'I am so tired, and my head hurts, and these life lessons seem to be the same lessons on repeat and I am wondering why they won't just shut up already! I really am taking the time and making the adjustments, and doing all the things to grow and progress and move beyond and yadda yadda yadda...but still, once again I find myself in the same situation but with different surrounding colors, and yes, not nearly as bad as the past. I am making progress, this is true, and yet I WANT TO BE DONE WITH THIS LESSON!!! There comes a point when I have to ask myself what's the point? What's the point of continuing to "improve", "change my perspective", whatever if I'm still going to keep running up against the same pressure?
I don't know what I'm saying and this is not a well balanced writing moment for me. It is clunky and full of terrible run on sentences I'm sure because I love run on sentences and I'm really not even paying attention and there's a piece of me that wants desperately to go back and sensor but that's not the point. So I challenge myself to not go back, because I'm sharing wildly. Because we are all wild. Because sometimes it's helpful to see each other's untamed inner landscapes and this is mine right now. Ugh, life is messy. It hurts. There is the question of "what am I not getting?" Where am I going in life? Does any of it really matter anyway? No. No it does not. And yes, yes it does. Each and every moment is filled with that duality and it's exhausting. I want to get off the ride and just be firmly planted on the ground below. But when the SAME lesson keeps coming back I have to ask myself "what am I not getting?" Why I am continually brought back in to a cycle of struggle? What is the lesson? Perhaps the lesson is that the lesson never ends, we just get better at the same terrible hardships that bound back into our life on repeat like a boomerang...and yet, I hold out hope for that not to be the case. I hold hope that there is a point when things click, and yes the tools learned from these repeating lessons are probably never cast aside, but that there becomes some ease and ritual that acts as protection from the raw hurt that previously boomed itself again my brain, and ribs, and heart, and ovaries again and again and again and again throughout this life's cycle... I have an aversion to ritual. I feel the truth in that statement. There is something that feels claustrophobic to me about that word. I am looking for a right relationship with ritual and have been for quite some time. Honestly, I am looking for a right relationship with the word service as well. These two words (ritual, and service) are so hard for me to find comfort within and yet I know from soooooo much research that we can rest within ritual, and that service is a link to finding a sense of purpose AND I DON'T WANT ANY OF IT! That's not entirely true, I do want those things...I just don't want to welcome the words along with the rest and sense of purpose they supposedly provide. As it stands now, ritual and service as words feel to me like a clawing trapped bird inside my chest that wants to break through the sinews of my body just to be free of the burden and weight these words carry. This bird wants to scream "but this is not my burden", "this is someone else's burden", "I'll happily carry my own, but this is not mine and should not fall on me to fix." I don't know if there is a reason for me to continue in any direction. I am sifting through life's mess and searching for something to "click". My only steady comfort right now is writing. I write and scribble words on a page with ink the old fashioned way every single day in the pages of a journal. I now have a pile of journals that have been filled and the funny thing is that this is the one thing that has probably been the hardest for my throughout my life. Multiple times throughout the years between the ages of 7-17 I had tried to write words in ink on a page. It usually ended with me ripping out the pages wholly uncomfortable with having sullied a perfectly beautiful blank sheet of paper. It was a long and grueling process to get past my inner critic and the impulse to shred each page after writing one or two words because I was convinced that the world would be better with a perfectly pristine journal rather than with anything I would put inside that wasn't a pure and true reflection of how I felt and my writing very rarely was just that. But within the last two years or so I have been journaling almost daily and letting myself get out the ugly, the disconnected, the otherwise hidden and shy parts of my thought patterning and it is helpful. Perhaps this is a mirror for what I am going through right now - I remember that to establish a sense of ritual and service within my writing I had to wade through the bog of despair that desperately tried to keep me out of the beauty freeform writing had to provide. I don't really know how we ended up where I am right now, but I guess the moral of the story (not that there is much of a story here) is that self-expression and a willingness to fail over and over and over again forever can be freeing and really is probably the point at the end of the day. Fine. So bring home the lesson that seems to be emerging from my rambles...I will remember to be kind to myself while I'm systematically beating myself up over failure...cause that's what we do right? That is the dance. So on that note, goodnight.
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Why do I have 3 blogs?!? I don't know. I guess that's what I'm trying to find out. Maybe one day I will combine them all, but right now the separation helps me identify which "project" I am diving into when I write. I have (1) one for letting things flow ooey gooey which is my Intuitive Artist Blog (but really this one started as a catch-all so there are probably posts within it that would maybe be better suited here), (2) another where I work through the fucking reason I make work in the first place and why it is important to me to heal myself through the work I am making and also centers around the work I am doing for my Juliet Project on the same titled Blog (which is really all about navigating this space), and the last (3) for the bullshit and inspiration that collide within right here, right now on this Melding Mynde Blog.
It feels overly complicated, this whole 3 separate blogs thing...and I think it is in the long term perhaps. But for right now it is necessary for me to get a sense of where the hell I am and what on earth I am swimming within and towards. This blog is all about outside in vs. inside out inspiration and listening. The last blog I wrote, Iconoclasts, was inspired by my watching the Iconoclasts episode with Maya Angelou and Dave Chapelle. This is the first blog posting I have done that has referenced specific outside content as inspiration. No wait, that's a lie. I reference Anne Bogart's book A Director Prepares in an Intuitive Artist Blog post from a long time ago. Ugh, but really when you think about it, doesn't everything start from some form of stimuli and so therefore you could say that when I reference conversations I've had with friends, or classes I have taken then really those are me doing this very same thing...oh my gosh my brain is like a freight train. Okay, so...the point of all this is - what's the point of all this? Yes, that's the point. The point is I'm trying to sift through the clutter and get to the nugget underneath the noise. What's beyond the noise? Well, there's a simpleness and calm. An understanding of self. But then the cacophony starts again in my brain and the chatter wants to butt in and have opinions and inserts itself to "figure things out", but really there is nothing to "figure out" everything is right. Everything is good. Everything is clear and clean and without the noise there is no need to rush. Without the noise a sense of stillness sets itself onto my shoulders like a blanket or a mother's embrace. Without the noise there is safety and that safety brings with it a freedom a joy from within. There is nothing to change, there is only what is and that evolves on its own with or without my pushing. In fact, more easily and symbiotically when I let go of the reigns. Though the thought still remains...where is the balance for me between going with the flow of life and letting go recklessly. The reckless part is what I am learning how to identify. There is an in between and that is what I feel myself running towards. The trick is I don't think running is the way to get there, perhaps swimming is the trick! That last bit sounds so very Alice in Wonderland to me. Beware the Jabberwocky ________________________________________ Now. Back to business. To the point... I like to put my thoughts and creative direction into categories. Like little North Stars. Beaming at me, giving me a sense of direction. That's what breaking these blogs up into 3 parts does. It helps give me a sense of where I am, like a map. There. I've moved through something. This is my new vantage point; my new sense of understanding for the day... Tah-Dah! I just watched the Iconoclasts episode from Season 1 with Maya Angelou and Dave Chappelle (link to full episode below). It was powerful, pure, honest, and so universally human. Their conversation was like streams of water. Their perspectives both living, breathing and beating in syc and yet headed off in two distinct landscapes. His understanding of decency, respect, and ownership of self are such a gift to witness. Her wisdom, compassion, and strength are something I only hope to embody as I progress through time...yet I know the reason they are so inspiring is because these qualities in their purest form are present within all of us - and to see her understanding of THAT across behind her eyes and embodied in her very essence is magnificent to behold. These kinds of conversations between artists who are human first...this is what I am insatiable for; what I drink in like honey; what I breathe into my cells like air, like love and light, like all the yummy stuff! I just can't get enough of it. Like bread and honey. What comes to mind now is talking with M. and Alex about art and life and love and pain. The fear of becoming what you feel and know you are capable of being. The self-imposed struggle with boxing in your creativity when the reason you are suppressing it is the very same reason that it has to come out. Something bigger than you is engaged and where the fuck do you put that energy? M. and Alex have not met yet, but they will. I don't see how they could not...there is something too kismet about the way the three of us individually engage with creating. Something profoundly grounded in the mutual strength we find within the feminine. We are tapped into something similar or the same - that is clear. And it is lovely to have companions to witness this wild and crazy journey! I saw a quote the other day on Rhizomatic Arts' website that said "Work independently, but not alone." This speaks to something grounded and sturdy within. A foundation of self-support within a collective companionship. I have been so afraid of community since leaving the dance studio and theater company I helped launch back in 2012. I left both in 2014 and it has been 2 years, almost to the month, that I announced my departure. The wound that time in my life left behind is ready to seal. I may always have the scar of the separation, but the healing has come to a place that is complete. With this, I feel there is a fresh breath of friendship and love that await. A breeze that has always been there but I have been waiting to ride. This is something special. This is something to be found within and without. This is what awaits. Maya Angelou speaks to the definition of the word Iconoclast in this episode I watched tonight. She says, "I know the title, Iconoclasts, it really means to break up the icon. An icon is that figure held high by the majority. And that's from the Greek icon and clast(s) means breaking. The iconoclast is he or she who breaks up old ideas." Just beautiful. <3 I don't know why I am here. I don't know why I am creating...except that I have to - ugh, sometimes I hate that I have to. I feel like I am trying to tunnel myself out of a mass of old dirty clothes that have been piled on top of me by the truckloads.
This whole being an artist and claiming that word thing is hard. I don't know how to navigate between the vulnerable archetype I have created through my "branding" and the logical mind that is constantly editing and fine tuning that "brand". Maybe that logical mind needs to shut up. Yep, I think that logical mind needs to shut up. In fact, I am starting this new blog so that I can share with you as I navigate trying to tell that very logical mind to shut up as it is simultaneously screaming at me from the outer rim of my skull. Finding channel and navigating the space of creative consciousness makes so much sense to me when I am writing poetry, acting, improvising movement, drawing, etc...but my logical mind does not want to go to this same understanding and knowing when it comes to "packaging" all that stuff up and sharing. I hate sharing. Sharing makes me feel nauseous, which is why I feel it is necessary to do so right here, right now. In the book "Healing Back Pain" it talks of nausea being a sign of repressed anger and I have so much of it in relation to my career. AAAAAND I hate the word career. It's so daunting, and looming. It feels like a pressure to arrive somewhere and commit to something for life. I don't want to commit to anything for life - except living I suppose. Everything should ebb and flow, but the word career feel solid and foundational and so I hate it. I grew up in a not so solid, not so foundational way and I get all wiggly and uncomfortable with the idea of permanence. It makes my insides crawl and I'm sure it has something to do with me not being able to love myself, blah, blah, blah. But what really matters is that I feel like I'm being strangled and I can't figure out who's strangling me inside of myself. What is the construct I am fighting? I can feel its fingers pressed in on my throat. Squeezing just enough to let me know that it's always there. And so the night ends. And tomorrow will bring with it new light. |
Melding Mynde
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