During my time in New York City, life brought me a friend Keisha Bissram. Who is Trinidad Tobago Staten Island goddess and actress, writer, and lover! I am so grateful for her wild Sagittarius soul. This photo series was photographed in my Miami home.
new personal work | Denisse Monge
untitled ( thirst trap I II III)
“there was a moment that is fading my mind now, and trust it’s one of the moments I want to hold on to forever but new experiences are making their way into my mind.”
I spent most of this summer writing. I never considered myself a writer but I realized to be a writer you just have to write. Maybe it was my mind trying to make the complexity of words and their meaning and their power: simple. Just write.
Write about everything - your life, your parents, your family, your lovers. I realize I write a lot about heartbreak and I am going to blame it on my Pisces moon. My perpetual state of being heartbroken and in love all at the same time but you add into the fact that my Taurus is in venus and it seems I can't move on…….until I do and then I am over it.
I woke up this morning with deep appreciation, gratitude, and respect for my teacher this summer, Alisha. I think about the space she created for me to write. To write is to feel and to express that feeling by giving words the life they deserve whether or not someone thinks it's good or not. it exists and therefore it can no longer not exist.
I had met Alisha before she became my teacher, and I remember thinking wow she is gorgeous but in the way that someone's internal light is so external it shocks you. Maybe it was that day that created safety for me to be her student. We took pictures of the space we both work at and became acquaintances.
Fast forward - I signed up for a writing class that had been on my list of things to do but I never did it because I didn't have space. No job - no responsibility- led to this moment where writing has become my form of creation.
I woke up this morning and I asked my body - when I am getting my period - today!
I also heard in my sleep- your Saturn return is complete and that’s why you are going back- check your Astro chart with the timelines and I did and everything adds up - I am about three months away from yet another transformation.
My intuition has been strong and my spirit has been in a state of fluctuation of trusting myself and not trusting myself.
I love that saying when parents tell their kids you didn't come with a manual. MY GOD how I wish I could get my hands on my manual and maybe I do have it but I don't want to read it. I believe I am the creator of my life and god helps me if I meet them halfway. My god is energy, my god is stillness, and my god is within me and I am in many forms my god - I pray a lot to myself and the energy around me.
but it doesn't mean that i don't question. Part of me right now has not been listening - it’s funny because I am teaching people to listen yet I am having a battle within myself. This is the perpetual state of a teacher - the battle of learning and unlearning.
At 31, my illusion dream was to be married to a wonderful man and have kids and somehow I would be complete. Part of that desire comes from being Latina, I was taught- that that was the goal. You get a job, you work on yourself and you get picked!!! You get picked- to make someone else's dreams come true and somehow yours take a back burner or somehow you figure out how to do it all at once. The funny thing is that I do see women -do it all! Exhausted but they do it all.
Right now at 31, I am moving back home.
I don't know if you can feel it but my ego just fell to the floor and it took my heart with it.
The truth is that I have like one million desires right now and that's why Taurus ass feels all over the place. I try to categorize my desires down to a to-do list - do this to feel like this but it's not true.
I have three desires right now: I aspire to make two movies that came to be in the form of meditation two years ago but I haven't figured out YET.
I desire with every fiber in me to live alone in my place - with plants, my books, and a big ass bed, candles- it smells fresh like that Ralph Lauren perfume that makes me crazy and space for me to make my portraits. this time and space is for my single ass to be alone yet extremely happy - I went from living with my moms, to living with a boyfriend from hell, to living in new york city with 10 roommates in two years and then down to my favorite roommate I ever will live with,
now is the TIME universe - guide me PLEASE.
my last desire at least for now is to be a mom. I see myself being a mom. I feel it but I question it because when will I be ready, when will everything conspire for this to happen.
I see it sometimes when I am very good at my practice. I see it and to be honest I have been okay with my practices this last month, I have been avoiding it. Mostly because I am avoiding myself but don't worry I also haven't been sleeping because of course when I don't make time for me to listen to be to follow me, spirit wakes my ass up at three in the morning to talk! I am tired, the truth is that as much as you want to rebel against yourself you can’t - you enter this life with this body, this heart, and this spirit. This is the contract! You don't get to be someone else and you don't get to live someone else's life.
For today, I want to be a writer, a lover, a friend, and most of all I just want to be the artist for my future children to see my life in all spectrums, life is not one way, and it's not good nor bad. It's just LIFE - the good and bad and you navigating between the spectrums making the best of it!
I have been working on myself intending to “fix myself.” so that I can be appealing to the “love of my life.” I set my New Year’s Intention like a hopeless romantic okay this year might be the “one” the one in which I meet the one. After last year's heartbreak. I made a promise to myself this year will be the year that I will not be heartbroken. I came to realize that I have spent the last 15 years in relationships, devastating situationships, and somewhere in between those two spectrums. I had lost the purpose of why I wanted to fall in love and be in love. Falling in love is all I ever dreamed of until I had that realization- maybe it's not meant for me. I cried hard the night I found this out. I went to all my ex-boyfriends/ex-flings IGs. I realized they all had found love and it wasn't with me but I also had the empathy that who I am destined to become is not who neither one of us would have ended up with. I was evolving and I will spend most of my life evolving, shedding, growing and learning, and becoming. The kind of love that I dream of is one of magic ride-or-die love. I want to look at my lover/partner/friend/husband as the muse that I had discovered. I want to discover this lover like the most beautiful sight I have ever seen in my eyes. I always dream that this partner will be different from me, they will be smart in all the ways that I am not, that they will challenge me but also be sensitive to me. Like down to drink tequila in Mexico but also down to vipassana silent meditation in the Himalayas. I dream that my lover will be my muse. Since in so many ways photography is the love of my life, I want to be able to photograph my person intimately. The kind of portraits that tell you the artist is in love with the person. I will look at their face, their eyes and recognize them from lifetimes. I will see their soul. I haven't found such a face yet! I have looked into a lot of eyes, I never got the feeling okay, him. I have often got the other feeling, not HIM. I am lying there one time, I had the feeling. I said to my partner then. In two years you will be ready for me, so go find yourself, you deserve it but maybe I just needed more time to fall in love with myself.
Jes Allen was one of the first people I met in Brooklyn. I love her so much and i am so glad she got to be one of the last people i photographed! love you Jes. Thank you for being part of Spirit Portraitures
Instagram : j.e.s.a.l.l.e.n
website: www.jesallen.com/
Denisse Monge X Capture Dances
Collaboration and Imagination.
Capture Dances workshops are designed to create a fun environment for movers, photographers, and other artists to create spontaneously. Visit www.capturedances.com/
Photos were taken in Wyckoff Manor by Denisse Monge.
My brother Brian Monge is a beautiful movement artist based in Miami,FL.
IG: brianxmonge
Vanessa Reycas is truly the embodiment of some serious movement goals. I am so grateful to have the pleasure of photographing her during our time of quarantine. Thank you for keeping me creative during this time.
IG: @vanessa.recyas
