make art

today i walked around bra-less in a red dress (because really, it's too hot for underclothes) and i drank a free coffee & used a free printer & i memorized lines. today i sat in the park on the southern tip of manhattan & i read a novel. & a stranger approached me while i sat, engrossed in another world, & he told me i looked like an artist & was i one? because i seemed mysterious, & guarded, & serious (do artists really stand out just in the way they read a book or sit in the park? can you tell an artist from a scientist or a stock broker, or an athlete? truly, i'm asking). & i sat there first annoyed, then suspicious, as my hand felt it's way down to the pocket in my bag where my phone was sticking out (thank you, new york, for the incessant suspicion). & a part of me just wanted to finish the sentence on the page i was reading & a part of me bloomed toward the notion that someone, a perfect stranger, saw through to the artist inside me. that it was laying there plainly on the surface, so clear that he called it out in me with no hesitation, & what's more, wanted my insight into what it was like.

i haven't let me myself identify as an artist in a long time.

& as i excused myself to escape to yet another realm of reality - this time from inside a chilly theatre - i walked away with the sense that i touched divine. & as i sat in the balcony, darkness enveloping me as i prepared to go back in time, a silent witness to a messy, imperfect, and reeling love, i felt things i haven't let myself feel & i cried for no great reason (or at least, none that i was aware of) to a song about a pink moon. i like to think i feel hard, and often, and on an impossible scale. but maybe i don't - not really. not fearlessly, anyway. & in some ways, that's good. protective. a defense mechanism. but when was the last time i flew into a pale-like passion? cracked so hard i broke and allowed things to seep out of me, raw & exaggerative, & overflowing.

sometimes you just gotta let it burn, ya know?

today i walked in the park on the northern tip of manhattan & i sat down on a bench & and i lost myself in a fourth reality as the sun disappeared into the clouds. & my head swirled with impressions, & opinions, & realizations & thoughts. but instead of engaging them, i read Jane's words & identified with them. "i'm obsessed with my life being a good story." & like all good stories the chapters ebb and flow, open and close, until you reach the climax, until you learn to ride in that peak, until you blink and the sun sets forever. so for now, i'll just hope for the best. i'll keep feeling. engaging the artist in me. saying yes to her. learning from the characters in the stories all around me. watching them go through the "tempestuous struggle toward happiness," until i learn how to move through the world.

& fireflies line my walk home & i am a child, yet again. back on the beach in delaware, hair moist and cheeks pink from chasing lightning bugs.

the lightening strikes & i ignite.