pleasure
I’m experimenting with offering up unscripted daily audio missives from my heart. Here’s day two: meandering along.
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projects
I’m experimenting with offering up unscripted daily audio missives from my heart. Here’s day one: getting real.
Have you signed up for my newsletter yet? Every Tuesday, I put forth interestingness and a free gift. It’s the best way to stay connected to my work in these digitally shifting times.
I happily accept and invite donations to support my work if you are so moved. 💖
creativity
The title of this post comes from this poem by the poet Borges. Why did those words jump out at me? I think “in a forgotten garden” speaks to me of what is happening in our fast-paced world right now. Of what is missing (at least for me).
The Unending Rose
Five hundred years in the wake of the Hegira,
Persia looked down from its minarets
on the invasion of the desert lances,
and Attar of Nishapur gazed on a rose,
addressing it in words that had no sound,
as one who thinks rather than one who prays:
“Your fragile globe is in my hand; and time
is bending both of us, both unaware,
this afternoon, in a forgotten garden.
Your brittle shape is humid in the air.
The steady, tidal fullness of your fragrance
rises up to my old, declining face.
But I know you far longer than that child
who glimpsed you in the layers of a dream
or here, in this garden, once upon a morning.
The whiteness of the sun may well by yours
or the moon’s gold, or else the crimson stain
on the hard sword-edge in the victory.
I am blind and I know nothing, but I see
there are more ways to go; and everything
is an infinity of things. You, you are music,
rivers, firmaments, palaces, and angels,
O endless rose, intimate, without limit,
which the Lord will finally show to my dead eyes.”
Spanish; trans. Alastair Reid
At breakfast this morning, we were talking about the past decade and what it brought us. This conversation was sparked by an article I read in the Guardian that had us pretending the year is 2042 and we’re getting ready for a “decades” party circa 2010. (I love this prompt!). As we discussed it, we decided one of the big words we will remember from the 2010s is “trending”. We talked about how quickly everything was moving in culture and how information is so exponential. We’ve made a lot of advances in technology. And yet, it doesn’t always seem to be making life better for many people. People are hurting. The disconnection that many of us feel is starting to take its toll on us.
As the line from my art journal above suggests, I am working to “remove what covers happiness” in my life. Not that I expect life to be happy all the time but to actively remove what is standing in the way of it whether it’s a bad habit, a false perception, or something that is socially constructed. Something I’ve found since I left Facebook is that I’m spending far more time exploring my own interests and generally exploring the world-at-large in a different way. I’m digging it. There isn’t so much stimulus and so much of everyone else’s lives coming at me. That has me reaching more deeply into myself. Listening to my inner voice more. Reading.
My horoscope from Chani Nicholas this month was so on point (as always):
Spend time with yourself. Spend energy getting to the spaces you find rejuvenating. Spend your love on those that know how to return an investment. ~Chani Nicholas
Part of “removing what covers happiness” has to do with social connections. I’ve stopped reaching out to folx who aren’t reaching back. That’s hard but feels necessary. I’ve spend time with dear friends and family but I’m seeing how shallow many of the connections I’ve had are. I don’t feel invested in changing that. Instead, I cherish the deeply-rooted relationships I have, including the one with myself.
I’m also revisiting my joy list and spending time getting real with myself. I’m enjoying blogging again. I feel reignited to blog after running across Austin Kleon’s blog. Like me, he “is an artist who writes” (his tagline) and I find both inspiration and kinship when I read his work. I love one of his recent blog posts, Art is the Fossil Record of the Artist. I agree. That’s part of why I create. I don’t want to lose track of myself and my life. Paying less attention to the daily lives of hundreds of people on social media has helped me a great deal in paying more attention to my own.
In 2042, I want my children and I to be looking back fondly rather than regretfully. We’re off to a good start. Happiness is starting to get uncovered, layer by layer.
Have you signed up for my newsletter yet? Every Tuesday, I put forth interestingness and a free gift. It’s the best way to stay connected to my work in these digitally shifting times.
I happily accept and invite donations to support my work if you are so moved. 💖
art
Bricolage has been coming back to me as part of my creative process again. I randomly chose the word “radiance” and began choosing objects that brought forth what that word meant for me. Perhaps it’s because the nights are getting longer or perhaps it was because I had just viewed the painting below at the Flesh and Blood exhibit at the Seattle Art Museum but either way, I began collecting mostly dark objects. As I did this, I realized that I am currently (maybe have always been) drawn to the radiance of darkness. The first thing I noticed when I saw this painting was those sleeves. Look at them! They remind me of the dark beauty of crow feathers. So lux.
I’ve been In the book “Twenty Four Conversations with Borges Including a Selection of Poems I found this poem titled “Poem Written in a Copy of Beowulf”. It moved me the way watching a storm moves me and evokes that feeling of the radiance of darkness that, while ineffable, is something we know when we feel it:
At times I ask myself what are the reasons,
During my wandering night, that now impel
Me to begin (expecting no miracle
Of perfection) to study the tongue of the harsh Saxons.
Exhausted by the years my memory
Allows the futilely repeated words
To slip away, the way my life first girds
And then ungirds its tired history.
I tell myself it must be that the soul,
In a sufficient and a secret way,
Knows it is immortal, that its vast, grave
Circle takes in and can accomplish all.
Beyond this longing and beyond this verse,
Waiting for me, inexhaustible: the universe.
That just pulls me down into my rootedness. In the dark beauty of life. Have you been experiencing the stars this autumn? The way the Jupiter in Venus was all snuggled up to the moon for a bit? I have taken to sitting in my home alone in the dark and just watching the changing night sky. Wishing I could capture its beauty to share but knowing I can’t. That’s what I’ve come to realize about the radiance of darkness–it’s personal. Life grief. Like the moments when we first wake up in the morning and realize we’re still alive. Sublime.
Someone recently asked me what my name meant. I told them it means “of the Light”. They said, “That’s about right. You lead people into the light.” I said, “Well, that may be true but I do it through illuminating the shadows.
I’ve finally learned to be okay with that. It’s not always comfortable but it’s necessary. Too much light obliterates detail. Blinds us. We can’t really afford to be blinded at this time in our history. We also can’t afford to wallow in the dark, hurting ourselves and others.
May the radiance of darkness lead the way.
Have you signed up for my newsletter yet? Every Tuesday, I put forth interestingness and a free gift. It’s the best way to stay connected to my work in these digitally shifting times.
I happily accept and invite donations to support my work if you are so moved. 💖
art
We’re nearly done with another year and another decade. Since getting hit by a car while biking a few months ago, I’ve been doing some soul-searching and working on finding meaning in 2019. I see and experience so much suffering right now and have been asking myself how I can “be the change”. Allow me to start with sharing why I recently decided to permanently deleted my personal Facebook account.
It seems like it should have been harder to leave but it really wasn’t. It was a nice experiment but the world is very different than it was when I joined Facebook in 2008. I am very different and most certainly the platform itself is different in pretty terrible ways. I would say, “It’s me, not you,” but that’s not sincere. It’s all of it. Existence is transpersonal after all.
Society has allowed Facebook to be woven into every aspect of life. They make it hard to leave. Like the mafia. But we get to choose where and how we spend our life force.
I remember a time before cell phones and answering machines (or text messages). I remember having to wait for things. I remember having to adjust the antenna on the TV to get a good signal. I remember eye contact and hearing a person’s laughter, not seeing a laughter emoji on a screen. I don’t see our culture becoming happier as we become more “connected”.
Or maybe it’s just me.
Either way, Facebook just became both invasive and isolating to me. It’s like being in a room filled with hundreds of people who think they know you but nobody is actually talking with you or each other. As part of my journey to finding meaning in 2019, I’ve made a choice to fill up my life with experiences that I savor, not that I instantly share somewhere. I’ve also made a decision to keep a paper address book with the names, addresses, and phone numbers of people that I cherish and who gift me with their presence.
It’s been a couple of weeks and already, the world is brighter. I spend time really noticing when I’m happy or sad. Just feeling it without distraction. I do still spend time on the internet because I’m not a luddite. I know that Mark Zuckerburg got (somewhat hilariously) interrogated by Congress. I know that Twitter will no longer run paid political ads like Facebook does. I know that there are anti-government protests all over the world. But it’s different outside of that space. I’m not witnessing so much arguing and grandstanding, so much misplaced rage and disrespect. Frankly, so much polarized nonsense.
I had a fear that perhaps people might think I didn’t care about them when I left but then I realized that I have demonstrated how much I care for folx repeatedly. Caring for myself hasn’t always been a high priority in my life and that has cause me suffering. It’s paradoxically because I care so much that I need to stay away from a space that feels really toxic. My care for myself and others needs a more embodied outlet.
I ran into this quote that has been attributed to Frederick Nietzsche (but for which I could find no citation) today:
To live is to suffer, to survive is to find some meaning in the suffering.
I see such intolerance for taking time to explore and listen right now. I did a lot of exploring meaning on Facebook as I went back to school post-divorce and got two degrees. I’m grateful for that time and for the people with whom I shared ideas. I used to have these beautifully chromatic conversations filled with complexity and ambiguity that helped me deepen my perspective, not unlike a college seminar. (I downloaded all of those conversations before I left.). Sadly, that hasn’t happened in a long time. It’s as though complexity retreated when 45 was elected along with respect and graciousness. I like what President Obama recently said which is very similar to what I’ve been saying for years:
Life is messy. Play anyway. That’s something I’ve said (and lived) for years. That’s how we I find meaning: through playing, exploring, questioning, challenging, talking, creating, loving, constructing and deconstructing. And also through listening, softening, deepening, and remaining open to possibility and pleasure.
I’m doing a lot more of that and really digging it. Writing and creativity are what drew me to the internet to begin with. I’ll be blogging more often because I still need an outlet for what comes up for me. I’ve had a lot of folx tell me that they enjoy what I share. If that’s you, consider signing up for my newsletter. There’s a lot of content there and a free gift each week because another way I’m finding meaning in 2019 is giving stuff away.
If you’ve stayed to then end, thank you! May the road ahead treat you kindly. xo ~Kymberlee
Have you signed up for my newsletter yet? Every Tuesday, I put forth interestingness and a free gift. It’s the best way to stay connected to my work in these digitally shifting times.
I happily accept and invite donations to support my work if you are so moved. 💖