Poem Seeds

The plum trees have begun to blossom on my street, just as the mat of cherry petals—worn to threads by the spring breeze—snake between my steps on the sidewalk to the studio. The buds have become leaves, the petals are making dirt, the rain running in between everything having plumped the pulse of 49th st. And I’m thinking about what propels me.

My therapist and I have some conversational dead ends these days. Not so much because my brain is TOTALLY GOOD NOW THANKS FOR ASKING, but because I’m in a place where I’m saying too many well-adjusted things (do I mean them or have I just learned to please my therapist?). And so, perhaps out of boredom, he has started asking me about my writing. Specifically he asks about motivation—both the call to action and what I am trying to say with my art. This is of course a difficult question but also meat and drink to an anxious/depressed artist! But even so, it is always like bottling a cloud trying to describe what makes writing good, or even what the tenor of my writing is.

It has come up many times in therapy that I am writing again this year. That it is a project both to reconnect with a skill set that I have fallen away from, and an exercise in expressing things that can’t quite be expressed in conversation, in journaling, in therapy. My first poem, that I shared here, was about the many precious moments that are shared from online dating before things inevitably fall apart (after 2-4 dates). Removing it from the outcome, removing it from the lightning fantasies of the future, the outsized nerves of being perceived and measured for your molecular chemistry. Outside of the anxious social experiment there are moments of pure connection, of laughter, of joy and sweetness. Moments that are “of a relationship” even though no distinguishable relationship was formed. Echos from sounds that weren’t made but your brain filled in.

The poem jar of seeds is a real jar of seeds. In a jar that once held a shea butter sample, sitting on my new tchotchke shelf on my kitchen wall. From the coffee walk in crisp October air, we remarked on how the pods seemed lit from within, and while looking the owner of the house came out to walk her dog, and crushed the pods into our hands “please take them” she said without asking. Our hands pressed together in a childlike absorption of a magic trick. Picking seeds from each other’s palms trying to think which pocket or place should carry them. I loved the way the opaque husks crushed so lightly, like the paper around rice candy, while only the veins remained, little divining rods over our bounty. The size of a peppercorn, black, with a white cap that looked just like a heart. I struggled not to see it as a sign, what a cute story it would be to tell strangers on vacation when they asked how we had met.

It was a great exercise in trying to keep the moments of my life that don’t fit into the grander narrative of one’s life story(coming soon). That these people are, if not exactly nothing to me, will be one day soon, memories not held so much as faintly possessed. The dates are dubbed good or bad only after you find out the outcome, run the numbers, mourn and then pity yourself the mourning. But in the moment, there is possibility. There is electricity. And I was able to capture that. To make tangible that which is otherwise runoff. That which to share sounds like anguish. And anguish is thereabouts, but there is also just the moment. Just the thing. It can still be a story in and of itself, even if it’s chapter’s ending is as commonplace and unromantic as being ghosted. A goodbye whispered into a fog.

He asks if I ever have a sense of humor when I write. Well certainly. Am I funny though? Sometimes! To some people. And also poetic, and also astute and also emotionally honest, and also probably the opposite of all those things. An encapsulation of my existence on this earth, I have many talents and many faults and I have a hard time keeping track of them all. But ultimately I always come down to the same thing. I just feel strongly about making things. In a world that offers many career paths, only some of which provide a living wage, the limitations hurt my head and constrict my heart. The beauty and brutality of dating keeps me up at night and lying on the floor like a tranquilized animal. But art is only every stressful in that I don’t get enough time with it. Only this one life’s worth, and only when I’m not working, or looking for work, or asleep.

That is to say, it’s the only time I feel completely sure and contented. It is this finding of contentment that really has brought me back to writing. Because when I was younger there was a yearning that always drove my writing, but rarely a contentment. Perhaps if I accomplished a bit of writing I felt proud of. But then long periods where I felt the disorientation after a creative achievement. That I didn’t know how to resume or what to do with my body. And then all the doubt, fear, and anxiety. I began reading my writing before I finished a sentence. I felt i needed to know why or what beforehand. The uncertainty of being bad, even in a draft, was too much for me. I did not have the courage to be perceived. To be seen as poorly, pretentious, unskilled, having huge blind spots, writing from privilege, lacking the energy, without poetry, having nothing to say. I wrote a second commentary that went under every line. What are you even saying? What is it? Who’s it for? Why?

But now, perhaps because my station in life seems somewhat set at this point, I have maybe just accepted that I am just grateful for what I have. And I want to enjoy as much as I can, and a big part of that enjoyment is creating. And so in the freedom of writing a blog that a few dozen people may or may not read, I can just write because I love to write. And in the practice just as my 10+ years of cutting paper have made me VERY FUCKING ADEPT, at it. So too, do I want to reach my 10+ years of actively writing. Both these blogs and poems, and comics, and children’s books, and short stories, and slogans, ad copy, you name it. I want to find my voice again, in this time that is full of listening, I think I have something to say. Not for anyone else but for me, artistic therapy.