psychic landscape
hungry for the sound of organs (containers for desperation)
Rather than allowing myself to move through organic reality, I pull at time. I want it to go faster. I want to know why I am not exactly where I want to be at every moment. I crowd myself by thinking, obsessing, and lying in bed, considering my life decisions. I think about people trapped under rubble and genocide and horrific acts, about the violence of the machine, about loss. I spiral downward as I think, think, think.
I respond to my wondering what to do next in life by job searching. I try to tailor my experience as a poet into a palpable form. Under skills I write, “Creative problem solving.” “Emotional intelligence.” “Ability to think critically and synthetically.” I sit on the toilet and send my resume out quickly, obsessively. Dear reader, what do you do when you can feel your own negative thoughts spinning above you, and yet you keep reinforcing them?
Tarot has an image for this: In the Nine of Swords, a woman lies in bed with her face in her hands. Nine blades are poised above her, pointed and looming, as the night drags on. She is caught in a cage of her own thoughts. After spending nights like this, it is not surprising to learn this card is also named The Lord of Cruelty.
Mando tells me that perhaps what I need is movement. We begin going to the gym together several times a week. I do laps on an indoor track , while he moves through the machines, smiling.
When I lived in Philly, I unwound tumultuous feelings by walking. After work, I’d walk through Center City, past the museums, and towards my West Philly home. I’d sing out over the train yard, take breaks on patches of grass by the Rocky Balboa statue, and people watch my way through Penn’s campus.
In my Notes app recently, I wrote: When the grief hits, I walk.
But I forget, I also think.
I churn with thoughts until I feel swallowed by them. I want to tell you how afraid I feel these days, how lost, and the physical ways this manifests. When I tell Mando I keep thinking obsessively, he says, Well there’s something to write about.
It is hard to speak about this feeling of overwhelm in the face of life without feeling overcome with emotion. On Christmas Eve, after years of contention with organized religion, I went to midnight mass. I was hungry for the sound of organs, choral voices, something that would sing out into the night. I do not know how to contend with my own life without wanting to throw my hands up and sing loud and deeply, or to walk for miles, or bike until I’m sore, or write poetry, work with physical materials until they are art, or hike a hill, or dance.
But that’s not true—I do find other ways. I scroll through my phone, spend long stretches of time looking at screenshots of celebrities in interviews, and send out resumes hurriedly.
Lately, the language used in recovery programs of everyone having a “God-sized hole” makes more sense to me now. I cannot ignore that there is a depth in me that feels desperate and whirling, and will find a way to be wrestled with. I cannot ignore that I contend with this energy in my own compulsive ways. My suspicion tells me that making art and writing are containers for this energy as much as social media can be. The difference is that one feeds me, and another makes me numb. Still, they both seem to have roots in the seek for meaning and purpose.
Years ago, I responded to this energy by walking across Philly, leaving the house whenever a sense of churning took hold of my heart. One summer, I responded to it by screaming into a microphone several times a week. These days, I tear nylons, straddle a large wooden panel, and pull them across it.
When Chris was visiting in January, he, Mando, and I stood in my bedroom, and played with Kim Krans’ Archetypes deck. I’d bought the deck after seeing it in Chris’ room last December. Now, in my Oakland bedroom, I told him that I kept pulling the Empty Room card. I don’t know where to go, I tell the cards, and they repeat, You don’t know where to go. With Chris standing in the doorway, I ran my hand over the deck, and pulled a card. Again: the Empty Room.
Ok, ok, I laughed. I’m listening!
The Empty Room is silence. The void of uncertainty, the feeling of emptiness. Nothingness, and a vast quiet. The smallness we feel regarding the presence of the universe. But it is also everything. Silence is not simply stillness, it is an internal choice. You cannot quiet the whole world. But you quiet yourself, and you listen.
The irony of searching is that you often find yourself backing into walls. I look and look for answers; but get tangled in the bramble of my questions. Who will I be? What should I do? The indecision does not move me anywhere. It roots me further into stuck ground—into an empty room.
To see the void staring back at me is not what I am hoping for when I’m looking for an answer or direction. I want to be told which way to go. But divination tools have never told me anything I didn’t already know. They have always been mirrors that allow me to more clearly see myself and the world.
I meditate with my head against the window and listen to the world hidden behind the magnolia tree. Cars driving down rain slicked streets, people walking and crunching on leaves, a crow on a power line. I pull out my field recorder, point the mic to the street, and put my headphones on to listen and record the sounds. Background noise. Is this the silent world? It teems with noise.
In my journal I wrote: We follow our paths until they lead us where we need to go.
You don’t get out of where you are by avoidance. You get out of there by feeling into it and finding the ways to expand from that place.
Note: I’ll be writing more on here, and making some of those posts paid, in order to not bombard your inboxes. I also want to branch out into offering some audio episodes. To receive all posts, become a paid subscriber.
PSYCHIC LANDSCAPE / BONE COLLECTING PLAYLIST (for February)
My show with Cecilia Mignon is opening in San Francisco on March 1st, at MRKT Gallery. This show has been months in the making. I’ve been making very new work to me (mixed media works on panels that are sculpture paintings), and continuing to follow directions I started in school (sculptures with videos behind them with a focus on rot, decay, and organic forms). I can’t wait to share! <3 <3 <3 <3
Also, for the collectors at large: my artwork will be available for sale in a fine art context for the first time.I was interviewed by Brie Stoner for her podcast, Unknowing. We spoke about art as a container for pain, not remembering poems you wrote, and creative alchemy.
I was also interviewed by my friend Jancie Creaney for the Creative Independent. I’ve been a big fan of their archive of interviews and resources for artists. I’ve found many amazing artists, filmmakers, musicians, and writers through their newsletter. It’s a deep honor to me to be on there, and I recommend signing up.
The Snakes Came Back is still available.
Mmmmmm this was like warm weather for my soul