i’m a writer who draws
and an actor who overthinks
and a spouse with a cat and a dog
and all i really want
is to create some beauty
through this slog
called ‘life’
i’m a writer who draws
and an actor who overthinks
and a spouse with a cat and a dog
and all i really want
is to create some beauty
through this slog
called ‘life’
stories of my past
problems from our pasts
[solutions towards the future?]
oh holy shit.
i just asked my body
what it needed
(instead of simply looking at the water and coffee sitting next to me
and thinking:
well, i haven’t had any of this water yet,
i suppose i should make sure to start it
so i can drink the full water bottle
before 9 am)
and my body seemed…
so excited to be listened to
so relieved to not be forced into doing
whatever i thought it “should” be doing
that i very nearly teared up…
and that tells me
a lot.
(of what, i’m still not quite sure,
but it sure is
a
lot)
just atop a grain of rice
it makes my laptop all
wibbly-wobbly.
and something so small
that affects so much
has to be a metaphor (right?)
(ok, granted, my laptop is far closer to the size of the grain of rice
than say
myself
or
the universe
but still,
size-wise
it is quite
small.)
so
what great insight can i gain from this
“rice under the laptop”
experience?
perhaps to always look for the root cause of an issue
and to not judge too harshly
if the core issue seems
“too small”
to affect that much.
or maybe the lesson here is to simply
clean off the table
between meals and morning pages.
the wind rushes through the trees
rustling the branches much stronger than a breeze
that pushing of the wind, the apprehension i feel,
used to be so frightening to me, but now, there’s appeal
the wind brings changes, newness, the switch of the seasons
and while change is scary, it’s no longer frightening without reason
i choose to look towards the possibility of what change may bring
and hear whatever the winds choose to sing
for in this poem, this struggle of rhyming couplets,
i’ve found a calmness in my fear’s former culprit
and that, i think, is worth this hassle of a rhyme-scheme.
the trauma was not good;
no amount of “things happen for a reason” will change that,
it was unfair, unfathomable, wildly wrong.
but how i choose to deal with the trauma,
how i have survived thus far,
and how i choose to keep on going,
that is where the beauty lies.
and i can adjust my own coping mechanisms;
make them healthier, make them stronger,
for nothing is truly “good” or “bad”
“positive” or “negative”
but there are healthier and not so healthy,
things that help me access my emotions
and perform acting in a real, vulnerable, and honest way,
and that is how i choose to keep going
(start going? this is technically all new to me…)
and, similarly,
there is no “recovered” vs. “not recovered”
there is in recovery and the levels therein.
but one level does not disappear once you move on to the next
they are uneven steps existing in a labyrinth
that sometimes require backtracking to continue on.
and if i can look at my own mental health
in a way
that is
Non-Binary
(just like me!)
then maybe,
just maybe,
i can make friends with my trauma
(and how i felt it initially/since)
and understand a little bit more about me
in the aftermath…
wasn’t i complaining
yesterday
or the day before
(or the day before that)
that i wanted to get back to my
regularly scheduled schedule
and continue on in my routine of routines?
so why, now, comfortably sitting in
‘we’ve taken the dog out,
we’ve started the lofi beats spotify station,
we’re both at the table, doing our morning writings’
do i miss
so terribly
the hustle
the bustle
the never knowing what’s going to happen
from one moment to the next?
oh!
did i just need a cat in my lap?
this portion of my routine,
my every day,
my comfort and creativity,
that had been missing
pretty much
since we moved?
(even tho i do stop every few lines
to pet and love her
so she stays,
she still really does
help me
feel
the morning page
poetry
routine
i’d been missing
[and then immediately
got bored of].)
(she is the chaos
that i need
to appreciate
routine)
sometimes you have to eat
and read
before you can write and wake-up
and sometimes you have to just do the things you have to do
before writing that to-do list
and sometimes you need to look at where you’ve been
before going where you’re going
and sometimes you just have to cuddle your cat and dog
before being human.
sit down to write
sit down with millions of thoughts floating through your mind
sit down with the plan to get them all out and before you on the screen
ebbing from your fingertips onto the keyboard, seeing the magic as they appear…
and yet
(and yet)
sit down to write
and suddenly
the thoughts stop
and the fingers rest gently on the home keys
and the writing, it just does not come the way you thought it would.
so
start writing about not writing.
start writing about the expectations versus reality
start writing and end up with kind of a silly pattern before you on the screen:
a word or phrase
expansion on that word or phrase
another expansion that then makes each line longer than the last
(do that in threes, at least, and boy will it be visually appealing [for you at least])
but then
you have to ask yourself
is this the poem you want up on your poem-blog?
trying to figure out
what i need
each
and every
morning
to feel fully
me
because i had a great time
these last couple of weeks
having coffee with my Kip
up on the deck
chatting
or planning
or meditating
or bird-watching
or dog-playing
’twas fun and new and exciting
(and the meditation certainly helps most of the time)
but my brain and body
have gotten used to
Morning-Pages
Morning-Poems
Morning-Putting-Thoughts-To-Tomes
that, apparently, without them, i feel
just
a little bit
lost…
i mean, clearly, i catch up,
do an afternoon poem,
or after a few days, back-schedule the words i write at the time
but this
pre-8:00-writing
this Morning-Gathering-My-Thoughts,
this is where my true me shines
(or maybe just the me that is the most
Raw)