Permission to Be
On my drive in to the studio today, I was thinking about how I’ve been trying to do things differently in my writing. It’s kind of like when you’re painting and something happens that is unplanned, but the artist recognizes it as essential to the work itself. When I’m creating and in a flow state, I really don’t know what’s going to come, and the mastery comes in knowing what to keep and what to kill. That is what I’m learning to discern as I grow as a writer. I ask myself questions like: What am I giving here? Am I giving? Why am I giving? Who am I giving for?
And recently, I’ve started asking myself, what do I want? What do I need?
I recently wrote about the performance of a lifetime. The transformation is sobering and at times dark and messy, just like a chrysalis. Sometimes change just sucks. But getting quiet inspires a lot of curiosity about one’s own behavior, nevermind the clarity one receives about others.
I’ve been very tired lately, in part from grief, but I imagine much has to do with what I’m making in the garden and studio.
I’ve caught myself numerous times questioning my sanity with what my hands insist on growing. I recognize it as obsession, but it is all I have ever known.
Sometimes I wonder if I’ve spent an entire lifetime creating beauty in an effort to make up for what I was taught to perceive as my own lack of beauty.
When I started writing on Substack, I think it was in an effort to do the same thing just in a different medium. I even named my space here on Substack Growing Beauty. Ironic. Another place to prove worth by offering beauty… growing it in the garden, creating it in art, giving it away.
Earlier this week I wrote: “I am the Art and in turn the beauty itself.”
It didn’t sit right when I wrote it, but I also didn’t want to over-analyze or dwell. I now want to revise what I wrote.
The word beauty itself still positions me as object for viewing. It requires someone outside myself to confirm I am beautiful. Even when I claim it, I’m still in dialogue with the gaze that judges.
I don’t think I need to define what I actually am. I’m beginning to see, living in Track 2, that offering explanation is not necessary. These things don’t require confirmation. They exist whether witnessed or not.
Power. Eros. Whatever it is, it is.
Permission to be.