Poetic Revelations: Going Full Spectrum

Creativity to Structure, Ugly to Magnificence

We shape our self to fit this world, and by the world are shaped again. ~ David Whyte

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Because Human-ing is harder than Adulting. This is a weekly publication for heart-centered warriors, swimming through this thing called Life.

Selected Readings and Sounds:

• The Piano Speaks, Sandra Beasley

• Working Together, David Whyte

• Desert, Josephine Miles

• Moving Toward the Ugly: A Politic Beyond Desirability, Mia Mingus

Dear Embodied Hearts and Dancing Souls,

By day, I’m reading policy and news writing (on Substack) but at night…I am perusing the predictive arts—astrology, tarot card and energy readings—on YouTube. Part of this is desperate, looking for a way through, and part of it is genuine for the same reason. Anyone availing yourself of the 3-D and 5-D all at once? Consider yourself full-spectrum informed.

Piano Moment. This week I had a... piano moment. While waiting for my husband during a hospital outpatient procedure, I went to the main lobby for a coffee, a muffin and a table. I was surrounded by light, air and in-door trees in this open lobby. As I pulled out my colors for my morning art practice, I heard the notes of a live piano. Yes, the hospital lobby had a live piano. Oh it stoked my juices. For those wondering how simple drawing acts as a meditative practice, I urge you to read Sara Beasley’s poem The Piano Speaks. She captures the forgetting, engrossing and suspense exactly.

For an hour I forgot my fear of rain.

For an hour I was a salamander

shimmying through the kelp in search of shore,

and under his fingers the notes slid loose

from my belly in a long jellyrope of eggs

that took root in the mud.

A fizzling out. My morning art meditative practice was stalled for months. This was how I centered each morning while receiving information about my priorities for the day. I trusted how my hand wanted to move, the colors it chose, and the way it made different strokes. If a phrase or sentence came forward, I simply jotted it on the side. This was my mainstay y'all. It totally worked (for years) until it didn't.

Mind you, my drawing practice was totally free form. I tried to find a way back in, it kept fizzling out. After a conversation with an InterPlayer about finding a simple art practice, I felt a nudge...maybe something simpler might help me also. Right on cue, I noticed a social media post about neurographica drawings. I sent her this tutorial and we did our first drawings together. Here, you create and color shapes. The first time around, it felt soothing but didn't quite open the door to the wisdom I was used to getting.

Re-Finding Structure. This morning though, I found myself drawn to coloring outside the shapes. It was this interesting interplay between structure and freedom. I found my hand feeling assured by the structures it was “leaning” against even as it sought to go beyond them.

Yes, my access to inner guidance began to flow again. But this moment reminds me of the relationship between structure and creativity. One supports the other, relies on the other. It’s interesting that this technique, which lets you create structure first, is the way my otherwise free-form practice gets a kick-start. Structure helped bring back my flow. I see refrains of this in David Whyte’s Working Together poem:

We shape our self
to fit this world

and by the world
are shaped again.

The visible
and the invisible

working together
in common cause,

to produce
the miraculous.

In truth, I am learning much from this moment. Having given myself over to self-expression in recent years, I’ve learned I am creative at my core. Long patterns of behaviors arise. Like, rote gets boring fast for me. I have always been a color-outside-the-lines type of gal. Like clockwork, I seem to find my way to the edge of any system I belong to and…find a way beyond it. I found this article by writer Nicolas Cole. Just like he says, without structure, I notice my creativity comes out in bursts….and remains as a burst only. Maybe not a nunnery, but it does feel time to create some supporting structures.

Structure is what creates the opportunity.

Creativity is what makes the opportunity unfold.

~ Nicolas Cole

Embracing the Ugly. How interesting that as I ran away from structure that the edge of my creativity craves it. This seems to be how we are designed as humans. Where we run away from ourselves—our shadow in psychological parlance—wants to meet its opposite. This came up for me in my metaphorical desert, having to face some parts of myself I was most scared of.

Along the process, I discovered this amazing piece of writing from Mia Mingus, an individual who has been “Othered” six ways to Sunday. In her words, she is “a queer, disabled, korean woman, transracial/transnational adoptee, raised in a US territory in the Caribbean.” This talk is one of the most empowered declarations from an othered experience I have ever read. And she gets to the key right here:

We must shift from a politic of desirability and beauty to a politic of ugly and magnificence. ~ Mia Mingus

She too ties ugly—your undesirability to its opposite: your magnificence. Given my history as Other, embracing my ugly — my undesirability — is the key to standing authentically (and bravely) in front of eyes I have been hiding from for a long time. Thinking of this recently, on a walk, I was shown an image of an ice cream scoop. That’s right, I thought. When people want to judge, they don’t bring popcorn, they bring an entire bucket of ice cream! The Josephine Miles poem Desert is exquisite! Remember: Desert = Truth = Everything Holy.

To your exquisite unfolding. Stay #heartwoke and trust that beautiful heart of yours!

Monisha

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When we belong to ourselves, we move freely. ~ Monisha Mittal

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