The Tugging and The Vision

I am watching fall blue out the faces of houses and cement sidewalk slabs, rain clinging to the air, my own eyes hoping it will just let go, fall just beyond the coffee shop windows, make the world slick with shine. For the first time in a while I'm enjoying my music, particularly Ellery/ Dividing the Plunder. Tasha and Justin Golden (the band members) have always sung a story so like the one walking the often puddly floor of my heart.

There's always this deep longing in the lyrics, something stretching out the emptiness in me, helping me explore all the rooms that feel stark and gray.

I feel so unsatisfied lately, and I worry that I'll never go where I want to. That I'll never write or help other people acheive their creative goals. I want to feel meaningful, like the hours of my life contribute to the vivacity of fellow human beings. I want to pull all the people who feel meaningless out of hiding and help them make their lives, and make things, make art or journals or poems or paintings that give them hope, some sense of originality, of, "I can do something and it has never been done the same way."

I want to help re-invent what makes a person valuable. There are such superficial criteria out there for people to measure themselves up to. It's absolutely ridiculous. I hear people talking about how a man isn't clean shaven and I think, "What if he spent the past three days concocting the most brilliant screen play, if he couldn't sleep, could barely eat because characters were on his brain, jumping new dialogue, movement into his every thought? What if he was helping someone, or organizing his books, or making music, or learning something new?" Why does a clean shaven face mean a damn thing?

I wonder if it's possible to escape such talk. If we can jump first to conclusions of gradeur. If instead of assuming the old homeless man is a mere deadbeat, considering him to have done great things, and met such horrible circumstances that he really does need society's help.

I know that we're taken advantage of, and that so often the book's cover actually says something about the book, but that doesn't justify superficiality becoming the rule. Too often, we apply the most convenient of our explanations because it makes us feel superior, as if we're justified in our plastic-sour talk, our choice to turn away smugly.

So yes, these days my desire to be a part of something colorful, supportive, substantial is immense. I feel tugged deep in the soft wells of my organs. I feel a cloud of dream swelling at the tip-top of my skull.

And I start to compose a vision. A workspace. A schedule. A plan. I found this wonderful wonderful book on amazon called, Creating a Life Worth Living by Carol Lloyd, and though the title is a tad bit cheesy, the book is written very well and provides a lot of insight and practical guidance for the creative individual who longs to make a creative professional life for herself.

The book has me attmepting to come up with a clear, concrete vision for my future career. I am holding onto all of my ideas, idyllic as some might be, in order that I might acheive as much of that vision as possible. I know life and God and relationships and children intervene, but I'm just trying for the best, clearest picture I can get of what I want, and working toward that, so that maybe, someday, I might come close.

What's interesting is that the ideal so often is not to sit at home and do nothing...to watch television and eat as many potato chips as their are channels and commercials and talk show fights. Tyically, after about a week of that, we're ready to do something, to create a life for ourselves. Armed with a bit of the vision already--that I want to write--mostly poetry--and help others actualize their creative/emotional selves--I am attempting to clean it up and put together the stepping stones of the path.

While I'm here, the biggest struggle is satisfaction. It is so hard for me to rest where I am. It's easy for me to do nothing, to stare off into space ninety-percent of the day, but while I'm staring I'm spinning wheels behind my eyes, doing the maddening work of worry. I need to be able to sit for five minutes and be okay where I'm at. Breathing. Catching up with a friend. Allowing myself to be hugged while I'm being hugged.

Sometimes there's so much to undertake. Satisfaction. A vision. Vivacity despite the emptiness I find inside myself when I am without a definite plan. I'm working on it, and working on getting quiet for a small space in the day, finding out that I'm worth something even when I'm not making it all work perfectly, when I'm undisciplined, when I'm alone without anyone to say whether I'm good or not.

Reason to Write

Tonight I find myself in the thick shadow of dismay, raking the grey-blue for possibilities, links to some shiny hope of happiness without a huge-impossible effort. So much of the happiness I never thought existed, and most definitely never thought would fall straight into a chair across from me at a coffee shop, has come in such richness. But now that I am steady in that one great happiness, I begin to search around noting depressing matters of money, impossible dreams, non-existent satisfying jobs, and my heart sinks.

I consider how this country is owned by other countries, and how everything seems to be worse and worse every hour. How the earth suffers and the poor suffer and the abused suffer. How so many of the people I know are worried sick and have no security blanket. All of reality keeps building and building and soon it seems almost naive to allow myself to live into any lightness with all this loss and decay and sufferring around.

I think of writing poetry, and how the whole dream or desire seems like such a joke in the face of all the needs doing in this big crazy world. Nobody reads poetry, anyway. I once read something by Kathleen Norris about following a calling because it's a calling, and trusting that somewhere, there's reason.

Perhaps it's not what you do that changes the world, or brings any hope to anyone. Perhaps it's how you do what you do, and who you are because of what you do. If I became some sort of disciplined writer, who urged other people to write and write truthfully, who attempted to inspire to any degree, then maybe it's worth it. Maybe the point is becoming the sort of person I want to be, and that writing helps me be that person.

Perhaps it is not that I need to be a sort of person to write, but that in order to be the person I really love to be around, to be the sort of person that feels light and airy and hopeful and spiritual and deep and thoughtful, I need to write. I need to go into that place, spend time, pay attention, and record.

Tonight, in the midst of this darkness, I've also had the realization that perhaps thinking about life--the hugeness of it and the seeming impossibilities--is harder than actually living. That perhaps our dreams are not so difficult to pursue as they are to think about pursuing. Thinking about anything too long can give it such terrifying shape, wings as black as night and immense lungs blowing a big storm of depression and pessimism. But doing the work of the dream, opening the notebook, going outdoors, calling words from the edges of fields, trash caught on the breeze, bird feathers falling slow, is a better way to go about things.

May you go into your work and not think so much that your dreams become too much, gaining a more nightmarish resemblance, losing all their light and compelling power.

My World

The rain has started spooling through the air, falling down strands of light and other heavy, near-bursting molecules. I am treating myself to coffee at a nearby shop, listening to Katie Herzig and Neko Case, hoping there will be enough time to immerse myself in the life I want to be living, the world in my head that begs for real space and becomes so rainy and blue when I'm living outside of it, on everyone else's terms, pleasing, climbing ladders.

I know it's childish, selfish, and it has nothing to do with the "real-world." But it's simple enough to be, perhaps someday, feasible. It has to do with color, silence, the sorts of songs made to fill rooms and still allow space for thought--for reading--for a kiss. It has to do with writing without judgement, and reading without feeling as if I have to somehow match or learn from the story--the plot structure--the diction and syntax. It has to do with treating people as real dignified, feeling, worthy human beings.

Lately I get home from work around six from a job which hardly allows my brain to excercise any of its creative components, and usually has me so strung out I talk about it for another hour, talk in my head about it for another, watch a movie to escape the conversation, and end up dreaming and talking in my sleep about it all night long. It's not a bad job. I'm so lucky to have it, and it has been a blessing. But at the same time, it is forcing me to realize that if I'm going to have the life I deeply desire, if I'm going to have peace and time for creativity, and lingering dates, I'm going to have to make some changes.

For REAL this time, I'm going to have to try discipline. I'm going to have to get up early if I want time for myself--time for yoga--prayer--going into the deep and hopefully keeping some remnants of that place inside me for the rest of the day. I'm going to have to stop worrying about what people think. I won't see people as much as I'd like to...because I'm going to have to start making time for myself, on my terms.

I know I'm without so many responsibilities at this point in my life...namely children...but I still need this. I need this if I'm going to keep growing. And that's something that's always been important to me. I want to stay vibrant. I want to become more vibrant. And I want to continue cultivating a balanced center. I want to learn emotional boundaries and start using them. Start protecting myself from becoming a twisted up wreck.

I don't want to waste time being unhappy, feeling disappointed that the world I want to live in and the world I live in don't seem to be working out together. Here's to making a way, and the discipline and work that takes.

Here's to building my truest self into the fabric of my world.

Day's End

With work consuming the majority of my time, lately, I have a tendency to begin to feel rather purposeless. My creative life falls to the wayside, and I have little time to rest in the sun and read and clean up after my morning rush. But, as I've worked at the coffee shop today, I've thought about whether I would feel satisfied if I was doing my creative work all the time. If my life was different, more free, would it be enough?

Sometimes I wonder if anything is really enough. I notice that I don't often feel satisfied. Part of this could be my ever-analyzing mind resisting any sort of rest or letting go. Part of it may be the fantasies of living a very gleaming, sun-lit, successful, romance adorned life.

And though I have my moments, even in my moments of bliss, I begin to roam the familiar passages of my brain, trying to draw conclusions from the bliss, and most often using up energy I could be spending enjoying, determining whether the bliss is warranted, whether I should start worrying, and usually the answer to that question is a resounding (truly unwarranted) yes.

What I've been thinking about tonight is how I can be content, what grounds I can authentically say, at the end of the day, that I've done what I've needed to, and it is okay to rest. First off, work isn't much of a choice, and while I'm there, if I can cultivate any positivity, any connection, perhaps any food for thought or eventual creative works, then work is not a waste. And, it financially sustains my other endeavors. After work, if I can go into my own work, and perhaps even for a half hour give over to the spinning wheels of color and words, I am fulfilling the part of myself that has always desired to make, to inspire, to tell stories, to breathe some sort of life that is not necessary to life, but to moving into the vibrant swells life offers.

If I can be close to someone...hug or laugh or spill or simply exist together for some amount of time, I have made connection, and connection is perhaps the most essential aspect of my happiness, of my finding meaning in life at all.

I don't think God hates me for not running running running all the time. Actually, I do think that, but I know, deep inside, that this is not the case. I know I also see myself in an incredibly negative light all the time because I have not accomplished. And, as mentioned earlier, I don't know if any accomplishment would actually make me feel worthwhile, as if I deserve to take in air, food, go into worry-less rest.

But, I am choosing, for my own sanity and potential happiness, to learn satisfaction. To, when sitting on my bed, seconds from lying down, know that I am human. That some wasted time is good. That if I have loved at all, been honest, done the best I could in my art and work (the best I can given any constraints and my humanity--not perfect), if I have striven at all to connect and know God (for me, this is important), than I am okay.

I can't afford to heap guilt over my head anymore. I need to know that rest is okay. That sometimes our expectations really are unreasonable, and in one day, unreachable. We need to learn the process, which is slow, and requires breaks and lots of time out cuddling, putting our feet up, breathing deep.

Thriving

With one tonsil the size of a bowling ball making the slightest swallow a most horrendous and anxiety producing experience, and my work schedule infringing on any potential sanity and rest and creative projects, somehow, in the coffee house, having just brewed a very potent cup of green/black/fruity tea, watching the rain pull from the sky and spool down the sidewalk and parking lot, with Ingrid Michaelson's hummy hopeful songs dipping through the air, I feel light. I feel relaxed. I feel softened--tensity trailing until I am a weighted cloud, leaning against the counter just enough.

I am reflecting, actually, on the good. The fact that I do have a job, that this tea is soothing the tonsil that's freaking me out. That I can do this--journal, read, listen to music that inspires and cradles my deep, sip tea, listen to customers' stories, feel familiar, dabble in the poetry running somewhere behind the stressed portion of me. I am remembering that I was able to spend time with good friends this week. I was able to have deep spiritual discussions with one who I haven't seen in two years.

As cheesy as it feels to write this, I saw my first sunset with my boyfriend. I was able to share time and laughter and silliness and acceptance, and know, for another week, how very lucky I am, and how that feeling is mutual.

My bank account might be drained over car expenses and doctor's appointments (if this tonsil thing gets worse), but I'll still be here, still with friends, still working, still sharing, still attempting to open myself to bigger, more meaningful experiences and concepts.

I need, often, to step back. To stop pining over what's lost (time to work, time to worry, time to sickness, time to thoughts about what will happen if I never forgive my father, never become super-spiritual, never go to graduate school, never accomplish anything), and know what I have, what I will take and live tomorrow and the next day and the next week. More time with friends, a lover, with books that might help me get closer to believing, to trusting, to living more deeply and truly and freely. I will write. I will thrive.

And eventually, perhaps, I won't need to step back. I'll have grieved enough to have truly lost. And I will have taken my father off his hook and gone even farther forward. I will love better and take myself a little less seriously.

I feel like a cheeseball today. Oh well. I feel good. There's sweetness popping around in my life, and I'm grateful.

Solitude: What the Dream Requires to Come to Life

Sometimes the dreary slips out from my deep, and I begin to consider dreaming up, actually doing, writing, creating, reading, journaling. I make to-do lists. I think about buying a vanilla/cinnamon candle to burn when I leave work, and begin remembering what my solitary life entails. What I would like it to entail.

I have dreamt, my entire life, of who I will be. I consider the house I'll live in and what I'll draw on the walls, what paint I will use to make the space spacier, to make it a bit easier to spread out and breathe within four walls. I dream of afternoons where the windows are open and the breeze is calm and the flowers haven't wilted in their vase on the sill. I dream of stillness and my lungs lift, all of my organs lift, at the thought.

And then there is the exhilerating thought that I can make my dreams, or begin the process, with my two hands now. I can put my words to paper and I have paint, unopened, on the shelf. I have memories to turn into stories, and a few solitary mornings to breathe into the full person: myself by myself, and the self I've been in social circles, with my boyfriend, at work. I have time to connect all the dots, to bring all aspects of myself together like ribbon ends and know who I am, in my entirity.

So I begin the work. I open the journal. I make lists. I find poem notes to stretch into full pieces, and small thoughts to elaborate. Then the major conflict I always encounter strikes. I go to the keyboard and am empty. I take words out of the air and all of them come together in such shabby pairs. Everything is disappointing, suddenly. Thus, I am disappointing, suddenly. And I cannot go on.

I begin working out the dream, and the dream turns out to be a hell of a lot of work. I'm ready to crawl back into bed, to call up someone to dive into, to pass the time with, to forget about what I've been avoiding: time to know and be and live into my own dreams, into what makes me. I become and observant dreamer, again. Wishing and hoping and fantasizing, but never stepping into the big mess living out our dreams requires.

I have learned that I need solitude to be fully me. I need my own work to feel fulfilled and feel valuable. I need solitude to mull my social experiences and open myself up to what has happened in that part of my world. I need to be by myself, with my art, candles, taking baths, listening to my favorite soft-blue-toned music, with my deep pain, with the joy people have brought, and hem it all in, consolidate, and feel full, satiated, alive.

I don't know how to approach solitude right now. I am restless. I want to move and go and talk and be with, rather than without. I don't know how to be productive when it comes to my own life and my own aspirations. I'll try again to set goals, and hope that this week I'll have the exhilerating experience of accomplishing one.

To Live More Widely

There is a knot devouring muscle in my back pulling my spirit down, winding it up in so many words I can barely distinguish them, blurring specific emotions into some sort of dreary cloud nest. It is hard to undo these sorts of things. It is best if you can find the point of origin, the moment, the first word, the news, the situation that might have been the catalyst. Start there. So, that's where I am now, tonight. I am gripping the portion of the root I can name, the one that first made me uneasy, that began constructing this strange uncomfortable edifice to the left of my spine.

I am starting there. And how ridiculous? Something rather simple created a chaos of insecurity in my head. Had me drifting through the grayscale--back and forth. I started comparing myself to some people who are way cooler than I am. Started worrying. Started feeling jealous. And also felt the strange weight of futility that comparing oneself to others often delivers.

Whenever I do this, delve into that awful, stupid, juvenille jumble of feelings that are somehow responding to the fear that I am not good enough as is, that I am not pleasing, that I cannot possibly be worthy for more than five seconds at a time, I end up discovering something essential. I cannot step outside of me (not to mention I can't afford to). Not really.

I can pretend. I can dress the part, change a few externals, but I'll get tired and I'll come back home into this silly, messy, sometimes remotely and oddly artistic, occassionally lazy, seemingly television obsessed (as of late) person. I have to give into who I am. And if I can for once push the image of the person I should be out of my head, I feel comfortable inside my own spirit, my personality, my body, my boundaries. What's even more interesting, I suppose (something I'm discovering as I write this) is that I actually admire the women I compare myself to and I feel so terribly ashamed of myself because I haven't yet achieved what they have.

The women I am most jealous of, and feel most ashamed around as I feel like I'll always be too lazy to actually produce or complete or really do anything, are beautiful people. Really, they are lovely. They are artistic and they take care of things. And the reason they produce things, the reason they are so amazing is that they are able to detach themselves from the terrible web I'm still stuck in. This web of, "Am I good enough for this person, for this calling, for these friends?: I am still responding and reacting and looking around for feedback. I am connected to other people, even strangers, in that I am terrified of what they might think of me and yet, wholly dependend upon what they might think of me.

What is nice is that, as I think of the attributes of these strong, stable, solid women I'm jealous of, I come to realize that perhaps I am not so devoid of these qualities. Perhaps the vibrance these women carry, the spirit and soul these women exude is something I, sometimes, also radiate.

Instead of feeling jealous and avoidant toward these people, I really would like to learn from them. It would be beautiful, a tremendous feet for me, if I could simply drop the comparison and start believing that I have something to offer. It would be beautiful if I could decide to step out of the web and in that instant feel it lose its power and join again a more natural gravity, a more organic way of living, a way of life which values everything and everyone, a way of viewing oneself with utmost compassion and forgiveness.

I want to operate from my core. I want to know what I love and live for and go from there. I want to tap my desires and not pay attention to what gathers positive response. I want to go out, walking on my own feet, feeling connected to my body, feeling carried by some energy that rolls and wells and hums within rather than without.

This is what I've learned tonight. I want to make my spirit a home, and move about as if I am settled in me enough to not worry about stretching out hands, being ridiculously brave, taking little risks, and living more widely, into more light and movement.