creation_myth tender square i thought i had destroyed all evidence of this. that drunken night in my apartment i ripped up every paper, threw their dismembered limbs into the hallway trash so that i would not retrieve it. the balloon had burst and i was tired of looking at its plastic carcass: i would never be a writer. but there, in the book i kept called “heart gallery” from my teens, was the pile of loose-leaf poems that i had written when i was a child. i found it yesterday. * “you were all like, ‘i’m going to sit on this rock and write poetry!’ who does that?!” brea and nicki joked at my dinner table. “you were such a snotty nerd,” they laughed. in my 2008 journal entry recounting that night, i admit to missing the three of us hanging out together but noted that i didn’t care for how often they ganged up on me for being a weird kid. i told michael once that when i was eight, i’d finally realized that the world would not bend to my will, and that this was a crushing discovery. the leslie knope in me always wants the best for everyone, often to the point of making decisions without their input, and in grade school my friends were growing tired of my bossy ways. i think this is the moment when i became withdrawn socially and turned inward to reflect on my annoying habits, the things i wanted to change in order to be accepted, the things i wanted to change in order to be loved. this is the moment that i began writing. * my aunt had gifted me a floral journal, which felt different from the lisa frank diary i had been keeping with its little butterfly lock that could be opened with a hairpin. the journal felt more serious, less childish than the complaints i wrote in my diary with swearwords against terri for always being on the phone and acting like she was hot shit. the journal required a maturity that i wanted to possess and aspire to. in the months and years that followed, i connected with the sainthood of lady songwriters: fiona apple, jewel, hope sandoval, tori amos, heather nova. wanting to emulate their lyrics and their depth, i started writing my own poems. i accidentally left my journal out in the living room once, and my mom stumbled upon it. “are these song lyrics you copied?” i couldn’t lie to mom; i shook my head. “there are a lot of big words in here—how do you know these?” i shrugged. * my favorite place to write, besides the hickory tree in our side yard, was brumpton park. there was this huge, triangular shaped rock in the middle of a garden that i was drawn to, and it bore a plaque in memorial to someone or something. i’d tiptoe between the tulips and take my spot on its warm shell to write my thoughts. there were other rocks i gravitated towards too: the square block in the open lot beside my grandma’s house, the one with thousands of pebbles poking out of concrete, a rock she said my great-grandfather had put there; the large flat stone i’d wade to in the middle of little river, the waterway behind our camper site in townsend, tennessee where we vacationed each may. the book of symbols says that stone is associated with the concept of eternity, that it is a symbol of endurance that continues long after we’re gone. now: the overwhelming urge to return to brumpton park, to take a charcoal relief of that memorial marker to hang on my wall as a constant reminder of this beginning. * i have found heaven inside your brown eyes; the angel interior beneath the disguise. that ever-so-sweet, irresistible charm, that makes me surrender when i’m in your arms. your warm smile, which makes my heart soar, makes my love stronger than it was before. whenever you hold me, i don’t want you to let go— i’m just too afraid of the world i don’t know. i’d miss you too much if i was left alone, because being with you makes me feel like i’m home. i wrote this untitled poem when i was twelve. the first line is iambic pentameter, a concept i wasn’t even aware of. the remaining lines follow this same metrical pattern of unstress and stress sounds, though the foot in each line in inconsistent. * your twenties are such a confusing time, where you’re trying to grapple with who you are and who you want to be. coolness was my currency and to acquire it i had learn how to not be so blatant about my feelings, because putting myself out there brought only rejection. the easiest way to amass this power, i’d found, was to put others down before they could do it to me, sharpening every curve of my soft heart. following the template that “vice magazine” and “gawker” used, i began writing for “upfront magazine,” a local free arts rag, where i ran a series on myspace profiles. for four months, i found local windsorites on the site and used what they wrote in their public profiles to ridicule them in print. i thought i was being satirical; in reality they were character assassinations. the only reason the series stopped was because a young woman i’d featured threatened to sue the magazine for slander; i had essentially slut-shamed her for wearing a bikini in her profile pic that we ran. my girlfriend theresa was the one who had asked me to do the profile; it was a former classmate she’d gone to high school with and wanted to take her down a notch. i remember one of my professors expressing his disapproval for what i was doing at the time, pulling me aside from class to say, “this isn’t you, cassie.” he was right. for years afterward, i felt crippled by my cruelty. why try to write when karma was going to ensure that i got what i deserved? how could i ever begin to apologize for what i’d done? * psychologist harriet learner says that when women are angry, they often turn that anger inward because they have been socialized to repress it. the anger i had toward myself for drifting so far from the moral compass i thought i had was too much to bear. the anger i had towards myself for using writing to hurt people, rather than to bring something beautiful into the world, was awful. i started drinking alone and heavily, smoking weed in my apartment until i blacked out, every single night. it was the only way dampen the intensity of what i felt, it was the only way i could keep living. there were periods where i’d try to clean up my act; i’d give up booze but keep the pot, or i’d give up pot and keep the booze. my “friends” at this time tried to convince me that i didn’t have a problem, mostly because they felt uncomfortable around me when i abstained. i’d stick with my resolutions for a couple weeks and then go back to my old habits. when i started having visions of throwing myself out my fourth story window, i knew something had to change. jung says that when one has visions of suicide, it’s a sign that is often interpreted by the individual literally rather than metaphorically; our bodies are telling us there has to be a death of the ego so that the true self can emerge. looking back, i interpreted those visions as a message that i needed to leave windsor if i was ever going to have the creative life that i wanted. and i fled. * after i moved to the states, i tried to convince myself that my life would be different than how i lived in windsor. instead of writing, i redirected my energies toward drumming and blogged about my progress as a beginner. that lasted for a few years but i was never disciplined enough with the drumming or the writing to really see any goals through. and so i went back to drinking like i always had, repeating the same patterns i’d come to rely on as a way of dealing with the pain of being a blocked artist. * michael and i had a big fight when i told him i didn’t want to play music anymore. we’d try to practice our songs but i was always so stiff and mechanical behind the kit, like i was too far gone in my own head trying to will the expression to happen. he was crestfallen; forming a band was what formed our spiritual union. i sold my drum kit because i couldn’t stand to look at it gathering dust anymore. * it wasn’t until i left a soul-crushing corporate job and returned to the non-profit world that writing came back into my life again, unexpectedly. the part-time administrative gig i’d gotten allowed me to leave work at work, and i returned home in the early afternoons with energy to spend and time to spare. “i think i’m going to start writing,” i announced to michael one day. and each afternoon, i’d climb the stairs to my office, our former jam space, and try. weeks later i showed michael some of the drafts i’d composed. “there’s something here worth pursuing,” he said. i haven’t looked back since. 210907 ... tender square (i'm realizing this ending is too pat for my tastes; "i haven't looked back since"–the whole piece is about looking back. i've also been thinking about the doubts i experienced when i did commit to writing, worrying that i would anger my family with what i shared about our lives; i think this needs to be factored in here somewhere too. i rushed to post this because it felt about 95% done, but it needs more. i am grateful for this space because it gives me an objective view with my work, one that i can't always see when it just exists as a word doc on my computer. thank you blathersphere!) 210907 ... raze i thought what you wrote was great just the way it was! i really appreciate getting such an honest and multi-faceted look at your relationship with writing, and how you integrate creative energy into your life like it's another layer of a complex musical piece (see? i can never avoid thinking about things in terms of music). but i know what you mean. so many times i've written something and then later thought it wasn't quite what i wanted to say, or i didn't say it the way i wanted to, or it could have used a little more time in the easy-bake oven. one thing writing here has done for me is it's (hopefully) made me a more thoughtful writer. i think part of the beauty of it all is that all these pieces of ourselves are preserved in internet amber — little reminders that we're all works in progress, always evolving, always learning, always in the act of becoming. 210907 ... unhinged (writing takes practice too. every time we question or doubt the way we said something we are learning how to be more discerning next time) 210907 ... tender square yesterday i visited the poetry rock at brumpton park, but the scene wasn’t as i remembered. the garden plots that used to line the other side of the path were gone. the evergreens that were cloistered near the rock had been replaced by a playground, the rubber base of which came in contact with the base of the rock. the tulips that once surrounded it were missing; the rock seemed larger and more sloped than i realized. the plaque reads, “harry o. brumpton. in grateful recognition of his dedication to landscape beautification in the city of windsor.” i wondered if this was, in fact, the rock i used to write on, but the inscription says it was placed there in 1982, two years before my birth. michael snapped a photo of me sitting on it, smiling, but the image looks nothing like me; i don’t see the girl that spent so much time there, i don’t recognize the woman squinting into the sun. * all my early poems have one thing in common: their penchant for drama. each piece is a struggle between two opposing poles—the desire to reveal all that i feel and all that i am, and the terror of being rejected for those qualities, or worse, met with those same qualities. * “it’s hilarious,” michael said, as we walked back to the car. “why is that?” “the depth of feeling you had for such a small human is incommensurate.” and i wondered if that depth of feeling will always be too big to be contained by my body, and if this is the real reason for why i write. 210915 ... epitome of incomprehensibility I can't believe I missed this the first time around! I love how you place the vignettes together, like rocks that are solid in themselves but can be arranged in different patterns. Minds don't all follow the same path in creating art: yours might prefer the pursuit of a single artistic goal at once, while mine seems only to work if I give it different channels of activity (i.e., I won't be able to concentrate otherwise, but then too many different things to do means I can't concentrate either - it's a balancing act). Anyway, different mind-types have their benefits and pitfalls. ...aaaaaand THAT seems too pat. Too obvious, anyway. But yes, I've had the sense that I don't deserve things. And it's because of wrong things that I've done, but then I can absolutely drag them into too much of my present mind-space and that doesn't help myself or anyone. What you wrote resonates: having to loosen your grip on the self from time to time, put aside the embarrassments and regrets for later, and focus on the activity. (At least, that is my somewhat tired interpretation, my way of connecting the rocks.) But yes! You rock, musically or not. 220510 ... tender_square awwwww, e_o_i! thanks so much for your kind words. i'm glad this thread could resonate with your own experiences. sometimes it's so hard to get out of your own damn way, y'know? 220510 what's it to you? who go blather from