i make pretty messes

All of the paradox and
contradictions.

I always wished I could make pretty things. 
I wish I was a pretty thing.

But what’s true is I am
messy and complicated.

I make more messes.

I make pretty messes.

I’ve been doing some inner calibration lately and ran across this journal entry from earlier this year.  When I read it, it occurred to me that others might benefit from reading this so I’m sharing.  Do you ever feel that way?

Over the course of my life, I’ve encountered and lived with people who clean up right before company comes but keep things pretty messy the rest of the time.  I used to be someone like that but it’s been a minute because I realized at some point that my messes were going to spill out anyway.  I also learned that the people that I feel safe around are the people who keep it real.  They tend to do much less projection and own what’s going on in their lives instead of blaming others for their problems.

Life isn’t a magazine cover.  It’s real, raw, and messy.  Why not celebrate that?

I have so much compassion for people invested in sweeping their messes under the rug.  We live in a society that sells products by selling image and erasing the truth with an airbrush.  People create a static image in their mind of what their lives should like without making room for their own or anyone else’s humanity.  We break things, we age and eventually we die.  Life is dynamic like that, isn’t it?

Later in this same journal, I found this entry from June of this year.  My mom had died a few weeks previously and I was at a tea house alone trying to find solace.  Freewriting, exploring and sipping bergamot sage tea when of course I spilled it all over my journal.  Because THAT’S WHAT I DO.  Interestingly, I loved what happened!

The tea was a beautiful color (and remains so in these pages).  It leaked through four pages so I just started playing with it.

Then I wrote about it.

Little messes as creative prompts.  That’s the essence of expressive arts practice, really.

 Alchemy.

The way the tea leaks through these pages (spilled carelessly).

So then my thoughts leak through
my everyday life.

Life brings so many things to push against yet I want so badly to just yield.

Does yielding mean surrender?

Yielding to that which oppresses me is not my path but spiritual surrender is perhaps like this tea–it just happens.

Spilled out
leaking through

Pretty messes making life and art.

So get out there and make your messes!  Let the mistakes be mis-takes–another take, another chance.

And take a listen to this.  I’m sharing because I want to support this guy’s work.  He’s real and raw and has a gorgeous voice.  I’ve never heard anyone make regret sound so beautiful.