This weekend I decided to stay at home, sometimes it’s important to stop and appreciate everything that you have around you. These are all my train tickets from my various journeys of this year so far and the wonderful visits to friends. Sometimes it’s easier to be in a flurry of activity than to just relax and think about how lucky you are to have somewhere beautiful that you can call home.
“No single word in English renders all the shades of toska. At its deepest and most painful, it is a sensation of great spiritual anguish, often without any specific cause. At less morbid levels it is a dull ache of the soul, a longing with nothing to long for, a sick pining, a vague restlessness, mental throes, yearning. In particular cases it may be the desire for somebody or something specific, nostalgia, love-sickness. At the lowest level it grades into ennui, boredom.”
Vladimir Nabokov
Here is something I wrote today to describe my own personal experience:
My least favourite word is loss.
The slow exhale as you say it, like the air has been knocked out of you,
And afterwards you are somehow deflated.
It’s such a soft sound,
But somehow the gentleness is even more hurtful,
Because screaming and shouting doesn’t describe loss,
Loss you feel every single day.
Like the caressing whisper of the word,
Reminding you that you’re not quite whole.
An undefinable feeling tugs at your insides,
Telling you something is missing,
It‘s somehow more difficult than simple pain.
At some point you’ve left behind people,
Or they’ve left you,
And like a trail of breadcrumbs,
These fragments of yourself you’ve left behind could lead you back,
But you can only go forward.
Still, I always thought I was stronger than loss,
Until I lost you.
This week I tried to visually represent abstract concepts. For me, the most important parts of life are the un-quantifiable, concepts such as kindness, goodness, interconnectedness, nostalgia. Beauty is deceptive, so how can you paint a ‘thought’? I chose these subjects (Ganesh and Alice in Wonderland) because for both it is the realm of thought that they belong to, not their appearances, that are important.
Spring has sprung so I decided to store away my winter coats (which is a pretty optimistic as I live in England). As I picked up my favourite, a camel/caramel faux fur piece that I bought in a vintage shop, where it was hanging between it’s real fur counterparts, I suddenly thought – is this ok?
I wasn’t having second thoughts because of the predictably unpredictable British climate – I started to examine my justifications for owning faux fur. Even though it is fake, is wearing faux fur almost as bad as wearing real fur? A lot of faux fur looks very realistic, so can everyone really tell the difference? When people see me wearing faux fur do they think it’s real? Or if they know that it’s fake, do they think that I would be wearing real fur but I’m just saving some money? Would I ever buy real fur?
I love faux fur, how it looks, how warm it is, it was one of my favourite winter trends. Sometimes when I’ve been away in a hot country for a while I think about the crispness of winter in the northern hemisphere and the beautiful coats everyone wears…
I truly think fur is beautiful. But I think it is beautiful on animals. I might be losing the struggle to be vegetarian but I couldn’t ever buy real fur. I also don’t think that wearing faux fur somehow justifies or aligns with wearing real fur – firstly they may look the same but their origins are so different. In my opinion faux fur is just the fashionista version of a veggie burger – they’re both a healthy, harmless, enjoyable alternative to the real thing.
Inspiration for fashion comes from the world around us, in a lot of ways trends such as leopard print, fur and snakeskin are an appreciation of the diverse textures and colours of the natural world. Although traditionally these items have caused the suffering of animals, that’s no longer the case, so for the first time ever I honestly think that fakery can be positive, so I’m going to keep my favourite furs – for fake’s sake.
For someone who was very inexperienced in trekking, I have to admit I didn’t really understand the appeal of waking up at 2AM to trek for hours in order to see a sunrise. However, as I was travelling I thought I would take the plunge and attempt the trek to the top of Mount Batur, a sacred volcano in Bali. Instead of waking up early I decided to not sleep, so I was in a slight daze as I followed our guide up the volcano with my flashlight. It took hours, but the time went surprisingly quickly, whenever I dared to take my eyes off of the rocky path, the most incredible night sky I had ever seen was above us. I never knew there were so many stars.
When we reached the viewing point, just before dawn, the sky was ranging from inky black to pale pink, the reflective lake below made it seem endless. Looking down at clouds in front of the adjacent volcano felt surreal. In that moment, as I breathed in the cold morning air, I really understood why everyone here had woken up so early to trudge and scramble along steep paths through the night. There was a complete silence as everyone stared at the view as if it were a great work of art. In that long moment until the sun had risen everyone stopped whatever they were doing or thinking and just truly appreciated the magnificence of what surrounded us. It was like an ancient form of meditation that forced the mind into the present moment, because the present moment demanded all possible attention. Everyone simply existed to witness what lay before us, and it is a view that will hopefully stay with me forever.
I feel that experience truly taught me the importance of trekking, and also embracing things you may not otherwise have done. With travelling it is so important to grasp at new experiences offered and overcome challenges, because if you don’t you’ll never know what it feels like to be above the clouds at sunrise with a volcano beneath your feet.
