Wednesday, March 23, 2016

No rules


Don't label my emotions
Or name my words,
For there is no wrong way to be human. 
Life is an abstract painting,
A strange haiku
With one extra syllable. 
Just put it on the paper. 
Or get in line at the museum
And wait your turn for the tour
Through someone else's colors and ink. 

- kjsmith


Thursday, March 10, 2016

G'night

I wanted to tell you a story 
About the night. 
The one where an owl hoots 
Way off in the distance. 
And the neighbors cat stalks 
Shadows of mice. 
I sit here, on the porch steps 
Arms around my knees. 
Chimes, soft music, out of tune 
with a missing piece.
The velvet sky littered 
with clouds that the wind threw away
Stars between them 
Just pieces of the constellations 
That made ancient men wonder
And dream. 
Maybe tomorrow night
The wind won't forget to take the clouds 
And I'll see more than just 
The Three Sisters through the trees. 


Lost in Translation



Marichit Garcia's post on her Ink & Water page (see link below) about jumping from one pool into another is so eloquent, as usual. Like music. My knee-jerk reaction is to share it on my personal Facebook page, but I hesitate, because most people there wouldn't 'get it'. They aren't used to that type of communication, not on my page or from me personally. 

And that got me thinking...

The way all my creative tribe write and express themselves is the way I have always talked to myself in my head. But that's not how words come out of my mouth. The life of my soul has to be translated into another language for the 'normal' people I interact with. Translated or hidden altogether. 

Today, I realized that I'm two different people. And I have been pretty much my entire life. The artistic and eloquent automatically translated before it ever leaves my head. 

There's a memory from when I was eight or nine years old and we had free time in class. I was drawing and coloring some crazy abstract thing full of swirling lines and another girl asked me why I was coloring 'that way'. I explained my idea, which was making patterns within each section. By changing the direction of the crayon strokes I could make a pattern within a pattern. She looked at me with a blank stare and said, "But why are you coloring that way?"

"Never mind" I replied, realizing she wasn't ever going to understand. So, I  quickly learned to 'dumb down', translate, become the generally accepted version of normal. I got tired of saying 'nevermind'. Most of the people in my life only see the parts of me that don't require explanation or translation. 

I wear an entirely different skin most of the time. I don't dislike the other skin. I've known her for a long time now. She's fun-loving and smart-assed and drinks too much tequila.  

I don't mind being her. After all these years that skin fits well. But it's nice being part of a creative, accepting community where I can shed the mundane and write stuff like this. Where I can be magical and eloquent. Where I don't ever have to say 'never mind'.