MOROCCO ON MY MIND

Trying to dredge up energy these days is a feat beyond me, and yet knowing this is the hālat of most of us, keeps me going. We are all a little brain rotted by Instagram - ooh but it is so delicious and appealing and who can say no to fast food when fatigued? Healthy food requires a little preparation, some care and attention, a neat and concentrated mind. I am just about keeping the ants at bay, Mum is busy keeping the kitchen clear of fruit flies, and the summer heat and drought lost us our cherry and our silver birch. Somehow in the midst of caring for Dad, waiting for various scans to check on this and that aspect of being a chronically ill woman in the middle of her life, I flew to Morocco to commune with camels and seagulls and brighter colours than can be found in an English fenland village. 

I clothed myself in kaftans, was fed milk and honey by a Gnawa elder, studied Kabbalah and Sufi mysticism at the feet of my friends and teachers on a divine decolonial sacred feminine retreat and then shopped for objects that broke and cracked in my bag - but no matter. I was grateful for the breaks that freed my washing machine mind, which was circling fatigue and despair - the kind that settles on us all periodically, but particularly on the artist who hasn’t made a proper finished thing in a while. Onwards to the books that await more than mere beginnings and ideation… onwards to autumn leaves and staving off the winter chill until we are good and ready for her…