tzigane

I wrote the beginning to a short story:

“Come out, come out, wherever you are!”

Time demanded. It summoned my remaining moments with its second hand, pointing in a similar manner to the way an adult would fashion their fingers to scold a child.

To better explain, it all started one balmy spring afternoon at the age of eight.  While lost in a game of safari adventure, my eyes spotted a seemingly ordinary ball of cotton sitting on top of a milky brown stem. The common suburban weed broke the mirage of the Amazon, and dropped me back off on the lawn of my backyard. To my surprise, this was the moment when I first discovered Time. It was hiding in the sapling. It spoke out with a whisper which was magnified through the microphone of my childish curiosity.

“Existence is but a game of Hide and Seek with yours truly.” Time said.

 My 8 year old mind didn’t even register the sentence as a language, but as I inhaled to inquire further about the gibberish I had just heard, the CO2 released from my mouth broke up the cotton ball and carried the little sapling of time away. When I looked up from the ground, the sky had changed from afternoon to evening as if my parents had turned off the lights before bed. Perplexed by the disappearance of the normal fading of the sky from light to dark, I went inside for dinner. 

My Love Affair With Creativity: Be Who You Really Are & Never Apologize For It.

I have recently fallen deeply back in love with act of creating and this is a little scribbling about embracing the wonderful creative spirit that rests inside everyone. 

        Creativity is not as hard to harvest as its reputation makes it out to be. It stretches deep; penetrating right down to the inscription in every individuals’ DNA coding. The recipe is simple: just be yourself. The difficult part lies in harvesting the courage to choose to be the individual that you are (quirks & unforgivable parts included). It’s about not playing a game of social hide-and-seek with your own differences, but embracing them. In a society that continually cultivates mimetic practices, belonging, and sameness (even the sameness among differences), it is not surprising that people become shamefully defeated; throwing their individuality gem under the bed, like a dirty sock, hoping nobody lifts up the bed skirt. On a similar thread, acting “different”, simply for the sake of being different, falls under the same crime as well. The questions people continually find themselves asking are: “Do I belong or not?,” “Is this good or not?,” “Is this accepted or not?,” “Is this cool/smart/[insert value here] or not?,” rather than: “Is this right for me?,” “Is this something I value?,” “Is this something I believe?”, “Is this something I envisioned?”. And, most importantly when asking the latter set of questions, not apologizing for your genuine answer. All creativity requires is seeking beyond what culture has already thrown up on you and finding nourishment in whatever sustains, inspires, and moves you. No two eyes ever see exactly the same perspective: the illusion is  the sameness not the difference. Don’t cheat yourself out of what you have to offer yourself by living in the shadowy lie of desiring to be or copying someone else. Take up an identity in who you truly are. Genuine creativity is choosing to be you, and what’s more inspiring than that? 

The Purpose of Hair

My embodied spirit tousles the wind

Fibrous filaments tangled

Unfolding threads extend from my mind

Traversing covert barriers between self & earth

Like spiny dendrites connecting thoughts

Swept and fettered by directions tugging gently

Twisting strands in unprecedented patterns

Elusive to all but the imagination

Each extension, a trace

Back to the burrowing follicles beneath my scalp

Boundaries

Boundaries are inventions of the imagination used to prevent sensory overload; their rigidity is an illusion. Some are put into place for good measure, but you don’t always have to stay confined in them. 

my lover: imagination

I’m infatuated with this André Brenton quote in which he addresses his imagination as one would address a lover:

“Beloved imagination, what I most like in you is your unsparing quality.”

It makes me grateful to still be able to engage in this infinite capacity of the mind; to be able to free one’s self from the limits of everyday life through imagination.