Laina V

There was a willow tree where I grew up. Old, branching up to the sky and swaying down to the stream. It was the kind of tree that seems like it speaks in the middle of a rainstorm and in the summer winds. Willow song, rain song. I learned about seeing music in movement from that tree. [Photog: Provoculos, Model/words: LainaV]. 

[Photog: Provoculos, Model: Laina V].

[Photog: Tony Mangerie, Model: Laina Vandekieft].

[Photog: MacLea Photography, Model: Laina Vandekieft]. 

The beginning of a journey is always a strange sensation; hope mixed with a trembling caution. It is eyes that stare into the horizon and bodies that are no longer puppets to fear. We live. [Photog: E.E. McCollum, Model: Laina Vandekieft].

[Photog: E.E. McCollum, Model: Laina Vandekieft].

I bend. I break, I break, I disappear. My body weaves itself into the day. It unfurls into the night and if I release myself, I can breathe the dark air again. [Photog: E.E. McCollum, Model: Laina Vandekieft].

Dryad. Roots are twined into my veins. I cannot separate my body from the forest soil, no matter how hard I try. [Photog & Rigger: Cannon, Rope: m0cojute, Model: Laina V].

Right then, there was only air underneath. Only air and breathing and that sigh of dreaming recognition. It is autumn now, many years since. [Photog: Provoculos, Rigger: Nate, Model: Laina V].

The stars said you were part of infinity; they recognized your eyes when you looked up at the night sky. They said that maybe, maybe your skin isn't a boundary at all. (I'm a hard, straight line holdin' up a wall.) I don't know what you are, but goddammit, I'm a planet. Stretch up into me and fly. [Photo by Dan Scenna, Model/Caption: Laina V].

This is a point of stillness. I fit my skin and I am in myself. It is honesty in movement and right then, I am my own. I am a mirror. I can see me, without the buildup of programming and mental patterning. Balance. There is balance. [Photog: InterwovenImages, Model: Laina V].

It is good to be able to hear my own song. I have found a facet of home and it is the drums and never ending winds of a far-off island, it is the loam and moss of the forest, and this: here. [Photog: JAE Photography. Model: Laina V].

Foetus. [Self-portrait, August 2014].

Laina Vandekieft with Gila Nudes.

Self-portrait, August 2014.

Laina Vandekieft with Rhus and NearlyCandy Photography

Model: Laina Vandekieft, Photog: Sam Holden Photography