Over the weekend, I attended an artist retreat – a short overnight camping experience in the tranquil rural wilderness of someone’s expansive backyard. Writers and artists gathered, tents were set up, a bonfire was lit, meaning was made.
To understand is to read. To discover is to write…
…and there is something pensive and magical about being a writer. We can so easily marvel at and romanticize everything: a gathering of poets around a crackling fire, an idyllic country landscape that conjures our own softness, a morning drive through dense fog just as the sun is beginning to rise.
As humans, it is our nature to seek meaning in everything. As a writer, it is our nature to canonize life through the lens of these experiences and convey our perspective and discoveries with words.
We paint with sound. We draw with similes. We sketch our very souls straight onto the page. We carve out corners time and time again and burrow deeper into our own meanings.
During that retreat, the facilitator posed a question for the circle: What is writing to you? What does it mean? How do you define it?
A loaded gun of a question for any writer or poet, and there were some profound answers. Mine was simple: it is everything. It has become so much that I think the better question would have been, “What is writing not?”
For me, writing is both an action and a sacred noun – a place I live. Writing is a sanctuary where I can wander in at any time and reconnect to myself when I have become too lost. I write to find myself, to make myself known, and to become.
Writing is immortalization of memories and experiences that are preserved in far greater detail than any photo. I write to remember, to feel, to connect. Writing is an allowance of the most authentic self, and I often find I begin to write as if I am Alice following the white rabbit to Wonderland. I often never know where my words will lead me, or even what I’m writing, until I come to the end of the piece and some bit of truth is revealed. Another part of myself has been collected and stitched into place. Another part of the whole has been unearthed and put on display as if to say, “Look! Look at what I have found!” in the hopes that someone else will find value, meaning, and connection in what I have so diligently and tirelessly worked to uncover.
In sharing our perspective, we recognize our own humanity. Writing is the conduit in which we help others to see theirs.
During that retreat, we spent time getting to know each other and had discussions on many aspects of writing. While I, still a bit standoffish when it comes to the group dynamic, mostly observed, taking it all in to of course, when the moment was write, share those experiences and make meaning of them as I am doing now.
I marveled at the rising embers of the bonfire like neon orange fireflies disappearing into smoke. I took note of the way the moon radiated a soft halo of pale light in the night sky. I relaxed deeper into the unfolding of myself in such a safe space while holding the paradox of also feeling slightly like somewhat of an outsider. All of it reminded me of a quote I’d recently come across in Mark Nepo’s poetry collection Reduced to Joy. He prefaced a poem with the following:
A fish cannot drown in water,
A bird does not fall in air.
In the fire of creation,
God doesn’t vanish:
The fire brightens.
Each creature God made
must live in its own true nature
-Mechthild of Magdeburg
It of course had my wheels turning, about how as humans, we can spend our whole lives in search of this true nature. We seek purpose and meaning. We look desperately for the places where we best fit, where we feel seen and accepted. We try on spaces and places and various groups in the hopes of communing with like-minded souls, those that see us and recognize us for not only who we are, but who we could become. There are certain people that know how to make you feel seen, even if you’re still the slightly aloof one at the far edge of the circle, still a little unsure about fully immersing yourself in that space. At least you’re trying. At least you’re putting yourself out there in an attempt to be known.
At its core, this is why I write. My true nature is neither water nor air, but ink.
Mine is every word I’ve ever whispered, every element I’ve painted on a page, every bit of truth sipped, swilled or spilled from my pen, every immortalized moment, everything and everyone I’ve ever loved in a poem, every piece written that uses only L, O, V, and E to write my many devotions.
To love me is to read my work. To know me is to find my words. To connect is to see some bit of yourself reflected in the things that I share and to tell me what you’ve learned.
Through writing, I wake up gently to life, and even when it is not so gentle, I can find respite in written word. My love language is just that – language itself.
I won’t just tell you I love you, I will compose a song so long it will require the expansive space of an entire book (and in fact, I’m doing exactly that). I won’t just say you’re beautiful, worthy, and appreciated, I will describe it a hundred ways until I’m blue in the face and when time has cleaved into the early hours of a slow Sunday, I’ll ask you to stay for breakfast and feed you the most decadent pancakes as a poem. I won’t just state what I’ve learned in life thus far, I will take your hand and walk with you through every fire, every storm, every early evening sunset I have ever experienced. I will cut myself open just to be known on a deeper level.
I often wake to fragmented thoughts and residual dreams, lingering somewhere on the edge of remembrance and have to fill in the blanks. Recently, I wrote this poem in my early 5am groggy state (a frequent occurrence for me - dream poetry), when messages are profoundly permeable and so easily cross the divide between the spiritual realm and our physical earthly plane:
The Things We Wake To
I have a dream about spilled milk and the mess it makes
and I wake to only fragments of some phrase
some idea that didn’t get completely expressed
and it says:have no doubt.
you are
and it is –
both a beautiful work of artthe pooling edges
expanding shape shifting changing
the allowance of itself
just because no one else can see it for its truth
does not make it any less true
I encourage you, even if you don’t consider yourself a writer – especially if you don’t consider yourself a writer – to make space for your own creativity, your own uniqueness, your own sanctuary, whatever that looks like for you. Maybe it’s poetry, maybe it’s painting. Maybe it’s music or dance. Maybe it’s dressing up. Maybe it’s doodling on post-its and leaving them for strangers in the most random of places. Maybe it’s something so obscure you’re creating an entire new genre of art and creative expression. Maybe you’re still finding out what that is. The point is to try, little by little, and to allow it.
To find your true nature, be not bird, nor fish. Be spilled milk.
Be the allowance of yourself, changing shape as you expand, in every encounter named as the various places that you’ve lived. Do not sleepwalk through life. Dig for your truth. Then be brave enough to express it in great detail, and wake us gently to your findings, to the once-in-a-lifetime experience that is you.