So... I'm not really sure how to
make the leap into the world of blogging or if there is even a leap to make,
but I woke up this morning feeling as though I need to spend more time exercising
my right to write. It only makes sense that because I’m on this damn computer
so often, an online journal may very well facilitate that shift for me.
I am an artist so, naturally, I make a point to engage myself creatively most
days of my little life, and though the diverse nature of my work is
exhilarating and monumentally fulfilling, there is a part of me that will
always need to parallel this experience by articulating it otherwise…. In black
and white…. Pen on paper. Quite possibly, this is my most significant
creative process, but it can be grueling as it is the process
through which I am most vulnerable. I can never remember if I was a writer before I
was a painter or vice versa, and I suppose it doesn’t matter…. One thing is
certain, though, in my world, one cannot exist without the other. In
every nook and cranny of my existence, there are words…. spoken, unspoken, and
sometimes unconscious… but they are there.
I’ve never been jolted awake by quiet pictures in my head. There are always
words to accompany them and a rhythm like glue between the two. My journal is bursting at the seams with bar napkins, receipts, and
post-it notes from those moments in which the words came in the middle of dinner,
at the grocery store… at work. These are
among the most profound.
Maya Angelou says words are things. “They get on the walls. They get in your
wallpaper. They get in your rugs, in your upholstery, and your clothes, and
finally in to you.” This is my truth, as
well. I’ve found that words do matter, and just maybe they matter most when we hold
on to them long enough, whether good or bad, to release them in love. Words can and do cause injury, but more importantly…
I believe they have to capacity to heal.
In my most desperate moments, they have saved my life.
The simple contrast of dark letters on a pale
background is enough to set my world
spinning stable again, but often it’s the imminent weight of the story seeping into the space
where the ink hasn’t quite adhered to the paper… knowing, at any second, the cracks will give way to a
raging river of nostalgia or romance or revelation. In college, I spent many math and science lectures writing poetry
backwards across the pages of my notebook…. as if when I held it up to a mirror
and read it to myself, the message would be different. Sometimes it was. I never mastered a graphing
calculator, but I learned a lot about how to survive myself.
For a large part of my life, pain was
seemingly imperative to my ability to rhyme words or create cadence in the
compilation of my life, but I’ve recently arrived in a space where I am
afforded the opportunity to learn that some things just aren’t what they seem. I realize now that being vulnerable does not
necessarily mean I am in danger and conveying honesty doesn’t necessarily mean
I will suffer consequences. In fact… it
has proven to be quite the opposite.
These things have granted me freedom, and my hope is to document this
amazing journey a little more diligently. SO….
fearlessly I go… into the wild blog unknown.
Hello... I'm 78% water, and I’m a little, baby blogger.
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