Welcome to TRICKLINGS

What is this gorgeous and unbearable life about anyway?

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Welcome, dear creature, and thank you for having me. I hope you will find some deep breaths here, or at least a little ease. It can be a thorny world out there, always shifting. And then there is art.

‘Tricklings’ is all about returning - to ourselves, to our breaths, to our humanness. It is the meandering stream, always twinkling.

Using the landscape and turning of the seasons as guide, it speaks to the side of us that dreams.

So as this is my first newsletter, I wanted to give a (loose) outline of what to expect (it’s a river after all).

‘Tricklings’ will be published on the last week of each month. It is a glimpse of the passing - cloud, poem, grief and leaf. Each month will have poetry, musings, art and creative exercises and prompts to carry us through to the next month..

I’ve got questions and I’m sure you do too. Shall we dip our toes in the well together? Can we trust in the process, a little more?

Why do we create?

How can we make space for creation to come play with us? Can we be slow, like the timeless snail and just watch? Can we empty the space between our shoulder blades and be still, outstretched?

Can we get things done more naturally, organically, because we want and need to, and not because we should?

Summers on the horizon. The bluebells have departed and without time for grief the foxgloves have already taken centre stage. I got to meet a lovely furry friend named Misha whose eyes contain a thousand souls reflecting eternity..

Anyway, here we are, hello, nice to meet you. My name is Ailbhe and I am a writer and artist with scattered roots. The place I call home is in West of Ireland. It is the land where I spent many strange young days roaming, longing, and getting lost - my feet have found deep squelch in the soils here. My background is in yoga teaching, literature and illustration, called to and through the written wor(l)d. TRICKLINGS aims to bring these practices together, and offer a series of workshops, creative exercises and along a monthly theme, as well as bits of my own ‘writing in progress’.

This Moment is Always Returning, 2023. Pigment ink and pencil on recycled handmade seed paper.

POETRY TO FILL THE VOID.

This month I have chosen an expert of Walt Whitman’s ‘Leaves of Grass’.

“Not I, nor anyone else can travel that road for you. 
You must travel it by yourself.
It is not far. 
It is within reach. 
Perhaps you have been on it since you were born, and did not know. 
Perhaps it is everywhere - on water and land.” 
- Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass.

This very life, one delicate thread, a tendril, both as fragile and impermanent as a blade of grass.
Grass and life - is there really any difference? Grass ties us all together. It grows in abundance all across the world and holds us. 

As Whitman writes "Peace is always beautiful". I think at the real, truest core, beyond fear and rage, we are all just praying for peace.

Now time for a story.. which goes by the name ‘Life is Short’. The Truth is that we will not be here to laugh and cry forever. The gravity of this was intensified by the fact it came urgently from the mouth of my granny, who is well into her 90s. She still has a sparkle in her eyes as we speak, midges flitting across the sky and eating us alive..

Photos from the land, it's been a foggy May here in Clare.