knots tied in between anger, boredom, and anxiety

Task (1): Meet the world each day somewhere between whatever terms it gives me and whatever terms I give it.

Task (2): Remain stress free.

Task (3): Try not to laugh/cry/scream at the combination of 1 and 2.

I have been mulling over how much of stress is a choice and how much of it just is. --As immovable, unalterable fact. It would seem that my body, and human bodies in general, were not made for stressing. They were not made for worry. They were not made for life to be so... hard. We are such fragile creatures for all of our bluffing and hoping and straining.

But how much of life being hard comes from our making it harder than it has to be?

I had a history teacher once who said that the purpose of history was to remind us that just because this is the way things are, does not mean that this is the way things should be or always have been. And ever since those words left his lips, they have followed me. He continued to explain that we need history to tell us that sometimes we need to fight and sometimes fighting is ugly. More than that, sometimes the way things are is, quite simply, wrong; and when it is wrong, we are not powerless. We are not restrained to a passive watching of the world, our world.

Those words have made me bold on more than one account in the years since. Lately, however, I have been really good at refusing to apply this idea. I am not so much the humanist that I can believe that a man's or woman's destiny is in their own hands entirely; but I do believe that the many of us spend too much time reacting to a life that appears to just happen. We are not as powerless as we often feel. We can take responsibility for more than we realize.

Those are dangerous beliefs. They are heavy and ready to add their own layer of chaos to the pile of things worth stressing about. And up until now, I have "turned a blind eye". Yet, I feel it is time to apply the process to the process itself... if that makes sense.

Because apparently, handling stress well is not merely refusing to let things bother you by forcing them into unsee-ably dark corners of yourself. And it is more than cheap denial or delayed reactions. It is not storing it for later to be dealt with when no one else is around. Apparently. Which sucks because...well, I am so good at those. Or I was.

Until my body rebelled. Treason. I had done the hard work of persuasion. Mutiny from the inside.

Now, it turns out, I am not meant to house and store things for later and 'not now'. I am learning to be more intentional about letting things go. Which is strange, because I swear that that is exactly the opposite of taking responsibility and meeting life on its terms and not just being a victim of passive reaction. Yet, it takes so much more effort to say (in a way that my body actually believes), "This is not worth the pain I will feel if I hold onto this one second more."

It is letting go of my right to feel incensed, annoyed, piteous etc. But it is not denying myself emotions, because that also I feel in this seditious wreck. Instead, it is the highest honesty of feeling everything as it comes without letting it rule me. I have never been so aware of my own thoughts or how little true self-control I have. More often than not, it seems an impossible balance to strike; but I guess it is just a more mature version of choosing to feel. To feel without shutting down or being consumed by emotion. To feel emotions in wisdom, if that is possible (and I do not yet know if I believe it to be).

So here I am. Open window blowing peaceful wind across my typing fingers as I try to figure out why I hurt today. All I can figure is that I am pushing myself too hard this week and  my body is too tired to filter out the stressors. I was not always this fragile. But I did love my strength.




Also, art. I have very much enjoyed this photographer over the last few days.

It just feels like a day that I should spend writing.

And by that it is possible that I mean..."I have so many other things I have to do."

I am about to fall into the rabbit hole of structure and schedules again. Outwardly, I am sure the transition will go well. I am halfway to becoming a veteran. Inwardly... I am equally sure you will find me chafing against time-ropes and deadline-chains. The dreams will be nearly unmemorable, the art that I have scattered about my room will be scaled down from life-sized to take-what-you-can-into-class-without-making-your-prof-feel-too-unimportant sized, and I will be who I need to be and a little less of who I want to be. But it is not all so bad, especially after the transition phase.
It really is a good thing actually, when the rebellion and cynicism settles.

You see, my love of aviation has always been from a very artistic point of view. Stories. Adventure. Curiosity. Perhaps, even, love. Even my appreciation of most science comes through a very thick filter of the abstract and imagined...and now I need it to be detailed, linear, mechanical. At it's idealistic height, it really is 'all for a dream's sake.' But the more I do this, follow this rabbit hole, retrain my thinking, and try to live in a world that does not always understand me and which I am sure to misunderstand at least a few times...the more I find out what I am really capable of.

And by that I do not mean by skill... but by design. And not just me as an individual but as one example of human beings as a collective creation. I am going to need to remember this in the coming weeks as I attempt not to drown being immersed in world not yet wholly mine.

changes, requested and otherwise

For some things to make sense, you need a change of scenery. It's unavoidable at times. Your imagination is not always big enough to handle the static. Your muse is not always inspired enough with the same material. Your mind's eye is not always full enough. Often times, I am entirely unaware that change is exactly what I need to get unstuck. Fortunately, I am not the final authority or even the main person in charge of my affairs.

So I wound up in the desert.

I was born there, allegedly. Well, not in this particular desert... but pretty close actually. It is really a small matter of borders and names... how does the government decide where one national 'forest' or park ends for another to begin? Anyway... I was not raised in the desert. Though I love the hot weather and the colors and the sunrises/sunsets of the desert... I love water entirely too much. And mountains. And clouds. And trees. Tall trees. Even if they block some of the stars. But the desert has its beauty (like how far you can see and how amazing that rare storm is) and its things to teach.


It was there that my chalk pastels made sense. And faces made sense. I have not a clue why faces made more sense in the desert, but I know that the colors of pastel that I was working with suddenly just worked.



Color. Texture. Shape. Lines.

It is not that I have arrived. But it is the feeling that now I have somewhere to go. I could not see where I was headed for such a long time. And even though I have left the desert and have no intention of living there; I see beauty from a new perspective. And taking that home with me gives better light to all that I see where I am.

I know I hurt you every time I ask the impossible. I know that you would do it too. That is, if it weren’t... “the impossible.” But I cannot seem to tie back the words with knots or ropes or chains or weights heavy enough and strong enough to keep them from charging out and asking again.

It is hope.

It is foolishness.

It is blindness and I love it;

because seeing how far away you really are is not worth the weight that it brings. And so I love blindness. Because I can pretend that you are right here; and that when I ask you to come, you can.

It is selfishness too.

To hurt you so that I hurt less.
To shut my eyes and speak words that make you open yours that much wider.
To make you the one with the bad news and reality riding on your back for you to deliver...because I chose to forget. I am hoping for a day when we can both shirk responsibility and reality, cross the distance, and forget the gap was ever there. I keep hoping even though I know it to be the most selfish, foolish blindness.

But I love it.

Perhaps, forgive me, more than I love you.

Because, you see, I have to think that if I really loved you more than I loved the idea of you here, I would find a way to swallow those poison words instead of feeding them to you. But I do not. I am trying though, to learn.

And that has got to count for something, right? I mean, it is hard and unwieldy and I do not like it. I think that that is life though; and if the rumors are true, you and I, dear are alive and in this thing called life for awhile. If you could, be patient with me while I learn to love you more than my blindness.

leftovers

These are exactly as labeled: leftovers. thoughts. emotions. ideas. From the last month or more. Mostly mine, I think. Finally grown up and finished, I think. Ah, I lied. The first one ends too abruptly and I know it, but this is my temporary cop out. (and now it has been editted again...)



Here I am stuck again
With eyes so dry
They make the desert weep.

It is not that I do not want to release
And feel the salt water oceans pour down over me,
Just that I do not quite remember how to swim.

At first,
I was waiting
Until I felt safe enough.

But I forgot
who it is
who makes me safe.

And I forgot what a fickle thing
Security can be
to chase.

How do you end a drought
you requested, demanded, created?

How can salt water
possibly make an oasis
of any desert much less me?

Shall I grow
myself a salt garden
with glistening roses and petunias?

But how?
Especially when it feels like
everything that will be watered

must die again.
So I wait
to grow my sparkling garden.

And say always, "tomorrow".

-----------------------------------------------------

I have read about people who have woken up to confront change staring toe to toe with them without warning. And it really does happen like that sometimes. You go to sleep and a strange wind creeps in through all the cracks and takes away the familiar. The more often it happens, the more familiar the feeling is even in its unarguable foreignness. In a way, the more you know this wind, the more foreign you yourself have become.

So when the air greeted me with the first auntumn kiss I had been given in more than a few months, I knew there was more afoot and overhead than cool weather and geese flying south. Fall was coming, sure, or was already here. But it came with a mission: to sweep away the past and pack it away.

Summer was a memory. That season was over. It was being uprooted and thrown out; and not just summer weather, but the life we lived and the people we were then. Fall had crept in and wrapped its fingers, arms, and heart around my fingers, my arms, and my heart.

It is a good thing that change never asks permission. I never would have grown the way I have, to appreciate it and even to love it. As it is, Change just comes, shakes the world, and lies down for a bit--only to fade when the requisite newness and pedantic instability wear off. That is what I wait for, the new normal. Let North settle northerly and let gravity find the ground. Then we who are left can build.

done?

tell me of your coming and your going
tell me of your wishing and your passing
tell me of it all

sing me a song
or tell me a story

please, take my heart in hand
just fill my senses to overflowing
the way clearest dark takes up the stars

and moves aside
to let them puncture timid, trembling night.

yes, tell me
and when you finish,
fill the rest with ineffable silence.

Things That Rattle

For the week, I am staying at my aunt's house in Arizona. Yay, desert! And being spoiled. It's a huge house that really does feel familiar enough to be home. I spent many family reunions exploring it and so it is a good place for some mind/body reconnection and reordering.

So I am trying to figure out how to write again, how to pray again, how to read one book at a time, how to lay enough of life down to let my body unclench, and how to draw what my mind sees and feels. In short, exploring the limits of discipline and focus. That video keeps haunting me. I makes me think. About a lot of things. But it also brings me back again and again to this woman in a pink dress that I saw on 82nd the other night with the hot dogs and stories. I am 96% sure she was a prostituted woman. I wanted so badly to go and talk to her, but she was preoccupied and I was a coward.

It's not a direct leap in my thoughts, but it does not take much to make me think of her. I think I have a window I will paint her on amidst...something else. For that, I will have to learn how to paint people. And I need to buy pink paint as I do not currently have any. This could be awhile.

Not to mention, I am trying to learn how to paint deep dark storm clouds and red kites (though I don't have anymore red paint)... and yes. Good things.

Also, I want a tattoo. So I've been researching that. Something about stars and compasses. And it will say "love is enough." Oh yes, vacation. So many things that have been rattling in the back of my brain can finally be heard and attended too.

Oh, and one more thing: I'm going through some of my old high school photography (2006/2007) and I found a few favorites that I mind as well share.