Deep dark desert
Creative openings take time, patience, and silence
Winter solstice transmission
When I comb through old journals, Instagram posts, and phone notes, I encounter selves I forgotten I’ve ever been. This one wrote lengthy, intimate photo captions cataloguing their healing process. This one rode into the desert with two friends, and sat on top of a rock, watching the sun rise. This one was in love with someone they’d never really dated, and sat with them and their new partner in a Chinese restaurant, staring at the orange chicken growing cold on their plastic fork. This one went hiking alone in Mission Trails after months of rain, and laid on damp green moss, dipping their hand into a creek then running the water over their face. This one is writing in the morning.
Of course we never fully become new people or discard our old selves completely. Even after we walk through the fire and feel that we have come out the other side fresh from burning. The layers build upon themselves and never quite disappear—still I cling to dreams of newness, total redemption, change as a sweeping light that dispels all I’ve been before.
Around barroom tables, friends discuss whether or not they believe people can ever change. What they are saying is, They lost my trust and I’m not sure I want to give it to them again. They were untrustworthy once, and they may be untrustworthy again.
Change may not be a light that does away with every part of you that existed before, but we are still changed. People become more layered and complex—though it often takes longer than we believe, and is less of a flash of light as it is a spiraling process.
Still, when seasons of my life return and remind me that I have been in ones like them before, it all feels new. I fumble like it is my first time. But again I am walking through a dark desert, trying to make sense of who I am. Again, I am retreating inward and wanting silence, craving it, listening to the rain hit the studio roof while Maxine Funke sings.
These are winter urges that seems to come out every year, and yet, surprise me each time they do. I stumble across an old comic I made in the winter of 2018 titled “Identity Crisis.”
It quotes Pat Baker, who was quoted in Rebecca Solnit’s A Field Guide to Getting Lost.
Baker wrote, “Cut a chrysalis open, and you will find a rotting caterpillar. What you will never find is that mythical creature, half caterpillar, half butterfly, a fit emblem of the human soul, for those whose cast of mind leads them to seek such emblems. No, the process of transformation consists almost entirely of decay.”
Again, I make artwork that deals with rot, decay, texture, shadows, and layers. I gesso a panel, pull at nylons, make armatures out of zip ties and then wrap them in fabrics, preparing to dip them in plaster. In the rain, I go on walks and record sounds. I make artwork that when I stare at too long wonder if it’s garnish and cheap, or like a child’s craft. Still, I kneel on a meditation pillow and paint a second layer of gesso on a panel.
What I want to say is that I am retreating. But I always want to say this, to offer this as an explanation, perhaps less to the faceless people who may or may not read anything I write, as to myself. I am retreating, I say, my feet already walking down a path. The door already closed, and no one pulling on it, or asking for answers. I’m going, going away, going into the silence.
The silence doesn’t say anything in reply. It doesn’t need my explanations–no one does.
In my journal, I pull at cobwebbed memories and string them together in fiction. I get stuck thinking of pseudonyms for friends of mine–was he really a Keith? I let Josephine Foster and Gia Margaret sing over the rain. I look through since archived Instagram posts for notebook entries from 2018 that I no longer wish to share publicly. I take notes from them.
I write, I watched our voices soar out the window and fade into specks against the darkening hills. So quickly that I could not grab them, that I simply had to take in their passing.
I make plans for the solstice. In my journal, I make lists of ways to find warmth and feel the darkness (at the urging of Sarah Faith Gottesdeiner and Bran Taylor):
Wake up at dawn. Find a sauna. Go slower. Walk away from social media and answering emails until the new year comes. Walk in the forest. Light candles. Let go of a consistent sense of time. Let go of the feeling of needing to be external. Go down a path of quiet and shadows and be with whatever is found there.
I write: I pray into silence & then the silence speaks to me.
But the silence doesn’t say much. Just,
— Yes
Rain falls against the roof, and drips off the passion fruit vine. The heater offers a soft hum, while Gia Margaret sings,
In a flashback I saw you, with so much to tell
The revolving doors hit, in a tentative spell
And the birds still fly
I stay up all night
And with one arm reaching out, I can almost feel you
I can almost feel you
I can’t really say whеre the memoriеs fade
But some are burnt into my brain
I can’t really place what they meant to me
But now I’ll never be the same
Happy Solstice, everyone. I will see you in the new year.
(Originally I wrote: I will see you in the near, and I like that too.)
eSims for Gaza - you can purchase these to help people there stay online
Again, to those in the U.S., calling your representatives and asking for a permanent ceasefire.
Actions and marches in various cities posted on the Palestinian Youth Movement Instagram
Reminding oneself that the search for beauty is not futile–humans do horrible things to each other and other living beings, but the search for beauty is a reminder of human grace
My book of poems, The Snakes Came Back, is available here (everywhere), here (U.S.), here (Canada)
Lighting candles and sitting with them instead of turning lights on
Praying, in words, in action, in writing
Adam Gnade’s new book I Wish To Say Lovely Things (Adam’s own retreat off social media has inspired me. I finished his new book this morning, and his writing always reminds me of the importance of archiving life and those around you. This novel also reminded me how love is not simply a process of caring for one another, but how we carry each other through changes and grief.)
My favourite quotes of all time: "let me stay tender hearted, despite, despite despite." This quote got me through this year.
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