🗝️2023🗝️: lately ~ I’ve been thinking about this dress I own ~ I didn’t think there was anything particularly special about it expect I felt comfortable in it, it remains ‘easy’ to slip into & can be worn in multiple landscapes of people. Aside from today, the first day of the year, I’ve worn it in many airports & in all seasons. I wore it knotted around my waist in the ocean when I was in its waves last with @jdraven & remarkably this didn’t ruin it. When I wore it last a couple weeks back, I realized I wore it once in a liminal time in 2021: a time I walked into a place to visit a loved one thinking they were just ill & left with the lightning bolt of knowledge some of us face, that she wouldn’t be surviving long. The same day I remembered this, I read a book of poems, called Please Bury Me in This. The title comes from the writer’s life, a friend had this exact wording pinned as a note on a dress in her closet before leaving. The coincidence ~ of dresses & d*ath ~ filled me with a strange and beautiful kind of sadness & in that moment of synchronicity ~ the dress took on a kind of talismanic meaning for me. { maybe you have a garment like this too~ maybe you are only now realizing it } I mention this because ~ life is strange ~ and so is grief. We’ve been facing, collectively & personally ~ a ~ w~i~l~d~ amount of it and I want to offer JOY & the hope of The Star at the start of 2023 to you ~ the knowledge that we’re always living with this duality ~ & I’m here in this between space~ whittling away in my Underworld ~ dreaming of joy and hope, while still soaked in murkier themes cause I don’t know what else to do but poke around in my wounds looking for gemstones~ how else to be~ and to thank you for being here with me, witnessing me & supporting me & us. 🖤 #1 @jennyholzerstudio ‘IN A DREAM YOU SAW A WAY TO SURVIVE AND YOU WERE FULL OF JOY’ #2 See also @jennyholzerstudio, yours truly in the dress on January 1st, 2023, as well as my beloved Saint Lucy statue inherited from my father the week he left, 2008 #3 from: Please Bury Me in This by Allison Benis White #4 The Star ~ card of my year & also my birth card #5 Andy Goldsworthy, Icicle Star, 1987