This year has been real.
Using the original intent of the word.
Inside my memory, each year has a different feel. A distinct style, usually punctuated by one or two moments or events. I am young so everything I remember belongs to my childhood, I could say I’m still there now, I’m not yet twenty. But for the past five years, it has been difficult to make out the shape of each year. Its form is distorted and hazy, dissipating at my touch as I reach out to them in my mind. Twenty-seventeen is the last year I can categorise by feeling alone, spiky and half-formed, still bearing little weight and distinctly red. At least until this one.
Twenty-twenty-four is fresh in the way you have a cut and can feel the coldness of the air settling into your exposed insides. It hurts at the beginning, but as your wound closes, you have something new inside you. A part of the outside world has formed and guided you. This year is a pale blue like the spring sky early in the morning. I have not had a blue year like this since I was small. Yet I am the furthest away from that childhood serenity I have ever been. It is my first year living away from my parents and the only house I have ever lived in. It has been the first time I’ve gone to the doctor alone, my body rapidly changing over the months, catching up with him. The first time, I’ve felt underdressed on the sidewalks bustling with blazers and echoing heels. Everything in this strange metropolis is larger than me, more important. But I feel it. I feel the softness of a smaller self. Her innocence and bravery before she discovered that others had feelings about everything she could say or do or be.
Yes, that’s it. When I reflect upon those years, it is not so much a fog but a white light of a screen that obscures my vision. I do not think it is a coincidence that the least tangible years are the years I have been squashed between lines of code.
It was an experiment at first. In the initial weeks, I felt like a newborn lamb bumbling and wobbly with the tasks of raw life. The potency of the world was almost too much to my starved senses. While the world may not be made up of the vibrant colours of a one-hundred-and-twenty hertz OLED display, theres so much that blooms beyond the borders of that little box. We must read widely to be well informed, but I think we must live widely to give context to what it is we are reading. Being present is not only a gift to yourself, but to others too. If I had been wearing my headphones while out getting coffee the little girl wouldn’t have asked to see my drawing that I was working on. Her curiosity and wonder would’ve been ignored, and her engagement with art, blocked. I wish I was that bold when I was young, but I guess I already knew I wanted to be an artist by the time I was her age, so I was much happier observing. This is something I owe my development of my art to. Observing, with not just my eyes, but with all my senses to create something that is fully formed, of all dimensions and quite, well, real. I have never been so in love with my practice as this year, living life de-robed of social media. It had been too long since I had sat at a kitchen table and just drew, pages on pages on pages, for the entire day. My art has become my new addiction. It always feels much better to finish a sketch (not matter how bad) than to double tap every 15 seconds, rewarding my dwindling attention span. I like this feeling of agency. This state of creation.
Tonight, I’m at a friend’s birthday. A feeling of intimate awareness washes over me. My view is expanding and I can see beyond my peripheral vision. I feel my gut sink, not in an anxious way, but calming, anchoring me to the now. For the first time since I was eleven years old, I know I am meant to be where I stand. I can feel my feet touching the ground, the residual heat of the bodies around me giving me goosebumps. This is my life. This is how I am living. I am living. Isn’t that completely mad? And I don’t need to have my phone out because this moment can’t be captured. Everything worthwhile would be lost in the flatness of your screen, and I would have chased this feeling away trying to show you. Life is not meant to be watched. The present moment does not need to be collated; it hasn’t yet left us for the land of memory. Do not give it an early death.
On the horizon, I see the next year begin its march towards me. Twenty-twenty-five is a rich and entrancing shade of Sacramento green. I’m not too sure what that means yet. I can only hope it is the colour of the forests that lure me deeper into this state of imagination, where I can get lost in all the possibilities of what could be, will be and is.