When God feels out of touch
an endless well becomes a crutch
’til there’s nothing more to dilute your fears
This soul is deep but useless now
I sit in silence asking “how
have I been adrift so long?”
Wandering, and not a righteous wandering,
in a dream of what I thought life was
wonderin’ how to make my way back home.

Is it you,
elusive traveler?
Have you crossed my path
to lead me back
into the other side of my mind?
The child in me says, “go,
learn what you can of letting go”
I won’t know
until I follow you
to the river where this desert ends.

Can’t end on a bad note, so I guess I’ll never leave

beat flow

In the end we are dust
There is no end
We are dust
In the end we deconstruct
And fall back into
The particles, the dots, the moisture
That we once were
Capture light with pixels
Formulate a plan to control the chaotic doodling
Make it mean something 
Make it look like everything and nothing
Build it up
Break it down
Build it up
Break it down
A method to connect the
Pieces, the puzzling connections
that I know are real
A belief that follows me, carries me
A belief that keeps me safe
yet not at all
The faith in what guides it can only make sense through this lens
And then I’ll share it
And then they’ll see it
They’ll make it mean something 
They’ll see everything and nothing
Break it down
As they build upon each layer
If they pause enough to listen
They are, too, connected.
They, too, are consulted in the next deconstruction 
In the end we disconnect
And fall back into
The particles, the dots, the moisture
That we once were
As we were constructed in every womb

Four girls sit around a table, all looking at a phone screen in hand
“My dog doesn’t like mailmen”
”He doesn’t like mail-PEOPLE” the friend corrected pontifically

You lie to me, the flood flows
from deep wells
I can tell by the ways you manipulate
I can hardly tell what truth to take
A lie
A cry for help to ease the strain
But I know, believe me I know
Because I’ve listened to you all my life
I feel the difference in your speech
I fear the depths from which she springs
In my dreams I lay awake, pause, replay the pain
Never doing it in vain,
In there I feel gravity in an instant
and see the choices I didn’t make
(this is what Hell is)
it is watching,
Heaven doesn’t wait.
The well walk deep to exit on the other end
and in the end she’ll catch up to her again
and gain again the recent present she knew she would always comfort her
Alone amidst 10 mile roads
The west is the best for heavy loads
Alive, you cannot bring it home

You met me just before the fall
And patiently waded as I lay floating
on the other side of drowning
You were always what I needed
Even when you didn’t want me and I didn’t need you
You were always what I needed, what I thought I wanted
Was I always just projecting a protected
image of me and you and who I want to be?
Imagine who I’d be if I just stopped trying to be free

Morning Meditation

I am strong.

I am courageous.

I am compassionate.

I am nurturing.

I asked myself how these things are displayed in my life. Trust the first response:

I am strong. I hold my own weight

I am courageous. I move forward in spite of fear

I am compassionate. I recognize the inner child and trauma of everyone I know

I am nurturing. I care for their inner child and give that child what it needs (or did not receive) to help heal from their trauma

If they want to heal. Not all want to heal, even if they recognize that they are in pain. I heard this today. Do not force it. Do not allow the denial of your gifts to discourage you or lead you to doubt your power. Recognize that the rejection from the other has nothing to do with you. Adjust the way you nurture them but don’t stop nurturing yourself.

I also learn from denial and rejection that I may be wrong. That I may only be seeing that inner child from my own perspective. See it from their perspective. Expand your capacity to nurture. This is what empathy looks like.

Maybe they don’t need healing. Do not assume everyone is broken and needs to be fixed. Just see and honor the inner child.

Big learning today.

Continued, about healing

I had a barrier to my own healing for a long time and it has taken a while to chip away at that wall. I was chipping away though, I know that to be true. In a decade of journals there are some common themes - dreaming of a happy life, one clearly different than the one I was living; emotional weightiness; obsessive curiosity of thoughts and things unseen; “I am growing, I am learning”. All of that was necessary work that has led to actual holes in this wall, allowing me to finally see what is beyond.

What is beyond the wall? More walls. What the hell?? Where is the field of green pastures and Springtime? All that I hoped for does not exist “on the other side” of the wall that I’ve been trying to get behind me. No, but the chipping away is still necessary work to understand what’s next. From this work I have learned and grown, I am able to encounter my disappointment with emotional intelligence and experience. With more walls ahead of me, I have a choice to spend another season of my life beating and destructing what I am facing. But I know that this cycle never ends, at least not with this approach.

I look beyond the wall, and get a glimpse of the whole from above. This is no border wall at all, separating what was from what will be. This is a labyrinth. Choosing to make my life difficult with incessant chiseling seems so wasteful and destructive to my own healing now. I can instead walk this path and engage my posture of dreaming of what’s to come, I can exercise emotional depth and stretch my curiosity as I continue to grow and learn how to navigate these walls without fighting so hard to get through them.

When I know that I am worth as much as Jesus, I WANT to treat myself better. Because that means that I am as complete, present, and loving as Christ. And he is the GOAT. I’m worth the same?! I immediately want to care for this temple, the structure of my being that is my mind, body, and soul. Its preservation comes first, it is all I need to survive. The joy of knowing and loving myself builds the foundation for my ability to react and respond to the world that exists around me - reality - and gives me the security to accept that reality. It is no longer about the emotions I have about the world or my feelings about myself. I never have to question what I’m worth, and can therefore pour out the overflowing currency onto the world. 

Is this instantaneous upon realization, or does it take practice to fully believe? It is a lifelong goal - getting closer with diligence until we arrive at full consciousness. That’s when we die.

Is dying just beginning again on the other side? I theorize that Heaven is the state of ultimate knowing - existing in and sharing the mind, body, and spirit of God. Though that is to say the God has such things. I think it’s just the best way for me to understand what it is. Fully conscious, present, and loving, as we are intended to be.

Blindsided

Honeymoon lasted until the summer came

Swept up by the waves

No sense in asking ourselves why

Just keep it movin until autumn fades

It will all start falling into place

They say we argue way too much

But I just said too much

The problem was really never you 

And if I’m wrong then let me roam beside the tide

You’ll find me in the winter night

When all is dark and starry eyed

I will fly

I will not fight

if you keep drifting out of sight 

and out of mind

——

Blindsided

You gave up all your moves

I knew me more before I knew you

Who knew you

before me?

Far sighted

Too close to see the truth

You knew me more before I told you

What to do

I blame me

——

Your pheromones and gentle tone 

drew me in

No chance to waste any time

with salt sifting through soft gracious hands 

You remind me that it can all be neverland

I stay because I learn so much

Because I’ve thought too much

About all the things I’ll never do

And if I’m wrong then let me roam beside the tide

You’ll find me in the winter night

When all is dark and starry eyed

I will fly

I will not fight

if you keep drifting out of sight 

and out of mind

——

Blindsided

You gave up all your moves

I knew me more before I knew you

Who knew you

before me?

Far sighted

Too close to see the truth

You knew me more before I told you

What to do

I blame me
——

But an endless well becomes a crutch 

When God feels out of touch

There’s no more water to dilute insecurities

That soul is deep but useless now

I sit in silence, asking how

Have I been adrift so long

Wandering, and not a righteous wandering,

in a dream of what I thought love was

Wonderin’ how to make my way back home

Is it you?

Elusive traveler 

Have you crossed my path 

to lead me back

Into the other side 

Of my mind?

The child in me says go

Learn what you can about letting go

I won’t know until I follow you

To the river where this desert ends

And if I’m wrong then let me roam beside the tide

You’ll find me in the winter night

When all is dark and starry eyed

I will fly

I will not fight

if you keep drifting out of sight 

and out of mind

——

Blindsided

You gave up all your moves

I knew me more before I knew you

Who knew you

before me?

Far sighted

Too close to see the truth

You knew me more before I told you

What to do

I blame me

Blindsided

I gave up all my moves

I knew me before, but didn’t know you

Who knew you

would know me

deeper than I knew myself

The dream was untrue

Realer than the love I thought I knew

The love is you

now salt sifts through soft gracious hands 

don’t look back now, take a stand

You remind me that it will never be neverland

It is all real. 

I feel as though I am mourning the loss of who I once was. It is the most intense bittersweet loneliness.
Mourning the loss of someone who is now at peace, out of misery, no longer suffering. But the death is still so fresh that it aches nonetheless.
There is a rooted understanding that this death is making way for new growth –
like a forest burned to the ground
I am hopeful, even though I am smoldering.

A Meditative Prayer

Only Goodness goes
in and out of here
Only Peace grows, there is no reversing
No need to rehearse these lines,
they are true
and Every light points to You,
only guiding light
No need to hide in shadow’s fear
There is no darkness here.

Could I truly be the artist of my nightmares –
In some age-old western scene,
runnin’ off-uh cigarettes, the blood on my sleeve showing up to soothe the pain I paint.
Factory fantasies,
a lover on my chest
yada, yada, forgot the rest –

Swiftly, lover’s wife
overlooking fields of purple, prime trim and canvas white.
Adjourn a toast to melancholic vintage tombs
to fumigate goose-feather downs for two runarounds
and drown in hibiscus clawfoot afternoons.
We stare, fair well and hold onto our eyes, printed larger than life, nailed above the couch.
It is a titanium house, buried in the grey. Maybe there is a lake.

Burn it to the ground if I reside without described content.
If you are, too, a solitary dweller,
at least accept the invitation and make my vision your vacation

trade it for grills and baecations
all these thrills are raging and boring
One day, in some age-old western scene,
the artist of my daydreams
sunnin’ like a raisinet, the heart on my sleeve giving up to soothe the brain-ache’s fate
Lactating fantasies,
a lover on my chest
yada, yada, forgot the rest.

Cleanse me
take me away from myself
and closer in to you.
Leaning in, all or nothing, sometimes I fall.
but I am listening, even if my ears are full.
Hang me out to dry
in the warmth of the Son.
Sway in your breeze,
I am clean.

divide et imperium

This is more than a contentious election year. The spiritual realm is at war. The enemy seeks to divide and conquer, and is seeping into my family – as I’m sure it is countless others. Where do we find common ground when everything is polarized? If our foe is identified simply by their ballot, what becomes of the intriguing complexities of the human spirit?

I fear the consequences of sinking into an echo chamber where my opinions reverberate back to me. It is through challenging discourse that I have experienced the most significant growth in my life. We have to re-learn, and reprioritize, the art of conversation in our lives, because these divisions will only widen if we keep down this path as a country, as a people. It is clear that we are losing the ability to empathize, which is strengthened as we form deep relationships with others. As we learn about each other and engage in acts of life together, we find comfort in the discovery of foundational human desires and fears. In every great community there is great intimacy, which requires deep vulnerability.

Psalms 137 exclaims this symptom of the human condition, "how can we sing in a foreign land?", and ends with a wish for the children of their enemy to be smashed against a rock. How can such angst exist in the scriptures? Because God allows for human emotion to be expressed without judgement. Do we?

I believe that human connection is the desire of a God (spirit - universal energy, wherever one places their trust and hope) who created personalities and color to see if we could find unity through the celebration of our diversity. Instead, I see a culture that is increasingly driven by tribalism rather than community. Tribes are homogenous, driven by a common hatred for the enemy; communities are heterogeneous, strengthened by an amalgam of race, experiences, skills, and beliefs. Do we seek to feel good more than we seek the truth? Do we want to change people's minds more than we want to love them? 

The former leads to a pitiless dystopia of our own creation – fear stands in the way of freedom, resentment in the way of trust, clicks and shares in the way communication. Any aptitude for empathy devolves into a mere vestigial trait, evincing what was but is no longer of use like the wings of a flightless bird. In an attempt to uphold our self-righteous posturing, we construct defenses to restrict the divulgence of any insecurities or dialectical discourse. The mission to maintain such resistance disengages all capacity for rest and reason, breeding adversaries as our list of offenses grow. Unable to preserve our own sanctimonious pretenses, we finally surrender any last scraps of intellectual ingenuity to a revolution of rhetorical chants sanctioned by the forfeiture of responsibility for our failures and flaws.

Clouds in the head, drowning

same olde language

nothing unique ‘round

here I’m just the same as I ever was.

Curiosity killed the gleam

verbosity got you stuck in them daydreams

too cautious or content to be appalling

Hold please, simplicity is calling –

“speak.”

“You shouldn’t seek these things,

they become me.

Say what you want to see

just to be what happens.”

A sonic brittle little cottage in a field of purple reign

bring em out for a day on the sea

dinner ‘round a mile of table

bulbs,

back porch sprawls,

no brawls.

A studio far from home I’ve known

windows follow slanted ceilings

A king who does not hide from my visions,

he knows them as his own

dramatic lover, so romantic

deep in the word, in the groove

I think then, right there we’ll be my muse.

“I misjudged you

apologies, kneeling

I bequeath thou this longing for a meilleur feeling”

Cloud is heady, reeling

I’ll miss these solo strolls when I reach some future, squealing.

What a summer, what a year. Probably what every blog is saying at the moment. Can I call this a blog? I feel like I’m the only person who reads it. There are many more entries in my physical possession, so even these ramblings are very curated.

On the note of curating and sharing my thoughts, I’m ready to take my career to the next level (the first step being going full time entrepren-artist, which I have now done after a lonnnnnng time coming). Making abstract step two focusing 100% on my passions, which will allow me to 3.) offer more of myself – ideas, talents, sunshine – to the world. Meaning that practical step three is to start a podcast / Youtube channel. I’ve been talking and thinking about this for a long time so that’s all I’m gonna say about it. I think the main purpose of this online journal is to hold myself accountable to all these ideas I throw around.

Despite this year being the modern remake of Twilight Zone, (I guess they already did that, so uh,) despite this year being season 6 of Black Mirror, I’m not mad at it in terms of spiritual and emotional growth. That seems to be the theme of my life, the lens I always look through. Maybe it allows me to always see the good in things. Because regardless of what is happening around me, out of my control, I choose to evolve.

I’ll elaborate on 2020’s lessons later, because a “last year of my 20’s” post is soon approaching. And I couldn’t be more excited. When I took the leap last month, my spirit immediately took flight into this boundless, pozzi universe that I had been visualizing. And by the way things have already begun to take shape, the focused fearlessness I feel, it’s clear that it has always there.

God was just waiting on ME. What a homie.

The will of God, the love, the depth

how far will it go, how deep?

endless – through the darkest of days

Visions of them, how , still? But they are different now

I am not alone

passions affirmed

license to be.

I am filled with this joy, forever free

This is not a script,

or a pitch to The World

there is just too much light to contain

so I share it without shame.

The breath of life flows

from here to Eden

No longer too far to feel grace.

I feel transformation, actively, present

in my soul this moment

I’ll hold it as long as I’m granted

and let this peace carry me through every season

Prompts to Remember

How does the loss / absence of sensory glands effect memories?

What do memories look like to the blind? What soundscape accompanies the mental images of the hearing impaired? Without the sense of smell - the strongest tie to memory - are memories loose, harder to find?

Does the brain create elements that are lacking externally? *See Alice Wingwall

Further, what effect does the impairment of multiple senses have on the mental health of individuals, in direct response to hindered memory formation / retention? *Research Helen Keller

The Great Pause

The viewer is with me in all parts of the process. In thinking toward the physical engagement possible with each piece, my editing and mark-making decisions are inspired by a deep sense of empathy and connection to the core of human existence. When I am deep in it, it is transcendent for me; it is my spiritual practice. I am always considering the future humans who are to interact with this work, and tapping into emotions and states of being I do not yet know. That is why there is this back and forth of planning and spontaneity throughout my process, allowing each preceding layer to inform the next.

Then, as the piece is encountered in a gallery or hanging in a home, there may be a moment when one comes across one of these instances in the work, of layers being interwoven rather than stacked. There is a pause, and they are drawn into a physical object that reveals the hand and mind of another in all transparency.

In a way then - even more than memories - I am exploring the shared human memory of being alive, and bringing awareness to the future memories we are forming now. Is that “the human condition”? I’ve always avoided that overused artist statement term when speaking about my work, or at least wanted to truly understand it through my own way of working. Maybe I have arrived at that.

Maybe all art essentially is about just that; constantly redefining, challenging, and questioning the human condition.

I believe that everyone is able to find connection in the observation and expression of creative practices. The twist is, one never merely arrives at this experience of art, as if it is a destination they knew they were headed toward. There may be openings on the calendar and pieces to finish, but the expansion of the spirit comes amidst this pause,

The Great Pause.

It is at this pause, like the moment between an exhale and an inhale, where we are given permission to exist, to be alive, and to individually understand what that is.

That is where I meet the viewer, and it is from where the process flows. When we require that art-people-life-experiences bring and hold for us nothing more than space, we arrive at an equitable place where all are able explore and listen.

Utopian? Maybe. But I am not insisting that the pause last forever. That’s the thing about memories - they are fleeting, a bit hazy, coming and going without warning. I am intrigued by the power of these images, that exist solely in our mind, to shape our entire reality. My work (really, my life, which is reflected in the things I make) seeks to encourage positive experiences that last forever in your memory. The kind that can be called up in times of fear, anger, sadness, and disgust to bring joy at the realization of existence.