Thin and permeable old skins.
Perhaps forgetfulness as self-preservation takes their honorable place.
I am not afraid of heart breakage. This heart has been broken many times as the hearts of others throughout many ancient times.
And now.
I am afraid however, of not living, not loving, while I am alive. Of not caring any more about anything as grand tiredness sets in, deep underneath those same skins.
And perhaps this is another comforting illusion, one of so many.
Futile attempts to make sense of vast and various degrees of extreme senselessness, unfortunateness, cruelty, and anguish as they continue on and on and on with no end in sight.
I believe that when we no longer have words left in us, only tears, we seek the warmth and comfort of other people’s poetry.
Words through which to live a new day, words wherein to find new light and vision, words that give a glimpse into still possible hope.
Discerning between what is growing between us and what is shrinking, slowly moving towards utter stagnancy, between what is exuberant and triumphant and what is hanging on by a thread, perhaps going nowhere, or even more profoundly, going somewhere never visited before, a place filled with deep sorriness and sorrow.
Earthy tones and neutral hues are always embedded in what I make and how I dress my spaces and myself. Yet reds and pinks always somehow insist on appearing as representatives of both the fiery and the soft.
Encompassing all the contradictions in me.
Many of us are still blessed with a space to be in, resources to live off of, safety, the opportunity to have what we like to call “peace in our hearts”, and the great freedom to come and go, stay, or leave, escape our entrapments.
Being able to physically and mentally distance ourselves from events that take place outside & far away from us and from ‘others’ is a privilege and an opportunity so many more don’t have.
I can easily decide that in the next few days I’ll be focusing on making art and in doing so relieve and subdue the heaviness in my heart and give myself a chance to forget for a while, the pain stuck deep in my bones and in the bones of others.
I can silence the overbearing noise in my head and put aside the constantly growing disillusionment I have with pretty much everything in the world, including my own, even if for a short time.
Being able to have a go at removing myself from ‘a situation’ is a great luxury I am greatly aware of and am deeply grateful for as well.
I also have shame around it, and that’s a luxury too. No need to make it go away at this time. I am grateful for that as well. I am grateful, for the gift of breaks.
So are these days. Filled with heartbreaks of all kinds. Hard to discern between them, find the breaths, the heartbeats, that would grant some power to separate them into digestible and manageable emotional events.
Hard to give into the sentiment that ‘loving deeply’ is both an exquisite gift and an unimaginable anguish. To surrender to the notion that both can be tenderly held, side by side, in the same old and familiar spaces in the body, at the same particular time.
Love and tragedy, seem to couple up. Way too often these days.
Someone once said, I don’t remember who, that ‘Form’ changes while ‘Love’ stays in tact.
And whether it’s so, or not, what is between us humans, ought to be always always always sacred.
In our bedrooms and in far away from us lands.
So let’s cease the extreme cruelty across our despicable man-made borders.
The contempt.
This screaming apathy.
The delusion of superiority and ownership.
The false righteousness.
This deep despair.
This unbearable and unmanageable fright.
Our endless engagement in the custom creating of nightmares for ‘others’.
It looks so very very very bad on us.
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🤎🤍🖤
Orly
“Love and Tradegy” (your words, dear Orly) it brought this thought and feeling to mind when I read your words.
To feel and give love in the midst of tradegy seems like a beautiful tenderness. I am often surprised that I can feel love at times when my heart and spirit is broken? When I am so furiously angry that I want to scream until I have no breath left in my body? How is there still space for love in the midst of such tradegy and evil in this World? Somehow, it is there to lean into. It seems like a miracle. I look forward to your beautiful soulful art with pink and red hues. It’s a balm.
All the realms of human experience lie here in your words. How far thin and how weighted and deep are the human emotions that consume us? Emotions live inside our bellies, but radiate through every pore of our being. Emotions arise without asking permission to visit. Burning hot emotions of hatred; soft, breathless emotions of love; whirling, churning, sickening waves of fear. We are filled with all these. How is it possible that one body holds emotions so vastly disparate and forever changing? How is it possible that one human absorbs the pain of another human thousands of miles across the globe, without ever meeting that human or knowing his name? There are such humans, though. There are humans who feel far away pain as if it were their own. There are other humans who witness their own neighbor’s suffering and feel nothing.
What am I trying to say? I don’t know. These are littie questions in my head. I read this piece, and I wonder. I ask, why is this so? How is this so? Who are we humans?