❤

do you believe in magic?

[cielxnoel-blog]

Hello everyone! This poem was written earlier this year in 2019 and in a way it's a response to the last poem. This poem is about the simple magic in being. I think of it as a reminder to myself that even my breath can help change my experience.

This is especially true now versus when I wrote it. A lot of my brain rehabilitation involves slowing down and relaxing, building new pathways in my brain until those become the default ones that my brain uses. It's a long process that can sometimes take a bit of endurance, especially as you fight against boredom or other things you brain throws at you. But I've been doing it long enough now that even when I'm feeling back in old patterns, they feel temporary. I know my brain is just pushing back against the retraining.

Sometimes the best things I can do on those days is just breath and relax and remember that tomorrow is another day. My most important job right now is healing and stressing about my brain's rebellion only feeds it. And there's a lot of power in that breath. Not needing to fight against it removes its power to drag me back down old patterns. Breathing is one of the simplest things we can do. We do it without thinking about it so many times a day, but it really can change our state of mind. And over time that can change us deeply.

xo Ciel

[cielxnoel-blog]

Hello everyone!

Today is a really chill day around here. I even skipped my morning yoga. I'm going to go out and enjoy the sunshine, but first I wanted to share today's poem with you.

This poem is from 2017 and is about the chances we take to be stimulated in life. I was someone who had a very difficult time connecting to the world around me. It seemed mundane. It might have been the brain injury or other things, but I wanted something more.

This poem in particular was inspired by an experience I had while my mum and I were visiting the Caribbean, where she is from. My partner, who is pretty spiritual too, was always telling me not to bring things I pick up home. Especially coins. There are some old stories about spirits leaving things around and following the person who picked them up home. I sort of half believed it I guess.

While we were in Grenada, I found a silver coin on the ground. I remembered what my partner had told me but frankly, I didn't want to listen. I pocked it and went about my day.

That night, as I was falling asleep, I heard in my ear distinctly the word "Hello" in a creole accent.

The next day I called my partner and explained what happened. I also spilled salt around my bed, but I didn't get rid of the coin. My mum had a good laugh, and so did my partner. I laugh now to think of it because it's pretty characteristic of me. I'll spill the salt but I hung on to the coin for a good long while, almost like I was daring someone. If it was a spirit and not my imagination, that is.

This poem is about that feeling - the feeling that you'll push the boundaries to get a response from the otherworld because you want to see something mysterious so deeply.

I rather like this poem, though I am quite enjoying my mundane life now. There's a lot of joy in my day-to-day so I don't feel so empty. Or maybe, I feel now that whatever I desire is already inside me. I can't be separated from those things that make me feel that the world is a mysterious and beautiful place.

xo Ciel

[cielxnoel-blog]

So today's poem is another love poem. This one is about when you find a good love that opens you up. It's probably not a huge surprise, but I wrote this poem in response to my current partner.

It's a pretty magical feeling when you encounter someone who really gets you. There's so much sweetness and care in our relationship and it really helps me be inspired to be sweeter and more tender in the world around me. But this was definitely something I had to work at a bit. Even though we want good things in our lives, we aren't always going to be immediately receptive if we haven't experienced them. I found that I would respond suspiciously at first to a lot of things that now I find quite comforting. We are shaped by our experiences and it is sometimes a process to learn new and different ways of being.

But it is a wonderful thing to feel so inspired by someone's behaviour that we want to grow and expand. I have definitely learned from my partner's example to become a more present and tender partner. We've been together... Hmm... about 3 and a half years now? I changed over that time to learn different sides of myself.

It's okay if we must learn softness. It's important to acknowledge what we're been through and let ourselves grow beyond it.

Wishing you a lovely day!

xo Ciel

[fredersen]

the year is 2027. society has dismantled beyond recognition. among the remnants of a destroyed building, you find a cassette tape with a faded image of an anime girl hastily taped to it. you gently insert it in your salvaged boom box and press the play button, shedding a single tear as a sped-up version of “everytime we touch” by cascada emanates from the speakers

[cielxnoel-blog]

this is all I want lol

[cielxnoel-blog]

Happy Tuesday everyone!

So I went to go get my school id the other week but goodness gracious the line was so loooong. Every undergrad was there the same day lol. So I decided to head home and enjoy an unexpectedly free evening and head back yesterday when there was less competition. Sometimes it's good to be a river flowing around a mountain. ;)

So this poem is about unrequited love.

Perhaps there are experiences of unrequited love that you have had that are truly good feelings. The love comes from a genuine place even if it is not reciprocated. But this experience that I was reflecting on in this poem was not such a case.

This piece is about a time when the feeling I had did not come from a place of understanding or knowing someone. I'm not sure if it was lust or projection but it was a strange, destabilizing feeling. I wanted this person so much and it was so long ago I can't even remember why. When I look back on it, my opinion of this person isn't even that good. Maybe I see more truth now than I did then? Maybe I have grown out of it... Or maybe distance and time unwound whatever was drawing me to them.

Either way, this situation confused me for a long time until I started to realize the feeling I had was quite shallow, even if it was strong. Once I could see that I didn't really know anything about this person or was purposely trying to fit them into an image I had... the feeling disappeared. When I looked back, I wonder what it would have been like if I had actually tried to get to know them?

We have many lessons in love as we grow up. I think perhaps the kind of people I am attracted to now are much different than in the past when I was younger. I'm quite grateful for that lol.

Have a lovely day, folks!

xo Ciel

[cielxnoel-blog]

[cielxnoel-blog]

Happy Wednesday folks!

We're heading into my birthday soon and things have just kept being amazing around these parts. I registered for my classes no problem and tomorrow I head down to get my student id which is super exciting! Tuition comes with a gym membership so I'm going to pick that up too.

Needless to say, I'm super excited about all the prep work for school and good things going on around here. We had a power outage yesterday after a super brief but powerful storm. It was gorgeous! But then without electricity we had to go in search of some breakfast.

My partner and I ended up taking the bus downtown to hang out at a community college where I got coffee and a breakfast sandwich. It was a fun little morning adventure.

So this morning, I'm sharing a poem I wrote back in January or February. I was about a month or two into my brain rehabilitation for the second time (I didn't finish the first one lol) and it was having some amazing effects. I still need to do a more complete post on the program, but I'm working up to it. It's pretty personal. Anyways, things had been pretty difficult for me for a long time and when shifts starting happening in a more positive direction I noticed something really strange with the folks I had been hanging out with.

When I would mention something good happening, they would kinda dump on it. Even if they were in a more secure position than me financially, it was like any little progress I had there was a reason for them to be negative or explain why something wouldn't work for them. It was pretty strange and I started to realize that it was a pattern. The more things were improving, the more unstable our relationships became.

It's a weird thing to realize when you've been spending a lot of time with folks that they are only supportive of you if you stay at the same place you were when you met them. I'm still not really sure what the deal was. Was it more comfortable for them for me to stay the same? Were they unable to be happy for me without making it about them?

Whatever it was, I realized that I needed to move on. I have worked so hard to regain my health and happiness and there is nothing for me in relationship that doesn't support that. Needless to say, I've enjoyed taking back my time and continuing to put time and effort into improving things.

As strange as it is, there are truly people close to you who do not want to see you succeed. There's lots of reasons for it, but none of that is your issue. Let them go and move on. You (and they!) will be a lot happier for it. There's so many wonderful people in the world and we're changing every day. You want to be around people who lift you up and challenge you in the best of ways.

[cielxnoel-blog]

Good morning folks! This poem was written in ...2017 I believe. It's a simple piece, about the need to find your own space. I think this resonates with me even more now than it did then.

I have often made the mistake of trying too hard to help other people in their visions. I'm not sure if it's my personality or a part of the brain injury or what but as I've been healing, I really see how important it is to tend to your own house first. If my own house isn't stable with a good foundation, I don't have anything at all. It is a powerless feeling.

I am enjoying the feeling of being much more powerful now. To try to contribute to others, but also to work on my own things first. I think I am more generous in the end that way, because I come from a more solid place.

Have a good day folks!

xo Ciel

[cielxnoel-blog]

Good morning folks!

Yesterday was an awesome day for me. It's my initial registration date for classes for university in the fall. Because I'm doing a Fine Arts degree, everyone's first year is pretty much the same in terms of classes. We have a bunch of art history and drawing classes to bring us up to the same level artistically. From there, it's the second year where we really get to branch out and choose more specialized studio courses. My school has a nice selection of practices you can study and it's been exciting to look ahead to the next four years. >^_^< 

So today's poem was written one day when I was feeling a bit bored with the kinds of stories I was seeing. I felt like a lot of the movies and games I was seeing were really similar in feel and plot. It was starting to feel kind of stale to me. I was missing the quirkier movies from the 80's and 90's that had strange scenes or weird gorgeous settings.

But I'm not so sure that it's an isolated thing - this idea of repetition in narratives. I mean, if you look at mythology there are very clear patterns that emerge across various cultures that may or may not have anything to do with each other. Similar gods and goddesses pop up, reflecting our interactions and ideas about Nature. Do these things also represent elemental truths in our minds?

How much of how we frame our own stories and narratives is inherent versus moulded by the stories we learn?

I think it's easy to fall into the same patterns that we identify with emotionally. And there's a sense of "rightness" that can form when we can fit a narrative into a pattern we've seen before. Our brain is naturally comforted by patterns. But to keep expanding and growing, we must introduce our brains to new things. Because that sense of "rightness" doesn't necessarily mean that something is right - just familiar.

Through brain rehabilitation I've seen some strange things about how the brain processes. Not everything we think or feel is real and we naturally forget narratives or memories that contradict the story we hold in our brain.

So what does that have to do with this poem? I think in the end, you could be a greater person than you know. You could be wiser, more beautiful, more inspiring than you realize if the only stories you've seen associates those qualities with figures that don't resemble you. Exposing ourselves to more varied stories with different perspectives brings nuance to our way of seeing the world.

I hope you have a lovely day! 

xo Ciel

[cielxnoel-blog]

Some people are like living flames - bright and shiny and we can see them a mile away. Some of us are a little quieter and fly more under the radar.

When I love someone, I am the kind of person that does small, daily tasks to show it. I'll find your keys, feed you, ask about your goals. I'm not always the most romantic person. Grand gestures are a bit more difficult for me. I tend to be more of the kind that tries to make life sweeter on a daily level.

(Unless it comes to art and then I actually can make some pretty epic gestures lol.)

Sometimes we can feel the pressure to be someone of grand gestures and presence all the time. But not all of us are built like that. We find true and lasting meaning and joy by being ourselves, and sometimes that can include being a quieter person. I don't think it's a huge surprise that I tend to value love connections that are attentive to my daily activities and needs, reflective of my own nature. I like variety but I find without that care, I feel disconnected. Grand romantic gestures are like icing on the cake for me.

We have a lot of stories and images given to us daily about who or what we should be in love connections. But as we all know, it's most important to be yourself authentically. Because you will form relationships with people who you connect with from that natural state of being. We all have room to grow and change, but it makes more sense to organically grow and change in the ways you want rather than force yourself to fulfill a cookie cutter role. xo

Ciel

[cielxnoel-blog]

Have you ever noticed how much freer we can feel at night? Something about the darkness and quiet makes me feel wilder than daylight ever does.

In a way, this poem throws back to a previous one where I talked about these intense creative and emotional periods I would experience at night. This one is different in that it was written more recently and still honours that time, with a gentler feeling.

I think the blending of things in shadows naturally make us think more things are possible in the darkness of the night. There seems to be less boundaries between imagination and reality. When we are children (and even into our adulthood sometimes) it can be so easy to conjure things in the shadows. Is that a pile of clothes on the floor or something else waiting until all is still?

It can release our creativity too, a wildness in us that feels more free to roam without the bright light of the sun that can be too full of eyes and judgments. I write a little easier at night, allowing myself to imagine more impossible and poetic things than I might do in daylight.

A few years back, I was visiting the Caribbean with my mum. We traveled to the island she was born on and another island where we have a lot of family. On one of the nights we were having dinner at a restaurant by the beach and we could hear the waves splashing against the shore. It was so dark though that there didn't seem to be a boundary between the sky and the water. We could have been surrounded by water on all sides without knowing. I liked that feeling... the sense that the sky and water were blending into each other, so dark that it could be made of shadows and dreams.

xo Ciel

[cielxnoel-blog]

Hello everyone! 

I wrote this poem during a particular phase of my healing when my brain was awash with all the new happy chemicals and I could see clearly what role I'd played in some pretty painful situations. Fueled by that new understanding, I wanted to do what I could to make things better.

As we go through many stages and changes it can be very gratifying to have others acknowledge how much we've changed. After all, if it's seen out in the world it becomes especially real right?

So I sent messages. Some of them I received favourable replies to, some I didn't. Some I didn't receive replies at all, while others it took time to play out the result.

All of these responses are valid. Just because I see a situation in a new way, doesn't mean that someone else is required to see it that way or give their energy to it. So I wrote this poem to try to come to terms with that and really store it in my heart. In a way, this poem started to help me to move forward without having input for the other parties.

After all, my healing in the end is really about me. And what other human can truly see us perfectly for who we are? We're all reflections in each other's minds anyways.

This poem is neither happy nor sad for me. It's merely a quiet truth.

xo Ciel

[cielxnoel-blog]

So this poem was written during a writing workshop I took earlier this year. It was a pretty intense experience for me because it was the first time I'd joined a group since finding out about my brain injury.

It was a lovely group, but rather intense for me to participate in at the time. Recovery was going well, but there were a lot of dynamics in the room that my brain struggled to keep track of. I wrote this poem because through that process I learned that I didn't really need to worry about that so much.

There are many things we can't control and in fact, there are many ways in which it's not our place to. We can and should cultivate our environments and decide what kind of experience we want to have. But sometimes, we can best live in the present moment by understanding that there are some things that are not our place to control.

My brain injury created a pretty hostile environment for me. Sounds, scents, and other things created a lot of pain in my body so I was constantly having to navigate and juggle many things to function. But as my brain healed, I had to relax into my environment more. I had to become more flexible, which my brain wasn't allowing me to do before.

When I wrote this poem, I was thinking of how strange it was that I was so worried about being hurt, but that by being more flexible and open I would actually strengthen my brain's ability to navigate stressful situations. I think I hit on something that made me realize that if I was truly at home in my body, I would feel safer, and thus stronger and more capable than I had been when I was on edge all the time.

I think with this poem I was trying to express that humility can balance us out so that we can see ourselves in context better. Through humility and peacefulness, I can see my inherent power rather than trying to dodge stress. By accepting a humble place in my world, I can do great things and love myself as a great person. Being flexible allows me greater capacity to cultivate my environment rather than holding on too tight. I can always leave a situation I don't like and being humble allows me greater freedom to do that.

I rather like this poem a lot. It represents a pivotal moment for me in my recovery.

[cielxnoel-blog]

Hello everyone!

So there was a new moon this week with a solar eclipse. I tend to think of these events as new beginnings. 

In honour of closing out old cycles, here is a poem about love and missed connections. I actually have quite a few poems from this experience which touched my rather deeply. But there's only so much energy you can spend wondering about "what if". At a certain point, that energy should be directed towards cultivating the here and now. But to close it out properly, I want to take a moment to think about what this poem means to me.

Maybe there's a reason this never happened. Maybe it happened in another world with better timing or circumstances. Maybe it never happened to teach me important lessons when I encounter another similar situation. Whatever the reason, it doesn't seem so bittersweet any more. I feel so good in my day-to-day life. When I look back, it feels like a curiosity and something I still don't understand and maybe never will. But I'm moving into a new cycle now and soon I won't be able to recognize the person I was. 

xo Ciel

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