it has been an interesting number of weeks for me. like tumblr once upon a time, instagram has become a safe space to document experiments with lots of different things- natural light, video, physical art pieces, minute moments.. (click on the videos to play them!)

things converge to create such a particular mood, moment, influence. spending time in emotional darkness, in physical sickness, days without blue sky. watching movies like gaspar noe’s ‘love’ and ‘to the wonder.’ returning to the proust chapter about memory (a memory is altered everytime you recollect it) in the ‘proust was a neuroscientist’ book.. walking over the triboro bridge to randalls island, again and again. looking at everything from high up. experiencing that particular feeling that hits me every year at this time- threshold. lingering light. possibility.

several things are on the horizon- i want to curate and perform in a different way, playing with poetic theatre hybrids, video editing, spatial exploration. i feel lucky to have new possibilities beginning with the incredible IDENTIFY show starting next week, and with my dear friend mwest this summer on SI.. it’s why everything has to fall out from under us, sometimes. sometimes seeing nothing, nothing at all, for awhile- is the only way to see things differently. to remember the vocabulary that exists in your hands, your body.

even thinking of ‘self-love’ in a different way..

wonder directed inward. inward(,)seeking wonder

my overwhelming need to build castles triumphantly is sabotaged because i don’t pay attention enough to not keep building them so close to the sea. one castle falls after another and i am enraged, heartbroken, impassioned, and blindly inspired to keep building, again and again and again.

you can still build the sandcastle. just be cognizant of the foundation. of where the tide comes in.

and that’s what i have to look at, now. the foundation. which comes with examining patterns without judgment.

what is the cure, the elixir of life?

having the patience- although part of me doesn’t want to use that word because it feels too conscious- to live through the days even when you are robbed of existence. even when you feel ‘you’re wasting your life’ – that is your life. right? it’s something you have to walk through.

i am a proclaimer, i love to feel strong and overcome and get to the end of something. but you don’t get to the end of this- it’s not neat, it’s fucking jagged and awful and meaningless and makes no sense. but it also just is.

we have to retrain ourselves to feel these things. accept them as whole, full, meaningful stimuli- instead of always seeking seeking seeking something more, something else. this is even about me, feeling myself. appreciation of the tiniest meaningful gestures- no one else can explain that to you.

i write these words while knowing in some days’ time they may be robbed from me but i guess that’s why we write, or create. not for continuity’s sake but to capture the feeling of a moment- i was here, feeling this.

every moment we can just stand here and say- this i what i am, right now- whether or not it is incongruous with our legend, what we want to be percepted as.

can i find the wonder in the small things? let everything touch me with profundity- the grace in what it is, not what i want it to be or wish it was?

birds outside the window, in the light. to take things as they are.

we are the only ones who can unravel our own illusions.

we are learning everything- painfully, by crashing into it, by watching it go.

i trust that i am supposed to learn from these golden moments instead of always “having what i want.”

because then everything gets numb. no wilderness, no sex, no recognition, no sunny days can fill you if you lose the ability to be filled.

gratitude is a word we all say so often. wildness, too- everyone is wild now. perhaps this is my journey to really uncover what they mean- by going slowly. seeing miracles. unravelling the dissatisfaction. and truly feeling again.

because from inside the gold of the moment- it just is. you are most grateful for your breath when you are breathing, fully, not thinking about it. you are most grateful for your life while you are just living it.

this week i will be standing onstage again. i’m hosting boundless tales on thursday and on friday i’ll be performing a brand new piece from this time at an event i’m so looking forward to- the wonderful joan becht willette‘s celebrating queens women artists event at queens council on the arts! it gets me thinking so much about history, HERstory, identity, perception. all themes running through my mind, my creative production at this time.. i want to explore this further and push past some edges i previously stopped short at. what does it mean to be vulnerable, to fully share? what about the space between the words? what about the power that comes from not always being the loudest or the most outwardly powerful or explosive? this is what i want to experiment with. how sensual, how gentle, how tender, how graceful. slow. nuanced. there is power in that.

after being in the dark you become obsessed with the light. physical light. feeling it on your face, the shapes it casts on walls, the way it warms bricks on sides of buildings, tied to some memory you can’t quite place, something from childhood, something sprang from goodness- something you somehow know- that even after all this– you believe in. you can remember what believing means. it is effortless, when real. the light. and even the light in the gradual fading of it to twilight and dusk, streetlights winking on, the sweetness of gradient. all the shades in between- we are.

i am easing up on the weight of the illusions- baudelaire, ‘to every man his chimera,’ stooped low, carrying.. i want to give my back a break. stand up and feel that light on my face. experience the gradients. not the violent highs and lows. the moments i have been too afraid, too restless, too impulsive to inhabit. i will be there.

springtime- in mind, in body. as always. so welcome.

to the wonder,

XO

a.

[.upcoming

3/10/16 – Hosting for Queens’ longest running reading series, Boundless Tales at the Astoria Bookshop, 7-8:30pm [Facebook]

3/11/16 – Featured poet at Celebrating Queens Women Artists Event organized by Joan Becht Willette for Women’s History Month at Queens Council on the Arts, 6:30-9pm [More info]

4/7/16 – Performing for Queens Book Festival/Wendy Angulo Productions in Long Island City at the Q-Boro Lit Crawl! [Facebook]

4/16/16 – Poets from Queens reading with Queens Poet Laureate Maria Lisella and other distinguished local poets at Queens Library in Flushing (auditorium), 1:30-3pm!

And later that night… 4/16/16 – Featured poet at UNDER THE INFLUENCE: The Inspirational Legacy of a King from Queens honoring Astoria graff legend DON1 with Louie “KR.ONE” Gasparro at QNS Collective, 7-11pm [Facebook]

[all events, past & present, always listed HERE