Learning to start again without a proper beginning

Connecting dots.  Drawing lines.  No one can tell I'm going this time.  I want something beyond what is here but I'm not sure how to find it, especially when I'm not sure what it is.

I'm a result, an effect.  There have been so many causes to lead me to where I am, but still I feel inadequate and ill-equipped.  So what do I do with these incomplete leanings?  Where do I go?  How do I move on?  I don't know why I try to be something more when my boat is anchored to the shore.  How can I expect anything more here?

I want to write a story, or maybe to be one (to be in one).  I'm not sure.  I want to make a difference, but it's so hard when everything is the same.  I need to move my feet and not be afraid where I'll land.  I don't know why I try.  I don't know what for or why.  Maybe some day words will align and mean more than jumbled ransom notes of words again.  Maybe I'll find my voice again instead of just filling empty space.  I have found something, a light, a flicker, a passion, in academia, but I want a little more, or rather a little something different.  I want something with life, imagination, and creativity, not dry, clinical research.

Creatures, unfamiliar features, narratives, and plot lines.  I want characters with character and places with history.  I want to leave this nonsense behind to explore the rationale behind the nonsensical.  Maybe this can be a month of exploration.  Maybe the effect here can become something beyond the mundane for a change.  Maybe something will happen if I work at it.  Maybe I'll actually work at it and not beat myself down with familiar meta narratives or numbing half-truths.  Maybe.

Hand-Crafted for the Masses

Popular art in this place is decoration.
It's soft.
It's not always easy but its risks are usually safe.
The calculated, concentrated artist is not one.
She's a designer.
Art is not design, though design can be artistic.
Decorative artists don't press hard
against the canvas.  Decorative artists
are not artists.  Decorative artists
are capitalists.
Art can be a means, but if that is all
it means, it is not art.
Art is not just
for looking, it's about teaching you
to see.  Creating art can be learning
to see.  Creating art can be
observing the act of observation.

Popular art here is for the masses.
If it's all the same
I'll keep to myself.
Art is not wallpaper,
and yes, wallpaper can be
art, but art is expression.
It's experimentation.
It's learning to see by really looking.
It's questioning the familiar
and answering a question with another
question.  Everything you see
is not art and somehow we are
all artists.

Popular art in this space
is not art.  It is decoration.
Decoration doesn't pinch or
even prick.  There are no
certain risks.
Popular art is not
my medium.

Three Friends

I miss you.  Three words.  Strong words, and a truth hurling deep inside.  I saw your picture today and remembered your gone.  I missed you today and that's fine.

What is the book inside me?  What are the pages waiting to be set?  The ink of the text falls flat until my eyes become heavy or my energy is dry.  I'm looking for something that's not there.  I'm writing invisible lines just to keep going.  None of this seems with a concrete purpose; none of it appears to come from anywhere beyond my fingers.

August isn't always great and this year is similar.  A move. A first house purchase.  A totaled car (or three in the family).  A new job.  An online class I started late.  September seems to be much better (coming from one that can't stay put in the present).  A four in the ninth month, a question of sanity.  Still, people trust me.  They come to me with questions.  I'm not sure where any of this is going, but I hope for hands to hold.

Codependency, interdependence, and intimacy.  What a combination, really.  A heart, a head, and a hand.  Like three people directing a show.  Three madmen leading the tour.  Is it worth following these men?  Where are they leading us?  Will they help us find our way?

And I do not want imitations of myself.  I don't want clones or colonies.  I want empowerment of others.  I want vigor and valor from timidity and turbulence.  I want the disdained to learn to trust, the fearful to learn to fly, and the lonely to know the embrace of a true and requited love.  I do not want for myself.  Yes, I will need headwaters to keep this stream going, but largely I just want to flow into others.  Water rushing, flowing downstream into new life.

Time.

Is it the same today, yesterday, and tomorrow?  Do we all experience it symmetrically or somehow the same way?  Is it anything more than a complex social construct?

Ask the pioneer who ventured into the unknown how his time passed.  The rugged, wrinkled man that went searching for adventure and returned to restlessness when the trail ran dry.  Time quickens to a pace unspeakable when the journey is fresh.  Once his heels have become buried in the ground complacency slips its mask on.  Adventure doesn't ever last.  Time crawls when joy dissipates or interior smiles evaporate.

The grandmother waiting in the hospital lounge.  No one can disturb her except the slightest movement or touch.  Maybe there's a chance her grandson will make it.  Maybe he'll walk.  And what about her daughter?  How will she fare? Time loses track of itself.  Time gets stuck between floors in the elevator.  It pulls out its playing cards and teaches Joan and Jill to play crazy eights.  No sign of maintenance coming and there is no need.

Field of Vision

I cannot look behind me.  That's just one reason why I need another.  I cannot see through the blinds.  Looking backward there will always be something behind me.  I think the late twenties (and into the thirties) is a spectrum vacillating between isolation and intimacy, community and loneliness.  It's rain clouds outlined in silver permanent marker.

And in this day this age range is an extended adolescence.  Where have we gone wrong?  What needs repairing?  How do we make adjustments if we do not know where the leak is?  Go to the root but when you get there it's cold, dark, and empty save for your own reflection in the shallow cesspool.

Alone and lonely are not always good friends.  A lonely neighbor can be surrounded by cardboard cutouts while alone is a location.

Maybe this is just my field of vision.  My perspective.  My lens.  My point of view.

Basta.

May Flowers?

How convenient that we made it here.  How convenient that the flowers grew this way.  Maybe May flowers are on the horizon.  Maybe June will bring something new.
I'm trying not to think so quickly, so far along.  I couldn't remember your face but now I at least have something to go on.  Now at least there's something there.  I'm telling people but I don't want to spoil the potential.  I don't want to ruin the moment.  Let's just take our time; I don't have to worry about how things will go. Let's follow along where the river flows, no need to rush it along.
There is a horizon and we don't need to reach for it.  Nor does it make sense to let dread burry our minds.  Worry is not becoming for us.
Let's just hold on
to each other for now.  I'll see you again soon.  My dreams aren't whispers or shadows; perhaps they're glimpses of an upcoming life.  Maybe we'll be together, but for now we don't have to rush things.
New feelings.  Or new now.  Thunderstorms in a state of sunshine.  I feel rumbling in the breeze and it's alright right now.  I wanted to tell you that I miss you before but the feeling is gone now.  I'll see you soon, I said.
It's okay if you see nothing here.  Right now just feels like a space filler, but we'll get there.  Don't worry.  There's no need to romanticize the moment.  We'll get there.  Everything is in its place.  Everything is working out.
We will not worry.  After all, it is not becoming for us.  See you soon.

April Showers

My soul is not a pendulum alternating between grace and justice.  Your love is not a carrot that you tangle just out of my reach.  Nor is it an obligation that you begrudgingly bestow upon us.  You choose us.  You chose us.  You want what is best for us.  You want us to see ourselves as You see us.  You want to share Your love so that we may become who You made us to be.  I don't need a missing puzzle piece, this jigsaw is complete.  I am enough.  I am sufficient as is, no assembly required.  I don't need fancy words or a wife to fill me up.

Please don't read this as flattery or imagined adoration.  This is not a "fake it 'til you make it" scenario.  I can make it from here.  I'm just looking for the steps as I gradually crawl from the darkened shadows.  I'm walking and growing ever so slowly to move from living to thriving.  This right here.  The soul beneath this skin is not made of dandelions and clovers.  The soil is enriched with nutrients.  I am flowers coming up for air in springtime.  Rain falls.  Sun scorches.  Even worms crawl in my midst.  But I am flowers, not afraid of growing.

Courage takes vulnerability and I am on my way.
Please plant me near the flowing stream.  Renew me from the roots up, refreshed in the gentle breeze.