northsea | lately.

i'm writing from the floor of my bedroom, surrounded by papers & books & art supplies. i am moving house this week, and deep within the long slow process of sorting and boxing and collapsing, condensing my life down into simple, moveable blocks.

and i came across a letter to my oldest friend, j., started and unfinished more than two years ago. always easily distracted, i let my eye glance across the page; it rested on a particular passage, and i stopped still and stared. the way that these things find us, exactly when we need them.

( the letter is dated wednesday 6 february, 2008. )

the heart has to hurt; that is a part of love. the tearing ache of absence. things need a winter to take root & grow.

so often now the feeling that love is like a small shy bird. you see it darting, flickering, around you, & somehow, though you cannot & never have, you know the truth of flight, and yearn for it. and sometimes it will settle somewhere near, and you are fearful, for the smallest movement will startle it away - so that you dare not blink or breathe nor even make the slightest sound. the camouflaging, the erasing, the effacement of the self. and sometimes - oh, but rarely; oh, but sometimes - it works; the bird pauses, remains; feeds from your softly outstretched hand, and the quiet, the sudden, unexpected beauty of it all holds you enraptured. but this, still, is fleeting; this too shall pass. and if you wish the bird to settle (if you wish the bird to stay), then you must become a nest - a place from which it might fly out into the world, bright with song; but at dusk, and as the light wanes, to which it shall return.

northsea (est. 2005) is my journal project; the happy culmination of a decade-plus of public or semi-public journalling, spread over many services, usernames and selves. it now lives here on dreamwidth. i needed somewhere new.

i am a girl with a full heart and a quiet voice, nestled deep into her late 20s, living with a boy and a cat in north-west england. i write, think, make art (especially artists' books), knit obsessively and sew timidly. i couldn't live without books, silence, music, good food, the out-of-doors, liminal states/spaces, languages, deciduous trees, rain and happy contradictions. i drink a lot of tea and like drawing umbrellas. i am principled & political and do my best to live ethically & responsibly. travelling is important to me. i love living in northern europe and am drawn to/obsessed by northerly places. one of my favourite things to do is to lie in bed at night and listen to the shipping forecast on bbc radio 4, and pretend that i am at sea. (the name of this journal, & its sub-titles, come from that.) { here is a youtube link featuring the shipping forecast, for those of you abroad. }

love, light and beauty are really all there is.

it is very nice to meet you.

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easterly;

lately.

remove;

learning;

nest/heart;

northsea;

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November 2010

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