apricot contentment

Right now it’s lovely you see because in this exact moment I don’t care for makeup, or blow-dried hair, or busy agendas, or having some place to be. 

I only want my candle burning that smells like spiced apricots, and the playlist I made precisely for moods like this.  And for my hands to write, and create.  I’m so grateful for those.  I shouldn’t let a day go by without being grateful for my hands and eyes.  And actually, it’s such a shame I don’t use them well more often. I use them all the live-long-day.. but all too often in such futile and narcissistic routines..

PRINT, CUT, MOVE AROUND, JOIN TOGETHER, REARRANGE, WRITE MORE BY HAND. THIS IS HOW I CREATE.

>a note I scribbled to myself one day as I was frustrated typing on the computer. It felt impersonal, unnatural, and so forced. I still felt like I wanted to get something on the screen, but then I realized I’d rather get something down on paper. So for me what works is writing words then cutting them apart and rearranging them, letting me visualize connections and transitions- the flow of my thoughts. the flow of language in fact, becoming something physical i can hold and move and make. mmm this method naturalizes the creative process for me rather than forcing myself to sit down clean and cold at a keyboard, sinking me into my own wallowing attempt to write a bit of magic that became nothing more than obligatory and lackluster..

--yes this works for me. it moves me forward.

{And james, please keep reminding me that scrappy is exquisite and that unpolished can be even more striking than the refined.}

Learn, but hold on loosely..

I woke up, looked in the mirror, and did it again.

Took a sip of coffee, did it again.

Putting on my shirt, stepping into some too-tall shoes, doing it again.

Yes I know, I already know this is a waste, please don’t think I’m unaware. It’s just that it’s harder than I can say to just stop something so addicting and creepily comforting, cold turkey. In those moments that are dangerous, the ones that teeter totter between settling for contented, comfortable self depracation - and decisive confidence.. in those moments i try to remind myself that I simply don’t have the time. (or i shouldn't give it time). I have got things much more eternal to get to, thank you. Be on your way, there’s nothing for you here.

Its like I’ve been this all-too-hospitable caretaker, in fact a protector, of my insecurity. But I know I have real guests to attend to, productive parts of my life throwing pebbles at my window for attention, while poisonous insecurity dressed up as a helpful friend, is uncovered as nothing but a snarled and hurtful weight in me.

I won’t call them purposeless though. Struggles are anything but purposeless, I’ll stand by that. There just comes a point where it is most certainly time to move on and away from them. In a way, these things we wrestle with, that we’ve clung to forever it seems, have been a close companion. No doubt they served to teach us things we’d never know otherwise. But as with all good things, we have to be able to let go of the thorns in our sides that we’ve ironically come to hold so so dear.

snippet

 

It’s night now, it got darker earlier than I wanted, t’s been doing that more and more.  And I’ve been letting mediocrity come too close lately.  Not in the routine of schedule, but in routine of thought. I’m getting lazy on my ideas. It’s a sad and wasteful thing.. for me, it’s spending countless hours crafting these intricate plans to paint more color into my life, and then just waiting and staring at the paints until they dry up, so I can say “ah welp, guess it’s too late now..”

 

I find myself swimming in all these unfinished or un-started projects and un-actualized ideas. Oh the sting!  ‘...So go, do.’ (I try to urge myself to get a move-on) (it often fails)

 

But I did have this moment, it was a sudden kind of thing while we were at Denny’s [and by the way this was a particularly juicy episode] and as we talk about our plans and ideas that make eyes sparkle, I was so stricken by the realization that we can, in fact, be the stories that we so desperately want to write into existence.  The ambition we draft into words and poems and stories may just as well be made real through our trips. and talks. and tears..

skinny love.

There was this song playing yesterday when we were in the car. It’s one of those that always ends too soon.. the minor chords make me melt just in themselves, the lyrics ring harshly the truth of a painful love. I don’t know music in a technical sense, but I could describe this part in the song where it shifts from a patient and pensive sadness, to a more raw and bold sadness that’s dying to speak itself out of existence. It’s this part that makes me double over with feeling.. you can hear the singer wincing through his words, expelling breath just to get out the next word of truth to himself.

It’s somewhere around this point in the song that I said, ‘man, there are those parts in songs, ya know? where you feel it so much and so deep that you need more.. yet it’s so good that I couldn’t ask it to deliver any more to my audible satisfaction. It’s like I want more of it, beyond music. I wish it could take me into its world so I could touch its sinking sadness the way I hear its sadness. And so I could see it writhing the way I hear it writhing. I’m thinking that the layers of this music have just got to be able to take me deeper than a song..

But then, maybe that’s the beauty and real power of music- it creates a desire to expand sensation beyond the ears.. it leads to a place of experience beyond what the song delivers literally- chords and words. It’s taken one medium of expression, and I- one listener at the least- am receiving that expression outside the medium in which it was dealt. I say that I ‘hear the singer wincing;’ I’m hearing something that’s visual. There exists this translation of the senses where they begin to melt into each other, it deepens the process of feeling. And I do truly feel it, but I struggle to find words that can describe the feeling I get when his hands trickle down the guitar strings and the chords imply on his behalf, 'between you and me, you have ceased to love, but I never will.'

I’ve never known heartbreak like that firsthand, but I’m trying to describe the sensation in my chest when I imagine his. It’s similar to the feeling immediately after you hear something tragic or devastating.. that kind of somber shock. It’s something to me like a quieted scream, a radiating sense of reality. Not as blatant as a vibration, but more active than an emotion. It’s a rush of energy, that somehow is anything but energizing.. it’s the most draining of energies. Maybe this sensation is actually the felt translation from emotion to physical experience. It typically forces me to draw a deeper breath, or else it would be too easy to choke on the quiet pain.

I’m realizing this is starting to sound awful; but although I may not be successfully describing it, the experience isn’t actually awful or ugly, not in the slightest. Though tinged with pain and heartache, this sensation brings the overwhelming understanding that this, this is a moment of real life. This means, if nothing else, that I have participated in life with another. That I have been present, I must have given of myself enough to create a void that was then filled with some part of another being.. and although it’s now left an emptiness that hurts and hurts and hurts- it means I participated. I gave some and I received some, and that means I have, as John Berger would say, ‘increased my capacity to be human.’ This is not a given, it’s not as easy to do as it is basic to describe, and it’s not always joyful. This give and take, it doesn’t always feel effervescent and exploding with gratitude for the reality of existence. Quite often, it feels like shit. But what I mean to say is that the effervescence and gratitude are not all that life should aim for. Maybe we shouldn’t strive just for the good and sparkling feelings of joy, but also to find satisfaction in the experience of pain, for these affirm both sides of existence.

So above it all, above the temporality of shock, and beyond the sting of the start of heartbreak, it is a sensation that confirms- you have been present, you have let part of the outside in, and you have left a part of yourself on the table for another. And I do think, that in itself is a vast and stunning accomplishment.

Re: To my unborn child

In writing to you, I am adamant that this not sound overly lifey and made-for-tv-movie-ish. I don’t intend this to be scripted for misty eyes and warmth in your heart. I want it to be a raw, bold piece of truth, communicated to someone who has yet to be, but hopefully one day will be, a moving extension of me into the world. I’ll give you words and lessons at that point I trust, but I also want you to have words from the me that is now, the young the racing the glowing me that is raging with questions. 

 When you’re a little older and you’re painfully awkward and you’re lost and confused, I want you to have words that resound from the me that was equally lost and confused at some point.. and I was ok with it. And I want you to be ok with it. I want for you to grab hold of that which makes you glitter inside because that is what the world cannot do without. If you’re scrappy if you’re shy if you’re obnoxious if you’re uncoordinated if you’re prissy if you’re bored if if if if….. you need to take moments to remember how little that really matters. 

Should you feel aimless or purposeless, just think: Each time you breathe in and breath out let that be an assurance to you that there is someone who thinks it necessary for you to be alive. That’s some powerful shit.

Please don’t ever let the sun go down on anger. All issues needn’t be completely resolved; the problem doesn’t need to be fixed, but you can resolve to work toward a better place of mind as much as is in your power to do so. But don’t ever let yourself close the day in contented bitterness or tolerated scorn. It is these that will begin to quietly eat away at your soul. And baby, that’s something too big to put at risk just for the sake of pride and anger.

There is so much that I could write and record and research to try to set you up for a life of least-resistance, but- I don’t think that’s the point. No doubt there’s a good chance I’ll one day become a worrying and protective parent and I’ll be eating these words in favor of safety and practicality in all your endeavors.. but maybe that’s why I’d like you to have pieces of my words right now. And from 2 years from now. And 5 years from now, so that you have written accounts of my current worldview (from a time before children) that can identify more with the need for uninhibited adventure. The need to experience the world in the stunning light of risk and uncertainty at this fresh and flying age….

..to be continued..for a long long time..

..and so it goes.

There are a lot of important things I feel and I won’t say them loudly to you but maybe I’ll whisper them. Because if I say it in normal volume I’m afraid it will sound normal and therefore be normal. 

Even though, 

It’s not as though,

Things are only what they sound to be..

But it’s just what I feel.
**

I've found myself so concerned at times with the impending changes that life seems to deem necessary. I'm prematurely mourning for the things that aren't gone yet. (Granted, i do have a history of doing this.) But i've been thinking so much lately about how sad it is that many of the things and people in my life right now won't be around forever. It may seem absurd or elementary, but i just have a real hard time being ok with the fact that hardly anything lasts forever, or even a few years at that.
but the truth is... the fear, and subsequent avoidance, of loss, only inhibits the true flow of life that is the necessary give and take of existence.
and so begins a very intentional 'being ok with' process. it's a daily, active aim to warm myself up to the idea of things being temporary- purposeful in their seasonality.
it's a matter of crediting the truth of where i'm at enough to lay rest my concerns of the non-present, my worries over the past, and my fears for the future.

But sometimes I wonder, is it true that it’s always and only the ‘now’ that we've got.. ?
***

So it wasn’t really that I even thought up poetry that day. It was more like poetry came dancing and rushing and flashing toward me, encircled me and wrapped me up, scooped up my restraint and tossed it to the wayside so that I had nothing left but to write.
***