If I could speak to my 20-year-old self, what would I say?
This is a rolling blog 🎪 that shares some fleeting impressions and some heavier droplets from my story of Me&We. It’s mostly for me: to keep the life-giving things that helped me in my fidgeting with ‘truth to power’. And to meet a need to speak in the languages that work for me. I also hope that this helps anyone who sees part of their story in mine.
With love,
Me&We: in pictures and captions
Openings…
#01 Jester
March 2022. Hello Jester, the escaped falcon from London Zoo. This beloved Crested Caracara visited my local park on her holiday. People from our local community gathered excitedly, being careful not to let dogs get too close or feed her crisps. We wanted to keep her safe, along with the other wildlife in our park who we thought she might eat.
Jester was a wonder to watch. As we watched, we talked about the weather and the collective trauma of the Corona-times. We noticed how nice it was that we had this freedom to deviate from our plans, to watch this bird for hours on a Tuesday afternoon. During the zoo’s many rescue attempts, we giggled as Jester dodged all entrapment efforts like a 3-year-old in a playground not wanting to go home. She’d snatch her favourite snacks cautiously, then wander off and dance around tree trunks (go, Jester!). Most people I spoke to wanted to watch – but not be there to watch the actual capture back to safety.
I think we all saw part of our own dilemmas with safety and freedom in Jester’s visit.
Posted 15 July 2022.
Learning to breathe
#02 Breathe in to nourish the interior world…
…Breathe out to meet the mosaic tapestry of the exterior #03
Magical sparkly play. I don’t realise what this becomes until I start.
Posted 15 July 2022.
Hearing Me, hearing We
#04 Inner and outer voices
Stories matter ✨
#05 Past/present, passed
Some stories float to the water’s surface in my brother’s blog, Ping Pong Pen & Ink and on Land, Sea and Stars.
As I write this, my sister – Lan-ji (aka Talls/sis) has now watched Burning Turning Red over 20 times with her newborn, an Ah-Mei-Sing Star. Our other brother, Tai (T-Boy/Choi Sock/Choi-jey) is back home for the weekend. The feast will be plump and fruity.
Posted 23 July 2022.
Fear of fear
#06 Touching and befriending
Posted 6 August 2022.
Dreams
My nephew has a sign on his bedroom door that says, “PRIVATE PROPHECY”. I think he means “private property”. I love it.
I’m not one to decode the workings of dreams. I’m more of a see-how-I-feel coin-flipper: if undecided I might flip a coin to gauge my truer reaction. And so with dreams, I’m more interested in the feeling I wake with.
#07 Symbolism
The journey between mint polo to fruit polo: I wish I could say it was down to positive thinking. For me, the mint polo era was a normalised state of stress and so positive thinking was often a prize out of reach.
In those moments of prolonged Moisery Guts, I wasn’t such a fan of: “what went well? …focus on the positives!”. I preferred: “what sustained me?”.
#08 Gratitude has no word count
Hello Carlo. Like us at the time, unanchored from any home. Carlo, the wonderful giver of fun, flavour and mint polos (and I’m reminded, fruitcake biscuits too). There was also Les, who worked at reception, who loved following Cameroon at the World Cup. Les filled our flask daily with hot water and to our relief, never enforced the no cooking rule when we steamed up electric one-pot wonders in our rooms.
Over the years, people might have widened their eyes hearing these glimpses of the past. A friend, after hours nursing some beers talking about this, waved their hand around the pub and said, “no-one else here has a story anything like this”. Really? How do we know?
Me&We. Our story is unique, yet it isn’t: it’s everywhere, yet nowhere at the same time.
Some might wonder about the effort to ‘recover’ from the refugee experience and to journey out of poverty like that. But mainly it was sheer luck, kindness and circumstance that explains how I’m able to sit here and write this.
Back to the dream…
Many years after these daily tastes of mint polos, I have a dream. In this dream my Ma and sister are by my side. I pick up a bright pink polo from a packet and pop it in my mouth. I always wanted to be able to taste things in my dreams (imagine the worldly possibilities without the calories!). In this dream, for one time only, I can taste the fruit polo – really taste it. And I wake with a lightness I’d never felt before.
Posted 6 August 2022.
✨ More to follow soon…