're taking that metaphor and running with it) before filling them again little by little, but hopefully a bit more evenly this time. Obviously there's some things that I can't just start afresh on, if I just gave up working for a month or two I'd be in serious strife, but I'm starting from as near to the bottom as I can. In order to do that there are a few things I need to let go of (if only temporarily) and one of them is this blog.

It was a bit of a heartbreaking realisation to have, but the more I thought about it the more I realised that this blog as it stands right now is no longer a passion of mine (Oh it feels so horrible to even think that). These posts are beginning to feel like simply repetitions of a routine I've found that works for me, instead of the excitement I had to share something like it was in the early days. You can probably imagine how awful I felt after discovering this; like I just wanted to push that thought right back into the corners of my brain again to let it hide there a while longer. But alas, it had shown itself and I couldn't deny it; my blog had somewhere along the line started dragging me down instead of lifting me up.

So I'm taking a hiatus, and if I'm telling you the truth as this entire post finally is, then I cannot give you a time frame of how long this will be for. In all honesty it's not even a case of when I'll be back but if I'll be back. You have no idea how scary that is to put into words because I feel in some respects as if I'm letting each and every one of you down. You came here for my usually lively posts, not for entire self adjustments and then for me to just up and leave. If/when I do return I know this blog won't be the same again as the one I left it as and that's rather bittersweet.

In the meantime I intend to pursue new interests I've never let myself dabble in before. I want to draw and make art (no matter how horrible) and I really really want to write a collection of essays on the places my mind goes when it wanders. I can't do that if in the back of my mind is always the subconscious thought that I will need to share it. I want to reteach myself how to create for creations sake and not to just have it be seen.

That being said there is one single aspect of this blog which I am keeping, and that is my monthly videos. They will no longer be posted here however and will instead reside purely on my YouTube. I tried taking a break from them but it turns out I just like making them far too much.

I ought to stop here as this is nearing 1000 words but I just wanted to get this all out there and it feels so good to do so. If you've read all of this I am extremely grateful and thankyou sincerely for supporting my little blog. I still feel awfully guilty for leaving you guys, perhaps one day soon I'll reappear again and this will all just be a memory of "that one time Erin tried to leave her blog but couldn't"

Just because I'm leaving this blog for now doesn't mean I'm completely falling off the face of the earth. You're more than welcome to email me if you want to keep in contact and you'll still be able to find me updating my poetry on a regular basis. I'm simply taking a little time to reevaluate. 

Thankyou,
Erin.

Outfit || Suspender Skirt

I had originally planned to take these photos outside but amongst the sweltering heat and my neighbour's gardener literally hanging over our fence I figured inside might be my best bet.  I recently found the instagram account of Karla and my goodness am I obsessed with the retro style of her and her daughter Olive. The next day I melted in 38˚C heat in my tiny sewing room to make this suspender skirt which I am now in love with. I also made a video along the way so you can see a little of how I went about making it. Enjoy!

x Erin