Who and What You Are For
Poetic musings, meditations, and community news on the new moons.
Hello from the surprise of February sunshine in the PNW ~ I hope a sneak peek into spring is landing for you in a sweet way too, energetically or otherwise.
The muse that follows crawled out of a spill of morning pages written a few weeks ago as I found myself overwhelmed, as many of us are, by the daily task of creating amidst collective upheaval, personal shifts, keeping kibble in the cats’ bowls (metaphorically and for real), staying connected to and caring toward the self while continuing to reach toward the ones we love in hopes of supporting them too. It’s a lot. I’m with you in the a-lot-ness. The rippling of it all is unceasing.
Sitting my worn out but ever-determined poetic self down in the frustration, language led me out (again) into the spaciousness of questioning, into the softness of remembering that all of our actions and words and creations have a greater effect. May it land you in your own gentle curiosity.
Who and What You Are For
an essential inquiry and its cyclical renewal
In any practice, it is reasonable, common, and (I think) important that questions around who and what we are creating for rise to the surface. Creation for creation’s sake is an incredibly beautiful, human inclination—let us not lose our touch point to this basic impulse as we ponder. But as the practice elongates, as time draws us deeper into the layers within it, those eyebrow-raising questions float from the vulnerable depths to lure our inquiry… Who, or what is this work for? Who, or what am I for?
We are bound to lose our immediate answers to these questions. Sometimes the answer is obvious—Joyful! So clear! Easy! And sometimes the answer is almost absent, like a far-off windchime echoing from an unknowable direction in an eerie midnight breeze, more like a memory than a graspable thing. In a world practically designed to erode our connection to this innate creativity (artists often acting as the conduits for societal revolution, and their art-making often acting as a form of resistance) it is all too easy to become prickly when asking these questions of ourselves, snagging a spiral all the way down into the whirlpool of thoughts around art not mattering to most people. At least, not obviously, it might seem.
I know this spiral, I know this worry. I am versed in the feeling that returns like an unwelcomed relative to haunt me, to daunt me into doubting what poetry can actually do for us in a world that is in such chaos, such destruction, such dire need of immediate and sustained action.
I am here (on the page, on the earth) to affirm all art as a tool to deconstruct what keeps us separate, knowing it as a force that strengthens the connective bonds we all need to keep our work and the collective work going… I am here alongside you to be the ripples of remembering this.
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I am for the poets. I am a poet for the poets who are also translators, conduits, diviners, healers, helpers, seers, spell-casters, truth-tellers, visionaries, free-thinkers, contrarians, revolutionaries.
I am for the artists among artists who uplift each other as they create. I am for holy reciprocity. I am for the ones that choose the paths un-walked, who clear the way while they move.
I am for those who know the sacred cyclicality of coming into being, who practice renewal in relation to the renewal of others in a great and continuous unfolding.
I am for empathy, for the voices that wail in their witnessing of atrocity, that still sing soft songs of hope and healing.
I am also for the robin that sings at first light, the brave signal awakening the chorus of dawn into its ringing. I am always for the seed which sprouts a tendril, for the dampness that nourishes a strong root. I am forever for the miracle of the bud becoming the blossom.
I am for the courageous hearts that open again and again, despite the wounds. I am for the wild, weathered hearts that beat through all their laugh lines and scar tissue.
I am for the moon. I am pretty sure we are all for the moon even if we don’t know it. I am for the constellations that surround her, their wise archetypes reflecting aspects of our higher selves back to us.
I am for those that keep coming to the pages to write Life itself, both miniscule and cosmic. I am for the ones that understand this is entirely absurd and completely vital.
I am for those who honor the dead alongside the living, who listen for the voice of the world as it speaks in more than mere language.
I am for the flux and its constant undulation, for the spectrum of madness and peace within it.
I am for small gestures that have deep effects.
I am for necessary realignment, for the stark lessons that illuminate the purpose.
I am for the ones who answer the call to create, for their place in the myth of the hero’s journey.
I am for the unwavering centering of Love, for those who build their beings around it, who practice it with humility and surrender and reverence and awe and openness.
I am for Love itself—for the palpable force of it, the radiant light of it.
I am for the questions that keep us ruminating and returning.
I am for myself, and I am for you. Both of us, one ripple on the rung of existence. But bright ripples, necessary ripples, vast in their vibrations.
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And who are you for, what are you for? I hope your answers reveal themselves with delightful idiosyncrasy. I hope you’ll nod to them in knowing when they come.
Poetic Meditation - Ripples on the Rung
In the Orbit
A reminder that CAM’s new Writers Membership Program launches this weekend! March 1st, Common Objects, 7pm, come celebrate!
Cadence Video Poetry Project is hosting the Reimagining Climate Futures workshop, an offering to reimagine y(our) relationship with the climate crisis and transform feelings of powerlessness into creative action. This, y’all. Learn more and register here.
A group of musicians, including Ran Park, created a compilation album called Earth Amulets, the proceeds of which will be donated to Gaza Mutual Aid Solidarity. Their verbiage around our linking (“this album is an effort to contribute an eddy to the ocean that is Palestinian liberation… through the process of feeling and vibration, it links the artists… to the people listening… to the people contributing… to the recipients of funds… and so on”) is particularly moving. Listen and support here.
‘Til the next moon, dear ones, take very good care of yourself and others.