Lost and Found
A week of darkness that was really only light
This week my home office got broken into. Double-pane glass door shattered; a computer, a guitar, and a speaker system stolen. After the initial shock passed, I looked around the room and my heart filled with relief. The custom poem written lovingly for me by cubs the poet was still hanging on the wall. As was the print I purchased from lordcowboy. And the feather pen that found me in Paris. A pen that seemingly carried my incredibly broken and mangled poet soul through its 20s. All these totems that remind me how hard I’ve worked not only to heal, but to romance (more on this later), my own creativity—safely nestled in their homes. All but one. The small leopard statue I brought back with me last year from South Africa.
Luckily, I’m heading back to South Africa this week. To the same place where I acquired that statue. If I feel the need to replace it, I will. It seems this burglar knew better than me what I truly needed and what I didn’t.
It all reminded me of an anecdote I heard once about a very wealthy man who owned a very expensive glass vase. One day, someone knocked it over and it shattered. The wealthy man was beaming with joy. When asked why he was so happy when he had lost such an expensive object, he replied, “that vase was always here for my joy, never for my misery.”
I constructed and designed my home office as a sacred place for my creativity on the heels of my very first trip to South Africa last year. To have someone come in and steal from my alter reminds me so sharply that how I’ve nurtured, cared for, mothered, and protected my creative self has been an unbreakable act of love that will always be mine. It’s so much of my present joy.
On a different note, there’s been a general darkness all around my week this week. I uncovered some disturbing ancestral pains I’ve been holding onto deep within my psyche through the facilitation of plant medicine. Edie and I got attacked by an off-leash dog (we’re both okay). A neighbor and friend had a psychotic break that was devastating to witness. And I found out my very first therapist, who I cared for dearly, has passed away. As an emotionally open nerve and someone wooed by collective consciousness, these events falling together register intensely for me. I believe we are all connected and communicating with everything all the time. Especially in our suffering.
I’m not sure why I have opted to include this aside of murky and grief-stricken events in this newsletter. Probably because, as a writer, I try to thread myself toward the light. But sometimes the light is—feeling the grief, cracking open, breaking down, experiencing the pain of violation. Sometimes darkness is light.
If you’re reading this and having a particularly dark week—even if you’re reading this months or years after I’ve written it—please know you’re not alone and everything is in communion with you even if you don’t feel it.
Circling back—I do feel like I’ve cultivated a romantic relationship with my creativity. I believe my creativity is an energy I collaborate with rather than something I control. We dance. I take her out on dates. This issue’s poem is about that romantic relationship. And waking back up to myself as a songwriter. It’s one of my favorites, written last year when I was putting lots of honey in my glögg. Writing poems makes me feel so sweet and alive. What more could I ask for?
HONEYCOMB Today the house is empty But full of notes written on a staff long ago unplayed, still even after all these years Honey melts from your face pours a puddle of it at my feet It stays there for days, I don't dare clean it up Night by night I build a comb shaped just so for the mess on the floor When the puddle grows in size I add more hexagons and a new room weaves itself A single note is touched on the keyboard downstairs All six sides of my body are sticky now Each marked by a a kaleidoscope pattern the reflectors bouncing a shape with five rounded peaks The piece is played, the piece is played In full I open my mouth the piece is played in full