I carry your image always in my head - Folded and yellowed and torn at the edge
A lot of artwork shown from Timothy Renner of Dark Holler Arts. http://darkhollerarts.com/
I’ve done a lot of writing in my time, enough that when I look over my body of work, I can see the clear progression from youthful exuberance and poor word choices and imagery to a more nuanced way of putting my words together… from the anguish and confusion born from the pain of growing up to the more introspective and thoughtful [hopefully] observations that have come with age and experience.
The little booklets that I’ve got in my lap right now, the ones pictured above? They encompass the entirety of my growth as a writer and an organizer too, from 1992 until 1999. I went from ‘zines to regular blogging, and a lot of what I wrote from that time on is traceable via my Livejournal and then this blog. Of course there’s always been paper journals, too - those are even more personal and rarely is anything written there shared unless it is poetry that I decide is ready to go on to be viewed by the outside world. Writing for and publishing ‘zines brought me my first friends in Charlottesville VA, where I moved to in 1990 - without knowing pretty much anyone. [this is a pattern for me. Luckily I'm outgoing, despite the best efforts of some people in my life who would have rather kept me isolated.]
Working with ‘zines helped me build a relationship with someone whom I treasured as my muse and inspiration for almost everything creative that I did back then; a relationship that was more than friends but less than lovers, fraught with complication and confusion and adoration and so much energy. It was the first time I experienced that sort of communion, with someone who innately shared a common language of words and sounds and symbols. It kept me afloat for the longest time, a tether to all that I could be and all that I longed for.
And then something really horrible happened and ruined everything for me… I got a stalker, a very scary and threatening one. And he knew where to hurt me the most - he threatened the person that I adored. I don’t like going into too many details about this nasty excuse for a person who kept me in fear for too long, but it’s important to express that I was played well and hurt deeply, and I cut off everyone I knew in the world of ‘zines at that time because I was afraid for my life and for them, as well. I had to involve the freakin’ FBI to get things finally resolved, and I still spent months worried that a dangerously unhinged man was going to show up at my job and do something - and as I already lived with someone abusive who decided that “this was all my fault” for putting my words and name out there, I would get no help or support from that quarter… I was all alone.
Blonde, so very goth-eek. This was at Loudon Park Cemetery in Baltimore, I believe.
Somehow, this whole experience only kept me hiding for a while. I just can’t stop reaching out, you see. I need people. I need to share myself with them. It’s one of my best and worst qualities, I think. I spent all of my 20s and a chunk of my 30s being held in fear in some way or another, which is why I am SO outgoing and relatively fearless now. At some point I just decided “fuck it, I’ve already done the thing where I’m scared all the time. Let’s go the other direction and live.” That’s when I wrote the words that would eventually become the song “Redemption” that I sang with The Violet Dawning.
a feeling of redemption
slowly takes me over
could it be at last
I have a chance to live?
[2x]
-chorus-
I would emerge from inky shadow
re-dress in jewel toned cloth
tame my madwoman’s locks
and wipe the sleep from my eyes
a feeling of redemption
slowly takes me over
could it be, at long last
I can look up at the sky?
[2x]
-chorus-
Even breaking free brought the need to share. Maybe it’s ego. Can my experiences really be that important, enough to think that I should be writing them down and sharing them, making poems and songs from them? AngryRob would have said no, that I was full of myself and not as awesome as I think I am. [for the record, yeah... no.]
I’m just an over-sharer. I look for the moments where I see it in someone else’s eyes, that moment of recognition and maybe even relief - I am not alone in this. Someone else has felt this way, has experienced this moment. I am not alone.
Isn’t that what we all want? To know that even though we travel through life in our little meaty bodies with all the baggage that entails, and we’re trapped inside these brains that feel bigger than they are, in some way we’re still all travelling together?
Mirrored from xiane dot org.