bright shining.

Most of the time I spend writing, I am trying to capture some beauty or hope that I’ve felt, something in a fleeting moment that I want desperately to share. I don’t know if I can even go so far as to call these feelings - they’re something a bit deeper and more instinctive.

It’s all wild and wrapped up in how the bright sun is shining in the alley - the white light and the red bricks and the blue sky.

I just love this blog so much. This lady has got a head like mine. Food is all woven into her observations on life. But most importantly, I don’t know how, but she captures that grain of a moment - the one that is filled up with beauty and longing and hopeful feathers. It’s a clarity of mind, of observation, of reflection. Whatever it is, it sings inside of me. This post reminded me.

Jacob told me the other night that he had been thinking about how important it is for a creative person to have someone behind them. When the work of a creative person lives so much in the head, it’s invaluable to have someone who loves you unconditionally and really believes in you. It’s powerful to have someone believe that you’re capable of making great art. It is one thing to talk all abstract about what it means to be an artist. It is another to really figure out what it means - what it means in life, real life, the life where you pay bills and eat food and forge relationships.

A change in season is always good for my soul. Heavy snow fell here last week, but it melted off quickly with rain. And now, for the last few days I have been waking to wide-eyed birds singing their new songs. The air has an edge still, but the sun is warm.

I read this post yesterday, from The School of Life, on living with a creative mind. The bit I latched onto was a quotation from Ryan Reynolds.

“When I was a kid, I felt like I was this skin-covered antenna, and I could never get this antenna down. I was so aware of everything around me. I would watch people looking for signs of danger all the time.”

I love that. It’s just like the ants in your brain. I feel hyper-aware, hyper-sensitive, hyper-curious all the time all the time all the time. Opening up to that is overwhelming, so sometimes it’s easier to shut it down, or at least try to.

But then a man sits down next to me on the bus. He carrying a twig and he is itching himself, doesn’t stop once for the full fifteen minute ride. Amidst the horror of sitting far too close to someone itching themselves for an unknown reason, and amidst the general thoughts of I hate the bus, my little antenna went up. I’ve been thinking about that man all day and not because I want to. Frankly, I don’t even want to be writing about him, but I just don’t have a choice. What’s there is there, and what we see is what we see. My ignoring that man or reducing him to a stereotype in my head doesn’t make him any less real. Some series of events, some life, brought him to that moment, itching himself with a stick on the 8am bus to Anacostia.

It doesn’t mean anything. That isn’t what I’m saying. Life might sometimes involve mentally wrestling your way between the bright sunshine and birds and the itching man on the bus. It doesn't need meaning - it needs only to exist.