We Cultivate These Things

I'm having a public love affair with life. I am writing in large bold type while wearing my glasses. I am in my plaid pajamas and summer bathrobe with a mug of hot weak naked tea beside me. The house is cold but feels good like an icy swim on my skin. I feel heat from my neck and goosebumps. I have eleven years of dust and paper piles in my office. I'm still wearing jeans from the Carter administration. I need to find a shoemaker.

Writing is freedom. We have unbelievable freedom in this country. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise even if they have advanced degrees. We can write paint and dance the way we want. It’s easy to forget this and be sucked up into the cultural indoctrination surface swirl. Dive deep and examine your thighs, and your thoughts.

When I first started writing I used to get up every few minutes and go to the window to check and make sure my mother was not out there with a gun aimed right at me. One day I saw a man on the street pointing at my house and nearby properties, he was looking up and down the street. I was sure he was the hired assassin assessing his angle for the kill. That’s when I knew writing was very important and I must continue. As a kid I would only write my dreams in my sketchbook and even those were psychoanalyzed. But now I am free to write, I am no longer living under a fascist regime.

Freedom doesn't take the fear away, it includes the fear. But we must use the combustible mix of fear, joy, love, and rage energies with a heavy dose of compassion, tolerance, and patience. Every day a kaleidoscope, a new mix of weather, news, emotions, hungers, dreams and fears. We are walking palettes and the brushes are in our hands.