sharing something from my journal that feels pertinent: awhile ago i was huddled into my insufficient sweater in the gusting winds of wichita, numbly pushing my fingers into my moth-eaten pockets as we walked. llewellyn and i with our faded-ink tattoos and tousled dark hair, with our furrowed brows and curious smirks, perfectly bookended nick jaina. nick has a lovely, open face that reminds me of an old gold-leafed portrait of a russian martyr: broad brow, compassionate eyes, some slight suffering around the stubborn chin. he was wearing a casual bit of beard, grown in comfortably during his stay at the fisch haus artists enclave, and it gave his cheeks a burnished sort of glow in the gray kansas prairie light. he was explaining to my cold hands and worried heart as follows: i feel like i want to be successful as an artist, not as a capitalist, and there are all kinds of systems in place to make you confuse the two. i wanted that too, and i got excitable and breathed dragon breaths of steam and hope into the bird-smattered sky, exclaiming: me too, me too! thats what i want! youre my guru, nick jaina. llewellyn was quiet like a birds nest just before eggs hatch. he looked at the way the old buildings interrupt a horizon that is gilt fields pressed between red brick streets and acid-washed sky and he smiled a little with just the edges of his eyes, bluer than the sky, and i knew right then we were rounding some kind of corner, both literally and metaphorically. the wind ceased in tormenting me as we turned into the narrow little road where fisch haus is; it gave up tugging my hair and twisting my fingers the way mean kids gave up doing those things when they realized i wouldnt cry but wouldnt fight either. there is some gorgeous and happy thing that started up growing where i think i buried my broken heart. i remember the feeling of doing things just because you love them, the balance beam of secrecy, how nice it is to settle back contented having done something only, exclusively, for yourself and the ones you love, never needing to say, to prove, to sell. success as an artist does look different than success as a capitalist, and to me i think it will very soon look like this: i am standing in the kitchen of the place we are going to find in the west. i am pouring coffee carefully carefully into a cup mary made. i have ink on my finger and the ink looks like a bird. somewhere in the house katie is drawing. micah is singing. there is fog crocheted around the evergreen branches and the needles are spangled with interspersed drops of quiet rain. i can hear the echoing sounds of the new building going up, of firewood being cut. a fox yips a last halloo at the incoming dawn before disappearing into fern, into fog, into forgetting. and i, cup in hand, go back to my writing desk.
Posted on: Sat, 30 Nov 2013 20:22:56 +0000
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