Just a few months ago, I had a piece of paper on my wall above my desk that read: “not forever, but for now.” That felt so true in the moment, everything felt forever changing and there was a simple joy I felt in the detachment to everything around me. That both horrible and incredible moments alike would change and slip through my fingers. Nothing felt stable to me, and that felt sort of incredible. It still feels true now.
But here is a forever that I will give myself over too. A forever that I would happily yoke myself with, for better or for worse, in sickness or in health, till death do we part. (Though we will love each other long after my body is nothing but compost to the earth).
The other day, I made a wish in a wishing well. (this is not a figurative wishing well btw, this is a literal well that has been imbued with the magic of wishing). I wished that I could be a poet forever. That poetry could shape every porous boundary of my life. That I would forever be moved and transformed with locating and parsing out the nuance, the magic, the infinitely refracting mirrors and shadows that made living this experience here on Earth so amazing, rich, and at times miserable, but then, amazing again.
When Lana Del Rey said: my life is my poetry, my love making is my legacy. Just know,
I FELT THAT.
Forever, (and ever), I want to light a candle and think about God, admire the way the light falls through the trees, stop for every snail crossing the street, speak my fears into the music at every club, find new ways to describe my feelings that are sometimes different, but usually the same, imagine every opening as a portal and on and on and on.
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Unhinged poem on obsession REVISED or ACT 2
I have been volunteering and overall just hanging around an art/writers residency in Andalusia for the past few weeks. I have been so moved by everyone’s devotion to their creation. The intimacies of their obsession.
I have often been self-conscious about my obsession over lovers. How much I desire to consume every part of their being, know all their secrets, and enmesh them to myself. And have also witnessed how fast that desire curdles over. @sighswoon said something once about how obsession is for your art and your writing not for your lovers, and how many people get that confused. After a summer coloured by flings, I’ve been feeling the thrill of pouring all my obsession into creating, and all the neurosis that come with that obsession—pacing around the room (the drama!), sobbing in the shower will cleaning, aggressively dancing at the moon, and of course making creating itself the sun, so you can hang around in its orbit.
Things feel intense, but in that very light way that I love. In that way that feels joyful and fun and not heavy. Things have been emerging, and I’ve not really felt the desire to share all of it just yet. Allowing some of my writing and creating to be just for me, until they are ready to be something more, at least for now. All I know is I want this forever and ever.
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Lowering the Stakes (another shade of “perhaps, it’s not that deep”)
In the saga of realizing things are perhaps not that deep (and more importantly I can choose when to perform the drama of deepness), I have had a thought floating around. Again, like most realizations this one has been hanging around for a while, but only recently and (in the strangest turn of events) thanks to a white-man-with-dreadlocks™ (wmwd) I have fully understood this realization deep in my body.
I was amazed at how much wmwd gave himself the permission to be right in the art he was creating. How much he doubled down on the importance and value of his work even when he had been previously challenged. How much he lowered the stakes for himself, letting himself create prolifically on scrap cardboard and paper materials that he gesso’d. How free his work felt because of it.
I was truly floored by the realization that I could just lower the stakes of my creation. As a kid I would draw ferociously on everything and anything in sight, but drawing in a journal just felt too overwhelming. The vibe immediately shifted, I felt the stakes of the journal space. I wanted to flip through the pages of this beautiful journal my parents had gifted me for Christmas and feel proud and sure in every creation I put in there. Suddenly I felt aware of the figurative audience that one day might flip through this journal (also maybe this was Anne Frank diary syndrome when we all felt as if our journals and diaries might one day be a piece of historical text of a ten year old in [blank] year lol). In the journal I felt stunted, but everywhere else my ten year old drawings were prolific and obsessive.
That state of creating was just a feeling and I could give myself that feeling at anytime. I could just lower the stakes.
Not only could I lower the stakes (“oh, I’m just having fun seeing what emerges”), I could also feel right in my process of creation. How many times have I told myself “oh, I can’t write for hours and hours at a time everyday and therefore I don’t have what it takes,” or, and this is more of a recent one, “I enjoy creating art watching TV, or listening to a podcast in the background, and therefore I could never be a REAL artist, or my work is less valid because of it.” Oof that was a big one for me. One I even put up a poll on instagram to ask people about. But, wmwd made me realize how much permission white men give themselves to be right in what they are doing. Allowing what works for them to just work for them. Also realizing……. I could give myself that much permission too????? Wild.
Don’t let anyone tell you how you should create. If it feels right, it probably is right (and on and on). *gets off soap box*
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Prompts babes
Can you lower the stakes for your creation? What would that look like?
Do you identify with obsession as a feeling? What feels juicy about obsession? What feels exhausting about it?
What is just for now? What is forever?
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Lots of love,
-ThaiHJ xx