Tag: creative writing

Cosmos and Chaos

It’s nearly 4 in the afternoon and I’m still wearing my anti-slip fuzzy socks.
Moments ago, I retrieved two little scraps of tissue from my nose that were lodged there to help me stabilize the lava-like snot flow.

I’m the icky kind of sicky person. No cute red nose, no adorable raspy voice. More like can’t-smell-my-rancid-breath, bloated-faced, puffy-lipped, nasty all around.

Soooo, lounging on the couch (again) and inspecting the couch pillow for drool from my last conk-out, I see this: the tiniest rainbow.

Somehow cradled in the folds of our curtains. Somehow light bouncing off the beveled end of my bike, ricocheting through the window,  landing in full color in front of me. then gone. as quickly as it came.

This is life, I think. little reminders of promise. fleeting moments of beauty. a lot in between.

It strikes me how contemporary art and poetry–the work of creatives– is so easily manufactured to reflect the chaos and inexplainable. All the yuck. Or, and I don’t know I would call this art at all, it is an idealistic twisting of reality, a set of expectations our world could never fulfill. A perfectly arched rainbow on a piece of sky-white paper.

All this lofty talk.

What I really mean is this: It’s too easy to write or draw or paint or sing the chaotic. And it’s way too easy to conjure up the unreal.

What’s hard and what’s beautiful is when both chaos and cosmos can be held in either hand, balanced, and accepted as mysterious.

My home girl, Madeleine L’Engle introduced me to cosmos and chaos in her little book Walking on Water. Give it a read.

Just deal with it

True: my zine is heading into editing tomorrow (!)
False: I think it’s awesome
True: I was this <> close to scrapping the whole thing yesterday
False: someone told me I was awesome, so I didn’t
True: There are a lot of good writers out there
False: Therefore, I shouldn’t even try

Today I gave my zine ‘manuscript’ one last lookie before I will send it in for shredding (editing). Needless to say, I’m a little bit nervous. I’d probably be biting my nails right now (if they weren’t already weak little stubs due to my my run-in with the persuasive nail technician.)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mwomPoefhAA

You see, just like the 5-year-old in this video dismantles the whole hip-hop world with
his 30 second spiel, so thousands and thousands of bloggers scream at me: it takes like hardly any skills to write!  Not to mention actual training…education…experience. Nada! You can just sit down and flutter your chubby little fingers over a keyboard and wah-lah! You have likes, hits, re-tweets!

But, like little Jordan recommends, I just have to deal–get over myself and get over everybody else– forget those pseudo-lives on instagram or facebook photos. It’s all just flamboyance, a highlight reel; we’ve all got our behind-the-scenes-boring stuff. It’s false to assume something about someone’s lives or skills or personality without ever knowing them. What I do know is true is that comparison only fuels fear, pride and jealousy.

Yes, there will always be those people who make parts of life, or certain skills, or jobs, or relationships look easy. At the same time, there will always be those who struggle with what we find simple.

Evergreens and oranges don’t grow in the same soil.
In the same way, we all have stuff that comes organically and stuff that doesn’t.

Maybe its time we just deal with it.

Tonight, E tells me, “do something you enjoy,” and “come back before it’s too dark.” So I take the spare key, swing onto my bike, and hit the trails.
I could think about the smells of roasted sugar-summer air, or the colors of retreating sun. But it’s 8 o’clock. All I really think about is that my face is now a death sentence for the unsuspecting flea and mosquito parade just beginning. I fear for my nostrils, keep my head down.

Despite the distractions,  fresh air helps me think. And on a bike or a walk is when most ideas come to me. Some are terrible, I should admit,* but tonight I decide I am going to resurrect my childhood dream of becoming an “artiste” (I still can’t spell) which has morphed many times, but is not completely lost– so long as I do not let it be. I decide I am going to write a zine.

I live by the sweetest paths!-- here's some pics of a zine I love
the paths I love and the zine that helped inspire me

On Dreams

Children—classmates, and kid-neighbors, little cousins, and daycare buddies—all of them future firefighters, inventors, astronauts, presidents. Many of them now slipping so silently into turtle shells of adulthood apathy. It’s me too. I have a stinky, confining shell, it’s illusion of safety and responsibility too easy to believe. I want out. I want to dream

To let a dream shift and change with time, I think is almost necessity, but to lose it altogether? Nothing less than living in fear, or worse, apathy.

And this is why I’ve decided [finally and with no compulsion or sanity whatsoever] to write a zine. “What’s that? And “Why?” (you probably won’t, but possibly might ask).  I’m not entirely sure. I just know that a zine can be anything, though it usually comes in the form of a smallish, hand-made/self-published booklet. Maybe I should call this a chapbook? Doesn’t really change a thing either way. The best part about all of this… I’m going to do it here, sharing this process with whoever wants to see it– because writing is a conversation. So I fully expect that what I initially write and what I eventually print, fold, staple and probably never sell, will be a constantly change form. And boy does this excite me.

* I once had a mini-dream to tweet for big bird. Not mimicking a bird-call, but  creating 144 characters about the life of an over-sized, misunderstood golden condor.  I thought it would be fun, semi-ingenious, appealing to the masses of millennials who worshiped his (its?) synthetic feathers. Tweeting on the struggles of life without giant bird seed, the joys and perils of livin’ on the street? Somehow, I never got around to it.