…for the love of it
STORIES FROM A SOFT BELLY
My eyesight deteriorated suddenly when I was ten. Suddenly I needed glasses. Thick unflattering glasses.
How to be the storied girl I imagined myself to be - the adventurer galloping across the steppe, squinting behind glasses? Nah, it didn’t fit.
Then, there was the body. Pudgy, one aunty said, pinching cheeks. Or the “Michelin” as a friend in Spain would call it, the tire around the center. That didn’t fit the body I was shown and told I ought to have. (I feel “stories from a soft belly” is going to be part of my next play.)
For so many years, I did not see myself as someone who created stories. It was only because /despite my not believing - journeys moved me and in the end, in the beginning, the stories saw me and I, them. fin de mundo, principio de todo, the end of the world, the beginning of everything.
The journey is mysterious, rocks, sudden squalls, felled trees, soft breezes, a path through a meadow, the terrain uneven one day, or grassy another.
There is no knowing what will stop your story and what will start it. alchemy, surrender, mystery. In one minute, I feel I have arrived; in another moment, I feel I have lost the way. I do not know the secret of it all - I only have gratitude for poetry whenever it chooses me.
ONE STORY INSPIRES ANOTHER
Being in Ireland as I just was, at a residency in a stone cottage by the western sea, with the sound of waves, and the sight of islands, Duínis, An Scairbh and in the distance, a lighthouse on a rock called The Bull that marks the edge of the known world, and the calls of curlews and crows, aand a wild landscape of ruins and wedge tombs and standing stones - all this reminded me of the long journey into who I truly am, and how I hope to be of service…
CREATE FOR THE LOVE OF IT
So here is my invitation:
Starting now, and lasting forever: may you create for the love of it. Just for the love of it. Just because it speaks to you. Just because it sings. Just because it calls you to step into dance or words or the page or the stage. Embrace your creativity and take a tiny step into it. Or rush headlong.
I have felt especially embraced by the language of the senses - image, sense, taste, touch, sound, what is called figurative language, metaphors, similes. I have been healed by invoking landscape. I, Land. Island. What a gift to find your StoryLands. To name your Land Out Loud.
We don't live in a world that tells us to be creative only for the love of it. You have to go searching for that. You have to go searching to be seen. By yourself first.
For me, the gift of using the language of the senses is that it protects you even as you are creating something. It creates a kind of a buffer that gives you space, hidden in plain sight, and also expressed in full shadow.
The world needs more people like you who want to express themselves for the love of it, because something is calling.
Every time a person chooses to act on their creativity and express themselves is nothing short, nothing long of revolution.
Please, take that step. You are creating a world that is different than the dismal world of only decimals, of commodity.
You are putting money in its place - we created it to alleviate barter, not to take over and become our guiding star.
May you be the stone, be the tree, be the endless sea. Be the lost boat, the found shore, the path home after a long journey away. Be the story only you can sing. even if you whisper it to yourself at midnight, and only the blanket hears it - speak your story, take the smallest step. it matters, it matters, it matters….
all photos by Shebana Coelho unless noted otherwise.
photo: rhob cunningham, ballinskelligs beach, december 2022
