I am so happy for those of you who are using self help to get through these times of apparent struggle and arrive at a place of self-realization. That is wonderful, and I applaud you. For me, this is a time for the dark and winding staircase to my secret soul, to the place where danger and laughter and hope and fear intermingle, like wine and perfume and sexual longing at the intermission of a great show on a great date. For me, this is a time to open up my mind and let the beauty of art touch me everywhere, in that way only art and music and literature can fully express and reach me, because everything else I could write or say or read or hear would never make as much sense as Beethoven's 9th symphony, as Nina Simone singing a cover of Leonard Cohen's "Suzanne," as ee cummings and four leaf clovers, as that ancient calling I felt when first I read "The Once and Future King" and T.S. Eliot's "Wasteland," when I heard Tori Amos and felt like there was someone who had gone to the inside of my bone marrow and written songs about my life before I was even a singer myself... it's a time for Chinua Achebe and Neil Gaiman, for Harry Potter and Verdi, for Mary Shelley and Billie Holiday. Why? Because I don't need permission to be positive, to be a good girl, to do the right thing, to be super duper happy, to change the world, to speak correctly. I actually am already that woman and was raised lovingly to take care of your hurts and wounds and I.... I don't need a reminder not to dampen someone else's day with my emotions or my mind or even my sexuality, which does in fact belong to me, and I don't need to be yelled at just because I supported one candidate or the other or because I did march and then I didn't march and then I will again and then...... Ugh. F*** all that that I just wrote, even though I meant it and it's true and there is a time and place for all of it and that time is always now and that place is always here, if that is the time and this is the place, but for me, for now, only poetry and algebra and desire can reignite this flame, and by algebra I mean that, and by all of it, I am actually speaking in code, and so, now, let's sit with our music, and our books, let's light a fire and read aloud to one another and tell each other of the ancient lights and conquests, of the dreams still in our heart, and when silence become our music we may fall into a dream of our own humanity and linger, until human voices wakes us.... and we.... drown... but drown in the sea of love, where everyone would love to be.
Or we could just look at some puppy videos. That works for me.
