WORK IN SLOWGRESS
Listen to I Want to Eat the Earth - an NSotA sonic almanac and a brief, Solstice cycle check-in from me
Summer Solstice. Sun stand still.
It’s cycle day 3 here and I am basking in the sweet relief of finally feeling like a sane person after several weeks in a luteal hellscape. My cycle has been progressively getting shorter, but this past one has landed me with a long, stretched out luteal phase that took me way beyond the usual 27 days. Such is the landscape of perimenopause.
In the middle of this train wreck pms I had my final presentation at NSotA; pulling together 9 months of strange courtship with the River Frome; tangling with the poets and fellow cycle nerds, Peter Redgrove and Penelope Shuttle and, I think, a new way of imagining and working with my cycle.
I will eventually share that work with you, but I’m still decompressing from it all and feeling-into what it is and where it’s going. Taking it slow. A work in slowgress, somewhat intentionally to honour its significance; somewhat out of necessity because all this stuff happens in the margins of the rest of my life.
It’s become part poetry, part ritual, part posthuman feminist inquiry. Maybe? I dunno. All I do know right now is that it has changed me. And that’s exciting, but also obviously a bit scary. I didn’t realise that corresponding with a grimy river would reshape my sense of self so significantly. Life is fucking weird.
If you’d like to listen to a teeny peppering of my almost-poetry read directly to the Frome itself, you’ll find it in this episode of I Want To Eat The Earth, an NSotA-led sonic assemblage that my peers - other scholars at the school - have curated from our collective audio works.
Released on the Solstice and Equinox, these audio almanacs feature the music, soundscapes, spoken word and story telling.
I’m very honoured to be featured in this edition amongst some beautiful fragments of spoken word. This particular episode is wet and weird; flowing over and around various voices; stories, reflections and poems. I’m biased of course, but I think it might offer the audio equivalent of a cooling balm to this sweltering sunday Solstice afternoon as you potter - or flop - around your home.
You can give it a listen here.
Enjoy.
I find this moment in the year all a bit too much, if I’m honest.
In old-school menstrual cycle awareness the summer is associated with the ovulatory phase and all its magnetic, energetic glory. We’re encouraged to think of this time as a good moment to ‘get stuff done’ - it’s a peak productivity moment, apparently. There’s a pressure to be up and busy, doing things, visiting people, ‘making the most of it’ et cetera.
But I, personally, hate this narrative. I think this moment in the cycle might be much better spent relishing in the sensation of feeling-good. The sensuous of this moment coaxs us to slow all the way down and linger in the connections - the kinship - between ourselves, our loved ones and our more-than-human ones. This kind of being in the world invites a languid centredness; a slow plod through our days, where we take it all in. Fuck the busy rush of getting things done.
So I hope that this stillpoint of the turning year finds you going at the pace your body wants and needs depsite the demands of modernity. No rushing (unless, of course, that’s your thing right now.) Slow, steady steps and plenty of ‘nos’ to anything that feels too much during these long, bright days. (Easier said than done, I know.) If you’re in the Northern Hemisphere, maybe you find moments to savour a cool breeze as it seductively circles round your legs or you stop on the pavement to bury your face into every rose you pass, inhaling deeply into its soft lushnesses.
(And to my friends who are navigating those dark, short days of the Winter right now - I send you all my tender wishes too. Sorry this is such a summer-centric message!)
I’d love to hear how you’re doing - comments always open.
And drop me a line if you listen to I Want To Eat the Earth, I’d be delighted to know what you think.
More soon. (Well, you know, ‘soon’ might be bit ambitious. More eventually.)
Love, as ever,
Lottie x