The Journey

The other night when a friend of mine says, “You are so creative,” I am not sure how to take it. To say “Thank you” doesn’t seem entirely right. It seems to be missing the point. I spend some time in my notebooks writing down what the nature is of this creativity. It is is only Monday night, early Tuesday morning, in addition to the need to fill out exhausting paperwork in addition to the hope for better work and work that pays more,  that better sustains creation. I cannot believe how full of hope I was. I cannot believe the almost cloud I have been on the inexhaustible belief, hope and determination. I don’t feel it now. Last night I worked on several stories and contributed to the two writing sites I am on. At nearly five in the morning I was writing a letter and sending poems to a friend in prison. I got up, a little weary, but continued on with proofreading and submissions and the writing sites and then, overlooking the long steps to filling out new paperwork, was sent into a depression. At times like this I wonder if things will ever be easy, if I will ever have the work I long for. If I will ever feel good and confident about things again. It spirals into all the ifs, all the ways in which we might not be alright and I might be alright and it’s a little hopeless, and for a while I need to stop this working, I need to treat myself a little better. I need to, not try to feel good, but try to incorporate these feelings

On the other side of the worst of this minor depression, I know that there are things I need to do to get out of this place .i need to write in that green journal. I need to write myself out of this, and smoke myself out of this, to light the candles on the altar and sing old songs while I set up the images. Cigarette smoke, sage, smoke, dragon blood incense, I need all these things.

And I am writing in the green book but stop because I know what is being written there needs to be shared here. Its why, when my friend said I was so creative, I cringed a little bit. Because this is the admiring tone of someone who does not know where creativity come from or even what it is, who is making an amalgam of all the things I do, we are doing, and making this amalgam without understanding. I heard someone say that when people used the the term community it was a meaningless term for people who did not need such a term, and I think this is what the word creativity has come to mean because the truth is this writing, this journaling, these essays, this sculpture, these poems, these submissions and submissions, these rough drafts and final drafts, all of these are ways of writing myself out of the hole, of getting out of the dreadful box.

There are some, there are most to be be honest, who are fine with the box. There are those who have fallen so deep into the box there is no way of getting out, and they aren’t worried about surviving. They don’t really have to worry much if they’ll make it, because there is survival in the box. But you are losing your mind. You are losing your mind and this is why you write the three page poems, why you embrace the trees and vow to save your corner of the earth, why you almost howl with rage at cruelty and stupidity, at thoughtlessness and lies. This is why you’re more angry than you want to be so much of the time. This is why you learn the five point star, the six point star, the seven point star and so on and so on, why the myth given to you is not enough and so you peel back Mary and Jesus to find Isis and Osiris and then peel them back to find yourself. This is why you have learned the ninety nine names of God and delve into Qabala while you spend all night in meditation and burn incense and light the candles and cross the river to the place beyond, because the place right here is madness. It is not enough, and if you are not doing everything you can to carve the gods from your own flesh, then nothing is worth anything.

You are no fool. You believe in the stories because the stories are stories and in the stories is truth. You hold the holy images of the Gods and place them on the altar because you know all the Gods and Goddesses are inside you, and this doesn’t make them bullshit, it makes you the Kingdom of Heaven, and now and again you feel that keenly, but often it slips away from you, and you devote all of your life to finding it again. This is the journey of the artist. This is the journey of the bard, the poet and the shaman. This is the journey of the witch.