mutecalliope
I've got nothing
but a bunch
of problems
held in my hand
like a bouquet
I breathe them in
and have to marvel
at the complication
of it all.
I've been working so hard at this for years, and I never seem to be good enough. It's been killing my soul so much that I had to take a step back. I just didn't see how I could keep deluding myself into thinking I would ever reach my goals. It's been a year of learning, of growth, and I find myself becoming more of the artist I always saw myself to be. I will probably never be good enough, but creating beauty for beauty's sake has to be it's own reward.
There are so many things that have shaken me from delusions of what I thought I knew. Mostly loss, but also love, and discovery. I guess sometimes you have to be shaken of your former self to grow to a newer one. Shaking off old hurt, philosophies, ways of dealing can be a great thing if what grows beneath it is something more evolved.
I have owned plenty of mistakes in my life. I feel like it's good for my karma to just get it over with. But I feel like something's coming, something big. My deep and profound sense of intuition tells me what it is, and I cannot speak it out loud. What have I done that is so terrible, so cosmically atrocious as to deserve what I fear in my worst nightmares is coming to me? My mind, my spirit, everything is preparing me for it. And I just wished I'd owned more of my karmic debt sooner, because this retribution may kill me.
People today are so entitled. I see it in my daugher's generation, all the way through mine. I wonder why they think they "deserve" the things they want? What ever happened to hard work? I try to teach my daughter that what she deserves is respect, love, and the opportunity to work for what she wants. That is all any of us deserve.
I remember the first time I learned to french braid. I was at a friend's house and I taught myself from a book. I was 8, and this accomplishment seemed to go fairly unnoticed by everyone. Looking back on it now, and knowing that my daughter is much older but still cannot french braid, I wonder if I really was that advanced - or if she is that delayed. I compare her childhood to mine in many ways. Our lives are braided together in ways she doesn't yet understand.
I saw a man do cocaine once. I was lying in his bed, waiting for him to get hard. It never came. He never came. He laughed and he cried over his wife and kids. They left him "for the weekend" to get away from his binge. What a powerful business man, addicted to this powder. I stared at it and wondered how a man can be reduced to an addict.
I'm not sure relieved is ever the right word for what I felt when Grandma died. I wanted to scream, cry, hold her and never let go. I felt anxious, excited, scared as hell, and the word relieved even crept into my mind. Because the brief knowledge of her illness wreaked havoc on her, and somehow I knew I had to be happy for her when it was over. The best I could hope to do was be relieved.