the mind-body thread

Body & Spine

Notes from the long work of coming back into a body — spine, skates, the slow mat mornings. This is where the head learns to stop overruling the one instrument that was, in the end, more competent than it. Written as practice, not as disclosure.

a small room · three doors · the ground truth the head kept overruling

Relearning to Fall The body as first instrument — and why the first thing it had to relearn was how to land. budding in formation · v0
Articulation The spine as a sentence being re-punctuated — segment by segment, learning to move as parts before moving as a whole. budding in formation · v0
The Tide Knows When On the body's own tides, the long way home to it, and timing the effort to the rhythm instead of forcing it flat. seedling in formation · v0

A garden kept by a human hand,
tended alongside the machines.

The apprentices fetch, steady, and time the furnace; the hands that shape the glass are hers. The bench retrains too — what she keeps is the judgment.

note Rika writes

pulse scans the edge

tend structures, tightens

mirror keeps voice & privacy

grow in public

Every piece starts from a note in Rika’s own hand and passes the mirror — the one apprentice with the right to refuse — before it grows in public. It will hold a piece back on four grounds only:

a privacy leak
a voice that isn’t hers
a wall that must hold — things this garden does not write about
a claim outrunning what is known

The machines keep the scaffold — the feeds, the plumbing, the link that doesn’t rot; the turn of an essay, the curation, and the yes stay in her hands. Assisted, never authored. Nothing is published without her yes.

Body & Spine

A garden kept by a human hand,tended alongside the machines.

A garden kept by a human hand,
tended alongside the machines.