This Floating Rock We Share

“Trying to make sense of this floating rock we share”

Mixed media on paper. 24 × 24 inches. 2025.

Dearest Doodle Soupsters,

Trying to make sense of this floating rock we share.

That’s what I titled the artwork above (a new one in my Whispers Among the Trees series) …

I rip up drawings, tape and glue them onto black paper I cut into a square. In lines of white charcoal and orange pastel, black charcoal and too, I connect the puzzle pieces I’ve made and torn apart to put back together again anew … ripples of roots, branches, trunks, webs, portals, reflections of something above …

Did you know that trees talk to each other? Not just with their roots but through networks of fungi, mycelia, the underground and also in the air with pheromones, chemicals transmitting a message. On the surface, each can look distinct, separate. But underneath and invisibly in the air, there are all these connections. They depend on each other.

Can the invisible string be cut? I think it can be blocked, but severed? I don’t know. I hope not.

As complicated and cruel and flawed as humanity can be, as much as sometimes I want to hide myself away in my own fantastical land, a field, a mystical forest with rainbow waterfalls and lush tree canopies that glimmer in lavender at dusk, a place that smells like lemon and salt and tastes like a crisp Granny Smith apple drizzled with honey … even with all of that pain and desire for my own separate, special, magical, perfect, protected place, I don’t want the invisible string to be cut.

Yet, there’s also a part of me that’s terrified of that connection because it means I’m connected to all the ick and awfulness I’ve seen? I don’t know. I want to believe that the ick and awfulness is something layered on top, a consequence of something maybe not at the root, not at the core. I don’t know but I hope for this.

So I keep trying, I keep trying to make sense of this floating rock we all share.

What do you see? What do you feel? What do you hope for? What does your fantasy land, your special island, look like? How can we make it real while also integrating it it all that is here, messiness, the muck, the yuck, the rest of reality, the part that’s hard to look at, the part that hurts?

Calling the Earth a floating rock makes it all feel sweeter, but also colder? Like isn’t it sweet that we somehow exist, here? How wonderful and absurd is that?

A couple weeks ago, I shared my artwork at Snug Harbor, my favorite park in Staten Island, one of my favorite places in the world.

I leaned “A fairy named Existence, encountered in the space between, the borderline, at the interdimensional crossroads” against a tree, beside “I am an unraveling landscape, gently (and not so gently) revealing myself to you.” The trees reflected onto the surface of the frame. It was right.

You can just feel it in your body when something is right, can’t you?

I feel so grateful to all the people who stopped by and truly engaged with my art. Shared what they saw. Asked questions. Signed up for this newsletter. Gave encouragement. Shared their stories with me too. Supported my art.

Is that the invisible string at work? That you can meet a stranger and share something real with each other? That you can support someone you don’t even know with simply your presence?

I don’t know.

I’ve been feeling a lot of doubt lately. Though I don’t know if it’s a lately thing or a matter of perspective, the way I see an ebb and flow from the vantage point of where I am right now. Anyway, in the moment, in the moment when something feels right, it’s undeniable. The magic and beauty of being alive, that I’m in the right place, I just know it.

At the same time, I think the wrestling with what doesn’t feel quite right is important too somehow …

The past couple of weeks, I’ve been having a bit more trouble with how my PTSD interacts with overstimulation while in transit. On the subway. Walking in Manhattan. There were other factors going on that I don’t feel like getting into at the moment, but the point is I just didn’t feel right. (It just didn’t feel right?) Breathing took effort. I felt so tense and stuck in my anxiety loops. (What if this is all life will ever be? What if I’ve made a wrong turn somewhere and I’ll never get back on track? What if this fear is me getting off track and I’m just making everything worse????!!)

A lot of this was its own kind of flashback, a ripple from the past. My body remembering. Times when I felt trapped and lost and I knew I was trapped and lost but I also couldn’t form the words consciously in my brain and I just didn’t know how to find the exit ramp except for the thought of giving up on life which I really didn’t want to do. And there’s a part of me that still feels ashamed of how lost I was. How many times I kept getting abused and didn’t know how to stand up for myself. Couldn't name what is happening.

And if it were anyone else, I would say it’s not your fault, you can’t blame yourself for what happened, right? But it’s me and sometimes things are easier to believe for someone else than for yourself …

It’s funny I feel like I’ve said this before during another phase of my healing on some other level of the video game, right? That shame is a pesky one, isn’t it? I’ve dealt with so many of these feelings but then I hit another level and I realize that there’s another part of me that’s still holding onto the idea that I’m just a rotten apple, that it was never the tree. That it must be my fault somehow. That I should be ashamed.

And still, right now in this moment, I know wholeheartedly that I will work through this. And that every time I do, on each level, I heal another part. And that healing is something perpetual. That it’s a learning, a practice, a development of the skill of loving myself instead of just repeating the old script. Kiss yourself in all the places they hurt you. That’s what I hear when I listen to what the trees have to say to me. This is your task. To heal. To love. To be here now. To be who you are. To encourage others to do this too. Sweet child of the universe, what a strange human you are, I love you anyway. I love you for your strangeness. So kiss yourself in all the places they hurt you. Pour honey instead of salt into your wounds. I know you can do this.

With faith, gratitude, and the hope that takes courage to hold onto and to find over and over again,

Nicole Sylvia Javorsky