Maybe the climate crisis is happening within me too
and a windy night on @cid
I’ve put lots of prisms around my room. An object that collaborates with the sun and projects rainbows. I started to think of myself as a prism —not inherently practical, though I offer beauty when the light hits me.
I didn’t know that rainbows are curved because the water droplets are round.
An amalgamation of fluid prisms. A rainbow: a momentary billboard: a bat signal in reverse. Not a sign of danger but a sigh of relief. That’s what this weekend has been.
Beauty pours through prisms and then arrives on the other side ten fold. This is the kind of shit I’m trying to think about while so often rudely interrupted by the fucking weirdos that love killing people and destroying the planet. I’d love it if they could direct their energy to the wonders of a prism and realise how silly (a gross understatement) they’re being.
This weekend reminded me that weather can completely dictate our experience. Maybe the climate crisis is happening within me too.
You know how when we enter a new stage or era of our own lives we say we’ve “entered a new season”? Have you felt like it’s been mirroring the weather changes? I seem to have a new “season” of my life quicker than usual now. Are my personal seasons speeding up in frequency, just like the seasons of Earth?
Is the speed of the internet a mirror of the skies, and are the skies a mirror of my constant inner hurricanes and heat waves?
Earlier this year I had a crazy night and it was very much directed by the wind. Curl up and get comfortable while I tell you a story.
There was a club night happening at the Gasometer. A DJ I love was playing and it was really hard to get tickets. I gassed up my friends to come too, I boasted that it would be a guaranteed good time (laughable, as if anyone can guarantee anything in this life).
˗ˏˋ ★ ˎˊ˗
I didn’t have much money, and this dictated my choice of dr*gs (if you’ve been reading my newsletter for a while you know that my finances have been in a drought this year). So, because it’s only ten bucks, I chose to take a little square of cardboard that lasts for way too many hours. A hallucinogen that I used to be quite familiar with, an old friend that I rarely stayed in touch with.
The afternoon of the event was fun, though there was a strange omen on our way to the club. A mother duck was on the sidewalk of a very busy road. Her baby was in the middle of the traffic, closest to the side we were walking down. Mum was crying out, wailing. Her baby was helpless, waddling through the the lanes of cars going 60kms an hour.
༺☆༻⠀⠀⠀
We jumped into action, along with some other people that were passing. We stopped the cars, trying to herd the duckling across the road. We did this for a while, and finally they were reunited and we got them off the road (I’ve posted a video of it below). But then, all of a sudden, mumma flew away. Over a wall, completely disappeared. What the heck mum? For a duck, she was a bit of a dog cunt.
We didn’t know how to proceed, but a man with a blanket and cardboard box grabbed the ducking. He seemed to have the initiative so we umm’d and ahh’d on the moral question of bailing……. until we gave up and left the issue with him.
⋆.˚⭒⋆.˚
What a way to start the night. I should have known it was going to be a bit of a weird one.
Cut to the club. The DJ I was the to see was playing at the upstairs dancefloor of the venue… And how do I say this nicely? The room… It’s…… a hellscape. A sensory nightmare. It stinks, it’s cramped, there’s no space to dance. I’m wedged between a wall and some sweaty men who are staring at me with a look of disgust (they probably weren’t, but the acid was saying they definitely were).
I did a bump of something else, and thats when the night fell apart. I lost comprehension and motor skills. I wish this fucking place had a couch or something.
My girlfriend and I went for some air, and in our conversation, I completely lost the ability to understand them. I started saying weird shit, which in turn made me get self-conscious. I realised there was no option but for me to leave the venue, and ride out this night of insanity by myself.
˚ ✦ . . ˚ .
How ashamed, embarrassed, confused I was, to be making that decision. I had begged people to come to this party. I’d promised them the night of all nights! And now I had to leave, and I couldn’t even tell them I was going because I was so cooked.
When I left, the real chaos began. The wind picked up.
This is the kind of wind that doesn’t just blow your hat off, it blows your very life into a completely new direction. I love wind, it’s the first syllable of my surname. Bu just because you love someone, it doesn’t mean they don’t have flaws. This night, the wind was dysregulated, and I wasn’t strong enough to endure it…
. ݁₊ ⊹ . ݁ ⟡ ݁ . ⊹ ₊ ݁.
I should mention another detail to this tale is that my phone screen was severely cracked. Funnily enough, I dropped it on the dance floor a month prior, while watching the very DJ I had been excited to see this night. I hadn’t gotten around to fixing it (we’ve already established I was not cashed up). I was managing to live with this tech issue, cos when you’re broke, you just get on with it. My ignored dental issues can confirm this.
I needed to book an Uber home. I could barely see through the digital collage of my screen, and to make it worse every Uber I tried to organise cancelled on me. I tried and tried again, crouched in a doorway, the high pressure winds drying out my skin and also my tolerance. It became apparent that I’d be walking home alone. Trying to stay calm while I was wigging out on acid through cyclonic winds.
⋆.˚𖦹⋆✮⋆.˚
I won’t bother trying to articulate to you the places my mind went, but I will say, fear was a prominent companion. Fear for my physical safety, fear for my sanity, fear my friends hated me, fear of the hooded figures that I saw in the shadows as I walked through the otherwise empty park.
When that weekend ended I realised it had been a huge shift in a personal season. Though, it wasn’t necessarily for the better. I wasn’t renewed, or inspired, or even grateful for the lesson. It marked the beginning of uncertainty and a complete lack of control over my life. And the wind was my painful fucking mirror.
Jump to this weekend just passed, the weather was perfect. You could feel it in every stranger, their optimism as warm as the sun that was shining on the city.
And THANK FUCKING GOD this marked another change in a personal season.
.𖥔 ݁ ˖ִ ࣪𖤐
I feel a new wave of abundance. New opportunities have arrived. New inspirations. I feel love and connection with so many people. My heart has been soaked clean and refilled once more.
But Spain this weekend? Horrific and deadly floods. Another disaster to add to the list. When will it hit me? And what will it be? What will it mean for my personal weather report?
I can’t know the answer to those questions. I have no control.
If you’ve come this far, well done. Reading is hard in this day and age and honestly I’m impressed.
November =
★my show at Kent St bar (Thursday 14th)
★group show at Milney’s (Thursday 21st)
★doing my first mural
★some other secret collaborations
HAVE A GOOD FUCKING WEEK, GOOD LUCK, LIFE’S HARD BUT IF I CAN DO IT SO CAN YOU!!!!!
Love you, Milli