dearest readers,
it’s been a while, and i’ve missed you. this wasn’t the post i was expecting to return with, but i wrote it in one sitting and couldn’t wait to upload it. i’ve been working on another piece that gives more context to my hiatus, so keep your eyes peeled, but i’ll lean into the mystery for now.
i come to you from a room, redone. waiting for the inevitable kick in of something, the weed or flow state, or some other trance that bewitches me at night. i have completely torn apart my childhood bedroom, and in its place is a new, poorly-washed-clean slate. it feels as though i’ve laid down a paper cut out, chaotically painted over the whole thing, and then peeled the image up. i’m living in the silhouette of what’s left. for context, i recently redid my room. i deconstructed my loft bed, purged two dressers worth of clothes and other stuff, repainted the walls, constructed a new bed and storage space, and rearranged everything on my desk and shelves- all over the course of 5 days. i felt prepared to have a change- despite the rush, and i love the new set up, but i still feel a little melancholy for the old look. it wasn’t quite my childhood room, but the decor had remained the same (changing only in amount of clutter and dust) since i was 11.
the room previously
a change was long overdue, and i feel much lighter; finally free of my hoarder ways. i think i might not want to leave in september when i have to go back to california. i digress. i am currently sitting propped up by pillows against the wall, writing to you by lamplight. it is from here i bring some important musings.
i’ve been doing a lot of deep thinking recently, more than normal, which says a lot. i’ve been pondering style, personality, and individuality. i’ve been exploring the creative process, and how i operate in relationships. my perception of myself physically and spiritually. i’ve been thinking a lot about god.
in terms of spirituality and god, i have a lot of work coming your way. check out my instagram for some upcoming stuff, as well as my blog posts soon to come. there’s some big things in the works.
for the sake of this post, i want to talk about mary oliver, but let me back up a little. my friend sada from california has been visiting me for the past few days, and since i was scrambling to get everything ready in my room before she arrived, i forgot to make any itinerary for her short stay.
as an aside, as i was writing this paragraph, i had the overwhelming deja-vu feeling that i once dreamt about scrambling to clean and organize my room before a guest arrived. i have an ineffable feeling that this dream happened long ago, before the idea of redoing my room was brought up or acted upon. i can’t remember any details, just the feeling of anxiety about the arrival of my visitor.
so yesterday, driven by sada’s curiosity about the local jewish community and my yearning to return, we went to saturday morning shul at temple beth zion. i also have a mission to accompany someone to church on sundays, congregation-hopping to get a breadth of experience, but christians are a lot harder to find in my area than jews. plus, there’s something profound about judaism that speaks to me- a yearning that characterizes a long-standing consideration of conversion. remarkably, i’ve never really talked about it on this blog, but the idea has long since been a feature of my complicated religious thoughts. all this to say, it was a morning full of devotion.
i had been to tbz countless times over the years with my friends and their families, for normal friday or saturday services as well as holidays. i missed the songs, the prayers for those in mourning and those suffering; the devotion and clarity with which the congregation sung, a conviction both childishly simple yet profound and unabashed. i missed all the introductions, the lighthearted gossip, and the tuna fish salad. there was a substitute rabbi in place of claudia i had gotten to know, but i really liked her.
that evening, after puttering around the shops and cafes, after trekking to the boston common and chinatown and getting rained on, we went to see the new mary oliver documentary at my favorite theater. i had seen the trailer a few weeks prior at a screening for backrooms (which scared me shitless, for the record). i didn’t have a ton of interest at first, but it was the only intriguing thing playing on the only day we would have time to see a movie. i always knew vaguely of mary oliver, not knowing anything about her life, breadth of work, or even the time period she lived in. i always grouped her in with other famous women writers from “antiquity” like virginia woolf and jane austen. like many people, as the documentary went on to explore, i knew the few famous lines and otherwise considered mary a run-of-the-mill “nature poet”.
the documentary was so moving that i cried at three separate points. having never been taught her poems in school and having never owned a collection of hers, my ignorance was too be expected but nonetheless disappointing and off-base. the film chronicles mary’s life, her love for her partner m, their life together in provincetown, her philosophy, and most importantly, her poetry. i find it interesting that she became such a celebrity in poetry, a rarely recognized face amongst the books of sonnets and odes, yet was genuinely so misunderstood. people like myself, from the public to the academies of fine art and literature, reduced her to the subject matter to which she was devoted. they criticized her for being gay without being a gay activist. they wanted a female walt whitman, a poster child for the fetishized myth of “secluded celebrity”.
in the weeks and months before watching this movie, i would joke that i was going through some big identity crisis. these feelings ebbed and flowed, from the dark moments of wanting to up and leave my life, transfer schools and move cities- to my near-manic anxiety about simply experimenting with my style. i felt paranoid- watched, judged, and inauthentic. i felt misguided, disconnected; a ship adrift at sea. the tides began to change when i accepted my reality in santa cruz, sometime in early june. i slowly emerged from my unrealistic visions about dropping everything to run off to an art school i couldn’t get into and a life i wasn’t prepared for. i told myself that i was in the right place. i began believing that the trade off i was making- staying in a place i struggle against, for the sake of the people i love and connections i’ve built, the excitement the future can hold, was a worthwhile exchange. i believe this still, and it has given me a lot of solace.
regardless, even as i accepted the next two years in santa cruz, the identity part of this crisis still simmered away inside me. i was driven by things- dreams, computers, cryptic visions, horniness, needing to touch grass. i was moving in a strange way- enjoying myself for the most part but remaining unmoored.
i felt misunderstood. i became fixated on the fact that people (the wrong people) perceived me as intimidating and judgmental. i’ve been told this repeatedly over my life, usually in a joking tone months into a solidified relationship. “i thought you were so scary when we first met, i thought you hated me, i thought you didn’t care about anything or like anyone”. i heard this so many times that i started to believe i was threatening and that i did hate everyone. no one ever told me that they saw my tenderness, my devotion and shyness until months of knowing me. this has long since been a point of struggle for me. i couldn’t understand what about me gave people such a hostile impression, and i still don’t. my best theory, supported by evidence and conversations i’ve had with close friends, is that people's external projection of “cool” combined with a monotone voice, leads them to the conclusion that i am uninterested in their friendship, or incapable of being vulnerable. this is not to toot my own horn and proclaim that everyone who meets me thinks i’m cool, but i’m simply trying to understand. i know i’ve done this to people i admire- i jump to the illogical conclusion that they would judge me because of our perceived “swag gap” (as the kids say).
the clarity i got from mary oliver, is that it’s truly okay to be misunderstood. i know from experience that it can be lonely, isolating, and frustrating, but i’ve finally metabolized the fact that the perception of others doesn't reflect anything on me. this has always been easy to say, to dismiss my heartbreak over feeling misunderstood, but i finally think i’m starting to grapple with what that means. of course, i still want to work on being more outwardly tender. i want people to automatically feel safe around me and i want to make friends easier. but i think it has become easier to process that some people might not ever feel safe around me, some friends will never be made, and some judgments will always stand. i can process the likely fact that these things might not have anything to do with me. external perception doesn’t make me less tender or vulnerable, just like it doesn’t make mary oliver any less profoundly important.
as we walked out of the theater, i joked through stale tears and snot that my identity crisis was solved. although it was a humorous exaggeration, i’m fairly certain of it. i feel moored somehow, even if i don’t have clarity on what i’m tethered to. at risk of sounding corny, i finally feel like i’m here for a purpose.
the vague strokes of this purpose are something along the lines of: devotion, healing, complete spiritual surrender, exploration, documentation, and creation. i still have no more clarity on my career path- instead i only have more contradictions. i’ve never felt more compelled towards struggle and revolution. i’ve recently felt incredibly moved by the birth of my friend’s baby. at the same time, part of me feels ready to throw all of my career aspirations out the window and escape to a cottage in the middle of the woods or a beachfront hut. a proper artist’s retreat. i crave a time without deadlines, without academic or career or monetary purpose. i want spiritual purpose, artistic purpose, interpersonal purpose.
mary suggests every poet get used to writing and reading every day. to this i am committing myself, as i know it brings me immense peace and joy. i am still grappling heavily with the role of art in revolution and struggle. i wrestle with what art even is, and if there’s any purpose at all seeing as i’m not convinced any of my reality is even real. i’m conflicted over the identity politics of the whole thing, and the ethics of creating in a time of destruction. i plan to find some other voices on these topics, to give some external wisdom to my ever-raging internal battles, as well as some old-fashioned meditation on the subject. i’m sure this will be a reoccurring theme in future posts, as i discover more and begin to get a sense of what it is i feel tied down by. i recently read a quote that says motion brings clarity, and i couldn’t agree more. so i plan to move, and i’ll keep you updated. this blog has always been for the purpose of my own self-exploration and archiving, so i’m happy to reinvigorate the spirit of this page with the bellows of self discovery.
for now, i have a mary oliver poetry collection to read from ("coincidentally” titled devotions). maybe i’ll share some of my favorite poems of hers soon. i’m going to try and convince my long term best friend, maeve to get matching wild geese tattoos with me, since she loves the poem, i love wild geese, and i feel my life has been fundamentally changed by mary’s words and wisdom. i’m sure more reflections will come soon, as i’m going to rewatch the film with maeve later this week, but for now i leave you with the soft animal of your own body, as i retreat to my own.
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in blessed love and sweet dreams,
ek
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