You Never Really Get it Until it's Happening to You
Some nights are like this. Where are you? Some nights are like this there.
It's been a Monday. Except better. It's been all the terrible and wonderful at the same time. I'm sitting here with a smile, planning a weekend. Unless a Friday night changes it all. I don't think it will. But everything in me wants it to. I don't know why.
I baked bread. I gave away two loaves to important people who have given me the thing I needed most at the time they came along. Two such different gifts between them. But oddly, so bizarrely close. A torn shirt pocket and gentleness and gorgeous and wonder.
I've been compelled to paint for someone. I only paint from love. My best efforts are love. I think rarely the person I paint for sees what it makes me feel. Or more accurately, what it helps me express that I feel. I paint when the words aren't enough. And I always have words. Sometimes just not the ones that show the depth and height and the wild color and growth and breadth of the love. Someone once told me that I reached into their mind and painted exactly what they saw. I'm told I can do that with words. But I see it on the canvas so much more clearly. Painting never moves. Once you finish, it's done. It's one gulp of the world and not the little sentence sips of print.
The best painting of my life was something I painted when I kind of started loving myself. Wow. Just realized that. It sits in my sister's kitchen. I never thought about why I chose that for her. I hope that she finds the same kind of deep and abiding self-acceptance. Radical self-acceptance. I love her so. More than I love myself. And there is the reason I chose it, I think.
Today has been a big day for seeing. Isn't that a way to think about it. Words are feeling and painting is how I see and music is what I hear and the things I bake are my taste and everything is my nose: bookbinding glue, and oil paints and linseed, and fog machines and smoky bars, and bread baking and the buttery swirl of frosting whipping up.
Work was good today. Not unbusy, but important. I suppose in its way. Another thing today is that we all have our place. Sometimes it just means to support the good in the world. Loud and vibrant and peacockish as I am, my favorite place is behind the real show.
I'm grateful for sunscreen and polarized lenses. I'm grateful for parking lots and space to move if I choose. Or to not move. For feeling nineteen again. For being giggling Girlie in the way that most people who meet me now could never see.
Today was a day. Still missing a few someones I cannot call back to me. Nothing I can do. The ball was never really mine for the most part and I hate that. Move forward. There isn't any going back. I want to. But here I am, drowning and struggling toward the surface of blue water where it meets taupe golden sand that's in my hair and in my clothes and under my skin.
Some nights are about learning to breathe. They are about learning the right words and being brave enough to use them. About saying what you feel and being afraid and saying it anyway. Some nights weigh on you until almost midnight, despite several previous nights the same. Some nights are just that way. Some nights are like this where we are.
It's been a Monday. Except better. It's been all the terrible and wonderful at the same time. I'm sitting here with a smile, planning a weekend. Unless a Friday night changes it all. I don't think it will. But everything in me wants it to. I don't know why.
I baked bread. I gave away two loaves to important people who have given me the thing I needed most at the time they came along. Two such different gifts between them. But oddly, so bizarrely close. A torn shirt pocket and gentleness and gorgeous and wonder.
I've been compelled to paint for someone. I only paint from love. My best efforts are love. I think rarely the person I paint for sees what it makes me feel. Or more accurately, what it helps me express that I feel. I paint when the words aren't enough. And I always have words. Sometimes just not the ones that show the depth and height and the wild color and growth and breadth of the love. Someone once told me that I reached into their mind and painted exactly what they saw. I'm told I can do that with words. But I see it on the canvas so much more clearly. Painting never moves. Once you finish, it's done. It's one gulp of the world and not the little sentence sips of print.
The best painting of my life was something I painted when I kind of started loving myself. Wow. Just realized that. It sits in my sister's kitchen. I never thought about why I chose that for her. I hope that she finds the same kind of deep and abiding self-acceptance. Radical self-acceptance. I love her so. More than I love myself. And there is the reason I chose it, I think.
Today has been a big day for seeing. Isn't that a way to think about it. Words are feeling and painting is how I see and music is what I hear and the things I bake are my taste and everything is my nose: bookbinding glue, and oil paints and linseed, and fog machines and smoky bars, and bread baking and the buttery swirl of frosting whipping up.
Work was good today. Not unbusy, but important. I suppose in its way. Another thing today is that we all have our place. Sometimes it just means to support the good in the world. Loud and vibrant and peacockish as I am, my favorite place is behind the real show.
I'm grateful for sunscreen and polarized lenses. I'm grateful for parking lots and space to move if I choose. Or to not move. For feeling nineteen again. For being giggling Girlie in the way that most people who meet me now could never see.
Today was a day. Still missing a few someones I cannot call back to me. Nothing I can do. The ball was never really mine for the most part and I hate that. Move forward. There isn't any going back. I want to. But here I am, drowning and struggling toward the surface of blue water where it meets taupe golden sand that's in my hair and in my clothes and under my skin.
Some nights are about learning to breathe. They are about learning the right words and being brave enough to use them. About saying what you feel and being afraid and saying it anyway. Some nights weigh on you until almost midnight, despite several previous nights the same. Some nights are just that way. Some nights are like this where we are.
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