The Year of Loss
Initiation and the good things which have come from her.
This next piece of writing is going to be hard to write. Like so many pieces before this, hard, but this feels a little more raw and honest. It’s got easier to be honest and my work has lead the way. This substack has been rewritten a handful of times. I’ve been looking at the journey from how in this waking world, our rawest expression as woman tends to be villainised and we do it to ourselves gladly, to the actual fact that these raw feelings are very valid, and often a call to answer the shadow inside. What are our myths, how do we embody them and then in turn hide behind our polite human masks.
I for so long have hid away my depths and intense nature and inner worlds as a means to play it cool, let things find me while I do other parts of life. That’s how we’re taught to do life especially as women. Eventually, I would have to express and therefore paint in the ways I need to, write real poetry or at least really say what it is, acknowledging who I am, what I need, what I’m about and the things I love (because love too, has been undermined or put away for another or the next life, like it is not meant to exist in previous lived in times) have all come to a front.
The last few weeks have been messy while we muddle through a Mercury pre-and now arrived retrograde opposing an already retrograde Jupiter while Mars is it’s its pre-shadow phase. Pluto has finally ingressed into Aquarius and into my 7H of relationships/partnerships, relieving my 11 cardinal placements while setting off a bunch of (positive) asteroids in my fixed houses. I’ve turned off my twitter account and i’m not sure for how long while taking even more extended breaks from other forms of social media all to quieten the noise. I remain hopeful, even at peaks of anger or frustration as some hurt seeps in, there has to be some sort of hope or finding the silver line. I’m not a person who goes out of my way to find anger, but here it is after a great 2024. The most challenging of years to date in my existence. Today, I’m embracing the truth in situations as painful as that may be. I also recognise in the great words of Jamie Anderson, “Grief, I've learned, is really just love. It's all the love you want to give, but cannot. All of that unspent love gathers in the corners of your eyes, the lump in your throat, and in the hollow part of your chest. Grief is just love with no place to go.”
My practice has evolved to understand and hardness this. It’s looking at other women through a mythology and modern day film villain perspective. I don’t believe any of the women on our screens - or in real life - are true villains. At some point, we all lost something, someone, precious. Maybe even in my case, a shifting of everything I’ve ever known. I look around me at the world, family photos, the phrase ‘never again’ and I think, what a beautiful lie we’re all sold. So many lies, all for some kind of ego or monetary profit. How many women’s lives have we sacrificed and how many times have I given myself up to the alter? So really, the work I am creating now is a call to this.
The last few months (years) during the final degrees of the Pluto transition in Capricorn have been a call to look at how I give myself to others, put my body through its physical paces, resolve a few medical queries which included a cat allergy which no longer exists (it’s possible), switch careers to something far more fulfilling and less about survival or something I know I’m good at and full of competition, validate the self, move through many a separation even within myself, and not touch another soul’s body for years. And now here I am, finding the pieces which I’m grateful for, all because, my life as it is, is where and how it should have always been. I keep reminding myself of these silver linings in a year I am calling ‘The Year of Loss’ which reminds me of our prophet Muhammad pbuh and his Year of Sorrow and then what came after. If ever in doubt, there’s Abdul Basit’s recitation of Ad Duha which offers some needed grounding. Alhamdulillah, said with a tender heart. So here we go. This is the story to where it currently stands.
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Contempt for the Artist - an unlikely but lived manifesto. Sentences with double meanings and timelines.
In another life
I’d have two pets
Content with a 9-5
The conventional beauty
So softly spoken
Maybe then
I would be enough
Instead I find myself
Drawing blood for pigment
For a large stretch of silk
Setting moulds for a field of apples
Wearing both crowns
And two names ready
In a house which is not my home
Chambers of my Heart.
Tell my dear beloved who lives in the
chambers of my heart,
That even if I don't meet him, I still meet him
And that my sight is connected to seeing him...
Even if our dwellings are far away from one another
I hope he realizes that I don't remember him
As how can I remember him if I can't forget him in the first place?
O you who thought that I don't remember him
And God knows that I never forget about him
If he is away from me, my soul is his home
So how possibly could the heart forget who lives in the soul?- Al-Mutanabbi (915 – 23 September 965)
“ابلغ عزيزاً فى ثنايا القلب منزله
أنى وإن كنت لا ألقاه ألقاه
وإن طرفى موصول برؤيته
وإن تباعد عن سكناى سكناه
يا ليته يعلم أنى لست أذكره
وكيف اذكره إذ لست أنساه
يا من توهم أنى لست أذكره
والله يعلم أنى لست أنساه
إن غاب عنى فالروح مسكنه
من يسكن الروح كيف القلب ينساه”― أبو الطيب المتنبي
Everything of your old life you try to despatch into a corner. All while trying to remember the presence of God, but how can such a presence ever be forgotten. Everything has an anointed an hour, with its prescribed destination. Only you have somewhat control over your journey which is a mixture of understanding, learning as well as releasing and accepting. This is the fucking plan and you ask yourself in which parts did you enable the current events. Could you have done more or were you just exceptionally hopeful that this time you were sure the current plan was an end game. Is there any end game in this world. You had prayed that you would not witness such a tearing of the heart. You ask you yourself, where are my elders, the lover, the home and my familiars whom I have two names ready for. Where have you all gone and will you see me again. The sun for now is still setting in the west, therefore there is still time. Still time to say we’re easy to love, with the similar ease we love others. That life will shift into some grand ease where I won’t always feel stripped of pieces of my soul I send away to others. Aren’t we the lucky ones.
I think more than ever it’s the most important to have three things in my life at current.
The first to acknowledge my practice is autobiographical in a non-linear, non-descriptive, deeply spiritual, non-conversational manner; even though I sit here typing away to explore these painted and sculptural worlds I make. I’m happy with the fact when I paint and write, I never actually name or describe full events, more so I’m creating the atmosphere, the thickness of emotion for others to breathe. I want to transport you there. The painting is a portal. 3 weeks into my MFA I stud in the corner of my studio in tears because I knew my peers would see the secrets I hid inside my ribcage, and yet here we are. These few months have taught me to embrace what my ‘villain’ or shadow has been trying to show me. To live an authentic life of expression, fearlessly. To safeguard my ethereal nature and power. There will be peers, friends, eventually other divinely partnered persons who will and are supporting this growth.
I’m forever painting the inner walls of my ribcage, that’s where the truth lies. Sufis, and muslims in general say the key to life and your connection to the divine lays within your heart. The heart processes 5-6 litres of bloods per min when at rest. If the heart is the key to Allah (God), and the heart can experience heartbreak, then surely that very same heartbreak, those desires, our humanness is also divinely decreed. Be it a test of endurance or a test of an impact of a shorter event. Therefore I shouldn’t ignore the call to attend to all matters of the heart. I maybe had even told myself I wished I had never responded to a message sent by a beloved so many years ago but alas it was decreed and heartbreak is a part of this realm. For now it’s listening to the heart and letting this moment grow into another kind of beautiful. Be brave with the task and own up to it. Bathe in it, understand you are being initiated into the life you should live. Remember everything changes. This moment will not last, we hope.
The second is to have full autonomy over all my actions, every choice in movement is mine. How can I distill or release certain feelings in a ‘productive’ or safe way. Further, how can I push these actions released or offset by certain feelings to another brink. That’s where the art is, that’s where my ‘villain’ or shadows exist. We all have free will, and it is our remit to understand and learn from our motives. I can understand from an astrological perspective parts of who I am, however I need to understand how and why and also let that energy manifest. I’ve noticed how I dispel these energies is through action, rowing, running, lifting heavy things, painting large quick things. Motion is the key. This is my shaking the body. Every part of our body will testify for and against us. I owe my soul the right of its expression.
For so long I ignored an underworld and a possible descent, because the focus across the board, in marketing, day to day has always been to ascend. Like we’re scared to speak about the shadows and only do so to ward people away from exploring these parts of themselves. However, one cannot fully understand the desire and journey to ascend if we do not journey down to meet ourselves. These are two sides of the same coin. I know I need to tap out and call into something higher far more often than I have been. Power and anger are both seductive calls. Both have their place, but neither should override my call to the divine power which has made me capable of harnessing this power and intensity. Even after the anger dissipates, the seductive nature of power lingers in the air. What a blessing to be gifted the ability to harness and hold this darkness and intensity. Don’t transmute it, It’s not for everyone. Therefore, I need to utilise this energy productively with sensitivity.
Previously, when looking at my home for in which my shadows lay, the task resulted in either a short exchange or premature ending of my journey for many reasons. First, I knew the journey looked undesirable, therefore I would convince myself and others there’s no need to descend. Secondly, I didn’t know it was possible to descend so in a way I couldn’t allow myself to embark said journey in the first place. And third, there was this self villainisation, and not in the fun ‘let’s push the world where my art practice and hedonism meet’ kind of villain. I’m speaking of the villain we hate to see in ourselves because those parts are uncomfortable, telling ourselves that the human in us should behave more - to what capacity and to whose standards was never questioned or even formed. There’s three take aways from this. The first being, what are my remits where I owe it to myself on ‘this is what entails a good human’? The second being that the uncomfortable villain in me was just a very raw human part of myself, and the third, we are not villains at all. We should not dress up our wounds or tasks as villains, nor should we answer to a system which tells us anything other than suppressing one’s voice and needs means we become the villain. Our wounds and trying moments are soft points of the person in us we have ignored in this harsh world, in turn hardening our very own hearts.
I think my definition I’ve set for myself for being brave has meant I’ve leaned into picking the more challenging, uncomfortable tasks, regardless of these were tasks I thought I would enjoy; or even denying myself the love, joys and/or pleasures this life has to offer. Call it a learning from a lifetime of having to explain my motives in doing careers, art, expressing and so on the way I want and feel I ought to. I’m learning there’s a bravery in occasionally letting your body and mind run towards the things which greet you with generosity, compassion, genuine humour and a reassurance. It doesn’t mean it’s the easy or safe blanketed road. It’s the one which you can’t deny your soul and even the good stuff will provide lessons. This isn’t to say I haven’t learnt a lot from doing the tasks I haven’t particularly wanted to pursue. The journey will be worth while and water at the end will taste the sweetest. However, there must be a balance, acknowledgment, tenderness and nurturing ourselves while we initiate ourselves. A bit of growing discomfort gets us to move and explore, either finding new parts of ourselves or reaffirm the parts of us we always held dear.
The third, which leads into my own myth and circles back to my first point, is to admit to the need of my human disposition. Are the independent ever truly independent? Who runs our minds? Where do we do so much in aims to quiet down the softer core, all to ‘protect’ and ‘keep things flowing’ or rather, moving. Flow has a softness and we are anything but that at the beginning. The denial of my inner intensities although possibly always on show given the context of my paintings and writing. Growing up we were always told Islam had existed since the dawn of time. Therefore it doesn’t surprise me the global mythology I’ve been reading share stories with one another along with numerous faiths. Astrology is an art I’ve bought back in with a clearer view on how to read the art and via a scope which sees how the collective and I affect one another.
I’ve recently found myself understanding, acknowledging even, how and whom I love. That the connections lay within my soul to theirs, and that is a far greater love which I can’t seem to remove, and really, nor should I try to. This connection found with people, places, moments, paintings, all lived in experiences. This isn’t to say I’m choosing this current energy to stay as it is. More so an understanding that it will change along with the seasons, therefore there is nothing to do but nurture and go with it. Maybe even so by this acknowledgment, I’m seeing my own soul, stripped down piece by piece, as such like the tale of Inanna, the Queen of War. I’m currently asking myself what I and this queen have in common, what is my mythology, my character arch in this autobiographical practice? Inanna who was asked by her sister Ereshkigal Queen of the Underworld to remove every garment Inanna wore as she knocked on the 7 gates, until she arrived at her final stop, naked, covered in mud, crawling on all fours, at a loss of everything before Ereshkigal hooks Inanna onto a meat hook to die. What have I had to remove and what am I still removing? What are my 7 gates?
Inanna was the Queen of the Upperworld some 4,000 years ago in modern day Iraq. By choice, she embarks on the heroine’s journey, a descent into the underworld with the plan to take the crown from her sister Ereskigal. The heroine’s journey is quieter and more private than the hero’s one. There’s no winning here in the sense of traditional tales of masculine grandeur. For so long, I’ve heard tales of how women are thrown out or dragged into places (Persephone, I’m looking at you). Inanna this queen, was the first before Eris, Eos and Athene to willingly descend by her own accord, so she may answer her inner calls of rage, passion, those gnawing feelings you can’t seem to ignore all to better understand her role in the upper world. Almost like, that time I cut off 8 inches off my hair. The voice from my paintings telling me to shed the memories which accompanied this growth, telling me I can grow this hair again. And now my hair has reached this beautiful length where it almost can be tucked into the backs of jumpers. And my temporary gifted youth and beauty - which I can admit - is truly a gift from God. Hair being such a marker of feminine beauty and youth in Asian culture as well as to male suitors, and I just had to cut it off so I could grow it back as mine.
Before I depart, I’d like to thank those of you who continue to support my practice though its changes. On a more human and less artist level, recently my ego has been pushing away the love and gifts that comes with. By making the work I’m making, I’m being able to dissolve this part of me slowly. Thank you to the people I truly love the most. Thank you for witnessing and letting me go through this initiation.
I’ll leave you with this poem. Salaam x
Start again tomorrow. Start again when the fields grow flowers again. When the field look like heaven and heaven rains down every flower of every scent.
Start again step by step foot by foot until the roads extend one by one and slowly you’ll cross country by country and all of a sudden you might find yourself half way through a journey you did not plan foresee think possible or dare to dream. Start again and again until the world looks different, a different kind of wonderful and different kind of hold and a different kind of gentleman because you have grown into a different kind of beautiful, the only kind of wonderful a woman like you can hold. Hold on to it, dream about it taste it and believe in it. Start again so heaven will depart flowers and every chamber you’ve kissed goodbye smells like musk, start again and don’t fear the duration, start again even though it could be days, weeks, months or years but I beg it will never take decades if only you start again, start again after making your bed comfortable, start again after a good night’s rest, start again after rowing the duration of a river, after you’ve dreamt of them again, start again start again start again and start again the prayer and I beg just start again. start again and see them in the next life even if that next life is in your current waking life or the next life which is the afterlife, start again and talk to God, start again and speak with your chest, walk each corner of the earth, please start again, start again, start again and live beautifully, start again oh so beautiful sweet woman.