the usual / reading old blog posts / smoothies and green juice / yoga and pilates
Daily writing prompt
What are your daily habits?
I have run-of-the-mill daily habits which involve some combination of physical exercise (yoga and pilates), hygiene (showering, teeth-brushing, face-washing, hair-brushing), work (writing, reading, letting themes percolate in my brain), and existing (meditating, chanting, resting, consuming green juice). I’m not going to focus on any of the aforementioned habits; rather, I’m going to talk about a fairly recent daily practice I’ve chosen to incorporate in to my routines.
I read old blog posts and writings from versions of me long gone, lost to the vices of time, rebuilt from the ashes of destruction. Pieces written during particularly chaotic periods in my life make me cower in shame even though I know that it’s better to express pain in a primal manner (i.e., better out than in). Pieces written during particularly joyful periods in my life make me smile–they are reminders that life does get better, especially when you decide to take responsibility for yourself.
I’d taken up this practice about two months ago, when I decided that I was going to work on my fear of being perceived. There’s a scene in “Death at a Funeral” wherein Matthew MacFayden’s character seems to have been writing a novel for years, precisely because he has let no one read it. I, much like many other creators/writers/artists, deeply understand this sentiment–creative spurts feel so divine in nature that sometimes, you’re afraid of having your work perceived by people who have not accessed their inner divinity. I don’t know that this thread of thinking extends to others–once upon a time, I hated sharing my work because I knew the company I had kept could not appreciate it. I mistakenly believed this was a curse, instead of seeking out the company of people dedicated to creating things from the heart.
On the topic of seeking out people who understand and appreciate the most authentic expressions of your soul, “Wide Sargasso Sea” now feels several degrees more heartbreaking. The unfortunate truth is that neither Antoinette nor her mother had actually gone mad–both were subject to the whims of people who could not understand primal expressions of being, precisely because they had never let themselves “go there” at all.
Pain is pain is pain is pain. But there are types of pain that have not yet found an embodied understanding in the bodies they inhabit, pain in the margins that most cannot understand, pain that finds understanding only when expressed primally. Associating primal expressions of pain with accusations of insanity is a net negative for society–rejection of the primal self is a rejection of the mechanism/vessel/body that houses the soul.
And in the case of Antoinette and her mother–how do you carry on when your brain does not contain the frameworks to make sense of your pain/sadness/grief/rage? How do you heal, when every attempt to access the primal parts of yourself is suppressed by cowards afraid to access those parts of themselves? How do you keep the company of people who have not taken responsibility for their current stations in life, who refuse to understand that primal ways of being include more than just sexual activity and physical exercise?
Anyway, weird ramble one day I’m going to read this post and I imagine I’ll cringe and smile. :D.
Happy Thursday ;D.