FEBRUARY 2026

5 days ago
7 min read

"some people meditate. i stand over a pot of soup and pretend my life is under control" - unknown - for credit, prepare for trick questions.

WORD.

has this year started out alright?

brought some moments of peace after the hurricane called 2025?

felt like a welcome chance to turn a corner?

If not <yet ;)>, I hope you're taking care to remember that its all made up.

The entire civilisation, its ways, even its interpretations of the non-made-up world.

that its ok to not have made satisfactory sense of whats happening.

Maybe, its too soon for that.

maybe the artist is still at work. :P the universe is still going idnit...

maybe we've caught it in the in-between stage where the canvas looks worse than the initial drawing. - true for literally EVERY picture i've ever made, so i got to give others the same leeway you know!

But it's not possible to feel this lightness in the moments where my heart is sinking or fearfully still.

Who am i kidding! lately, even when things don't go badly, I'm secretly suspicious that they soon will. :P

If at my day job, the calendar is quiet, my head goes - "that can't be right! 4 days without drama? danger will robinson!"

It feels silly when i see these written down, but they exist none the less.

I didn't used to be so helplessly suspicious of the calm even until a few months ago you know!

GOSH what happened to us! SOoo - i have my work cut out for me - to pull back the overly deployed defences, and learn how to feel safe and joyous when things AREN'T going wrong.

to embrace the glimmers in my life, even if they could be impermanent.

And not foolishly forget that so am i!

"The water in your body is just visiting. It was a thunderstorm a week ago. It will be the ocean soon enough. Most of your cells come and go like morning dew. We are more weather pattern, than stone monument." -Jarod Anderson, Field Guide to the Haunted Forest

I've had a lot of fun daydreaming with this idea.

And decided I want to be that warm, gently breezy weather right before the first summer showers!

thick clouds but also sunlight! rainbows! petrichor! Now you secretly want to be that weather too don't you?!

And close second : that brief winter solstice weather where the moon gets huge and bright and a sort of quiet settles in.

that sentence almost makes the head think it has a choice huh.

Not bad for what words can do!

And maybe i'll be friends with them someday, but not yet.

Here, we DRAW - aimless and non-sequential! probably a writer's nightmare. or not.

I rarely pick up from my past. & I've under-mined my experiences. Which is OK, but notice somethings I wish i remembered more clearly or often, and don't.

Sketches seemed like a handy dandy way to do that.

So from January, I've been eating my way through a list of experiences which i want to remember.

CAUGHT ME BY SURPRISE

it's not intuition running the show this time. its such deliberation :O

I couldnt believe it. But i think I'm after a formula of some sort to come back to MYSELF, consistently! Perhaps a fight response to the external static that won't budge. Or maybe not. Maybe I'm just changing as a person. I still don't like it though - the deliberation. It feels like it comes from such a ... mortal... place! :P not the usual godess state I'm used to functioning from. Alright. thass enough.

So - SKETCHES of things to remember! Part 1 - Lamps and reading, but not together ;)

OBSESSION - a gateway to PLAY?!

When i was a kid, i'd find something new every so often - a chocolate wrapper, some old mirror from my mum's boxed things, a new tazo, a cool leaf... and become so deeply attached.

So, it'd come with me everywhere, i'd sleep with it next to my pillow (or often UNDER it), I'd check first thing in the morning if its still there, daydream about it no matter what im doing, if im at school, or if im swimming ... the 32 year old she has become, I laugh at what i wrote here - because i suddenly realise I still behave the exact same, only now with worries, and fears!

JEEZ! but - Good to know im in there somewhere still :)

In one recent visit to my grandmother, I walk into the room and find her reading a borrowed book - thats right, with a pencil in her hand! I realised this isn't a 'me' thing afterall. My mum asks her if she was scribbling and underlining in someone else's book.

To which she says without even looking up 'sure, why not, what's the big deal'.

After this, i proceeded to assure my mother the person she'll return the book to probably wont even notice it.

My mother gave a helpless laugh not knowing which 'ridiculous' attitude to address first.

I on the other hand, stand by my statement still - i've seen it happen!

But atleast now i know where i get it from -

the vandalistic tendencies, & also the narcissism to JUSTIFY them.

SO, if you ever lend me a book, you've been warned.

How wonderful is synchronicity?!

Like my personal little wink with the universe.

While i'm often drawing these utopian scenes, with free little creatures who are mostly just confused at each other, and have found themselves in really non-epic moments; I'm painfully cognisant the world I live in isn't set up that way ... at the moment atleast, it seems we're headed somewhere... weird.

If you've watched titanic, there's these musicians at the end, who are playing while the ship sinks? lately on some days, drawing from joy has felt like that. The commotion is too big, and nobody cares if i play the music or not, much less what im playing. But see, i care. So now i understand why those musicians played on. i think it did help someone - THEMSELVES, and how they wanted to go out.

And a perfect reference point to keep as i dive into the next 2 parts.

Sensitivity

Being a 'sensitive' in a maddeningly complex & dogmatic society is exhausting.

The contrast of life situations is observable DAILY. As are the many injustices & cruelties. As a sensitive being you can perceive effortlessly, the heart-wrenching resigned stance so many creatures, trees, stones have taken to - who you're also not allowed to free from this fate btw :|

Feel trapped yet? So do i. It's heartbreaking.

And it's taken me 3 decades to understand how to engage this very big reality of my life.

But I don't wish even for a second to not have access to the perception or sensitivity, whatever we want to call it. That to me is worse. So in a roundabout way, I have also come to see what a wonderful gift it is to be able to feel deeply.

And by now, I have a theory this sensitivity plays a dual role.

That maybe, just maybe, i've been seeing it only one way so far - outside in = perception.

But what if, it works somehow inside out too = imprinting?!

Joy as a tiny rebellion

Remember the weather metaphor?

Well, at the sketchbook, i get to choose the weather all the time. Its my world.

And while i can never talk too well about the 'process' of drawing, because its a little bit less intentional than that, I do notice what i draw is often lighthearted. In fact - the only thing i see surely about the 'process' now, is that the more frustrating or suffocating my days have been, the more i've drawn joyful free beings.

My doctor once told me i should keep drawing, it rewires the brain.

I now wonder if this is how it rewires - the sensitivity cannot recognise what is real and what isn't, and thinks its experiencing the real world, or... thinks it is getting to craft it?! Some bizarre placebo?!

A loaded hypothetical, and a quiet fear

When i think about the inside-out mechanism, i begin to wonder (read fear) - what if im imprinting outward already and i just didn't know it?! Then it got more fun :

What would the writers, artists, filmmakers, playwrights & poets create, if they were told everything they produce as fictional stories or scenarios, will come into reality someday, somewhere for someone?!

would we make the things we make? Would we change what we make? Would we feel powerful? would more of us take to the creative arts?! would we be more careful with the details? would we go back and delete some older work?! would we stop writing and drawing entirely out of fear that we cannot be sure whats for the best?! Would it feel like too much responsibility?!

Would art remain how we see it now - safe expression?

But then i think again - was it ever just expression?!

Thats probably enough circular questions for one day.

now this sounds unbelievably arrogant from privilege, i know, and it might be exactly that :P

But most days i have very little interest or patience when it comes to food & the surrounding conversation. <OMG>

if they invented a pill that could give me all the nutrition i need, send it my way please.

it’ll reduce one whole decision i have to make daily - i see the trade off of time is FANTASTIC.

Wait there's more : I also do not like others yapping about food for long - sorry, but discussing food is just not where my passion lies! 😛

Now discussing produce - is a whole different reality, this i do get some thrill out of.

Most days when i prepare dinner, its more just a chance to quickly check out of my day.

And once I'm at it, I love the language of the food during cooking -the aromas, watching the onions caramelise, the sound of the sizzle in a quiet room, or how neatly stacked the diced tomato sits right before it falls to the side ...almost like it realised with a lag, that its not one piece anymore.

That is just so fun to engage in. I also feel seeing these little details slows my time and mind down, and lets my day feel longer somehow.

Over the last year its been such a comfort to take to soup meals - because they require zero decisions, i don’t follow any recipe, and dump whatever i want in there, add a dash of hot sauce* to the mix - and it really can't go wrong!!

*spice is a non-negotiable in this family - i grasp this when i see just how many jars of spicy Indian pickles my family produces during summers/ autumn :|

its like we don't know how to go on with the year without these.