Dreamer's Crayon Box

I miss you.

I am sorry that sometimes my heart wanders and I neglect you. Despite this ruinous habit of distraction, you must know that I think about you all the time.

I think about the dozens of things you make the perfect catalyst for daily. I want you to see the people I meet, and the people I don’t meet. I want you to reflect their mystery, even after I’ve set them to your words.

No one knows how to understand me like you. You are the only one who can capture my truest feelings with such confidence and ease. You bear the secrets of my hidden pains and laughter. Sometimes I think you’re the only one who can handle me in that way.

Throughout the years, you’ve grown with me. From adolescent phases and anecdotes to bursts of creative eruptions spread across the shorts and lengths of your pages. You allowed me to remember my dreams, and work through my stories. Edit by edit, the microscopic idiosyncrasies peek out between letters and spaces.

In the saddest moments, you’ve been my best friend and confidant. In my most ambitious moments you’ve been one of my grandest dreams, and slowest of passions.

You are always generous, you welcome everyone to experience you as much as necessary. You are disciplined, making wise demands of practice, determination, precision and heart. You are an outlet for the wildest of imaginations and the vastest of questions.

Although I sometimes go days without actively engaging that spark lit beneath the layers of time and circumstance, I could never get by without you. The world would be stark and gray. Thoughts would wreak havoc, chaotically roaming the landscape without any constructive sense of belonging or dialogue.

Oh writing, I miss you. I wanted to tell you, because I want to make more room for you in my life. I know that you’re always there, but sometimes I’m not and I want that to change. I want to work towards the devotion that contributes to our greatest collaborations and successes. And even though it is work, I feel like it is always worth it.

Thank you, for everything.

Sincerely and Ever Yours,

ae

Do you ever remember certain parts of yourselves and wonder what happened to them?

Sometimes I do. Randomly I’ll remember some way of being or positive light I had inside me about certain things when I was a kid… I wonder how these things seem to get lost or fade away on the road to adulthood. And then I miss it.

Do you think we could reincorporate those removed parts of ourselves, if we wanted to? Do we lose them completely, or are they hiding somewhere deep within our beings- just waiting- after having been pushed down for so long? Why do we lose these these bright parts of our childhood selves?

Maybe we lose them so we can find them through some unanticipated means, to recover them later after lessons learned, to start shining brighter again.

from Frida's diary

I’ve always considered it to be one of the bravest things, to truly embrace being yourself. The good, the bad, the pretty and the ugly- all of your experiences, heartaches, struggles and accomplishments.

OK, maybe not always. In the last few-several years, definitely.

A very real acknowledgement of this occurred when I was introduced to Frida Kahlo. I remember it was winter and I was taking Humanities for the Visual Artist at Columbia, a class I really looked forward to each week. My teacher was passionate and kooky, she endeared herself to me with her enthusiasm and openness.

One day, she popped in a video. It was a biography of the artist Frida Kahlo, a woman who’s iconic eyebrows I recognized (and unnerved me as a child). Yet I  never knew much about her story. What happened throughout this first Frida experience, was that I was captivated. Moved. Because here was this woman-nature and chance maimed her, the man she loved cruelly betrayed her, her body betrayed her— yet she went on to continually find and create beauty from all of it.

She painted her fears, her betrayals, her joys, her questions and her heart. And I was so struck by it, because I couldn’t understand who would ever have the courage to paint such personal, painful things. For all the world  to see, to feel. That it could be done in a way that was natural, that allowed the viewer to observe, as if they were being confided in. So grotesque to be a real witness to the wounds bore by this woman, but also clutch your chest with the resonance of this emotion. Intense color, filled with light in spite of its darkness.

also from the diary; post leg amputation

Here I developed true admiration for this uncanny display of authenticity. Never, I thought, never could I paint about my miscarriage or the affair that infiltrated the deep love that burned through my veins for Diego. But she did.

And how could she do it? I was baffled, awe-struck and inspired. A new appreciation for and understanding of transparency was unveiled to me. I thought for days about how beautiful I thought her bleeding heart was. I thought for days about all the years of my life that I felt a fierce determination to keep my bleeding heart contained, protected in an unpenetrable vault. But there was a woman who painted all of it….who owned all of it. It was hers.

This idea changed my life.

There wasn’t any drastic, outward change. However, my ideas about what is important and how we use our stories changed. The way I value an individual’s reality changed. Because if Frida had never painted her pain and her dreams, how would I have come to value such a unique form of transparency? What happens that forces each of us to realize that whether we embrace or understand or accept our stories or not, we do have a story- and that story can be used to reach someone else on some level, for good? It can benefit others in some way, if we let it. But it can never make such impacts if it is never told, if some parts of ourselves- even and especially the painful- are not revealed.

And ever since the acceptance of that idea, I’ve seen the world in a very different light. A more bearable, colorful one.

It was this reminder I was seeking those months ago when I delved into the published visual diary of Frida Kahlo for some inspiration. I had spent an uncharacteristic season prior feeling ungrounded in my own identity. I have always been a fairly self-assured person, but I went through some things that caused me to really question and distrust myself. I don’t know that I had ever not trusted at least myself before then.

Regardless of what I’ve been through, I needed to be reminded that my story is mine. I cannot let anyone else write it for me. Nor do I want to. It is up to me to dispel the muck I waded through all those days. Even if I did make mistakes, even if I didn’t understand myself, even I wanted so much more than what I have had thus far: it is mine. All of it. And anything that happens next or after, that is mine too. So what was it going to be?

It was time to take the brush back into my hand, and gripping it tightly, paint new colors on to the canvas of my life.  I think I’ve begun to.

It’s like He gave me some gift

Somehow I feel lighter

An unsuspecting wish granted

I bet in time people will notice

That something is better

Is healing inside of me

This glimmer of hope

I’ll be growing this glow

Of all that could and will someday be

Something feels safe again

To dream and look up to the sky

Safe to breathe and feel alive

For the clouds hovered over me

They persisted for days

Stuck in some unlit valley of pain

It could amount to a monsoon

Those endless days of rain

But something has happened

I’m not sure how it could be

But there were these rainbows

Emanating magic to me

ae/ 10.2

Growing up, I was secretly obsessed with romance. If you knew me well enough to see me sob pleading cries for Anne and Gilbert to be together (Anne of Greengables) and prove true love victorious, you may have observed some indication. Or you may have just thought I was an oddly over-emotional pre-teen, which in all honesty, is also probably true. However, they are not the only “fictional” couple I have felt strong affliction and empathy for.

Underneath it all, I have always possessed this deeply rooted desire for love to win. True love. And yes, I am one of those schmucks who has always believed there is such a thing. How you go about defining such a mysterious concept, I could only begin to imagine. I do believe it exists though. (Conversely, that theory gets re-evaluated periodically as well.)

I heard the term the other day: “an incurable romantic.” And I thought, “Yes! Exactly, that’s incredible.” How many people are courageous enough to stand behind such an idea? I adored the sound of it.

I have two lines of thinking. One of them revolves around us being a jaded population of people. I mean, really- why shouldn’t we be skeptical with the level of chaos and dysfunction so prevalent of our environment? How many of our relationships or plans fall apart before they’ve ever even taken flight?

The other line of thinking is that I don’t feel confident that a majority of people know how to define romance for what it truly is. Or what it could be. Should be. I mean, it is a term so casually tossed around and associated with very superficial meanings. When it is a thing that can man a whole lot. It’s the thing. [which was a conversation recently held that led me to bring the debate public in order to incorporate additional perspectives]

If Valentine’s Day and the way people plan for and celebrate it is to be used as a visible, commonly accepted depiction of “romance”- what does that reflect about society’s perspective on the matter? Granted, I am making a very obvious example of a cause that is very cliche. It makes sense though, doesn’t it?

How do you define romance? What does it mean to you?

It means a lot to me…so much so that in latter years, I avoid using the phrase almost entirely because I don’t think it adequately expresses my connection to the matter.

There’s the rub. When I consulted Merriam-Webster’s definition of romantic, I found: