Anonymous asked: Are you British?

yes

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there is always a big disappointment around this time of the evening, when everyone clears out of the house. it feels so lonely, being surrounded by plates and plates from acquaintances, six or seven half-finished coke cans that you started off and never quite got around to. texts being told to come downstairs. a rocking chair appeared in my room and i’m not sure why. that sounds kind of cosmic and poetic, but it really happened and it’s kind of funny.

i don’t feel at home here anymore - i’m not sure i feel at home anywhere. yesterday i helped make dough, and my hands got very itchy around 2am, blistering over, and i couldn’t help but think to myself - if here isn’t safe, where is? and i rather think that here is a great metaphor for my own sense of safety and boundaries. it is two people that once loved each other deeply and now do so out of habit, rattling around in an empty house, waiting for their children to come home. they invite people over constantly so they don’t have to think. 

that’s a bit of a sad note to finish a year on. i start the year on a plane, this time. i’m away for a whole month. i’ve been reading tarot a lot, and trying to unwind, and actually succeeding, and feeling bad about it. it’s complex. i’ve been thinking about trading my life for goods instead of money. that’s difficult. 

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i started taking prozac today since i already do all the other things you’re supposed to do for your mental health

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I’ve been on the cusp of finishing gilmore girls for three months

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Is it unprofessional to have scabs?
Because I’m afraid that I do. I’m afraid
that I can’t keep a hood up
longer than thirty seconds. I skip mediums
and work til the early morning. I’m afraid
I’m fresh out of the right things.

I came alone, save for the sneaky notch in my diaphragm.
It catches whenever I get too close
to being at home here. I feel it on the train.
I feel it on my own. I cut my hair to shake it off,
because it’s all I can control. In the forefront of my mind,
there is a small shimmering dream,

Where I move to the countryside with a small blue bicycle
and a small blue cat,
and I start to wear colour
and I sell flowers, or ice cream. I make
simple joy. I make simple joy.
I make simple joy.

I paint in the evenings,
play country songs on my porch
with my ridiculously charming friends.
Something delicious is simmering.
I drink sangria with no guilt. Drink juice with fervour.
I don’t need to crunch. I am not grit.

There is nothing
anyone can take away from me there,
because there is who I am.
There, I am full.

I am allowed to be enough,

there.

slicker | ishani jasmin

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a quiet doubt

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let me tell you buds, i’m having the time of my life

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for a few years now, i’ve been saying to myself, ‘i just want to be a person.’ i’m not sure exactly what that meant - those goalposts move a lot, it turns out. having this, doing that. i’ve always been someone who does a lot of things, i think, since i was quite young - always doing. a million projects on the go, never really able to turn someone down. 

for the longest time, i thought that if i had one thing to do for 40 hours a week, i’d be good and enough, at long last. and then i did it and it turns out that i just have no time to do any of the things i love.

it’s the same now - i’m running six or seven things at once, partly to make things work, and partly because i’m scared of myself in my free time. i don’t know what it’s like. i’m scared to watch a tv show alone. i read on the train, not at home, not in the quiet. i’m only quiet when i sleep. i wake up in knots in the morning, having been quiet so long.

there is a lot of learning to do here - this isn’t always good for me, all this doing over being. but i am starting to come to terms with being this person, who does a lot of different things rather than a few things. and maybe that is valid in itself.

it is quite something, to maybe be allowed after all these years, to be, and to become, in my own way.

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STINGS, DON’T IT? - a zine about something inside

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this place has nine gardens…can you imagine? having nine gardens….

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I eat an apple four times a year, to remember
just how small my mouth can shrink. 
One way is to walk on the wedgeside
of the pavement,
and stare people down head on -
I don’t cave.

That’s what I’m worth. Hands down
and I’m stuck from whence I came,
four feet in the murky earth, and no one
can tell me otherwise.

I’ve never been here before, and I never hope to come again
except to feel cheap supermarket sandwiches
wearing their way through the lining of my organs, one
slice of ham at a time.
That’s what I’d come back for.

A chance to be sicker. To always be early,
to have to buy coffee I don’t drink, just in case.
I trade myself
for a place to sit, and every day I am here
I crust over.

the resignation | ishani jasmin

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27/9/18

the years are long. the days are long, too.

today i learned what it means to be a londoner. a man scoffed loudly because i was in his way and i told him there was no need to be rude when the words ‘excuse me’ exist, and he tore back up to me, crushed his way right into my face, and screamed at me to fuck off from less than a foot away, before walking away, pretty satisfied with himself. i can still feel and smell his breath on my face, like stale coffee. can stil feel myself biting back witty comebacks that might have provoked him to punch me. i wonder if his version of the story goes: ‘some bitch got in my way, and then had the nerve to tell me off for complaining about it. so i showed her - i yelled at her!’

he was quite big, and i am quite small. i wonder what it looked like from the outside, a big man screaming at a small woman on a street corner. i suppose i’ve learned a lesson in not picking up on other people’s anger, because sometimes defending your own honour is a bad idea - but on the other hand, if you don’t expect anyone to get in your way when ten million people live in fifteen square miles, i don’t know what to tell you.

i do love the city, and it has been my home a long time, but it has a way of making me cringe in my boots and renege my boundaries. every year, another one to think about. this year, it has been thinking about how others treat me, and how i let them.

i have been in a bit of a fugue state for months, and i am hopeful it’ll end soon - for my own sake, for the sake of here. i find myself dreaming of being a small yellow dog that helps the mayor of a small yellow town where everyone is playing. that sounds like i would have space to paint. right now it doesn’t feel like there is space for much.

actually, after today, i’ve pieced together - it doesn’t feel like there has been much room for me. maybe the winter will be kinder.

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wish me luck! - a zine about being nervous all of the time and and and

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feel like i make art about this a lot!

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A cluster at the end of a red rope,
and a card with a King on one side and a Queen on the other,
and neither one looks around the corner. And this,
this is quickening. It’s
making up words on the spot
and quiet behind the paper.

The years - they come with lessons,
and this one, this one is
maybe you’ve been right all along.

I want to name the house,
but nothing is better than a number,
and the promise that someday,
someone might water a plant in there.

the long game | ishani jasmin

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