Step into your wild self. Access your Dark Feminine energy to rediscover your full strength and unlock your untamed power. Recognise dark energies, but don’t fear them. Deconstruct the fortress of the self. Reweave the fabric of your world in innovative, transformative, driven ways. Embrace your Underworld i.e. shadow self, fears, desires; normalise negative emotions, seeing them as an opportunity to embrace authenticity. Allow yourself to experience nuanced emotions. Resist the temptation to bypass. Connect with yourself without neglecting the parts that you may have become disconnected from: reclaim them. Trust your instincts and assessments of the world, they’re usually accurate and you owe yourself self-belief. If it doesn’t feel right, it probably isn’t. Your intuition always sees through the fortresses of personas. Reframe your outlook on your whole existence. Embody the witch / alchemist archetype: Transform everything. Start by transforming your inner life, which will empower you to enact external change (including shifts in consciousness). Expand your vision, expand your knowledge. Only you have the power to hold yourself back from personal fulfilment. Some situations require control, others would be better navigated through an approach based on surrendering. You are the only one with the tools to discern between the two. Aim to be impervious to other people’s visions of your life’s trajectory. Avoid circumstances that don’t allow you to show up as your best, authentic self. Don’t feel a pressure to approach interpersonal relations as if they’re a performance and avoid situations where there is that expectation whenever possible. Healthy relationships don’t require you to change, pretend, cross your own boundaries, or feel depleted or uncomfortable in any way. Tap into childlike wonder and blissful maiden-like playfulness. Connect with nature more often. Be emotionally mature and empowered without losing a sense of connection with your innocence.
Tag: writing blog
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The engulfing
Spiralling,
A beckoning sign.
I’ve been teetering on a thin line
The catalyst-
Something as simple
as a knife twist,
disguised.
A reframing of purity-
turned glacial.
A false sense of security,
dissipating.
Withdrawing, inward
submersion.
It’s coming, one step forward-
the possession
the engulfing
It’s on.
The switch has been turned.
The demon has been summoned
I sense the first intimations of life,
feel its claw without being touched,
almost taste its void, hushed
She picks up and licks the knife
it turns into a magic wand in her hand
the open wound morphs into a black hole
I can no longer lick it to exorcise my self
She is free to bleed into me, she’s in control
The last protective layer is pulled off, violently.
After a battle spree
progressing morbidly, artfully
I summon the will
to lull the beast to sleep
before I get silent and still
I’m in it really deep
yet once again manage to make it all seep
out of me as I get ready to take another leap. -
Siren’s prayer
In my dream
I was a siren, dwelling
in a pool of blood
filled with corpses
of preys
awaiting
their starved predator;
Musical, aquatic Scheherazade-
unwilling witness, captive,
or cold-blooded accomplice
with a gnawing change of heart-
so not so cold-blooded after all?
Moon-intoxicated, I sensed
your presence from afar,
running, teeth-clenching-
anxiety rising,
clinging
to the last tidal dream,
I wonder – who am I
supposed to
hypnotise:
the new live prey,
the ghosts of the dead,
or you?
Reluctant to find out,
I sing my melody, inwardly
to drown out the sound
of your blood feast. -
Uncanny encounter
Lifting the white veil, I open the old, mysterious drawer. Inside, next to a fairy tale-infused wooden music box and some forgotten Christmas and birthday cards that seem to either yearn for my full attention or yearn to be left alone or be destroyed, I see the charming box where the photographs are stored – those prosthetic memories that seem to have developed a life of their own. Where I currently live, few objects that are explicitly mnemonic tend to survive the memorabilia purge I execute regularly sometimes in my attempts at minimalism and sometimes for the sake of symbolically shedding the past and starting afresh – a peculiar habit, perhaps, for someone fascinated with archives and the archival process and antique stores. Any letter or card would have to be extremely emotional, soul-stirring, and potentially heart-wrenching for some reason (for instance reflecting the cavernously deep feelings of the sender) in order to coexist with me for long periods of time. I’d have to feel like throwing it away would be a blasphemous act. Or alternatively, there should be something within that object that propelled my mind to get spiritually irrational and make up a superstition about it, specifically a superstition of what might happen if I got rid of it, so I just let it rest in some corner instead, where it’s cast into oblivion.
Any physical diaries I have ever had have been burnt – I couldn’t get rid of them in any other way: flames are symbolic. The process is more cathartic than deleting a LiveJournal account, but everything has been digitised and that works for me, despite the supposed deprivation of the haptic pleasure and of the magic of writing with a fountain pen in a beguilingly beautiful notebook. With the amazing texture, designs, and cover art of some notebooks nowadays, I’d probably decay with indecision whilst trying to decide what thoughts were noble enough to be written in such a diary anyway, and if I managed to decide, I’d still curse myself whenever I have to cross out one word and I would embellish the hell out of those noble thoughts to the point where it would be more of an exercise in literary style, imagination, and language rather than one in authenticity, self-awareness, or memory preservation. I suppose I’ll stick to the occasional LiveJournal entries and notes on my phone for that.
I have also deleted many photographs along the years and there are long chapters in my life that only ever still exist, in some vague, distorted form, in my mind. Rather than doing so out of an impulse or lapse in judgement, it was always planned and I have always been at peace with it, which is even more sacrilegious. Freud would be disappointed – he praised the power of photography to act as a reliable mnemonic device, since physical proof of a memory combats the decay the memory would face if it were only stored in one’s mind – hence liable to distortions over time. In his view, diaries, photographs, cards, are all part of a chain of mnemonic devices which free us, helping us unload the burden that we would have to hold if memories were permanently retained in our minds. They are extensions of identity, of your inner life, aiding our capacity to remember, which in turn allows us to absorb new information and conceive fresh thoughts. Eh, anyway, family photos, in particular, lie by omission – in addition to being an enemy to individuality, which is sacrificed in favour of an unreal collective past. Belonging whilst losing one’s self. Not to mention the notion of counter-memory and how trying to retain the past might only bring about its destruction, ultimately alienating you from your past and from life and making you construct false or weirdly altered memories. Photographic self-obliteration as a form of resurrection or metamorphosis. The intersection between the other and the self, photographic depiction and identity: the end of existence.
I open the charming, memory-preserving or memory-annihilating box. The photo album has an imposing, magnetic presence. As I turn the pages, I remember most of the photos, so they’re hardly nostalgic artefacts. I’m quite desensitised due to this observation and the fact that nothing seems to elicit an emotional response. But then I reach one portrait that I must have seen before, surely, and yet there’s something I haven’t read on her face before. Am I imagining this? It seems uncanny. The girl in the picture, a defying, atemporal doppleganger, an embodiment of a spectral condition, seems to want to tell me “I refuse to exist as an afterthought in this simulacrum”. She wants to step out of the frame and haunt. “I want to smell like Alien, not naphthalene. And this curse of only seeing the light every few years during the holidays…” She reprimands me for forgetting her, for misunderstanding and misconstructing her, for only reanimating her as a “Screen Memory” on rare occasions. I want to hug her. Tell her she is more myself than I am, in a way. Tell her she wouldn’t like it out here. But I remain silent. My expectation of chasing decaying memory traces has turned into an uncanny Blow-Up moment as I catch a glimpse of resignation and almost grief on her face. As I notice this, the door to the unconscious is slightly open, but not enough for her to escape. I know I was supposed to integrate her. But she will be here until next time, feeling trapped. And I will still feel both protective and afraid of her. Perhaps next Christmas it will be different.
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Sigh
What was that, right there?
Hmm?
Your sigh… a sign of weariness, blasé indifference, the content of decadence, spiritual relief?
…
Concealed contempt, a remembrance of loss, emotional capitulation, or repressed agony?
No, it was actually me remembering your intrusive habit of analysing nonverbal cues and how in moments like these it tends to rub me the wrong way. Consider it a sign of my discontent with this dynamic.
We should look into that, I’m sure there’s a reason for it. And for building invisible barriers of psychological impenetrability and feeling resentment whenever I try to cross them. Perhaps it’s because…
Hilarious. You’re talking about trespassing, excavating, and infusing. There’s a way to enter someone’s inner world, force and a lack of subtlety are usually not the way. And seriously…The fact that you get visibly and, depending on your familiarity or affinity with the observer, often vocally irritated when the same treatment of psyche dissection is being inflicted upon you without consent…Now, what was that golden rule of Confucius?
Before you embark on a journey of revenge, dig two graves?
That’s probably misattributed. And a cautionary statement more than a rule. Give it another shot.
To be wronged is nothing, unless you continue to remember it!
…Also not a rule. And I’ll be buried with my grudges.
Not an ethical rule, but a self-help rule. Look, I know, but are you truly bothered or just digging up reasons to be dissatisfied with and closed off to me?
It is more shameful to distrust our friends than to be deceived by them.
You don’t actually live by that. Also, preaching about trust… Your obsessive devotion to double standards is the gateway drug to narcissism. But I’ll look past this because I see a version of myself in you.
Your dogmatic devotion to projection under the disguise of spiritual awareness is a gateway drug to psychotic solipsism.
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Window to the soul
I watched her face
as she integrated all of them
inside her being
the change was subtle
I was attuned to her
inner turmoil
recognising the look
of the split self
in micro-expressions;
others couldn’t tell
why she seemed off-
the warning signs,
so tragically striking
in retrospect.
Her soul seemed made
of something solemn, unrelenting-
I trusted she could bounce back
from the lowest circles of hell. -
May Queen
I shut my eyes and let her caress me
with her veils, scents, and many voices
that touch me in moonlight-tinted spaces;
a mother figure, playful yet collected-
forgiving minor sins, sighs, disguises,
the slight disturbances of
extinguished raptures,
in a glimpse of purity,
in my unknown gestures of kindness –
towards myself and others – she saw
a potential for lightness
She rewards the sweetness
of the gaze with an aura of safety
She crowns me May Queen
whilst I bury my past
and penchant for remoteness
in a crimson house
overrun with honeysuckle vines. -
Nausea
When the whole world is drenched
in performative glue,
you feel everything’s tainted
still, you want your mind re-painted
so you can try to pursue
the myth that it’s all about perspective:
treat it like a tool or an ordeal, right?
it doesn’t always hold up,
especially at night
when you try to untwine
your hair and your spine
when one insight
can incite a riot inside
and you are so tired-
you know the tiredness I’m speaking of-
that of piercing through the sickly sweet
glue that ties people together
when they should be apart
unwittingly toxic,
such entanglement ensures
a removal from any ounce of
authenticity
your pathological detachment
from genuineness
is the source of my nausea. -
Rite of passage
the texture of hell can seep through a broken mind,
but its lingering echoes will leave a mark
looking ahead, I see parks filled with disease,
a small, kaleidoscopic winter coat wrapped around
a phantasmal presence that screams:
I am Home-
I am a haunted home
where it rains.
her hand reaches out to
wipe the morning dew
off a snowdrop lost
in the glittering white-
a mystical anachronism
I look at her with a half-smile;
as if sensing it, she turns around,
mirroring me-
meanwhile,
the world is disintegrating
in secrecy
an ethereal cage descends to envelop us;
a moment cannot define an entire existence
unless it echoes
its beginning and its end
our fate and lips are sealed
it’s more than a folie à deux
bred in liminality
a pact between blue hedonism
and dazzling dissimulation
clears the way forward-
some voices may forever
be confined within
yet the dreams ascend. -
An allegory
Let your mind paint a rainy cityscape. A girl dressed in black, with a mask and noisy heels steps on the sidewalk. Her tears merge with the raindrops. Each tear encapsulates an entire mini-universe, lingering on her cheeks, like undetectable tokens of fluid vulnerability. A stranger passes her by, closely. His slightly curious, slightly worried gaze briefly meets hers. That’s when she remembers she’s in a public space: Maybe the distress in her eyes was visible, after all. His face doesn’t show pity, which is fortunate, for she hates pity – she’s always been too proud for it. But maybe she misinterpreted his facial expression and it wasn’t really concern. Maybe he misinterpreted her expression as something else too. He reminds her of someone – someone kind, sweet, wise, and very dear to her. Someone who knew how to unleash her vulnerable and dreamy side simply by being himself. The rare realness of this person was always rewarded with the privilege of meeting all the facets of her personality.
What her expression conveyed was grief. All-consuming grief, manifested as an affliction of the mind and the body. The inner chaos-intense, the body-tense, during the painful procession. Towards the funeral of the distilled dreams of being. Still alive are the hopes to resurrect the dreams the next day. Another dream, of inner peace, is born. She is wondering when it will materialise. Meanwhile, sweet echoes fill the mind as background music, sung by the Light Beings, ‘Talent. Creativity. Intelligence. Beauty. Resilience. Strength. Kindness’ This is not your typical funeral song. This is one of those days when the melodic discourse is played like a mantra to assuage the mind, to overpower the inner wailing from the funeral rite, to self-induce good vibes, in order to help her keep putting one foot in front of the other foot instead of collapsing. Like an incantation, to banish other toxic thoughts. It’s one of those days when other aspects resonate too strongly, sucking the power out of the good ones, and releasing dark energy. These other forces are not as clear. The noise they express themselves in is a sort of gibberish, a chaotic, harmful nonsense, inducing a heaviness of the heart.
There are rooms she doesn’t unlock in her mind, because she doesn’t want to let the poison out. She wants to stay pure. Untainted. One room contains dusty effigies of blacklisted figures. They’re not distinctive or intelligible, they’re merged into each other, shape-shifting embodiments of damaging thoughts. They are all locked away together in a claustrophobic space, drenched in darkness. Poison drips from their mouth as they breathe in the poisonous atmosphere like zombies. Meanwhile, The Light Beings roam in their perfumed, elegantly decorated chambers inside the mind, as companions and guardians. The Light Beings are personified thoughts, but also real-life people. When she dissociates, it’s probably so as to stay away from the poisonous atmosphere when the forbidden door malfunctions. That poison rarely affects anyone else, besides her self, it is confined within her being.
DIANA MARIN 