Fragments of silence
words, lines and colours · an unbound single edition book
Kate Nobbs
2011
Flow
What is flow? When things gang up for you, not against you. It happens when you don’t want something too much, yet enough.
Flow needs spaces in which to go ideas through which to stream motivation and desire to offer it direction not too much to block it, or have expectations of it.
Life is made up of fragments.
We never have all the pieces
cannot ever see the whole
Fragments get garbled, misunderstood and distorted
taken out of sequence
They make up life.
Horizon
It is the line that divides all visible directions into two categories: those that intersect the Earth’s surface, and those that do not.
Struggling to abandon a horizon
I leap into nothingness without
lines or references.
space invades
silently
Luscious words
gratitude
grace
solitude
peace
ecstasy
accepting
cherishing
releasing
enriching
moving from noun to verb I attempt love
Void
Give me the strength to live as if today is the only day
as if whoever I am with, in whatever moment
is the only person and
that my heart only recognizes love.
A fumble of love
When I loved you I didn’t know
much about love
you got a fumble of love
Generous you managed
perhaps hoping that I’d make it
I didn’t
I couldn’t.
I shied away from your warmth
toyed to the point of destruction with your loyalty
perhaps hurt you
perhaps not
It wasn’t all for nothing
I may now be able to know a little
more about love.
I never thanked you for your belief
that I could distance from the desert that was my life
and travel to a place where I could be.
I could be me.
To mouse or not to mouse?
To colour or not to colour? This is the question.
As I sit on the edge of this decision I am confronted by the much bigger issues of change and adaptation, or acceptance of how things are.
Why can’t I just go to the hairdressers like so many other women as a regular part of life? Women all over the world are at the hairdressers having their hair changed, refreshed; the grey covered, to keep them looking with it, and bright. I sit here on the edge of this decision and all of its ramifications weigh down on me, crushing the joy out of the whole idea of not having boring hair. Boring, mouse grey hair. Hair that suits me.
Could that be the real issue? To mouse or not to mouse?
Silence, space and surrender
Space
Between a decision
between two people
between a moment and the next
the journey and the destination
Silence
between now and then
between two thoughts
between the dream and the reality
the imaginings and the happenings
Surrender
Giving up the struggle without giving up the possibility
allowing more to happen without pushing
letting go of linear time
falling gently into circular time.
Facial lines are like a map
a map of past territories
you can read the map and hear the story
a story of struggle and events, pain and joy
etched, not by acid, but time.
Prehistoric line
There’s a prehistoric line that I am searching for. A pure response to life. A distillation of life, free from time.
With that line and alchemy an object is born.
My body got my attention
pain strong, and powerful
shouted that it wanted to be heard.
Years of not listening made me sick.
I was deaf to my body.
What caught me unawares was how clearly my cells
could speak
full of patience
From where?
Being enough
is knowing its
enough to be
My mistakes are continuous
dramatically, diabolically continuous
coming from a place of humanness and
situated in attempts to live fully
How are yours ?
The lost prayer
Help me to embrace fully the practice of being lost, to savor being lost, and to suspend the need to be found.
Please help me to flow with that which life offers.
I no longer hear the bells
pealing out the future that I knew would come
even if sleep didn’t.
Their mournful sadness announced each new hour.
Grieving with me the loss of sleep.
I no longer hear the bells
sleeping as I do through the time
of my nights, silently ticking by.
Their peaceful passing marks the world
dreaming with me in sleep
Disappointment takes away my lightness and shrinks me. It leaches joy. It seeps into my soul diminishing me.