It’s been a difficult year my friends.
So I do the only thing I know how to do,
Like a stubborn frustrated buddha,
I sat. I knelt. I prayed.
And as always, I cut.
Quickly I became aware of two things:
Pain
And time.
Two things that translate strangely to the screen.
Knowing, I’ll forget the pain: the cold floor, the bruises, and the way my legs screamed
‘be here’.
And I’ll forget the hours I sat,
now condensed to minutes.
Seconds depicting moments.
Leaping into the future
Fitting tightly into the screen.
I have been thinking about time a lot.
How people say, in hindsight, it took me 10 years to really know what that period of my life was about. And how
that simple sentence erases seconds of self doubt, minutes of struggle, and hours of tears.
I’ve been doubting, and struggling, and crying. A lot.
I know why I cut paper, it helps me find my edges.
It hedges me in when I start to leak out
I just cut away what isn’t there.
The stuff that isn’t ‘the thing’.
Until only ‘the thing’ is left.
And yet,
I will always know the perimeter of what has been discarded than the evidence that has been left behind.
Mostly,
I cut in silence.
A quiet prayer. An emptying. A time of no self.
As I mark out the thoughts, broken lines of poetry, and old traumas.
I thought about the word ‘present’ and the word ‘present’ being all a game of inflection and yet how differently
they speak to the world.
Because I know I can present well, it is a safety net that has gotten me through the last difficult long year.
But I also know that someone that presents well, can present as present.
And how I can only get better at the latter as I let go of the former.
So here I am,
And I’m thinking about Moses now.
And I’m thinking about this burning bush that I am carving.
Be here. Be here.
I am,
I am.
I am that I am.
I’m always thinking about God.
And the way I am entranced by a tree branch as much as the light that filters through
And the dappled shadows cast underfoot.
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Art/s and Theology Australia 