foecuss

i think i've been asleep for days, between working jags and obligation. i've had little energy to check things off my list. but i'm trying. the sad news is, one of the kittens killed a bird. a golden finch, a female, from what i can tell, dressed in drab yellows. cheese puff, the playful, is still toying with the kill, carrying it around and i can't help but feel awful. perhaps leaving the kittens (soon to be cats) here is unfair. perhaps luring the finches with seed is also unfair. perhaps what we do when we try to help is only make things worse. i don't know. i don't have any answers.

but i am beginning to work on my thesis again and i come across this quote which stops me cold and demands i pay it homage before proceeding.

the creative person in a sense does something for all of us simply by being, and perhaps we help ourselves when we help such persons in the process of their own creative unfolding.

frank barron, 1969

as much as i believe this, it feels selfish to me. perhaps because it gives me some license to creativity. but, it makes me feel responsible to others in some way for my creativity and the use i make of it. i'm not sure which is right, if we are gifted with talent and do the best we can, or if we serve with our talents, again, doing the best we can. perhaps both are true at the same time.

i think of the burgeoning weight of responsibility i feel at the moment, and try not to let my shoulders slump, but keep leaning in to the weight, certain the help i need is on the way. i can do this, it is possible for me to succeed. i must, first, believe in myself.

had a brief discussion about vulnerability with a writer i love, and what it comes down to for me is, that i write on the edge of immense vulnerability. that i live in that place. which is why i fight so fiercely to protect it.

it may look like i'm fighting just for fighting's sake. but i'm not. i don't have an ounce of interest in warfare. i am keenly interested in creativity. in pursuing my bliss. in making the sound i am capable of making in the clearest possible way. is that always easy? is it always pretty? absolutely not.

anyone flailing on the edge of vulnerability knows it costs a lot, an awful lot to remain there. to write from that place.

i trust that i will make my sound and it will be heard.

i will succeed in this because it is what i am meant to do in this moment. even if now it looks like a man of straw, it will quicken. and live.

soon enough.