Two weeks in the woods
A diary of meaning making, creating from private self, and befriending the unknown
Welcome to SEE YOU—a companion for artists, thinkers, and analog lovers with ideas, inspiration, and reflections on living an intentional creative life.
Today I am recapping two weeks spent in the woods at a writing/art residency. Join to follow along!
I have returned from two weeks in western North Carolina, deep in the wooded foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains, where I along with four other residents took part in Dog Trot Writers and Artists Residency.
After seeing an open call for this residency in Cody Cook-Parrott’s newsletter, I applied and was excited to be invited to attend. This would be my first long residency in nature without any expected programming.
The experience was lovely, of course it was. If you asked me what I did, I could give you a lusty recap of all the fun summer camp-like experiences that were had with my delightfully wacky co-residents—going on long hikes, recommending books to each other for hours, gazing at stars while swatting away mosquitoes, or drawing and writing poetry to the sound of whip-poor-wills and woodpeckers.
There were triple the amount of hours I spent by myself in the quiet, reading and writing and drawing and awakening to the spirits all around me in the woods. Much of my time at the residency was learning to be comfortable without clear structure and befriending fragments as building blocks instead.
To bring you along to the residency experience, I am sharing an edit of my daily journal entries during my two weeks in the woods. It’s possible I may disappoint some of you by not sharing something more digestible (here’s what I made! here’s what I learned!) or turn you off with my spiritual language. But I am calling in those of you who are game and along for the ride, hoping you’ll find something true ☀️
June 6: Relishing the quiet here. Grateful already for my altar which invites me to sit down to meditate then open my notebook to “create myself on paper.” To have so much time sprawled ahead of me here—a full two weeks—feels like such a gift. I’m not positive what will be created but I have such confidence that I will be making lots of work. The birds sing in support.
how I want to bottle up time
deep inhales of sweet fruit rind
echoes of leaves speckled with sunlight
preserved into molten strawberry jam
tuck it away in the back of the pantry
dust it off in the frantic pace of city
where once again life speeds asthmatically
jam smearing into pores of the program
June 7: I look to the woods, a place of mystery and witchcraft despite its defined forms up close. Clear up close, dense from afar. Contrast the woods with water, clean on the surface, unknowable depths that one can only begin to make out after diving in. Perhaps this is what my moon asks of me—for me to dive in, befriend her, get to know her depths before surfacing anything into solid form.
June 8: I’ve come here in hopes of figuring out a shape for my life writing that can form a book. But my life is still unfolding. The instinct to analyze in the middle of an event is a narrowing of story to its most banal outcomes. Do I fear the imaginatory unknown so much that I must try to extract the lesson before its unfolding?
The shape of any meaning making effort is just one shape. Another type of shape will captivate me later on. I will repeat this chasing for a lifetime. Only in this Sisyphean pursuit is the whole picture, the spiral around meaning itself the meaning maker. The dance around questions more important than the answers.
June 9-10: Greetings from my favorite spot on the bridge over the creek, taking in laps of spring water running over mossy stones staggered in foam pools. Here I refuse to speak meanly to myself. Reading so much of it in my teenage diaries I can’t bear the pain I’ve inflicted upon myself through sharp language. I know I am connected to a kinder voice, my spirit. She feeds me. My prayers to Earth Mother connect me to the world at whole. I don’t need to be anything more.
Being here, I am met with the resounding lesson that I am fine and well. I am duly supported. I float on, learning and trying and expanding what I know, towards people and the natural world. I don’t need to crack the code on anything or rush through life or block out people to enact some higher vision. My feet are firmly planted on the earth. My crown receives the messages of sky. My hands create fire. And I cleanse with water and feel her humble unknowing.
June 11: For someone usually resistant to looking at my past, I have learned a lot from spending the past few days reading old journal entries, namely my patterns of self-analysis and desire to write about self. I see how in my public writing I keep so much at a distance, yet I read memoir where so much is laid bare. What do I fear? Judgment, hurt, at the cost of what—my own ego? But to write is not the same as to publish.
June 12: David Hockney is dead. Through Hockney I learned color, pattern, and love for the natural world. I found freedom of line and love for portraits. I saw the value of multiples, of drawing the same place, of drawing at all as a way to marvel, to feel joy. I dream of having a life as creatively filled as his. At the same time I wonder at the masculine illusion of this dream, supported through assistants turned lovers.
I watched A Bigger Splash earlier this year, the most intimate reveal of Hockney’s personal life (so intimate that Hockney wanted to buy the film to destroy the negatives). I see a man who desired to keep his private life separate from his art. Perhaps the measured approach of capturing nature was a relationship which could remain pure and undisturbed. Hockney is so different from another of my art inspirations, Frida Kahlo, whose watery, intense introspection is laid bare in her many self-portraits.
Which calls to me? How much do I want to reveal? Do I really have control, or is the pull greater than the fear?
June 13-14: A week in and I am officially BORED, SO BORED! I want to buy something, drown in sugar, transcend this state of ennui. Free falling, I allow myself to accomplish nothing beyond feeding myself breakfast and reading a chapter of a book. Think and unthink. Release any expectation of finishing a project, even a scrap.
What if this entire summer operated on pleasure and nothing more? What if it took me at least that amount of time to unlearn always needing to produce or be of use to feel right in my body?
June 15: I’ve been working on an illustrated story. I feel most frustrated by the difficulty I have of releasing my images into the world. It may be that I am scared of fragments, of being misunderstood by readers, so I feel that I must tell a story very linearly and obviously. But I also read so many things that are not this clear cut, books and zines that live outside of this linear trajectory. Why don’t I lay the images out, rearrange, and see what can be told from there?
June 16-17: The end is nearing. I’m ready to go back home. A nice insight from yesterday is the acceptance of my inner critic always being with me. Instead of eradicating her, I aim to find her utterly uninteresting. She’s merely droning television noise in the background.
Evenings after dinner pass quickly with group conversation. If I don’t have anything to say, I don’t have to say. If I have something I want to say, then I say it. I balance out all the yappers in the world as a listener. I want to see reticence as a gift, mystery as a value of regard, while still saying my piece. Perhaps it’s taking me until my mid-30s to accept my slow burn reveal.
June 18: Here in the woods I look for pockets to speak to myself. I know I’ll miss hearing my voice layered over creek sound. I leave having read six books and making eight drafts of poems and the same number of drawings and a 3/4 finished essay and another just begun and I don’t know whether that sounds like a lot or a little. I leave with that measure mattering less than when I arrived.
I read of writers and painters who want to crawl into their works. Meanwhile my attention remains fractured. I may be lucky to be a woman, where fractured routines create everyday domesticity. Bring me the fragments that make up a life. I’ll work in the stolen moments and build up surprise.
I leave these woods with a better understanding of my unsatisfiable self. This place has been both life-changing and merely passage of time stretched out. The romantic longing for a secluded, productive getaway is a fiction. Despite it, I make things. I create my world. Slowly, I think, it’s becoming a story.
☀️ My beloved four week workshop Zine Lab: From Idea to Publication returns on August 4. If you’re craving to make a zine project come to life this summer, do it with lively community with lots of support! Registration is now open and two spots for scholarships are available.
☀️ Quietly Public coworking sessions begin next Wednesday, July 1, 2 PM EST for SEE YOU paid subscribers. Join for the month and let’s work on our digital gardens, websites, or whatever else strikes your fancy. Find the full schedule and meeting link here, or in the email going out to paid subscribers on Tuesday. Hope to meet some of you there!
Oh my goodness yesssss we are riding a similar intuitive wavelength. This was beautiful! “What if this entire summer operated on pleasure and nothing more?”
Your journal entries are lovely. And i had to laugh at the "BORED SO BORED" part. I now that feeling! I hope you came back to the craziness here refreshed.