Di dove sei? Hatred killed Good

Hatred Killed Good 

Hatred killed Good.  That's all it's ever done. 

Good is a poet, many poems now. Good always has been. 

 

Di Dove Sei? 

Last night I dreamt of running dogs. We hunted, together. Later in the dream an octopus came ashore, I watched it advance behind me and then out of the sea walked a little dog/fish/cephalopod creature. It struggled on land, in a way the octopus did not. It looked for its mother. I carried it to a cat bowl to eat kibble. 

This morning at the bakery, while paying for our daily bread, the owner finally asked me after months of seeing her twice, sometimes thrice weekly... "Cara, di dove sei?"

And without my usual hesitation, I'd answered this same question last night when the woman I see several times a month at the citrus stand asked it, I told her. 

"Tejas."

I say it, always, in Spagnolo. Why choose one colonizer from another? But what connection do I really have, have I ever had, to the English besides their language? It's only a language my tongue belongs to. 

I've been ashamed to be from Texas. A word that means friend that, like the word Messiah, is perverted.

We discussed how she sensed a bit of Spanish in my accent. How smart it was to speak Spanish in the U.S. How everyone should speak Spanish and French there. 

I told her I'd love to speak Italian beautifully, because it's a literary language. She agreed and we agreed too that Spanish, French, Italian... all the others... held a mutual affinity. Latin,  the colonizer language par excellence. 

We didn't say that, because we didn't have to. It's irrelevant now. Isn't it? 

As I went on my way, I noticed a few of the dogs I passed. The Dalmation with his pale pink balls sitting high at his tailbone.  The Romagnolo barking with the Bolognese across the piazza green. The Afghan hound on via Garibaldi who nearly took my breath away. 

When I was a young adultescent, I met a philosophy professor named Stefan. He cooked me vegetarian borscht and taught me how to fly trick kites. He also invited me to a Slam Poetry he hosted. 

And here he is. 

Lovely human being. I wasn't deserving of his kindness or sincerity then. He has continued to be a gift. 

He and another poet encouraged me to write a chapbook, so I did. And here it is, mostly redacted. It's just one poem now. 

 

For years I've kept it, as proof I wrote poems before LiveJournal. I was ashamed of it. "Oh god and I had a hot minute with Slam Poetry!" I self-deprecated. 

Last night was my weekly tutoring session with a high schooler I call my friend. I improv'd contextual sentences to strew the words she needed for her assignment, and came up with this. 

"What does every artist, writer, poet, singer want? They may deny they want it... they may not even realize it...but they want this. "

She couldn't glean it, probably because it isn't universally true. 

Audience was the word. 

I never thought I wanted audience these past many decades of writing and drawing. I never even wanted to call, and often haven't called, myself an artist. I'm a creative person. Art is something I do or live or facilitate. 

Slamming was fun, because there was a sense of belonging and it fed my urge to perform. I wanted improvement. Naively I wanted to understand myself and to to be understood. I wanted to be heard. I wanted to arrive at some truth about anything. 

I also wanted an audience. I didn't need it, but I'm okay now with admitting an audience, even of one, helps to feel heard. 

I've known so many artists who seek admiration. I didn't seek it in my creative endeavors, but I did in my life. I confused being admired with being loved and known.

Some artists find purpose and meaning in their work. Some simply can't imagine what else they'd do. Jim Dine expressed something akin beautifully when he said "It didn't start with me loving art, it started with me knowing it was all I could do." 

I don't feel that way. I never had an "I am going to be a [writer, singer, painter, poet, etc...] I just danced. I just sang. I just drew and collaged. I just recorded me and my niece doing talk shows in my bedroom on our shoebox after creating background sets. I just tailored clothes from fabric scraps onto my barbie. I just wrote. I just collected rocks. Not pretty ones mind you, just rocks that seemed special to me for no particular reason. 

I went to museums in Germany in my early twenties and saw exhibits with Max Ernst, Joseph Beuys, Bruce Nauman, Carolee Schneeman, Ana Mendieta... and those were the closest things to AHa! moments. I realized "Oh, this is also art. I live this. I get this". 

But I also took to heart when my chosen father and one of the most creative people I've ever met... a New York window display artist from the 60s and an interior designer and onetime painter and self taught horticulturist and knower of succulents... I really listened when he told me "Calling yourself an "artist" is just a trip that people get on. It has nothing to do with being human. If you define yourself and your worth by what you do, you'll never get anywhere. That's not what being alive is about. You are worthy because you exist. That's it. You can be a painter or a porter. It doesn't matter. You breathe, ergo you are worthy." 

Or when I asked another dear human what their political affiliation was and they told me "Isn't it obvious? I'm an anarcho-cynicalist. I'm a groucho-marxist." 

Labels really are about branding and folding things neatly into boxes.  

I'm not as resistant to labeling myself now and also though, it still doesn't feel comfortable.  

We all want enough money to eat. More importantly, we want enough money to make time for ourselves to do whatever it is we do in our minds, alone. 

Some of us want more. 

I know I do. What I want is community. But having community means getting outside one's head. And this is hard for creative people to do. 

I'm a 45 year old perimenopausal mother who has lived a colorful and worldly life. I don't need to prove myself and I don't need permission. There are 8 billion and growing kinds of people in this world, and for now I am one of them. I'm thankful for that. It is enough. 

We're all from right here.  

Thank you, Stefan.