The past year in prompts.
1.
one: it takes a fucking heart to know someone
two: what does it mean to hold space for people you love?
three: what does it mean to hold space for people you resent?
four: loving me also means loving myself in my pain (a note to self, really)
five: and embracing ambiguous loss
six: red is the color of my grief
seven: how do I maximize the use of language in my daily?
eight: to keep meeting ourselves in circles
nine: life begins with emptying out
ten: keep warm through the fire of your center
eleven: you will weave it all together
twelve: ‘‘Change is the new, improved word for god’’ - Wendy Videlock
2.
“twenty-seven years of glimmer and puzzle pieces”
A phrase that flowed from heart to paper, alchemy. Reflecting on all that was, these glimmers and puzzle pieces - my life has always been one grand carousel of intimacy. I grieve and embrace tenderly many fragments of my being, parts that had to climb out of rabbit holes; to survive first before truly, courageously breathing with life’s grace and gratitude.
When days are far and gone, we find ourselves in present moments where laughter fills up a room with ghosts of broken picture frames and empty seats.
3.
I write so I can trace back one day what lessons, trinkets, and images I have collected so far in this grand journey toward ‘home’. To commemorate each, to paint pictures through the alchemy of letters into words. To write lullabies of the places and the faces that pieced together this picture of a lifetime.
Sometimes I dread the possibility of forgetting. There is fondness in memories and there is fondness in the hope of reliving each one over and over, once more. And so, as artists of words, we paint with the strokes of every letter. What effort and what currency does one trade to craft memory onto paper? What magic does one perform to experience memory once more?
Nostalgia is sweet, flowing like honey to each of our tender. Memories - these flesh and bones can never, ever grasp but instead, feel. And when I close my eyes after every witnessing of words and phrases, a picture of the mind plays.
It goes on.