my body is morning light

start from a soft place

what is this really all about? it started when i began collecting words. there are some words that i keep returning to. like when you like the feel of a stone and you keep turning it over and over in your hand. i started paying attention to words i liked the feel of, the words that make my body their home. the first of these, the ones responsible for my understanding that some words take up my physical space, is “my body is morning light”

my body is morning light
once a day, i am the entirety of a moment
how the everythingness
comes back to this little body

there is a quality of light at dawn that makes me feel like the fullest possible form of myself. the steady shift of color, sound, temperature fills me so completely. the quiet light is my breathing lungs. the sun rises and so do i.

there is a soft reliability in this moment. there is also an experience of embodiment that helps me to understand myself. the moment is a space where i instinctually pull in, breathe, connect to body, connect to ground. i settle into this moment, the rising sun. i am aware, breathing, grounded. it is so intentional that it has become ritual. i am connected to my body in a way that now allows me to expand out. i see that my existence is bigger than the body i inhabit. i feel how i exist on a cycle and the sun exists on a cycle and for moment we are aligned in such a way that we are not disparate from one another. i see that the way i understand my existence and the existence of everything around me is through cycles. i see that circles are the shape of everything.

this is about repetitive creative practice, a practice of pulling in to expand out. it is an exploration of my own curiosity of how this practice functions and of how translating the practice into visual art captures an experience that moves through my body to become another version of itself. it is a small look into how the personal is universal, how in our own ways we all try to make sense of our own existence.

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in the first three sections, i am writing for the universal experience. this is where i take us through my perceived infrastructure for repetitive creative practice:

i. return to the act (pull in)
ii. become the act (settle)
iii. become the possibility the act contains (expand out)

with these opening sections, i offer a framework for three discrete, sequential experiences of repetition as a creative practice. here is where i write broadly on how i understand this practice, hoping to leave enough ambiguous space for you to find yourself within its words.

following the first three sections, i narrow the focus to address my own creative practice:

iv. the thoughts i make
v. the art i make

these final two sections are where i write generously about how i think and what i make. the writing i do here rests on the shoulders of the repetition as creative practice framework that comes before it. these sections are the personal, in the light of the universal.

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to begin, soften. start from a soft place. start from a place of wonder. start from a place of wondering what it means to be a person making sense of their own existence. reclaim your attention by slowing, settling, and using your body to make something with care so you know it is real.