Landing Practice 02

5th March 2025

Monthly Newsletter (The First Wednesday)

By Sá Shellard

‘Once with a flaming belly she danced upon a green road /

Move your hand slowly through a cobweb

and make drifting strings for puppets /

Now the tambourines are dull /

at her lifted skirt boys study cigar

ette stubs /

no one is jealous of her body’

(St. Catherine Street - Leonard Cohen)

Photograph: Unknown Couple, Türkiye - Summer of Love 2024

Photograph: Pic 1. Nemean Lion Constellation by Jacob De Gheyn

When the moon intercepted the Nemean Lion, Cerberus spawned at my foot-side. I grew him in the dark, moribund and bed-bound by a relapsing fever, around the same time I was exiled from Venus. My head puffed up like a hot air balloon, filled with ether and vapour-led, hanging disconsolately, derailing the celestial parade.

February caught me hitching rides with pleasure seekers and other loved-up wanderers, coupled in their intention to find the axis of a world known to spit out the seeds. I wasn’t looking to ride, but it seems like the month of love and togetherness had other plans for me.

Reigning as the patron of carnal subjugation, St. Augustine saw me lie with rage and warned me against latching onto false starts. We used our brief time together to map out the life cycle of dying stars, and I was glad to learn of the astral burn—the pledge to sear all the way through.

Take that as you may, but I am in favour of the posturing incandescent. I am in favour of their sincerity, the way in which their fated descent tugs on the celestial switchboard. They give themselves so willingly to the dark.

From the rubble of ill-fitting love, I am hopeful new sprigs will bud. 

Then we won’t have to care so much about how we fall— it’ll all be just landing practice.

With Love, Sá