there are seasons for everything

poetry shapes the way we see the world.

Beltane has come and passed and I finally feel as though I’m on the right side of the world.

Two weeks ago, I stood outside a temple an hour or so out of Tokyo with a friend. The temple is set into the side of a mountain, vibrant with squirrels, insects and birds. An older man sits at the entrance, beside a small stream and pains the scene. A temple gate encased in green, azaleas wildly bursting forth.

I take a photo with my phone.

It’s so human, this innate desire to capture memory, beauty, our perspective of the world.

That day, a friend and I walk slowly around a quiet part of town. We take our time eating cold soba noodles, my first of the season. The elderly women who staff the restaurant gift us pickled bamboo shoot, a seasonal dish I currently feel unequipped to prepare. Maybe next year.

The bamboo is crunchy and fresh, almost tasteless - but it’s encoded with memories.

One bite and my mind floods. I think of the film, The Tale of Princess Kaguya, watching it in the cinema, alone, back in Sydney, crying, enthralled. I think of my friend’s family home in Osaka, more than a decade ago, eating fresh bamboo for the first time, cooked by his father, gifted by a friend. I think of my Dad complaining about the bamboo in our garden at home. You turn your back for a second and it’ll take over everything.

Apparently, the bamboo shoot (or child, as it’s sometimes called) grows insanely fast - up to one metre per day. This is the energy of Spring, as I’m coming to understand it. Frenetic. Whip speed. Lightning. When we leave the restaurant I have a slight, dull headache. This is how fast I’m growing. The season is lifting me up out of the mud so quickly I have vertigo.

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And just like that, it’s May.

It’s raining softly. Every day I identify a new flower bursting forth in my neighbourhood. I’ve been sending photos to Mum. I’ve been keeping a nature journal, and it feels like a force outside of my control somehow.

My first entry looked like this:

Neighbours yellow / peach roses in full bloom. Yesterday there were two, now I feel as if there are twenty or more. The air smells very sweet. Weather is warm and sunny but the breeze is still cool. Azaleas are in full, ecstatic bloom. Edamame and sora mame in store. I started craving shiso and okra again a few days ago. Does orange blossom have a smell?

I learn there are over 2000 words to describe the wind in Japanese, one of them being kaze kaoru 風薫る meaning the wind smells sweet, or fragrant breeze.

The air smells very sweet.

A week later the entries are much longer and messier. I use a fountain pen for the sound it makes and the drama it creates on the page. I can’t stop at listing the plants alone. I talk about my mood, what I ate, the places I went and the conversations I heard that day.

You can’t untangle it, the weather, from everything else.

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I’m in my favourite homewares store.

I’m looking at cushion covers made from velvet and silk. Each one is handmade and completely unique. I sift gently through each and every pillow case for 30 minutes or more. It’s a public holiday and you can feel it in the quality of the air. I wonder if there’s a name for it in Japanese. A couple holding hands giggle beside me. I finally decide on a cushion cover, with hints of pink and green. It’s a forever piece. An offering to myself and my apartment for Spring. Leaving the store I feel deeply satisfied. Shopping is not inherently bad. This is an art. This is how it’s supposed to be.

A street over, I order a macchiato in my favourite french bar. I can smell the fermentation of natural wine, the flowers on the counter. The sound of Phoenix, played on vinyl fills the air, cut by the sound of grinding coffee now and then.

Life is an altered state, if you pay attention.

I’ve been busy.

I have been in a season of big responsibility. I’ve been holding a lot more than I’m used to. I’m imagining the energetic field of my body becoming wider. I remind myself to be patient, to remember how a muscle breaks down before it grows.

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I’ll tell anyone who will listen: living in a country with seasons so distinct, so extreme and in the northern hemisphere is gifting me an embodied understanding of everything I’ve been studying for the last ten years, or more.

Mostly people just smile and nod, change the conversation.

I don’t have the words for it yet.

I still want to scream from the rooftops how it all makes sense.

Every thread I’ve followed for my entire adult life has led me here.

My body is in university.

Physically integrating concepts and philosophy I’ve studied, read about and practiced for so long into my actual, lived reality. Taking the information from the brain, down into the marrow of the bone.

Through this living education challenges get more precise, like an arrow pointed toward my deepest, darkest wound.

But the gifts are beyond what I ever imagined possible.

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Recently, as I walk around my neighbourhood or sit on my balcony, I feel both elated, and a soft undercurrent of grief.

The weather is so beautiful it’s like a fantasy. Every day is a new story, a new poem, waiting to be spilled onto the page. One night falling asleep, I actually see myself as a fairy in a glade. I inhale the exhale of wildflowers on my way to the supermarket. I am working hard but it (mostly) feels energising, restorative even. Everything glimmers with potential and sweetness.

But it will not last long.

Soon, the light spring wind scented with flowers and fresh leaves will fade. The gentle, afternoon rain will be replaced with daily showers for a short time before the air turns thick. The rain will stop and the heat will become so extreme, you cannot even step onto the balcony without immediately breaking a sweat. The temperature won’t come down, not even in the dead of the night, until late September, at least.

But with the heat comes other gifts.

Large, juicy peaches. The hum of cicadas. A holiday with friends in the countryside. Fireworks. Watermelons. Wind chimes strung up at local temples. Eating chilled udon from a glass bowl.

There are seasons for everything.

And every season teaches the importance of attention.

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To pay attention is to feel the sharpness and the softness of things. We cannot escape the difficulty in life, so why not feel it? Why not really feel it with your whole body and your whole heart and then let it melt into the dust, the compost, the soil instead of avoiding it, re-visiting it, avoiding it, re-visiting it on an endless loop forever, letting it keep you constricted and small.

To be a writer, to be an artist in general is to have one eye very firmly focused on the present and another in your craft.

To turn life into poetry, into art, into a life worth living at all is, I think, to be in a constant state of both awe and grief.

Sometimes one outweighs the other, but we cannot be firmly in either without an acknowledgement of the opposite.

When you pay attention, you cannot deny the fact that nothing lasts forever.

So while not hold them close while we can.

When you pay attention, the things that hurt, hurt so much harder.

However:

Maybe not initially, but very quickly:

The pleasure intensifies. Life becomes richer. Colours becoming brighter. Food tastes sweeter. Your life feeds you. You traverse the seas of hard moments with trust. You learn to ask for help and seek support. You actually digest the sweetness, because you know if you don’t, you’ll be short of nourishment when the wind ahead picks up.

It’s the most human thing in the world.

The desire to turn life into art. The desire to live a life that feels as if it is truly your own. It’s the greatest privilege in the world, and one we are very lucky to have access to at this time on earth.

As I fill my notebook with stories, and my camera roll with the flowers rolling around the streets of my home, I thank the season for gifting me the fragrant air, the exhale of the flowers, the wave of energy to carry me through moments and seasons soon coming again, when it all begins to wane.

I thank the practice of writing poetry, for taking notes on life, for pausing, even when I don’t want to, even when everything around me seems to scream I know you are tired but you don’t have TIME for changing the way I see and live in the world.

I thank you.

A song for this piece

Emmie xo

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A Poetic Life

A poetic writing and creative living workshop series, for women.

Commencing June 26th

It is with so much excitement I finally share a new workshop series on poetic writing, and living, for women.

A Poetic Life is a meeting point for women who want to write more, live more deeply and attentively, to bring back creativity, nourishment and beauty to a fast-paced, homogenised, greyscale world.

This is a workshop series for the art and craft of writing, and living through a poetic lens. We will dive into the creative process and the creative life. The art of writing. The sticky points of sharing. We will explore our relationship to nature, sensuality and our body through a poetic, mythic lens. We will hear each others stories, ideas and words.

You can find all the details on the website, including the schedule and each of the chapters we will move through together.

There is an early bird price until May 28th, so you can feel into if it is right for you at this time, as well as a two part payment plan and a $50 discount for all active members of The Daily Rest Studio.

I would of course, love to see you there. 🤍