Starting This Again
Once upon a time no one cared about being remembered for ‘content’ they cared about being remembered in the way people would remember how their presence left a trail of perfume when they left. Or entered.
I deeply feel we all have a deep and profound desire to enter back to this time, and I see many people nostalgic for this time and they have never even lived without a cell phone.
One of my fondest memories when I was little was hiding in the back of my grandparents matching midcentury modern tapestry damask living room chairs, where there was a makeshift wall ‘library’ where I would pour over all the books before I could read and try to make sense of the symbols before me, absolutely determined to learn on my own, the magic of the word. My favorite was a very giant book of the complete works of Shakespeare with gilded pages; with random etchings placed here and there, a collection of encyclopedias and books of travel to far off and distant lands.
What does this have to do about anything? It has to do with the pace in which reading and understanding language is the pace at which time and space inspires and colors your life. Slowly and surely, time and patience, reading has instilled not just a fancy way to pass the time but the original idea to look deeply. And feel deeply. And follow desire to do the impossible and mysterious. To look at a word, and not just see ‘a word’… but in a way… a perfume… a key to a world of all its own. And when combined with other words, it’s like jewels strung on a necklace or notes in a perfume.
Anyway that’s how my brain ‘thinks’. And that’s why.. I believe it’s possible for someone like me to make perfume, write stories, make icecream flavors and soap scents and have them all basically….be interchangeable and all connected… is because I truely see the world sensually. Even words. Because in order to try to teach yourself to read, you have to pour over a page and use your brain and imagination and creativity to a point where you must inject meaning into the symbolic. And meaning has roots in the tactile and visionary, in taste and scent. And I’m okay at doing that.
I moved into a house that is almost uncannily like the house I grew up in to the point where I can almost hear ghosts. The ghost of my self before social media and phones that require hands and eyes constantly tied like another limb growing on us. That’s why I am working really hard lately to reclaim my hands as mine. I think it’s my life’s mission actually at this point. To love and appreciate them, and give them things to touch that are worthy of them.
But also I realize as someone who remembers childhoods with rocks in my hand looking at sunsets… I as the last of the people who remember the ‘before’ time… I will do my best to figure out how we can all use our hands before our brains truly become compete mush.
I wondered to myself ‘what if I follow all of my dreams at once’… what then? Can I ? And this realization meant being able to retrain my brain from the things in modernity that take time away and never give anything back.
So I started with feeding the part of my brain that ‘sees’ meaning. And that’s poetry.
I decided to read or listen to poetry every morning.
It made sense because I needed a foundation of inspiration for my starved soul.
Then there is the ritual aspect of creation. Every day the goal has not been to ‘do something amazing’ but to slowly tend to my garden of creative endeavors, each one being fed a little bit each day until they provide fruit.
The question for me is… when is the best time to show the world the fruit of them? I have to use social media but don’t want to, but yet must… so maybe the answer is when everything is done. But yet people like seeing ‘the process’. But for me the process is best done in a cave. In the dark, with the art, or creative thing I make coming out like Jesus in his best Easter clothes.
Like a fucking resurrection.
Not because my creations are ‘that good’, but mostly I don’t like to be influenced by public opinion or distracted by it.
Maybe it’s because I yearn for a time when I made things before the internet just for my soul and not for an external audience.
That’s why I guess I’m starting a blog. I can show what I am making but it’s more thoughtful and mine. Maybe sharing the creative process can be discovered to be fun for me… I’m not sure yet. Let’s find out. I’m trying and open to anything.
Also I’m writing this because I woke up early and am about to go see if my broken toe needs surgery and I felt inspired watching the sunrise. There’s something about a beautiful sunrise that makes everything better.
I’ve had an incredibly unbelievably wretched last two years but more recently this year. It seemed like accident after accident…. Happened with no avail for comedy relief. And the irony of a book I created based off my cat, that I made with the was hated by so many people because I used help of technology, only to later fail a project because I decided to do a graph entirely by hand….
Because wow I guess the gold standard is hands are not good enough anymore.
But yet we are still not allowed to play with technology….im saying enough! At this point! Enough! I’m going back to my creative cave.
I think I’ve decided to just do things my way or die trying. I’m going to make lots of things entirely by hand. I’m probably going to make things on a computer. I’m going to make even more things on hand that people think would be best on a computer, and some things on a computer people will think will be best by hand. But I am going to use my hands how I want. Not how other people want me to use them. And the less computer the better. I’m going to make things for fun, like food, perfumes, soaps and over the top things people probably wouldn’t even expect coming from a house of a girl who hangs out with cats all day.
I think what really got me, was I failed an entire thing because I was forced to use a computer in a situation and couldn’t. But what if I just didn’t want to? Are we now not allowed to just use our hand writing anymore? Is that not good enough?
That’s what really got me.
If I can’t use my hands I don’t want to do it anyway.
Anyway this blog will just be a bunch of who knows what, but it will be the best I can. Of whatever it is, because it’s like that one song by Frank Sinatra … ‘I did it my way…’
One day I hope to put my hands to use in tender ways, but in the mean time there are lots of things to discover and touch and create. And think about. And dream about. And you know… what if? That’s the question isn’t it? What if?
