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Sage 🌿🪐✨

@burntpaper

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Holder of many shapes 🪼🦋🪐
Ponderer of things • Observer of details
I do massage therapy here!
@tender_root_bodywork

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TWO WHOLE YEARS with my sweet sweeeeet angel Ramona ✨ wowweeee am I so fucking lucky to know you and support you and love you. I can’t think of another person that exudes so much forgiveness and emotional wisdom. I look up to you. You have taught me new ways of being just by existing around me and softened old ways that needed your love and grace. I love you forever Mona! 🤎 by @burntpaper

Last summer with the wildflowers // Along the Columbia Gorge // Dreamy fields and film 🍃🌱🌼🪻🌸🌺🌻 by @burntpaper

~ A poem I wrote two years ago ~ by @burntpaper

Guess which ones the real mushroom by @burntpaper

Wow! I finished Massage Therapy School yesterday and boy am I feeling sentimental about it. These past 12 months have been so full. Full of sweet friends, my 30th birthday, moving into a communal house, lots of tears and overwhelm, much new knowledge, and many massages!! Thank you to everyone who supported me through my adventure of being a student(one I’ve never done in this kind of setting before) and for all the car rides, meals, listening and asking me questions about school, and all of the hugs and body doubling. I may be just a guy but I’m a guy that is full of a whole lot of gratitude and surrounded by so many wonderful humans whom I love so deeply!! Enjoy these silly pics from my time in school 📚🏫🖇️🤎 by @burntpaper

New house goofin!! by @burntpaper

Film photos from last summer/fall. A rainy day in the sunflower field ~ a birthday trip to a cabin ~ and a country side wedding. by @burntpaper

Deep in a flare up last December, Ramona and I drove from Portland to Yucca Valley to stay in the desert with her family for the holidays. On this drive I contemplated many things as I always do with too much time on my hands. How I had pushed my body and mind too hard in school and work with one day off a week. What my actual capacity was, how unsustainable my job was and is for my nervous system(or frankly anyone’s for that matter.) I could feel myself in burn out, inflamed within a reactive system. This trip and having time off for 10 days had my body screaming at me. What followed when we got back was three weeks of a giant flare up - histamine running rampant, exhaustion, etc. I asked Ramona to drive anytime we were in the car, I did very little in my day to day, cried(a lot) decided I needed to pursue another leave from work, and find a naturopath that could really and truly help me with my chronic illnesses and the mold that I knew was(and is) still living in my body. This was the most I had ever submitted to a flare up - I asked for more help than I ever have before. My kind and supportive partner never hesitated to do anything I asked of her(I hope all of you have your own Ramona’s in your lives.) I leaned into trusting that if I could just rest, if I could just listen to my capacity, that my body would start to feel just a little bit better. That was my goal, just a little bit better. A little less fatigue, a little less pain. Slowly over the next couple months things did start to get better. I took another day off work and called out when I needed to. Here we are 4 months post flare up and much has changed - I found a naturopath that is helping me immensely with my health, I listen to my bodies cycles more closely, I try to do less within a day, I have two days off instead of one. These moments of time in this post show someone laughing, posing, and walking around - I did all of that and more while in giant amounts of pain and discomfort. Chronic illness has taught me a lot. How to be still, how to choose, how to hold the grief and the joy together…. anyways - thank you for reading. I have more thoughts for another time. Love to you all. 🤎 by @burntpaper

These days I can’t help but look at everything through the lens’s of capitalism, colonialism, consumerism, and the American experience. These ways of living permeate every corner of our lives. I crave for communal spaces where profit is taken out of the equation(only asking for $ to cover cost of food/goods, etc.) We need more togetherness, now more than ever. How do we hold each other accountable(in care, not in judgement.) How do we take what money we do have farther away from big corporations? How do we get ourselves away from scrolling for hours? How do we dismantle our minds from believing we need more and more and more? These are the discussions I want to be a part of, more than ever before. I can’t wait to have a bigger living space so I can host these conversations!! by @burntpaper

I often think about the first photo in this set. It feels like a still from a movie. I can feel the emotions and aliveness spilling out from that moment. Jumping and dancing and folding ourselves into the strange flowers on the mountain, together.

In the last few years, I’ve been more afraid of posting here, for fear of approval or popularity. I talked a lot about this in therapy last year. These spaces reduce us into a non holistic version of ourselves, without our context. They allow us too much control over what is seen and what is hidden. At the same time, I adore creating a digital journal of my life. I find much joy in seeing what has been captured and documented. I am forever the curious observer. I appreciate the little windows I have into lives that I wouldn’t know otherwise. This place is complicated, as all things are. Cultivating outside of these spaces is SO important for a multitude of reasons, too many to name here. Anyways, those are my thoughts. If any of you feel this way, I hope these words comfort you. by @burntpaper

Ramona and I have been together for 6 months today. She has taught me so much about kindness, support, passion - ah! The list goes on and on. Dating another Virgo really is a trip. I feel so grateful to love her and be in relationship with her. It’s such a special, sacred feeling wanting to build life with someone. My love for you is never ending Mona. 🤎 by @burntpaper

Slow walks and chai and karaoke and farms and friendship and brown jumpsuits and birthdays and braiding each others hair and trying your best despite everything because the moments of joy and hope and connection make it all worth it. by @burntpaper