August 18 2017
Edinburgh, Scotland

I’ve lost my feelings. It’s really inconvenient. I’ve lost my feelings but I remembered my yoga mat. Bright pink rolled up under the bed. We’re in a fancy high-ceilinged apartment close to all the action.

This is where Creative New Zealand houses the team who deliver on Aotearoa’s Edinburgh showcase. It’s a new group every year and this is my first time. I’m here in one piece but I can’t fucking feel anything? I’m jet-lagged and too shy to turn the kettle on just for me. Too shy to raid the fancy cheese left over from last night’s party. I wasn’t at the party, I was in the sky on my way here to castles and ponies.

The rain falls lightly at first, little kisses on the trees across the road and then harder and harder until people run for cover and all you can see from up here are newspapers over heads and umbrellas and couples running together, hand in hand.

It’s more than rain. I want to find the way back to my feelings, the way back to my old skin, to climb back into it, the moon swing, to be ahead of it, to be the one the that alters the mood of the moon.

Instead, I try on masks, this woman is anchored!
I try on pursuits, this is a well-adjusted adult-human!
I pretended to find a good man in the chest of an ordinary boy.
What does it take to be accepted? To be coveted? To be someone else’s?

I have moments in all of these worlds where I’m the traveler gathering and losing feelings.
I’m the confused lover wondering what brought us together.
I’m the sunken heart deleting my browser history.
Alone eating berries in Edinburgh. Writing in measured loops.