Dear Reader,
Let me explain:
I’ve lived on both sides of every fence I’ve ever seen. Does not matter if the fence, or land on either side, is actually mine to claim.
My mind wants to understand the potential for every possibility.
If told a story about anything, from cold-blooded murder to the most boring trip to the grocery store, I will instantly delve into how, and why, and what the cashier was thinking, and what the murder weapon might represent— I pick apart, however true or totally made up, all the details.
It’s a skillset to interpret the potential of life on this side or that, should this or that happen. Which is a nice metaphorical way to tell you, however incoherently, that I worry about everything.
It’s part self-preservation (which is an illusion because I know that no amount of preparation and understanding will actually assist in the metabolism of any part of life) and part overactive imagination— that’s the gift.
Or so I choose to believe.
I’ve dealt with the anxiety of over-processing by embracing present-moment living, as much as I possibly can, as an adult. However, while that keeps me from having a full-on psychotic break, I need an outlet so I don’t explode.
That’s art, baby.
If I don’t experience a life in rainbows, hearing music and feeling poetry and comedy and tragedies, seeing art and reading the wild things that pour from bright and troubled brains, admiring the gardens of life made by the gods of wildflowers and weather, I would not live, completely.
I need to feed the creative entity residing in my mind-body-soul with inspiration—so I can in turn make my visions of art, and words, and bad dance moves, come out.
Do I really believe I am an accursed creative, forced to live a life full of responsibilities and taxes even though I myself am full of life and rainbows and hope and love?
Absolutely.
And I bet you are, too.
Most are, in some way, afflicted by the need to express themselves to feel part of the gloriously misunderstood whole of humanity. We are, whether or not we get to express ourselves, part of it. I do think how we live is an expression of creativity, intentional or not. Something like spirituality resides there, and isn’t separate from ‘art’ or ‘self’—it’s all together, shaking in the same spice jar, seasoning life.
I hope I get to sprinkle my magic creative pixie dust on the words I share, stuff I make, love I give—even if that’s really just sharing a hello, making a snack for the kindergartner, or giving a hug—it’s all good. I do hope to write more, if for no other reason than I enjoy it. And I hear poems I haven’t written yet, and see visions of art begging to be made, every night as I fall asleep. I cannot escape myself.
So I write this today as an apology of sorts, for the madness and disheveled manner that I share my words, but more so as a thank-you note for holding the space for someone like me to get the stuff out.
Still chasing the daydream,
Yours Truly.