Rebecca J Hanna

Wishing you all a Peaceful, Merry Winter Solstice!

"What happens to us enters the body. It leaves marks. It alters the grain. Nothing passes through existence untouched. In the wild, being shaped is not the same as being lessened. Trees bend with wind and bear its imprint. Stone carries the memory of water and force. Seeds split open because they must. I have been changed by what I have lived through. I carry its marks and have been opened by it, made different by experience. But I refuse to be reduced by it. The earth carries its scars as part of its becoming. So do I." ——— • WORDS Brigit Anna McNeill • • ART Lucy Campbell •

𝐘𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐒𝐤𝐮𝐥𝐥'𝐬 𝐄𝐜𝐡𝐨 𝐂𝐡𝐚𝐦𝐛𝐞𝐫 𝐨𝐟 𝐁𝐨𝐫𝐫𝐨𝐰𝐞𝐝 𝐕𝐨𝐢𝐜𝐞𝐬! “It is said the Englishman’s home is his castle. And everybody needs a castle, a place where you can get away from it all and just be yourself. But even then, when you’re away from it all and you’re just being in yourself, you’ve unfortunately got a lot of thoughts inside your head that aren’t yours. Because you think in the English language, and that was given to you by other people and contains their prejudices; that you can’t avoid them in thinking. Japanese people will say that when they think in Japanese they can have certain feelings that are characteristically Japanese, but when they start thinking in English they can’t have those feelings. And so you are very, very much, really, in the sphere of public influence when you start to think. And if you listen carefully to your thoughts—insofar as they are uttered in words, and they very often are—try and discover the tone of voice in which certain of your thoughts are being said, and you will listen and hear your mother, or you will hear an aunt, or you will hear a school teacher, or will hear certain friends expressing their opinions and telling you who you are and how you ought to behave. And you think those are your thoughts and they’re nothing of the kind. An inner pandemonium under the dome of the skull is going on all the time. Myriads of voices, myriads of influences from outside working upon you even when you are physically quite alone.” — Alan Watts, 'COSMIC NETWORK', at 01:53:51

“A writer out of loneliness is trying to communicate like a distant star sending signals. He isn’t telling or teaching or ordering. Rather he seeks to establish a relationship of meaning, of feeling, of observing. We are lonesome animals. We spend all life trying to be less lonesome. One of our ancient methods is to tell a story begging the listener to say — and to feel — ‘Yes, that’s the way it is, or at least that’s the way I feel it. You’re not as alone as you thought.’” - John Steinbeck