I wrote the title first before anything else because it came to me before the idea of the post itself has even fully formed, as most of my objectively good ideas. I think the best approach is to attempt to write it from my heart & experience.
Today, I was looking at a red heart ring with a dagger through it and I noted it reminded me of tarot, and I liked the style but I wouldn’t want to wear something that depicted a pierced heart. The woman showing me the ring looked at me surprised & said, “it’s representative of the Evil Queen, it’s from Disney.” I noticed she had a sun tattoo on her chest and I liked how it struck me to think of anima & animus; the chest on a woman is such an intimate place and, to me, the sun is a very masculine symbol, and it felt like a real picture of duality. My ex described my art as inspiring him to think of duality so I carry that word with me always in unexpected times.
Anyway, and side note; writing this fluidly and intuitively is more vulnerable than expected and I scrunch my nose at the thought of sharing such intimacy publicly but I’m also at the point of not giving too much of a fuck anymore, for personal reasons I will never share, which is liberating & terrifying. I have given into the seduction of addiction before and - hearing sirens outside feels synchronistic - been pulled out of that infinity pool again & again.
I stopped drinking at the beginning of this year (many know my weariness of marijuana and aversion to anything ‘harder’ than that) & I’m reminded constantly of the concrete, dull-ache of sober reality, but it’s worth it. I think drinks are called spirits for a reason, and I don’t like the world they weave around you even if you indulge only casually, sometimes; the pull of alcohol is always there but it’s kind of like a sexually attractive person, in that it’s nice to think about & pretty dreadful to be involved with.
I think all of this weaves together quite well in a web of awfulness I’ve needed to get off my chest for some time, because I’ve spent far too long romanticizing the concept of tragic love because of my own psychology & experiences, and maybe, naively in a sense, the media I’ve been drawn to; songs, movies, books, implying that only in tragedy is love true.
No.
My self-mythology these days is that of a flower in-bloom, regrowing from .. what I can only recall is the concept of it picking its own petals, which makes me cry a bit. I gave too much where I shouldn’t and not enough to myself, and in some ways it’s difficult to not fall in love with the mirrors image now - which sounds completely narcissistic until I realize I’ve built, destroyed & rebuilt myself from the ground up, somehow literally and fictionally - but finally I am coming to realize I am not from the world, but of it. All of this to say, I am less victim than knight, less knight than king, and less king than emperor. Someone recently brought up Marcus Aurelius’ ‘Meditations’ to me, to which I said I already own a copy of the book to their surprise, but I think it’s an essential book that any logical-thinking and practical-emotions-preferring person should own, or at the very least read. There is wisdom in every single line of that book.
I feel like I’ve undone some of the armor around my heart in writing all of this and I question deeply publishing it, but I’m not going to pussy out now (ironic that I’d rather share my anatomy than my soul with anyone, which speaks deeply of my character), and just skim it and post.
I don't want to change anything.
PS: I keep noticing I surprise people lately & I want to figure out why that is. It’s not really good or bad surprise, it’s just a startling of their spirit. It kind of feels like they’re waking up. Maybe it’s something only I notice; “everything we see is but a dream within a dream.”
