Years ago, I wanted to be where I am now.
- Let me be a cloud, passing by in the vast blue sky. (A Poem).
Open Heart Surgery is a newsletter devoted to exploring metamorphosis, unravelling, questioning and healing. I write essays and poems in service to personal and collective liberation - the personal, political, social, cultural and spiritual realms are all present here. This is a space for divergent thinking and open hearts.
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Hello friends, it has been a beat since we last spoke.
Life has been unfolding at a quicker pace suddenly than it has in a long time, so the poems and words are flowing, but I have not stopped much to publish anything for a few weeks.
Here is a poem that I wrote last Wednesday, on February 26th 2025, from 30,000 feet or well above 10,000 metres in the sky, on the first aeroplane I have taken in sixteen odd months.
It was wonderful. I hope you can feel the essence of that flight in this poem below.
- 35mm film photo taken by moi, circa July 2018, upon my departure from Mexico-LA-NZ.
Let me be a cloud, passing by in the vast blue sky.
(Years ago, I wanted to be where I am now).
Years ago, I wanted to be where I am now. The clouds are cotton balls outside my window. The sky is a bluebird. I fly over the North and South Island in this giant metal bird, filled with wonder. Everything makes more sense 30,000 feet in the air. Ben Böhmer is playing in my ears - Begin Again. I am beginning again, but from an ocean filled with my own tears, and the ancestors who never got to spill theirs - carved out of a trench of suffering. Now, I am flying high above the clouds, a moment I forgot was possible, in the pits of it all. This is resurrection. I think about the human I have loved for years, who I can never let go of. I think about the new crush - that came out of the blue this month, and the plans we are making. I think about February - filled with my best friend’s children, radiant and angelic, untouched by the world’s harshness. February, full of summer harvests - tomatoes, basil, plums and peaches. Filled with ocean dips and waterfalls, adventures and old loves and new. Filled with Qawwali music and poetry, Buddhist tales and therapy, and clearer and clearer seeing. Filled with movement and motion and exquisite stillness. Filled with surrender. I think about the next month - of work and travel and reunions with best friends, oh to be able to travel again! oh to be able to commune with people, oh to have energy to live! The chronic fatigue is healing, and joy is returning, alongside an immeasurable sense of presence. I think about the way this year is already surprising me, No matter my plans, life always has its own, often better ones - after it has brought me to my knees, more than once. I wonder if the light we let in is proportional to the darkness we are brave enough to face within ourselves. Years ago, I wanted to be where I am now. But the striving never ends. I travel with a photographer’s backpack, Loaded with film and digital cameras, I write poetry on the plane - poetry I will publish later, and I realise that I am an artist, because I allowed myself to be. I stopped letting fear constrict the neck of my dreams, choking them to death. Instead, I started watering the seeds of a life that blooms. I started nurturing my gifts, and sharing them. I contemplate the size of my own ambition - or potential, perhaps. There are always bigger mountains to climb. More people to meet, and things to capture, poems to write, books to publish, places to travel, things to both learn and unlearn and unravel. There will always be more art to be made. But I wonder, as I sit here, Will I ever feel more joyful than I do now? The Buddha tells me - there is no future, no past, Only Now. Will I feel any more accomplished, when my first book is published? If I become a famous artist? Will it affect my connection to life? I know that the climbing must always be for fun, for joy, the dreams pursued lightly, otherwise, I will miss my own life. I don’t want to miss the vistas as I climb. These clouds, here and now, are too gorgeous, this sky is too vast. This earth is too magnificent, to not pay attention to. I love aeroplanes. I love the spaces in between, I love the suspension, the travel, the pause, between places. I love the clarity and perspective that being high in the sky always brings. I love the zoom-out of my entire life, of all the threads that led me here, painstakingly brutal, terrible and beautiful - all the moments that led me here. I am the great mountain. The ocean, The clouds and the sky. I am the darkest of caves and the sunlight. I close my eyes, let my spirit soar over it all, releasing my hard grip on things for a while. Let me be a cloud, passing by in the vast blue sky.
- 35mm film photo taken somewhere over Baja México or Baja California, 2018
- Orchestral Qawwali music (that I just discovered this year in January) that honestly makes me cry and takes my spirit up to the clouds. To quote Bubbles Pothowari from the Youtube comments:
“Tamil Sri Lankan Urdu singer, Waqar Faiz poet fm Houston, Indian Sikh on tabla, Indian arranger, a Singaporean conductor based in Manchester, British virtuous musicians: This is amazing.”
Thank you for reading me.
Let me know if this resonates with you/your being this season.
With love,
Laura
Smiling while reading this x