Tag: art

Do I remember how to do this?

~ jennadawn ~ Leave a comment

Months away from the creative page.
The desire to make things
or express myself with words
evaporated and melted away
like the unseasonably warm weather of these winter months
kept the snow away
and prevented it from returning to stay.

I cannot find the words to convey the depths of pain and grief and depression and anxiety and ambivalence and change and interspersed joy that have filtered through and between the days of recent months.

I could not imagine what such words would look like, sounds like, spell like, write like or hear like, so it seemed worthless to spend any amount of time before a blank page, hoping for the imagining to come to me.

The thought of spending time before a blank page cascaded waves of fear, discomfort and vulnerability through every tissue of my body, maintaining distance between us.

I have felt vulnerability before, even embraced walking alongside it. But this felt different. It was vulnerability in a new form, a more terrifying form, and I chose to stay away for what I believed to be my own self-protection.

Last weekend, in the midst of an anxiety attack, I tried to color in a coloring book with pencil crayons, reasoning that the act of coloring would distract and calm my mind. Instead, my anxiety amplified. Fears of choosing the right picture (not too complex but not too simple), fears of choosing the right colors, fears of coloring too faintly, too intensely or beyond the lines, fears of choosing colors to live next to each other that do not complement. Questioning why I am limited to the colors chosen to be within this collection of pencils. Questioning why I need to adhere to rules and lines and systems laid out by an entity separate from myself. After ten minutes, I abandoned the effort.

I want to stand before a giant white canvas and throw globs of paint upon it, then wave a brush to spread them all around under the guide of exploration and curiosity. I want to get my hands messy. I don’t want to abide by arbitrary rules that tell me what’s right and what’s wrong with my exploration of self. I want to translate myself into colors and textures and images that words cannot always adequately capture within themselves. I am evolving. I am expanding.

I must believe
I am strong enough
to rise up against any tribulation
threatening to pull me down
and keep me there.

I have to trust
that I have the means within me
to face each new situation
in the moment.
It’s somewhere deep inside of me
waiting to rise when the time is right;
the knowing of what to do.
All I need to do is trust.

Trust that evolution
is a celebration
and a journey with no finish line.

I must trust that I remember how to do this,
and will remember how to do this
when I need to.

reclaiming the act of sharing art

~ jennadawn ~ Leave a comment

For weeks and weeks
maybe even months
I have been writing
but it has been
a different kind of writing,
different than a pen and a notebook,
different than poetry.

I have been writing a kind of writing
that requires a computer
the ability to use both of my hands
to write faster
to keep up with the dialogue and the story
pouring down from my head,
the kind of writing
where you can see word counts
at the bottom of the screen,
and pages and paragraphs
and can easily go back and make changes
if, realizing after a while,
thoughts have run off-kilter.

These weeks and months
have kept me writing
nearly every day
in joy, in creativity,
in imagination
and the wonder of seeing
my mind’s movies begin a life
on paper.

The trouble, though,
if chosen to be seen in such a way,
is the lure of my computer
and open Word document
call out to me with urgency greater
than my pen and notebook.

The pen and notebook
have remained in their spot
on the living room coffee table
beside the plant
and below the window
ready on the side stage
for a call that has faded away,
pages left empty.

I find myself in a confusing place
because the desire to write
and share the words I do
remains
in fact,
the desire grows stronger every day.
The dissonance lies
in the difficulty of sharing words
from a novel in-progress
and yet
having no other words written
seemingly better suited
to be shared with the world.

I feel a pull to absolve the dissonance
between the words I write
and the words I share.
Break my self-imposed rules
of what type of art belongs where.
Dissolve the criteria
of where art must be born
and rather, shift focus
to capturing the magical moments
themselves, as they are,
no matter the medium
or method.

Sharing art for the
simple, generous, vulnerable, beautiful,
act of doing so –
this is what I have lost
and what I want to reclaim.

holding back, holding out

~ jennadawn ~ Leave a comment

Hovering over the page
filled with worry
of wasting my time
of producing nothing of value
finally, after all this time, realizing
that I don’t have to offer
what I believed.

I can no longer be afraid
of making shitty art.
Art is art.

Holding back, holding out,
for the perfect words to come
has led to weeks of nothingness.

Making the less-than-desirable, the difficult,
the imperfect,
moves me forward.


each one is a work of art

~ jennadawn ~ Leave a comment

Trees tall and green, with
trunks wide, adjacent the sidewalk.
There isn’t a spot of pure sunlight;
only small bursts of light
falling to the ground between the towering leaves.

Each house is different.
Color, size, shape, layout, accents –
oh, the accents –
make every house its own.
Front yards filled with flowers and gardens,
or smooth with paving stones.
Verandas outfitted with couches and chairs,
or a plain front door with stucco siding.
Front steps hanging on to the last inch of paint,
or built strong of stone.
Shades of brown, grey, or pops of bold purple, red, green.
A neighborhood unforgettable.

Every house catches my eye in its own way,
all cozied together, only a few feet of separation.
Blink, and you’ll miss one;
you’ll miss a work of art.