Balancing Truth and Memory

Balancing Truth and Memory

My Lady of Trees

This past Saturday, I set up my booth beneath the live oaks of City Park in New Orleans. The air was thick with heat and stories. People drifted through the market carrying their own treasures, some of them tangible, some of them invisible. That’s the secret about these markets: every conversation is really an exchange of stories. Art changes hands, but so does memory.

Out of that day, a new piece emerged: My Lady of Trees. She is a portrait born from the oak branches that arched above me at City Park, layered with the sense of spirit and myth I felt moving through the crowd. Oaks hold memory in their roots and whispers in their moss; they’ve stood as witnesses for centuries, and still they reach upward. In her, I see both the land’s remembering and our own.

Next Saturday, I’ll be at the Baton Rouge Arts Market, carrying My Lady of Trees with me. I can’t help but wonder what stories will arrive there. Who will step out of the crowd with a spark of recognition in their eyes, ready to tell me about the memory my work awakened in them?

The Feather of Ma’at

In this week’s meditation, I turn to Ma’at, the Egyptian goddess of truth and balance. She does not shout. She does not command. She waits.

In the old stories, she holds a single feather. Against it, the heart of the soul is weighed, not for punishment or reward, but for clarity. The question is never, “Were you perfect?” The question is always, “Are you carrying what belongs to you?”

Ma’at offers no comfort. Only the stillness of truth. And perhaps that is the rarest mercy of all.

The House That Remembers

On Friday, a new chapter of Tongue of the Serpent arrives. It begins with a house, an old one, with roots deeper than memory and walls that seem to whisper when you are not listening closely enough.

This is a house that remembers. It remembers what we try to bury. It remembers the questions we avoid. And sometimes, when the air shifts and the shadows lean too far in, it asks us to remember too.

What would a house recall about you, if it could? Which secrets would it keep tucked behind the wallpaper, and which would it press into your hands when you least expected it?

Between the Feather and the Door

I find myself returning again and again to this connection: Ma’at’s feather in one hand, and the house’s memory in the other. Both ask the same thing in different voices: what do you carry that no longer belongs to you? What weight could you lay down, if only you had the courage?

Perhaps that’s the thread tying together my art, my writing, and my meditations. They are all doorways into reflection.

Invitation

If you’re nearby, come find me at the Baton Rouge Arts Market this Saturday. If you’re wandering further afield, join me online: breathe with Ma’at in meditation, or step into the house that remembers with Tongue of the Serpent.

And maybe, just for a moment, pause and ask yourself:

What am I carrying that I no longer need?