Listen to the audio reading:

Don’t think too much. As a matter of fact, don’t think too much at all. This is not one of those exercises that requires much forethought or preparation. You can’t back your way into this one, all neat and tidy buttoned up.

There’s no clean way to do this. Not this time.

This is one you’ve got to blast your way through – close your eyes and jump, light the match and burn on the way down, get pummeled by the waves, upside down and spitting water, freight train your way all your way through to the other side.

And by all those overused, layered metaphors what I really mean is this:

You’ve got to fucking write.

Not think.

Just write.

Get a sheet of blank paper.

Write the truth of yourself. As you know it. Right now. In this exact moment and only this moment.

Limit yourself to one page.

Fill that page. Pour it out. Do not edit or reduce or backtrack. Do not worry about being succinct or understood. Just write. Just writeandwriteandwriteandwriteandfuckingwrite.

Now scratch it out. Marker it up. Cut it. Burn it. Obliterate it.

Gone.

Get a new page.

Write the truth of yourself. As you know it. Right now. In this exact moment and only this moment.

Limit yourself to one paragraph.

Make this single paragraph sing with the hope of you, with the want of you, with the very blood and bones and guts of you. Select the lines that speak your heart. Your sex. Your sacred. Spill yourself into this paragraph as if lives depend on it. Because your lives – every last one? They do.

Now scratch it out. Marker it up. Cut it. Burn it. Obliterate it.

Gone.

Get a new page.

Write the truth of yourself. As you know it. Right now. In this exact moment and only this moment.

Limit yourself to one line.

Choose carefully the words that define you. Choose them with exquisite care. Just one line that is the truth of you and nothing but the truth of you in this living and breathing and beating moment.

One line. Only one line.

Do you have it?

Good.

Now scratch it out. Marker it up. Cut it. Burn it. Obliterate it.

Gone.

Get a new page.

Write the truth of yourself. As you know it. Right now. In this exact moment and only this moment.

Limit yourself to one word.

One pounding, pulsing, bleeding word. One word that flies or explodes or burns it all down. One words that is quiet whisper or the living manifestation of insistent howl of your bones. One word that glows white hot or grounds you into the dark blue-black of the deepest night.

One word.

Just one.

Does that scare you? Good – it should. This isn’t child’s play here.

Now scratch it out. Marker it up. Cut it. Burn it. Obliterate it.

Gone.

Are you shaking yet? Is your heart pounding? Do you feel what we are doing here?

We’re not done yet.

Now – now that that is done. Close your eyes. Take the deepest breath you could possibly take. Fill your lungs with all those words and all those truth and all that emptiness and all that fullness and the love-loss-ache-bliss of all that carried story.

Now empty your lungs. All the way out. As your breath goes, watch all those words go too. Watch them float away on the air around you. Watch them turn to smoke and get caught in the breeze and dissipate, just like that.

Feel how damn good empty can feel when you choose it.

Now get a new page. A blank page. Purest white and completely pristine.

This is all yours. This page. It doesn’t contain any of the shit they told you was true. It doesn’t contain any of the shit YOU told you was true. Right now, it contains the only truth there is.

This story is always yours for the telling.

This has always been yours. You can expand to fill it all or take up the smallest corner. You can write in invisible ink. You can tell your story in red wine stains and spilled ink and bite marks. You can only write in pencil so it can always be erased. You can write in layers, and turn the page and write sideways. You can spin spiral and make your words dance.

You can ink it on the surface of your skin or x-ray vision the story onto the blank canvas of your bones. You can write a novel and then let the whole thing dissolve in the waves. You can write the truth and bury it in the ground, throw it in the fire, fold it into paper airplanes and watch it fly, roll it into a note in a bottle and toss it in the ocean and let it find its own way home.

Or, you share it with the whole fucking world.

You can care and not care and care-not-care all at once.

But you get to write. And you get to choose the story you tell.

And there’s no freedom bigger or bolder or braver than that.

The post get writing: write the truth of yourself appeared first on Jeanette LeBlanc.

Writers are often an introverted group, preferring the company of words to people, but that creative fire — left to its own devices — can burn itself out rather quickly.

You know what I’m talking about. We call it writer’s block. Frustrated Artist Syndrome. The whole overdone trope of the artist pacing in his slovenly garrett tearing his hair out — full of angst and unable to write or paint or make music. And always alone.

But here’s the thing. Writers — artists, musicians, creative beings — we gather. Somehow we pull away from our art and we dust ourselves off and we emerge into the outside air. And then we find each other. Introverted or no, there’s a magnetic force in play that brings creatives together. Over and over, through the ages.

We find one another because we need one another.

Deeply.

unknown photographer, vintage snapshot print, July 1915

Leonard and Virginia Woolf and their contemporaries — renowned intellectuals, artists, philosophers and other early 20th century badasses — formed the London based Bloomsbury Group — creating works that had long reaching impact on literature, economics and feminism.

The Saturday evening literary salons at Gertrude Stein’s 27 rue de Fleurs welcomed that Lost Generation of post-war Parisian expats that included Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Picasso, Joyce and Matisse into ‘a haven for the sacred sparks of insight visited upon humans…Stein’s apartment was a church with art as the divine matter.

And perhaps the most famous of these magnetic creative gathering points — The Chelsea, in New York City. To read it’s list of residents — Dylan, Bukowski, Joplin, Miller, Mapplethorpe, Ginsberg, Warhol, Cohen, Kerouac is to take a deep dive into the exploding literary and music scene of the 50’s and 60’s — an unintentional artists colony smack dab in the middle of Manhattan — a legend around every corner and more stories than the walls will ever tell.

All of these wildly talented artists convened in these spaces and places because they needed each other. Needed to be fed by the convergence of ideas and passion and creativity. To be supported. To find understanding — to discover others whose demons would play nicely (or at least creatively) with their own.

I need this. You need it too.

You know you do. Even if you look at that word that I keep using — Writer (With-A-Capital-W) and think… “that’s not me. I’m not a real writer”. Quiet that voice — right now. You’ve got a desire to write and a pull to the story — of course you do, or you wouldn’t be here.

And if you are putting pen to paper or fingers to keyboard or joining letters into words and words into sentences in the quiet safety of your own mind, then you, my dear, are a Writer.

And I would be willing to bet that you feel that hunger to gather with others. To find that tribe. To discuss. To dive deep. To drink. To dance. To seduce the muse. To be understood. To be uplifted. To join your fire to their fire and all of our fire. To burn. To rise. To create. Together. En masse.

In community.

Because you need it. To maintain the spark. To fuel the flame. To keep burning and burning and burning until your story can be born. Because when creatives gather? That is exactly what happens. Watch out. That combined creative fire? It’s magnified for all.

You need this. And we need you.

When my, ’Wild Heart Writing’ course launched a few years ago I watched as the women and men in that space formed their own version of what Hemingway and Bukowski and Woolf claimed for themselves so long ago.

Though this wasn’t a decrepit hotel in Manhattan or a ritzy salon on Paris’ Left Bank — simply your typical Facebook group — we created community. We formed a tribe. We showed up as ourselves, raw and vulnerable and lit from within with the power of what was being created. Not just words and stories and ignited hearts — but a swirling force of creative energy — far greater than any one of us could have created alone. We lifted and legitimized and most importantly of all we saw each other. Fully.

I’ve never seen anything like it.

Several years later — the community, and the sharing and the combined creative fire — it continues to burn.

And let me clarify one thing. I did not create this community. I created a course that helped weave common threads among strangers. The birth of the community was alchemy and mystery and full on magic. The creative community creates itself, and it grows itself and it becomes through the sheer force of that much passion in one space. It is inevitable and it is necessary and it is a thing of great beauty and love.

“We know that community is sacred. The fire where we gather, sharing our stories, tending to the light and release, is where we resurrect ourselves and remember ourselves. It’s where we die and labor ourselves anew. It is a holy place where we see with tender eyes and let ourselves be fully seen. The sweet honey loving of the Wild Heart Writers so naturally calling out what they liked and loved about another’s writing was beautiful. I find myself still posting here because it feels like a home for my wild heart and wild words to come and be real and revealed. Even though the course is over, I truly hope the writing and the group has just begun.”

Winter Session participant, Tulasi Adeva

Soon we begin again. Welcoming another group of creatives and soul searchers and wild hearts. Opening our arms to another collection of those who know that the best way to find yourself, is to get lost in the wild, and then write your way back home. Growing the writing community that started by the most perfect sort of serendipity.

I would love, more than anything, if you would join us — to make this commitment to yourself and your writing community, to be welcomed into our tribe of Wild Hearts.

I’m positive Hemingway and Fitzgerald would totally have my back on this one.

Xo.

Jeanette

“The Wild Heart Writers space allows me to feel alive and connected to my own wild heart and all the beautiful, messy, raw, honest, amazing pieces of me I see in all of you…You give words to the deepest truth inside me, that I don’t have. I give understanding to you that is true and real and known. You inspire me. I risk showing up. We expose our nakedness and see our common humanity”

Winter Session participant, Kathy Whitman

The post Do you need a creative community? appeared first on Jeanette LeBlanc.

‘But what am I to do if I can’t ever get them out?’

It’s true. I am haunted by that question.

The words live in me always. Tumble all over each other inside and out. There are voice memos from freeway epiphanies. Hundreds and hundreds of unfinished word documents in all stages – from one-line fragments to pages and pages of almost-but-not quite-finished prose and poetry. Almost unintelligible scrawls in long ignored journals. Words I have to examine closely to even remember if they are mine.

Are any of them really mine?

 +++++

Where do they come from? Where do they go when they leave? Sometimes I haven’t the slightest idea.

The words, they are easy.

It’s the writing that’s hard.

It’s the writing I run from.

It’s the writing that takes me by my roots and shakes me and shows me raw, everything I am and am not made of.

It’s a brilliant and brutal mirror.

It’s been this way for a while.

Who exactly is a writer if she does not write?

+++++

Calling myself a writer is not easy. It takes audacity to even let the words leave my mouth. Harder still to believe and stand tall along side them.

I am a writer.

I am an artist.

I create. I bleed. I breathe. I write.

There, I said it.  I couldn’t say anything but this.

The words, they are my purpose on this earth.

And fuck, if I don’t still tremble every single time.

+++++

But the most difficult of all?

To cut away all that comes between me and the words. The perpetual everything else that must be done. The inadequacies. The demons. The self-doubt. The not-enough and the not-good-enoughs. The excuses. The excuses. The endless excuses.

And to write.

And then to not just write, but to finish. To push through to completion – however that may look or sound or feel. Regardless of whether it is lifesaving or total and complete shit.

To create a post, or a poem or a novel or an opus.

To finish that post or a poem or a novel or opus.

And then to stand. Open hands and open heart.

To say here.

This is it. This is for you.

+++++

It’s the echo of my soul on the page. The blood and sweat of my being on your computer screen. My tears and grief and sex and laughter ringing in your ears.

For you to love. For you to be inspired by. For you to hate. For you to judge. For you to find wanting.

For you to ignore.

For you to know my heart.

+++++

My stories. Brutally true to the hard edge of life or full of fantastical imagination and beautiful impossibilities.

Mine.

Yours.

Ours.

Here. Take them.

I made this just for you.

Yes. You.

There’s nobody else this could be meant for.

You knew that, didn’t you?

+++++

I couldn’t be more naked now.

You have the beating heart of me, there before your eyes. The words that seduced and haunted me winding through your veins now.

They were never meant to belong to me anyway.

Nothing truly belongs to the writer.

The words were always for you.

Thank you for accepting them.

Thank you for holding them like your own. 

+++++

I dance with the muse every time I write.  It’s a dance of heat and grief and melancholy and burn and shatter and rebirth.  It’s the only dance that matters.

And we always dance for you.

Every single time.

Blessed be.

The post Millions of worlds of words (a writer’s thank you letter) appeared first on Jeanette LeBlanc.

You feel her come in on a breath through the open window and settle deep in this space. Like she owns it. It’s strange how she can be inside and outside and all around. All at once.

A shiver rises from the base of spine until skin tingles. Everywhere. You know what this means.

It is time.

No matter you are tired. No matter today and this week and this month have worn you down. No matter your bones ache. No matter your weary heart. No matter the undone chores or the unfinished work. No matter the cool white sheets calling you to slumber.

That has all changed, she says, now that I am here.

Sit down and write, she says.

And she says it in that way she’s always had. The way that lets you know nothing will be happening but whatever she decrees. Not tonight. This is how she works.

So you do as she says. Nothing good ever came of doing anything but this.

Her lips graze the back of your neck. She’s closer than you realized. Her voice, all honey and gravel and midnight summer rainstorms and the slightest hint of lonely, right by your ear.

Stop wasting time. Stop making excuses. Set the stage if you feel it’s necessary. Light the candles. Pour the whiskey. Your ritual matters because you believe it matters. So do whatever the hell you think you have to do to loosen the eternal hold you place on your magic.

Just don’t ignore me now.

Put on the music that brings to mind the blade slice and the rising smoke and the way bodies turn liquid when the desire gets that sharp and close. That music that feels like burgundy velvet and tastes like black market moonshine in a smoky underground jazz club from another era.  

Get up. She wants to dance. You knew she would. This was decided long ago, between you and her. Because flowing words demand fluid muscles in a body often locked tight. Hips loose enough for goddess spiral. There can be no tension tonight. This is about melting resistance. About spinning it down just so you can rise. This is all about the release of all things.

You’ll know you’re there when you can’t tell your pulse from the downbeat of the music. When you are one with all that there is. The music and the words and the want of it all.

Because you’ve got to want it. More than you have. You’ve got to want it like everything that just might happen if you lost all your inhibitions. You’ve got to need it like the sweet hit at the root of all your yearning. Like the way you crave the sound of her voice, raspy and low right next to your ear promising what comes next.

You’ve got to move with it, until the words become a dance of seduction. Until there is no more stillness and everything is desire.

Until you do not know any longer if you are doing the seducing or being seduced. Do not worry. It has never really mattered and you couldn’t change it anyway. Just give yourself over to the pull of it. The wanton desire. The holy unholy need. The sweet dance of dominance and submission and the way they live best so tangled you can’t figure where one ends and the other begins. The heat of creation-destruction-and-what-will-be-born-now-that-all-the-rest-is-destroyed.

Have you done as she instructed?

Good. You can begin.

Now. All you need is those fingers. That blank page. Your beating heart. The energy pulse that travels lightening current across your skin.

It’s all right there for the taking in and giving over.

Bow your respect to the one who brings you here.

She nods back, in her own particular way.

You have done the work, she says, the words will come hot and clear now.

Now get the hell out of your own way.

AND WRITE.

Listen with me: {music for dancing with the muse} on spotify.

The post get the hell out of your own way {and write} appeared first on Jeanette LeBlanc.

Let us please her.

2. Poetry is not always literal. Do not assume our poetry means what it says. Sometimes it will mean the exact opposite. Sometimes I love you means I hate you. Sometimes come here means go away. Do not twist yourself into a pretzel trying to figure out what it might mean. Let me repeat this again. Poetry is not. Always. Literal. Except when it is. You risk madness trying to figure this out.

Let it be.

3. Poets fall in love easily. Regularly. Messily. With people. With ideas. With food. With the way the light falls through your hair and crosses your cheek. With the sound of our own thoughts. Love is fodder for our art. Love is the root of it all. So much love, and not all of it for you. This is the danger of loving a poet. This is the bliss of loving a poet.

Let us love.

4. When the voices in our head start speaking we don’t talk back or look for a doctor to make them stop. We write them down. On whatever we can find. Receipts. The last letter you got from your late grandmother. Dollar bills. The entire surface of our right arm. If you happen to be bald, the top of your head is fair game in a pinch. Do NOT fall asleep while we are holding anything that can be used as a writing implement. We will write at traffic lights. During happy hour. Right in the middle of a particularly romantic moment. Our words must find a home or they will consume us.

Let us write.

5. You have never been as beautiful as you will be through our eyes. You will have never known that the hard edge of your hipbone was worthy of poetry, or the curve of your smile or the husk of your voice or the caress of your cheek against our own. But if we love you, we will turn you into a poem. You will be made immortal by the power of our words. You can count on this.

Let it happen.

6. When you start to date a poet we should read you your rights: Anything you say/do or think can and will be held against you. We will write about what an ass you were that one night, about how you drive us bonkers by singing REO Speedwagon in the shower, about the ways you have brought about betrayal. Still, if you censor yourself, we will know this too. You might as well speak your truth. It’s all poetry to us.

Let us write you into life.

7. At some point, we will get ink stains on your good sheets. Your best dress shirt. That super important report you stayed up all night finishing for your boss. This will drive you crazy. But know that we will also make love to you with ink stained hands. Finger paint typewriter font onto your skin, brand a masterpiece into the spaces between your ribs with the words flowing from our palms. Tattoo you with the imprint of our hearts. Together, we will become a living poem.

Let us get messy.

8. We will love you well, with words and nuance, with bodies and phrasing, with kisses and passion, with poems and love letters scratched on coffee shop napkins. So that no matter what happens between us, for the rest of your life, something in your soul will always be searching for the poem that we were together. This will make it very hard to be your next girlfriend.

Let us love you.

9. Poetry has a long, long memory. After our love is long gone, we will still be reading your poems. You will not be the only one whose heart this breaks. Know that we will stand , reading the words written about our love – and we will ache for you  The body will remember the way you shifted and sighed as skin met skin and those words will pay tribute to the lines that were composed while we moved through this world together. Because of this, we will never truly forget you.

Let us remember.

10. If you’re going to love a poet you should know this. Our words are our truths. Our blood hums with verse. We break easily. Our words save us. Our stanzas keep us alive. If we loved you at all, we loved you truly. And you will never leave us but live under our skin and beneath the tips of our fingers and in the ink spill on blank page.

Because poetry, like some love, is forever.

The post 10 things you should know {if you intend to love a poet} appeared first on Jeanette LeBlanc.

There is a chill here today.  The sky is overcast and the room is darker than usual.  I lift my coffee to my lips, hands wrapped around warm white pottery.  I drink with some sweet kind of reverence.  Thank you for this small grace. Melancholy piano keys offer melody and a sultry voice delivers lyrics with the ache of loss and hope of redemption.  The air is inexplicably tinged with the scent of wood smoke, summoning a memory of dark green trees and the perfect slow slide of a summer sunset.  The world tugs at me, speaking in a language I don’t quite remember that I once spoke.  I am restless.

My eyes raise.  I see around me lives and relationships and heartaches and bliss.  Beginnings and endings and the monotonous days in the middle when future is uncertain and the present begs escape.   I see the way the lamp illuminates his skin and wonder about the dark circles beneath his eyes.  I hear the sound of her hesitant laughter.  I watch them eye one another, both too cautious to do more than warily approach the idea of their inevitable coming together.  I smell jasmine and night air and my longing is stirred for some reason I do not yet understand.    All of this matters.  It is all a part of the story.

As a writer, my main task is to observe.  To bring presence to my moments and attention to my days.  To pay homage to what filters past the notice of most.  This attention is the starting point, the place it all begins.

I bring focus to the sacred; find it by teasing back the layers and reaching just beyond the surface of the relentlessly mundane.  It is all fodder for art.  I absorb and empty, messy scrawl on blank page.  When I am hollow I am only ready to be filled again.  And so it goes.

What do I know?  This is the question that is at the start of everything.  What do I know? This is where the words must always begin.

And after what I know comes that which I do not know.  That which I may never know.  That which piques my endless curiosity.  And then that which I long for, reach for, fear and shy away from.   All of this is ushered to the surface of my body, to the tips of my fingers, to the place where they connect with the keys and the flow begins.

The man in the blue plaid shirt across from me at this weathered table.  I wonder about him.  He runs his hands absentmindedly through his hair, inhales deep and lets his head and shoulders slump forward.  He is young but he has done battle. I can tell. His losses hang like curtains in front of his green eyes.  I wonder who it was that he loved.  What he has lost.  Where does he find the beauty that sustains him?  Who does he call home?

Every mornings we open our eyes to a day that brings birth and death.  Sex and breakdown.  Meditation and tantrum.  Prayer and profanity.   Every epic tale we have ever known is right there, within the texture and fabric of our ordinary hours, waiting to be told.

The dark red lipstick mark on the perfect white coffee mug holds an entire story.  So does the breeze from the open door behind me.  The mortar layered between the bricks to my right was laid a half century ago or more, by hands that held babies and made love to strangers and hurt people so badly they did not recover.    And the way the sunlight is making her hair glow like a halo as she turns to laugh and decides to spin in circles like the freedom found in the center of the spiral.  Right there.  That moment.  It could hold an entire novel.

These stories all swirl in the air around me, mingling with my own, becoming more along the way.  I draw my sweater around me and shiver – as much from the possibility inherent in the blank page before me as from the chilly air.  My coffee has cooled.  My ears are filled with a song that makes me think of new worlds and ancient love.  I am awake.  I am paying attention.

It is time to begin.

~~~~~~~~

Do you want to write?  Have you long known that there is story in you and all around you, just waiting to be told?  Are you reading to start paying attention?  Get in touch and tell me all about it.  Beginning next month I will have openings for three lovely and brave souls with stories to tell, who are ready to work one-on-one to bring their words to the surface and offer them to the world.  I know you have a story, and I would love to help you tell it.

The post it is all a part of the story appeared first on Jeanette LeBlanc.

And so I tried to do the sensible thing. The thing everyone said was the very best possible thing to do.  To go back to school. To get a ‘regular’ job. Something solid. Secure. Dependable. To do what I needed to do to care for the wee girlies who were and are my focus.

And yet I struggled and fought and pushed back against this future that felt inevitable – with all my might.  In the years since I have gone from supporting myself with my words and my photography, to driving an hour and a half commute and working in a corporate cubical, and back to etching out a living with art once again.

But through it all, one voice has spoken with clarity and force and no small amount of entitlement. She is the artist. She is me. There is no separating the two.

It was the night I wrote of here, stuck in a freezing classroom, attempting to force my brain to understand computer programing – that I found my way to my truth. That truth has never left me, and it never will.

The day after I wrote this post – one of the first ever published here on this blog – I quit school to live my purpose. I didn’t have a plan. it was utterly irresponsible – without a doubt.  The years since have been fucking beautiful and fucking hard and fucking everything in between, but not once did I regret listening to this voice- the voice of the artist. Not once did I question her wisdom. Not after this night.

You could say – really – that everything begins here.

Why am I here?

I feel panic bubbling up inside. I can’t breathe. I don’t belong here; don’t want to learn about programming algorithms and logical coding structure. I’m the only female in a room of guys who have been tinkering with computers for years. They are all eager, excited to learn enough to finally unleash their inner Bill Gates on the world. I am terrified, searching everywhere for an escape route and finding none, so ridiculously out of place that I hear a refrain bubbling up from my subconscious, and I stifle a laugh.

“one of these things is not like the other, one of these things just doesn’t belong…”

I’m accustomed to feeling intelligent, but here I feel like everyone is fluent in a language I’ve never before encountered. All the rest seem well versed in the dialect of DOWHILE and ENDIF and PSEUDOCODE. I am missing the part of my brain necessary for making sense of all this. I don’t WANT to make sense of all this. My brain feels like the human equivalent of the blue screen of death that keeps appearing on my failing laptop. I am caught in an infinite loop of confusion and self pity, about to freeze up and shut down.

i just want to make pretty things.

It becomes part mantra, part plea – a desperate cycling through my brain in hopes the universe hears.

Please, not this. I just want to make pretty things.

~~~

It took me a long time to call myself an artist. It takes audacity to hold up a word like that and claim it for myself. It is a big, bold, brilliant, terrifying thing. I am an artist. I play with light, bend words to suit, gather inspiration and beauty and scatter it in circles that are ever widening as I learn to step into myself.

I make pretty things. It is what I am here to do. It is what makes me feel alive. It’s not about the medium or the money, it’s about letting the universe flow through me, accepting what I’m given and letting it become what it will. I am so solid and sure of myself, of my path. This is who I am. I create – words or images or communities of people – and it’s as necessary as breathing. I must do this.

This future I’m now staring down –  long days in a cubical somewhere, staring at a characters on a computer screen and trying to force them to do my bidding  – this feels like a direct betrayal of the work I have been put here to do, a slow death of spirit and purpose. I know what my work is, with a clarity that people yearn for their whole life. I know it, and I cannot embrace it. I turn quickly from desperation into a petulant, foot stomping child.

I don’t wanna do it! I don’t wanna do it! I don’t wanna do it!

So my rebellious teenage self steps in, all cocky attitude and larger than life bravado – chain smoking and punked out – way too cool to be owned by anyone’s expectations.

Fuck it. Don’t get worked up. Just don’t do it. They can’t make you. Go underground. Be an illegal alien. Don’t waste your time with this messed up system. This is stupid. Nana-nanana…They can’t catch you! Just sit there and put your hands over your ears, ignore the bullshit and make your stuff.

But I’m full of self-pity, an egocentric puddle of woe and the worst part is that I did this. Nobody set this in motion but me, and what is there to do but follow it through? The sense of resistance I have is incredible. I’m digging in my heels hard but being dragged along in spite of myself. The logistics of this situation leave me with few options. I am stuck in a trap of my own making. I’m gearing up for ginormous temper tantrum followed by limb flailing meltdown of epic proportions. I’m almost daring the universe to send me to my room for an indefinite time out.

Out of nowhere another voice fills my head, and she’s irritated. She hauls me up off the floor and drops me roughly on my chair for as stern talking to (with a healthy dose of ridicule thrown in for good measure).

So, you’ve got to go to school to learn to do something you don’t want to do? Oh, poor, poor little baby. You know what, lots of people go to work every single day to do jobs they hate and they make the best of it. That’s life. There are bills to pay and kids to feed and this is just reality so SUCK. IT. UP. SISTAH.  Oh, for gods sake quit that sniveling – it’s pathetic.

And I know she’s right, damn it, but I don’t want to hear it. I want someone to understand why this feels so fucking terrible. I want someone to hold my hand and stroke my hair and tell me that it will all be okay.

please, just tell me it will all be okay…

I’ve fallen off my imaginary time out chair and I’m curled in a ball on the floor now, an oozing, snotty, crying mess – wondering how to pull it together before people notice.

My gently pragmatic self steps in, sits down next to me on the floor and lifts my chin. She’s all Mary Poppins with her spoon full of sugar and spit-spot snap of her fingers making everything tidy again.

You’ll make the best of it dearie. You’ll do what you have to do and it won’t be forever. You never know, you might even like it. Come on, pick yourself up. You’re a strong one, remember. You can do this. You have to do this, so there is no sense in crying about it. Chin up love, chin up.

And I know all those voices are a part of me, and they all have a point. But the only one who speaks in first person is the artist, the one whose soul burns with the fire of creativity.

The one who makes pretty things.

~~~

Class is ending and I’m gathering my things together to walk out. For three hours I’ve sat here so deep in my head that I have no idea what was said. No matter that I’ve turned this around in my head a million times already, I’m still searching for a way out. I get into the car and turn on my iPod, looking for answers the music. I take a deep breath  put the car in drive and head home, because sometimes, there’s nothing to do but keep moving forward, taking the next logical step, and having faith that it will all work out in the end.

I am exactly where I need to be.  I need to be exactly where I am. I am a blessing manifest.

~~~

I’m gonna go home and make some pretty things.

{This is the story of the night my artist voice came and lodged in me. Where I heard her speak and knew her to be mine – for the very first time. And it’s true, I believe, that everything that came after hinged here – the way it does sometimes. on these moments that seem perfectly ordinary until lived in retrospect. You could say I owe my creative life to this night. You could stay that it all started right there in that room. And that even now – all of my choices are a way of honoring that.

So here’s to making pretty things. To the insensible and the impractical. To the pull to the center and edges. Here is to vast crucible of art and creation. To the swirl of paint and the spill of words and the melody of song and the glorious mess of it all.  May it fill us and break us down and lift us up and make us whole. May it be the very thing that saves us. This is the way of words. This is the way of art. This is the way of life.

Quiet now. Do you hear the the voice of the artist within?  She is waiting for you to listen. She is waiting for you to create.}

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