Why Joining the Facilitators’ Collective feels like a Wordless Comic

I’ve been trying to write this blog post since November.

It was supposed to be a three-day thing (pause)

But I stampeded over the deadlines

Like a shady wildebeest because

there is so much I want to say

(embarrassingly intense stuff)

Like Hey

Everyone, I think I’m Madly in Love with You All/

I want to drink tea and listen to you talk about facilitation

till climate change pours out of the sky and we die onstage in a glorious blaze of radiation, Etc.

(maybe two years spent alone wandering between two floating rooms,

asking visiting mice

about the pandemic outside will do that)

But to feel lost then found

To have Mondays be Fun Days

To play like otters and hermit crabs and baby goats

In a medieval garden in sunny weather

To move from grief and panic to feathered conversation and the sound of ten people

Breathing together

To find such warmth so close to home,

to thaw

Has made me rhyme then fall silent then draw:

Text and Illustrations by Alia

Alia is is an illustrator and theatre practitioner based in Delhi. She is deeply interested in collaborative art-making and obsessed with fungi, ghosts and bees.