Somehow I am missing like three years of photos. Most of 2014-2017 has vanished from my phone. Thank GOD I still have this one from 2016. 2016, you were a hell of a drug.
Our second small theater showcase (with open mic!) is underwaaaaay! Another killer combo of multifaceted poetry, music & goodness right in time for @imalwaysali 's solar return 😍😍 All art forms welcomed 🎙️🎙️🎙️🎭 link in bio to secure your seat.
The words aren’t flowing like they used to, but I can’t always expect them to. I know this. Ebb, flow. Absorb, reflect. This is how it works. Sometimes, mind to pen is easy peasy, and other times I have to accept the creative wintering, even in summer, and embrace the opportunity to do literally anything else, and trust that I will find it again, right where I left it, you big baby. I am choosing to trust I am on the right path, even when it feels a little slow, even when it scratches against my skin. Frictionlessness is an impossibility anyway. I am choosing to see all that surrounds me, as opposed to all that does not. Happy summer to all who celebrate 💛
My 40th birthday came and went with just the right amount of fanfare, and here I am, still alive. Still making new core memories, still blooming.
I am currently sitting in the San Juan airport after a blissed out weekend celebrating an incredible couple, and I am contemplating family and choices and fate, and the idea that I have no idea what’s around the corner is becoming less daunting, more thrilling every day.
I’m in my forties, and I can do anything. (DM for the skincare routine 😇)
Here’s a truth: for many reasons, this year, the last year of my thirties, has been one of the most challenging of my life. I have been made to stand face-to-face with ancient demons — real original sin-type shit — in what was possibly the most intense and terrifying episode of my life. A real rock bottom moment. But I am since reminded — again, always — how malleable the mind is and how resilient I am. And how, with the right support, recovery is possible — swift, even. Downright graceful.
Probably not coincidentally, I have been carrying around this wretched idea that anything I’m going to accomplish has to be done by the time I hit 40. After that, it’s lights out. For however enlightened I proclaim myself to be, I’ve found this idea to be stubborn as hell, and combined with my recent mental health issues, has made for some (unnecessarily!) humbling moments. But yesterday, I cry-laughed watching “The Nightman Cometh” (Always Sunny), and next week, I turn 40, and the world is on fire, and so is my brain, and I’m still fucking standing, and as long as that’s true, I have to have hope. I am not done!! Sorry to my haters.
Today we said goodbye to my grandfather, Ted Eisler. The most upstanding guy there was; they simply do not make em like they used to. Pop-pop led a full and vibrant life, surrounded by loved ones, until the day he died at 101.
Over the past few days, I’ve spent a lot of time at his home in Westchester, and I keep coming back to these house slippers haphazardly kicked under a side table in the den. Something about how we do these routine things all the time and then one day is the last day you scooch your slippers under the table.
I am filled with gratitude for having known and loved and been loved by him.
Tomorrow! I have the privilege of facilitating an Expressive Arts support group with @dbsacalifornia , who do such great work fostering community and providing support to those who live with mood disorders like bipolar disorder and depression. (As you may or may not know, I am part of that community myself!)
The session is tomorrow (Thursday 11/14) at 3:30pm eastern/12:30pm pacific. We’ll be writing and making art and sharing with each other. It’ll be so lovely, and you don’t need any artistic experience to participate, just writing and any art materials you have and a willingness to play — join us!
Zoom link and ID:
https://us06web.zoom.us/j/84933246771
849-3324-6771
✨
Happy beanie szn to all who celebrate.
I’ve been quiet a while. I’ve been writing a lot. And maybe I am spinning myself in circles a bit, but maybe that’s what I’m supposed to be doing right now. It’s hard to say. Still, I am grateful that the pen is moving — that I am standing upright and looking my demons dead in the face, picking them apart bit by bit until the only thing that’s left of them is that glowing little wish they wrapped themselves around in the name of torturing me. I don’t know if I’m doing it right. It’s so hard to know if I’m doing it right. So hard to believe that the universe is fundamentally kind when I have so little evidence to support that.
If I ramble, it is only because I am trying to swallow the sky, which sends my mind in a thousand different directions. I am just trying to keep up. Sometimes, I am speechless, but that never lasts long. Mostly, I am so full of speech, I feel like maybe this is the one — maybe I really am going insane this time. Rage so incandescent I cannot believe this body can house it, so righteous I want to cultivate it. See what it can do. Let’s see what my particular insanity can do.
Rage has never been my season. But I admit now that it is a season. That there is a place here for white hot fury and its descendants. I am finding it in the contours of my mind, the steady thump-thump of my heart. It exists, whether I like it or not, whether it is rewarded or not. It is a glowing little ember, so intertwined with my wishes that they depend on each other for survival.
It reminds me of the power in my fingertips. It reminds me I am alive.
