💜"Heart Shaped Leaves"💜

"I Shaved Carefully With An Old Razor, The Man Who Had Once Been Young and, Said To Have Genius' - Charles Bukowski. [4 July 2026]

Chasey Delaney

Jul 04, 2026

“If you like your newsletters without politics or preconceptions or seeking a break from the norm you may have just found your new hangout”

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Saturday 4 July 2026

Dear Chasers! 🎀

Hello! Sorry this is quite a jam-packed ‘chaotic’ mishmash update. I appreciate your eyes, and apologise to them for what they are about to see, if you include listening to my recordings, both voicemail and music, I must extend that apology to your ears too!

I’ve been busy trying to pull my head out of my ar….mpit and have fallen back into music as my main creative outlet ;) was gonna say ‘arse’ there because that’s what ‘despair’ feels like, everything is so shit like that.. the world around us stinks!, but it comes and goes and just like consciousness it rows in and out of reality, or is that just mine? I chose armpit because it still stinks but ain’t half as bad as ‘the other’ and hey, I’m writing so that helps when trying to remain chipper!

I have a treat in store for you! (the kind that disappoints but you’ve been very good with waiting patiently for me to come up with something better than my last loaded letter. I can’t remember what it said but I wrote here to you last time:

💜"Writing Through Resistance"💜

Chasey Delaney

Jun 22

SUBTLE MINDSET CHANGES

Read full story

The theme for this letter was going to be based on the heart shaped leaves of the linden tree but I’m all over the place so just threw a few pieces in to knit it all together.

“For centuries, the linden tree’s heart-shaped leaves have served as nature’s ultimate shorthand for eternal love, fidelity, and emotional warmth. From ancient Germanic folklore to romantic poetry, this distinct botanical symmetry has long symbolized a sheltered, idealized bond between humanity and the heart. Yet, nature’s symbols are rarely so static, and the human heart itself is seldom so pristine.”

In his raw 1963 poem “The Tragedy of the Leaves,” Charles Bukowski violently strips away this romantic veneer, replacing the lush green canopy of myth with the dry, yellowed decay of neglected houseplants. By contrasting the classical, nurturing archetype of the heart-shaped leaf with Bukowski’s gritty reality of withered flora and human abandonment, you uncover a deeper, more fragile truth: love and beauty are not permanent monuments, but delicate organisms prone to neglect, decay, and the quiet tragedies of everyday life.

MIXTAPE: Heart Shaped Leaves

Listen in Headphones: Recommended! …x

0:00

-2:35:51

This Mixtape is my version of a ‘SoundScape’ experience, like a concept mix, more about the emotional catharsis than the songs themselves. This particular one features more music than abstract expression but its music of an acquired taste (not one for belting out in public!) I myself even turned the volume down on my headphones when I was out on a walk listening to it LOL - I like just lying down in the dark and nodding off to it, or sat reading a book with cozy lighting. I recommend my first in the Eclectic Sesh series I’m creating on my new account with SoundCloud The first installment is called The Last Day links provided or click image to take you to it. xx

Books I’m Reading:

Shadowman by Johnny Daukes
Songs Only You Know by Sean Madigan Noen
John Peel - Margrave of The Marshes

Song I’m Loving:

0:00

-4:48

Message from me (and story I’m Pondering):

0:00

-10:20

MY RECENT INCOMPLETE ‘LETTERS’

sent out on chasingthemuse.substack.com

Chasing The MUSE

🦋"TO BE LOVED"💀[The Prism of Love Pt. 2]

“Everyone is writing about all of this political stuff all day, and I’m over here like…

6 days ago · 3 likes · Chasey Delaney

Chasing The MUSE

🦋"Shitting Through The Eye of A Needle"💀[THE PRISM OF LOVE pt.1] + {Mixtape & Updates}

13 days ago · 2 likes · Chasey Delaney

“And since to look at things in bloom, fifty springs are little room, about the woodland I will go, to see the cherry hung with snow”

—A.E. Housman (Poem: Loveliest Of Trees)

A COMPLETE UNEDITED ESSAY FROM MY UNPUBLISHED UPCOMING COLLECTION:

The FIRING Line (Paradox of Seeking).

S2-E2: TOUCH “I Could Wear A Sunset”

The initial spark of seeing something deeper happened at the end of my only serious relationship, at this stage of my life, it wasn’t the love, touch, connection that hurt me the most, it was the tortuous loss of those, which almost amplified the terrific sound of my heart breaking.

This wasn’t just some guy, this was my first real love, my first infatuation with another human being. I’d fought hard not to fall into it. The first person to ever reciprocate the intensity of what I was feeling, what love meant to me was reciprocated in him.

It was a romantic exploration, a skydiving sensation where my head had full control over the situation and was keeping us up in the air. My mind was floating along on the breeze, my heart was letting go and the more full of love it swelled, the heavier it became at risk of becoming a risk of its own.

If we let if have its way two things could happen, it would become untethered in its own excitement and get blown up in the air on its own, flying high, soaring on the tide of the winds, or it could let go of us and risk crashing down into the sea — which, it eventually did, through no fault of its own.

Looking back now it was inevitable that I would get my heart broken by a bloke, I’d never been that close to one before, not in a romantic, intimate way. I was young and naive and was expecting the best outcome because I thought I was playing it safe.

I was hardened by my historical aloneness, my thick skin and strong mindset, obviously inside I wasn’t always feeling as stoic as my stone face suggested. I thought that by keeping my wits about me, not getting carried away with the energy his style of love was giving me, that I’d be safe from making any drastic mistakes.

I didn’t want him to stop. I never wanted us to end. I sensed that no matter what I did, I was guaranteed to fuck it all up. The absolute shift in me this time was that I was prepared to try my very best not to. I was beaming with these feelings of pure ecstasy that this new man was generating inside of me, without ever touching me yet.

I kept it all in, the stirring up of newfound passion, the longing to touch, the craving, the cherishing, appreciation, trust, and eventually, embracing, needing him and loving being ‘in love’.

I hoped everything would work out like the perfect daydream. I believed in dreams not fairytales. I’d spent my life dreaming; of being loved, of belonging somewhere (and at a stretch to someone), I pondered my perception of the world had I ever been adored. I dreamed of being adored, I played a Stone Roses song to shout about it. Unlike most kids, my dream wasn’t ‘to be rich’ or ‘famous’--- rich would be good, famous - would be my worst nightmare.

I wanted people to adore me the same way they adored new born babies, animals and my beautiful Nana.

Mostly, I had a dream of getting up out of bed, brushing teeth, going downstairs, sitting on the carpet in front of the gas fire, eating cereal hoops in sterilized milk…. until BOOM!….My name gets called from downstairs again, “come on love you’ve got to go to school and your breakfast is ready. Hurry up!”.

I’m still in bed, fast asleep, I’d done that thing where I hoped thinking my actions would make them real. I still had to get up and do all those things ‘again’ now! It always felt like a lot of ‘hard work’ mentally, psychologically and emotionally. The physical shit was awful as well.

I hated it when we’d have to step outside the boiling hot house, out into the blistering cold, the snap of air that bites your nose and turns your fingertips purple. I swear 90’s weather was on another level. When it was hot it was bearable, halcyon days were great, but when it was cold it was fucking baltic.

We’d come home on those winter evenings in our school skirts and run to stand by the gas fire to warm our hands and the back of my legs would get chilblains on them, I’d say, “look at my ‘corned beef’ legs”. I was the only kid in the picture. I said ‘we’ as in the collective ‘we’ there were the two of us most of the time who would return back from school, only Nana and I, the way we liked it.

It used to hurt to go outside. Not just my body but in my mind. The devastation I would feel climbing out of a warm bed was probably the first manifestation of my chronic depression that I had ignored throughout my teenage years and tried to dine out on, without taking medication, in early adulthood. I’d rather smash myself in the face with a frying pan than hit the streets to walk to school.

I didn’t need to walk alone, Nana always came with me. She was a loving, kind, beautifully caring soul. I remember feeling the cold blast of air on my face, my cheeks and my hands instantly freezing, was much worse. I knew I’d have to put on a ‘mask’ for some of the school day, which I hated myself for. ‘A Brave Face’ to protect me as I was sinking into existential dread. I managed to change my fact to a braver one, by ‘excluding’ Nana from walking me down to school each day.

I don’t know if she ever knew that I got ‘laughed at’ (not bullied, I mean I wasn’t that way inclined, I’d bully the bully!) but smirked at like I had a loose link in my chainmail armour. They weren’t laughing AT her, they laughed at me. Like “ooh we have something to hold against you now!--- As well as your ginger hair and no eyebrows!!” Everyone else’s mum or dad were young and cool or what-not. Nana was cool too, just a bit older.

My Nana was only in her forties, that’s the age range I’m in now (2026) but to a little kid, at 43 we’re almost ‘pushing up the daisies’ and best take a back seat. My friends knew better than to tease me, beside they adored my Nana the way everyone did.

I wished I could pull access to daydreams directly out of my pencil case sometimes. I was too sucked into staying present stuck in the real ‘warped’ conventional world. I was constantly on edge of insanity and decided to keep myself on high alert until home time. I’d knit some ‘ideas’ together with a bit of many satisfying story lines, and look forward to weaving them all into a dream later that night in bed.

I loved the pillow I dreamed on, I loved my bed, and being alone in it. I found myself rolling around in tears and snot and my own cum in a messy bed, depressed, heartbroken and humiliated. Nobody else was interested in any of it and didn’t know “the half of it”.

The humiliation was that my soul, my psyche, my trusted personality had all taken a beating, had walked into this situation and fell hook line and sinker. I was humiliated by and in full view of myself. There was never any reconciliation between my mind, body and soul.

I spent so much time, depressed in my adult double bed alone after a break up. This was all new to me, the first time I’d dealt with love and the aftermath. I felt bad at 24 and already a broken six year, first relationship behind me.

I could never have prepared myself for the oncoming soul-crushing destruction of my entire emotional empire. I’d never had a drug that felt as powerful as this ‘sick business’ of falling in love with another human being, the withdrawals from it were more poignant.

What scared me the most about looking back at it all, wasn’t that I got hurt, it was because he had wanted to hurt me. That glimpse of malevolence (disguised as love) just fucking fractured me. Through those cracks I took the opportunity to slowly seep into the dark abyss of what lies beneath, something much deeper.