thegypsy-v1

This week I took part in a poetry slam.  This was my first time for that genre.  It was at a pagan gathering, and the cognitive dissonance of a slam for paganism was too appealing to pass up on the opportunity.  Slams are oral performances where the emphasis is higher than normal on how things are said, and usually (at least to me) they are confrontational or transgressional.  A little research online didn't show this in any offical definition, yet the examples I saw on YouTube all seemed to have this.

So I thought, "Why not?"  I have performed a lot but I've never been exposed to this style before.  I took it as a double challenge to come up with a piece that was both transgressional and pagan.  Or maybe a triple challenge in that I was writing poetry for the first time in years.  Really, this was the kicker.  For a long time I have been unable to finish any poem or even start one.

Happily I can say I wrote one, performed it, and got shocked and enthusiastic applause and was told by more than one that they got goosebumps from the performance.

So maybe this is a style I should examine more.  We will see.

To my friends here who have seen neither hide nor hair of me in forever... my apologies.  No need to explain; you've all been there.

In the news, I got it in my head to do something I haven't tried since college: submit for publication.  I am looking through site after site of places that pay for poems.  Mostly it's $5 US or "pays in copy".  I have one old one sent off and two new ones sitting on the virtual dining room table, partially finished. One thing I've noticed is how much more picky I feel about my work when I think someone will ponder sending me a rejection letter.  Throwing it out here - no problem.  Sticking it in an envelope with a stamp - huge insecurity.

But we will see.  Hopefully it will prompt me to jot down some new stuff here as a way of germinating ideas for the commercial stuff.

Anyway... peace and love to those I love to pieces.

The diagnosis is bipolar.  And the medicine helps.  It helps so well that I stopped feeling a need to write.  I cut some negative things out of my life and I was too busy being happy to write about it.  Not in a white-coat-that-ties-in-the-back way.  More of a soaking-it-in way, like meditation, only with talking and body odor.

All in all, I'm feeling fairly satisfied again - which has allowed me to explore other projects and outlets for creativity than poetry.  The poetry is still there but it comes out in other forms and shapes and moments of time.  Starting to feel the music come up out of the ground again - that streak of animism runs deep.

When I am excited (in a good way) or painfully depressed - I write poetry.  It's like there is something tap-tap-tapping at the glass at the front of my mind, needing Out Now!  In times of depression or, oddly enough, deep calm I like to work with wood. You can feel the slow growth, the survival, the hidden wonder.  And music seems to come when the world is taking care of itself and I don't have to keep fixing it.

So how about you?  Do any of you experience a massive shift in genre or even in art form when your long-term mood cycle changes?

One of the amazing poets I follow, iPoeticChicK, wrote something about trying even after you fail.  At first I read that as "f-a-l-l" and it brought an image strongly to mind, that of plummeting into a void, the walls rushing past you, curled up in a ball of pain and despair.

Because, let's face it, it feels that way.  The world has gone out from under your feet.  There's nothing to grab hold of to anchor yourself.  And you really don't want to anyway.  You just want the numbness to overtake you so you won't feel the pain.  You are falling off the edge of the Earth and if you reach out toward the cliff face beside you, you will only hurt your hand from the speed of your "fall-ure".

So curl up.  Pull your knees against you and tuck your head and try to outspeed the pain.  And fall.  And fall.

And fall... and fall...

And fall...

And after one hundred thousand subjective years of being surrounded by nothing but the memory of pain... if for no other reason than boredom, you reach out and touch a fingernail to that edge-of-the-world cliff face you are falling past.  It hurts!  But it is a different pain than the one that has followed you.  You reach out and touch hands to that cliff, knowing it lacerates them, but this feeling of new pain is one *you* control.  You might even play around with it some, touching then curling back up, touching and trying to slow then speeding back up.

Finally, after two hundred thousand subjective years, you try grabbing hold of projections. The memory of solidity flows back into you and you try to stop the fall. Reaching out you bump hands and feet and elbows and knees against the rock, suffering the pain in order to slow down and jerkily stop your descent.  And when you do it hurts like hell.  But it is a hell *you* control.  It is one of *your* choosing.

When you return to the land of the living, you can choose to hide from people out of fear of a repeat.  Or you can wander among them and take some pleasure from their chosen company.  You decide who you want to talk to.  You decide how and when.  It is of your choosing.

And if you guess wrong about someone and find they've hurt you and knocked you off the edge of the world again... well, you know the trip.  So reach out and stop the fall, catch your breath, and go back into society.  You *will* find friendship there, and more.

It's really a choice between falling alone and in pain endlessly - or of feeling pain while you heal in the company of friends.