Don't Push, Don't Shove

Late night, again. Adrenaline, again. I'm listening to the album Andrew made me, this Gasoline Heart song called "That Girl," in which the vocalist sings, "This is where you are, don't push, don't shove." I feel so often this pressure in me, pressing against the walls of my lungs, stretching them, stripping them the way cigarette smoke strips them, the way screaming strips them. I feel tight, stretched, dried out. I am pushing. I am shoving.

The reason for all of this is this stark realization that I don't quite know where to go with myself in the coming year. I mean, I'll graduate. I'll try and save some money working at the cafe, at a fruit stand, hopefully, and move. But where? Should I apply to work at that monastery in California? Am I only thinking about applying because I want to put that in my statement someday for graduate school? That's awful.

I HATE the fact that I am still working to please people. To please grad programs. To look good. I think about this, this part of me and I feel violent. I want to be done with myself, with all the ways I keep from knowing myself, from doing what I most want to do, from even knowing what I most want to do.

Granted, working at a monastery would be amazing. It would probably be very good for me in so many ways. The environment would be great. But, would I get bored? I am such a stress addict. Really.

I've been thinking of all the ways our society works, that we graduate and if we're going to get retirement plans we're going to have to jump through hoops, we're going to have to flaunt ourselves, make ourselves these "professionals" and further remove ourselves from our humanity, our feeling of worth simply because we are here, because we contribute on a level deeper than filing paper, creating spreadsheets, putting together cubicle walls in a factory, doing more and more. I am SICK of this. I don't want to be a part of it. But, perhaps there are good aspects to it. I feel like a mess of thoughts right now. And there's no where to go with any of it. There's nothing to decide.

I want to be a part of sweet full living. I want to make love out of life (as silly as that sounds). I want my good friends. I want more good friends. I want closeness. I want work that inspires closeness, that involves healing. I want work where I can share art, and make art with other people. I want work where I can help people find what they want, what they've lost. I want light. I want brilliance. I want joy. I want carelessness. I want floppy-soft-yellow days. Mornings. Days that look like mornings. I suppose none of this has to do with work, with business, with occupations. But, it's what I want in my work, my business, my occupation. I don't want to be stifled. I don't' want white office walls. I don't want hierarchies. I don't want regulations. I already feel like the past twenty-three years have been strangled by these things.

I think of Sabrina Ward Harrison's saying, "Make your own life." And I think, I have to do something different. I have to look deep and pull up my art, my real art. The poems I most want to write but haven't because I'm trying to write what will be accepted. The paint I most need to throw on canvases in configurations I've needed to set down, to lay out. What do I WANT to do? What am I going to make, if I am to make my own life?

It's somewhere in me. It's risky business. And I'm terrible with risk. But this is all I've got, I suppose.

Sabrina also wrote, "I'm afraid to show you who I really am, because if I show you who I really am, you might not like it, and that's all I've got." I think of this in terms of going out into the world, of putting my art out there, and this is what I have to stand by. This art, this work, is all I've got. I'm afraid. But I don't want to go out of this life as big of a wimp as I am now.