Self Examination — Thoughts on Personal Branding

So…

What traps me?

Am I a creative force? A Renaissance Woman? A.D.D.? A cataclysmic clash of fractillian ideas that seem to be most active when I am sitting quietly with a cat on my lap, unable to access any way to write them down so they may find a way into fruition by at least being captured long enough to remember a tiny hair of the original splendor. 

Ah sigh…

To be afflicted by fear of judgement. 

To have been judged and felt the sting.

To have withdrawn into an interior walled in universe in which my only escape is through the lens of a camera, until it isn’t anymore. Until the shallow depths of unrelenting ideas seethe and brew until they vaporize into steam and fade into the distance. Like a summer rain on the heated asphalt.

To crave to survive and thrive from some kind of order and sense made of steam and smoke rising from smoldering flames of long ago. Trying to derive passion from a sea of varied interests, seemingly conflicting, if I could only tie them all together and float to an island of cohesion.

To remember essences of former me’s. The stage diva, the troublemaker, temptress, inflated ego, victimized drama queen, hopeless romantic, family glue, divider, uniter, driven perfectionist, sniveling in envy and jealous introversion coupled with authoritarian speech that sounds like a leader, and everyone is confused when they don’t get there, no one more than me…

I don’t want those me’s anymore. They do not amuse…

But somehow I got creative juice from those manifestations. Juice that seemed like a torrent a few years ago, and now feels like trying to drink water from a trickle. I'm not worried about them judging me. It's me who sits in judgement and stops me from tasting the water.

I have been cut off from my source. 

This is what it is like inside my head these days. The nutshell version.

“Have self compassion,” they say.

Does that mean one should not be honest with themselves? Is the self compassion movement simply another example of whitewashing ourselves to refuse, as is the norm in society, to truly examine oneself?

Or is that just an excuse for allowing an inner terrorist to threaten me with the truth that I am not always the angel of light in this world. Putting it mildly. But who, really, is? Aren’t we really a society of narcissists refusing to look at our effect on the world and on others?

And in suppressing that truth with sugar coated numbness, we propel shadow monsters to squeeze forth from the woodwork, wielding horror and psychopathic ugliness upon society. We sugar coat everyone else too. No, it is not, ‘all good’. There are people out there that are not ‘all good’. Am I one of those people? Eeeeeck!

Rip the shadow from my feet. Don’t look within and notice how much of that is me, hating, feeling envy, jealousy, etc. Just don’t go there. Hide it if I see it in myself. Sugar coat it. Squish it into a black tar ball in my inner right brain, where it might provide food for my creative expression. Or it might kill my creative supply off completely. Or erupt publicly somehow. 

Just pretend. Just keep always pretending.

No. That is not the answer. Sew the shadow back on and take a good look at it. Examine. Examine. Sew the parts together. I am not a single thing, I am a patchwork quilt made with blood and guts, fear and terror, talent and luck, wrinkles, age spots, menopause… I have a point of view that is only mine. I do not. fit. in. And neither does anyone else.

So what is my personal brand? The one I want the world to see, the creative force that isn't a puff of steam?

To be continued…

Things He Said

from desert flight

he descended upon her nest
on a Taurus moonlit night,

dragging his broken, golden wings behind,

warning he may not stay long

yet engulfing every moment

awake and asleep, with his presence.

he said she was a stepping stone

and so he stepped on her threshold

she said she didn’t really mind

(except she did sort of mind )

but looked for a deeper voice

she caught a glimpse of in a dream…

and she was hungry
his lips were sweet,
a flavor she had known
somehow

It was nectar
to be near him.

something told her to let him stay

and he stayed

though he said he didn’t know why…

and she offered him water

and he drank and drank and drank

and they would laugh, and play, and he flooded her with attention 

and as soon as she felt in love

he said he felt nothing

nothing

no thing at all

she dreamed of poison snakes in the gemini moon...

the surface is hard

but surface cracks

the stepping breaks the stones

under the stones is the water

he longed for water

she let him drink

as she longed for water

so drank his tears

listening, patiently

to long dead stories that filled the air

with sound and sorrow

and longing

she touched his scaly wings

his steel clad armor skin

and tried to reach inside

feeling moments of melted metal

she sang to break the barriers

to feel the soft inside spaces

and heal the broken pieces

or at least try to soften the edges.

He drank with desert thirst,
offering hollow words to her hope

that almost, maybe, he might want her
if she just kept offering her tenderness...

he wondered why he stayed,
arguing that it was

convenient

for him

that their arrangement 
was simply a business arrangement
and needs should be negotiated

except they never were discussed

and she excused it.
wrote it off,
because who was she
to have needs that mattered?

and his kisses felt guarded

unless she worked to open them

to soften them

as though afraid to push open

the gates he held so closed

and it drew her in, 
that he was so willing to receive

...the allure of healing, 
(with a sound like being sucked into the void)
seduced her into a twisted hall of mirrors.

and he said he didn’t find her beautiful

while he raved about women all around him 
who wanted him, or (he imagined) wanted to taste him,

women who appeared and circled and reappeared

and wrapped themselves around his world,

while he said he longed for a stepford wife

that had all the inner qualities he found in her

and she would never have the outer qualities

he ordered from the menu

and was confused because she wasn’t that

(because he was supposed to be omnipotent)

she wasn’t there for that character  

she was there for the water she dreamed of

behind the dam of his devices,

and patience began to grow wings

his stream of unconsciousness

denting her armor

her body aching in pain

from his boots…and she questioned her willingness 

to receive the mental blows

while she longed to reach the shores

of the deeper waters

she questioned his intentions

as they walked and mingled, her floating on his arm

the world saw her beauty

and he saw glimpses in their eyes,

she could see him seeing them seeing

what he wouldn’t see

and he defended, deflected, mirrored her weaknesses
got mean on a dime
pushed her buttons on purpose
and attempted to undermine her insights

they slept,
(wrapped up and entwined)
in a sea of self doubt
she dreamed... 

of wasps destroying trees
of bees threatening to swarm
of trying to garden in a vast wasteland...

In the cancer moon’s light 

she knew that he had to step 

on his own stepping stones

to see above the mask

break the armor

that kept him blind

only then

could he see her beauty

hear her insights

touch her with longing fingers

to find the waters

inside of himself
to offer nectar
to their union

she knew

he would need to protect

and give back what he was drinking

or she would fix his wings 

with the bloody needle of his own shadow,

the one he couldn't see

the one he tried to make hers,

and she would send him flying

into the lonely desert

of his superficial existence.

before the roar of the Leo moon, 

a hurricane smashed the glass
in the hall of mirrors.

where she saw the truth lying in the shards,

pieces of her scattered on the ground 
in a heap.
A glimmer of reality echoed in blue,

fogs of awakening...

there would be no great healing,

that was a mirror of her narcissistic hope...

she had simply been Carrion food,

picked apart methodically, 
(as a raptor knows the most delectable parts),

Be gone! she said as she released him to the sky,
his great dark wingspan casting shadows over the nest,

silhouetted as they ascended

and disappeared into the morning.