being alive is art
being alive is art.
art isn’t something you do.
or something you make.
it’s not a specific form.
or even any form, in fact.
it’s not what hangs on your walls or sings through your speakers or fills the shelves of your library.
art is existing.
it’s bothering to be alive at all.
it’s rising day-after-day.
on days when rising is easy, good.
and on days when that’s a weighted thing.
it’s how we tend weft + warp by putting one foot in front of the other.
one hope in front of the other.
how we extend our living, and sometimes our loving, vertically + horizontally.
the way we offer prayers, formal + not-so, sunrise to sunset.
the way we build bridges with our breath from now to next to then to good to god.
it’s how we love.
how we love when we’re spotless + free.
and how we love {again} when we know too many ghosts.
art is the way we carry the magnitude of the global moment.
how we carry on. that we carry on.
the way we still know sunlight when we’re afraid.
possibility when we’re uncertain.
and devotion when we’re scared.
it’s how we know living when, sometimes, it seems easier not to.
art is imperfect.
beautifully so. necessarily so.
it’s both complex + wholly simple.
a jewel with a million x a million facets.
and, at the root, a resilience that’s straightforward.
it’s your good Ancestors perpetually at your back-and-front.
holding you close. calling you forward.
it’s your good destiny being patient, incorruptible.
and your lineage always standing at-the-ready.
it’s finding even-small joy in neon pink paint.
or the smell of vanilla bean.
all the words rain speaks to soil.
how cello sings.
it’s in the poetry of how you position yourself in relationship to yourself.
and how you can, and will, rewrite that again-and-again.
art is being here.
for as long as you can. in the best way you can. in ways that are real-and-good for you.
it’s as enormous + as simple as that.
