You may have noticed that Light Balance has been on a bit of an unexpected summer hiatus. We’re back now! And sharing the news that Light Balance will now be published monthly for the foreseeable future. Still chock-full of goodness, though!
With Labor Day being the proverbial end of summer, I’ve been reflecting on the last few months of the season (‘season’ in the most liberal of terms as, here in Miami, there are only two: uncomfortably hot and rainy, and comfortable enough for no-sweat midday walks).
I celebrated Father’s Day and family and friends’ birthdays and going away parties. I had a rejuvenating visit to the California High Desert, retreating and visiting with friends at Jackrabbit Studios over the summer solstice. I visited friends in San Francisco. I celebrated Fourth of July reeling from food poisoning, eating bland food but enjoying rich quality time with family.
I traveled to Colombia for a second time this year with my mama, spending chill time with her in her hometown of Bucaramanga and revisiting Cartagena after 13 years. I went with family up to rural Chiefland, Florida, to visit my cousin Joey and his wife Crystal for their baby shower; and we stayed in a tiny house! I went to a comedy show, a hilarious roast of a little-known 1988 movie called Miami Connection, hosted by my friends Mike and Danny, brothers I’ve known since childhood. I enjoyed dinner parties and late-night poetry shares with new and old friends. I made it through a month of heavy construction work being done next door in my new neighbor’s apartment, a paper-thin wall being all that separates us. And I had to take a little break from jogging because it’s been so hot and humid here this summer in Miami that I nearly collapsed one day at dusk. (My birthday falls on the autumnal equinox—September 22nd—so you know I’m more of a fall gal.)
I’ve also started taking painting classes! I love it so much. Like photography, I study and observe light. Only now, I’m also noticing color and form. And it has all only enhanced my appreciation for things around me. I’ve been able to better understand how light is, in essence, the spirit, soul or even mind of a thing. Color: the emotion, the heart of a thing. And form: the body, the physical, the material structure of that thing. Plus, I’ve made great friends and am digging more into the Miami art scene, and I am so excited about it all.
My first painting is in storage at my parents’ house. It’s a mountain landscape image, and let’s just say it was a good starting point with plenty of room for growth. The second painting, a study of a Matisse still-life, is much improved and I gifted it to my grandma Nonita for her 83rd (!) birthday.
Being three-quarters of the way into what, most certainly, has been a rollercoaster year, I’ve learned a lot about limits and boundaries—physical, personal and interpersonal. As a born-and-bred Miamian, so acclimatized to the heavy, thick warm air, heat exhaustion is something I never thought I’d experience. It’s taught me some of my physical limits when I naively and stubbornly thought I had none. I’ve learned to set boundaries—spoken and unspoken—with friends and other relationships. I’ve learned more about my own mental, emotional, and spiritual limits; these, too, being ones that I naively and stubbornly thought were nonexistent. And I’ve learned there are also limits to the highs and the lows we all experience. When to say to oneself, you know, I can’t and don’t want to do this alone; choosing not to harbor within oneself but instead to voice aloud, delighted in knowing that the echoes of response are no longer your own. Even in the lowest of the lowest valleys, you can be certain that this trough is cradled between the highest of highest mountains. And above all, I’ve come to truly understand that limits are malleable, changing with age and experience and circumstance.
At my first painting class in early August, we sat at a plastic table splattered with paint that makes you smile at its unintentional whimsy. We didn’t set up our easels, no, not yet. Our first lesson would be on colors—the color wheel and complementary colors. We learned how to interpret the color we saw from objects around the room—a manilla folder, say—and tried to recreate the object’s color from our batch of 10 basic colors: eight complementary ones, and black and white. The key, I’d found, was to balance many colors, blending violet and yellow and a hint green and lots and lots of white. Always inching closer and closer to the color that feels just right, whatever color a manilla folder feels like to me. In arguably any art form, sometimes the form of the thing is more prominent, like Picasso’s cubism. Other times the color and the lack of form stand out, like Monet’s impressionism. And still other times, light and shadows hold their own, like in Henri Cartier-Bresson’s photography.
I realized I’d been so long focused on balancing light that I sometimes missed the color of a thing, and even more often missed the form of a thing. My head too often in the clouds, drifting too much in the spiritual realm of things, forgetting that the color of our lives—emotion, relationships—that’s where we learn the most. Now, next up is form. The shape of our lives. Remembering that there is a container that holds together all the light and color of a thing, however amorphous its boundaries. Learning lessons from the light and color of our lives is exactly the point of having a form, a dense physical body. To stand in our shape, our container, to place our feet firmly on the ground, in this world, is to balance both light and color. Each of us, an eternal art.
Lately I’ve been:
Reading: Loads! And reading a lot always helps me recenter. I’ve been reading a ton of articles as I declutter my email and dozens of Safari open tabs across a handful of windows (cue: melting face). One poignant read that I highly recommend is from my friend Ellen Murray. Her story A Tempest of Dread at the End of the World on Hidden Compass is a captivating read on her arduous trek through Patagonia following the unexpected death of her father (“I didn’t want to do another worksheet appealing to my sense of reason. I wanted to feel the ground beneath my feet and see myself in the water and wind.” <3). Also, I read and finished the following books: The Creative Act: A Way of Being by Rick Rubin, You Are a Goddess: Working with the Sacred Feminine to Awaken, Heal and Transform by Sophie Bashford, Wherever You Go, There You Are: Mindfulness Meditation in Everyday Life by Jon Kabat-Zinn, Love’s Journey to Freedom by Oscar J. Vazquez, Writing Fiction: A Guide to Narrative Craft by Janet Burroway and On Becoming a Novelist by John Gardner. And I’m currently (finally) reading The House of the Spirits by Isabel Allende and I’m already obsessed with it and her and the realization that magical realism is my jam.
Writing: Still on my morning pages game! I’ve also been expanding my dreams into short stories because they have been THICK with plot and richness. And I’m mentally working through some of the revisions for my novel, Julia’s Orchids. It’s simmering. It’s cooking. It’s baking. It’s happening.
Photographing/Photo Editing: Editing photos from my June visit to Jackrabbit, with the loveliest of loveliest Jen, Erin, Caroline and Taline <3. Photos from my July Colombia trip with my mom. Photos from Chiefland for my cousin’s baby shower. Photos from my goddaughter Ava’s third birthday mermaid party. Some dinner party snaps with my buds Alex and Pedro. And I photo edited a small portfolio of work for an application to an artist residency <3.
Watching: Oh man, heaps. Oppenheimer. Mission Impossible (in a theater in Bucaramanga, so, subtitled in Spanish). Numerous episodes of Amazing Race season 1. Love Island. Ted Lasso. Adaptation (fun fact that I recently discovered: Nicolas Cage is cousins with both Jason Schwartzman and Sofia Coppola). Queen Charlotte: A Bridgerton Story. Live to 100: Life in the Blue Zones. The Women’s World Cup (another fun fact: I couldn’t stream the live USA v. Netherlands game while in Colombia so we opted for the next best thing—streaming an animated version on YouTube of someone playing it from their FIFA video game console). And, you know, also been watching plenty of YouTube. My algorithm has grown far and wide, and I dig it: we’ve moved on from mole people and are now watching the Jolly channel and their ‘British highschoolers try American snacks’ genre of vids, the Soft White Underbelly channel and their frank conversations with everyone from former gang members to prostitutes, more tarot horoscope videos (still! Though I was recently empowered because my friend watches the same channel I do, ha! ), videos on near death experiences, and videos on polyglots who speak over 20 languages and go around giving away free hamburgers or sushi to people who speak a language they cannot.
Listening to: My That Certain Chill Spotify playlist. The Hans Zimmer Mix Spotify playlist. Spotify nature playlists such as Sleep in the Rainforest. And ‘Mogoya’ by Oomou Sangaré on repeat. I have never choreographed anything in my life and this song just makes me want to create a flowy fluid poetic choreography for it. I’ve recently also become obsessed with streaming nature ambience YouTube videos on my TV as I work at my desk and promenade around my apartment. Forest sounds and Harry Potter scenic videos are my go-to.
Xo,
Jessica ♾️