(View in landscape on phones) 2022 and 2024 below.
2022 – Bodies. Our bodies. My body.
Experience rooted in through it in many often intangible ways. For a large part of my life I felt utterly disconnected from my body. Now, at 40, I am lucky to have discovered some methods for really tuning into it and its powers. Its usefulness as a tool, its playfulness (and the possibilities of being playful with it), its ability to process.
I am still not always ‘happy’ with it. I often feel it to be larger, rounder, fatter than I would ideally like. I watch it change with mixed feelings, those poky reminders that start to come up, of mortality and ageing physicality, that it won’t be young and spritely as such again, even if I do something about the parts of this that I might, and of the things it has probably been able to do that it simply won’t in 10+ years time. Mixed feelings about much of this. Embracing the tougher things feels possible and powerful sometimes. Other times.. not so much.
I have days where I love my body’s curvy, typically feminine shape, and days where I would love it to look very very different to that. I always have. Where I want to live my gay boy dreams physically, where aspects of it seem utterly “un-me”.
I also feel aware that it is as it is. I love it. I love to be free with it, feel the air against it, move it in ways that open it up. Taking part in this project was a fantastic moment for that!
Being simply naked in a world that is scared, ashamed and in awe of nudity, especially on a breezy, sunny hill, enjoying the sensations of that. Being naked as someone who doesn’t always feel inside as their body looks on the outside, embracing expression of that as queerly glorious and strong.
Practices like radical undoing, qi gong and meditation (including sound meditation) are powerful methods for me. This is felt stuff, not thought stuff. The body can do things that the mind wants to, but simply cannot. But open-mindedly exploring theory, secondarily to practice, is also very interesting! The body-mind as a system, a vessel of awareness, this point of awareness, moving through, dancing through the world. It is perfect as it is. A beautiful burst of “…and yet!”
Learning to be free-er with it, exploring my own relation to neurodiversity at the same time, exploring and expanding *what that is and what we might do with it*, opening to moving my body in the ways it wants to be moved, less afraid of showing it.
Exploring that movement as something that the ‘wider process’ / whole shebang wants to happen, being aware of being a part of that. Also becoming better at allowing the tensions and aches and pains that can arise without resisting them (a work in progress!). I’ve discovered that much more can often be possible to shift through than I might have thought.
I am in such a different place than I ever imagined I would be at this age. That can be looked at from many different angles, giving me lots of different feelings and impressions. Aspects of life it’s time to release, not in absolute terms, but to make sure I am not clinging to. Aspects of things that need to change. And yet there are many joys I get to fully explore and live that I never thought I could possibly have the opportunity to. Beautiful things I do and have done that I barely dreamed of as past selves.
I feel, right now, at a moment of transition, and I sometimes wonder whether I always will.
For my offering I’ve gone with Nessy, who played a part (pun intended!) in a few of the photos, and also walks a curious line of the imagination and reality, a bit like our relationship to age and our thoughts about our bodies!
2024
Being alive, aware, in a body is such a remarkable and ridiculous thing!
A privilege indeed. I continue to find it absolutely amazing, and be endlessly thankful for the tools I have learned to be able to tune into this in an embodied way.
I also love every opportunity I have to share them with others who that calls to.
To do so with, and while sharing, sincerity, creativity and playfulness! Although this is as simple as it sounds it also includes all sorts of things. Prancing about naked and clothed in nature for this project, even. More of this!
I’m 42 and still endlessly astounded by life, the universe and everything.
The last two years have been challenging in ways I really hoped they wouldn’t be, especially financially, but also in terms of building a bolder sense of who I am, aligned with the ways my perspective has changed.
Learning to work and express myself in a way which is true to me. Learning to trust and attract abundance into my life and share it.
Learning about my broken patterns and about other ways to operate.
Ritualising, enacting and speaking my presence in the world to where I want to be in challenging circumstances in which to keep the faith.
Learning even deeper gratitude for the beautiful and caring people I have in my life and to myself for showing up every day.
The signs are that big and positive shifts are imminent, which is a lovely thing. I’ve appreciated the whole journey, and will continue to appreciate it as it flows on.
At the same time I’ve delved deeper into appreciation of my neurodivergence, of all of our experiences of that.
I’m loving embracing the different sides of my ways, the deeply caring, serious, sensitive version of me that I felt a need to run from for so long, as well as new and deeper ways to express the ridiculous shifty silly bugger beautiful absurd nature of life.
I’m aware the moments of transition are only set to continue, but I’m deeply looking forward to some significant shifts in how that shows up in my life!
And (all willing!) I feel better equipped to navigate the endlessly strange seas than ever…
[Phil I’m adding this twice as I love it so…] Prancing about naked and clothed in nature for this project, even. More of this!
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Phil Pool - Art and Protest 