Photo by Persephassa
A mismatched backdrop of something wavery & vulnerable pushes me to share this — for i feel my art is a letter, one that could apply to anyone & everyone i’ve loved, FILL IN THE BLANKS, or simply, the love i feel for others is an infinite returning compound, a reflection of myself: my love for myself.
Now that the subject of the letter below has moved back into the filing cabinet to draw inspiration from, i feel it only fair that i display what it is that compels me, what drives me, what i thrash myself into intellectual oblivion over. Sometimes, those mystics & those who are enthralled by them say it best —
“Sometimes we sense that love is our expertise, despite the obviously murderous bent of these days & hours…. Sufis say the heart is ‘the comprehensive human reality,’ and that the way of love is a path of annihilation, of the beatitude of ‘as though it had never been.’ Our original state is nonbeing, nonexistence, and we spend much of our lives trying to break free of matter, free of mind & desire, back into the deep region of being & nonbeing we are at the core…
There’s a shredding that’s really a healing,
that makes you more alive!
Dance, when you’re broken open.
Dance, if you’ve torn the bandage off.
Dance in the middle of the fighting.
Dance in your blood.
Dance, when you’re perfectly free.
All i know of spirit
is this love.
-Excerpts from “Rumi: The Book of Love” as translated by Coleman Barks
Dear _______,
The pumpkin pie has little beads of sweat on the fleshy portion – i tore off the crust, butter apparent on the blister, shallow spices & poignant chai. The beams on the ceiling are carefully resonating with a pomegranate & candy garland, interspersed with small white lights, strands of popcorn, copper tins in a variety of curvature & fragrant canisters of tea.
This, reminiscent of the baths i’ve taken in your absence. The mid-morning light turning the water milky, plumeria shampoo frothy in my hair, moments under water. O, the comfort of the oceanic sounds. I imagine you, over me – my hands become more distinct on my stomach, my knees folded above into right angles -
the water sluices forward, colored from late nights, slow & incandescent like stolen swings, cinematic in the eerily low lit town of _________.
All those interactions are in my hands, recalling you with a moment of touch, a cold playground swing or slide beneath my back, vinyl mary janes stuck in diamond fences, slotted for forbidden, where we are children, invested in play as if it is one romance, the harder we twirl, jump, fly,
we become closer to that love, how we learn how to have sex.
So, i give you my tangents, from my hands, that recollect you, whenever they are on me.
I look for little signs of you in my daily life, but there aren’t many except for in memory – i wish there were more mornings to wake to you – your lips on my face or vice versa. Citrus. Citrine. Mint. Ambrosial.
Are the love letters wasted? Or one day, might we collect them all? I contemplate an art show of just my letters or letters to rearrange, a giant wall of words to evoke you, me, everyone (i) you (we) know.
My tangents are love for you – i barely share them with anyone else.
I wish you many more love letters in your life – from me & others, from those who appreciate your eyes from the movement, to the moment they close, your face close in _________, or relaxed in a scent or flavor that escalates you to another time -
your hands, the careful way you sketch portraits, the music constantly on your brain, your romantic heart, your intellectual ____________, your strangely normal family, whatever drives you to be here now,
the process of getting to know you, _________.
I love this, you, now & after.
