The Sound of Silence

Despite my resolution to do so at the beginning of the year, I have not been posting more regularly here. I have not been churning out creative work at the pace I had hoped. I have been having to work through a lot of internal stuff again.

I feel ready to begin the next chapter of my life, and I feel trapped in a cycle of mere existence. Like a snake midway through shedding it’s skin but unable to break out entirely, I feel awkward and stuck. Things are shifting, but not fast enough, and I feel like I’m missing out on the time with the kids that I so desperately crave. I also feel like the universe is mocking me and piling more on top of me lately.

Then all the pain in those around me weighs down. The separation of the family at the borders, knowing the irreparable damage being done to those kids. Knowing the damage being done to so many kids around our country in general. And knowing that all of humanity could be living in abundance and have the freedom to pursue their passions right now, if we used technology to work with nature, if we set aside our hatred and our greed, if we stopped viewing others as “less than”… we could accomplish so much good. What we are and what we could be are so vastly far apart right now, I grieve.

But I have been grieving fairly silently. I have gone deep inside myself, to the very depths of my being, and such a journey is always traveled alone, out of necessity. I’m only just now struggling to the surface.

I don’t know what the future holds, either for myself personally or for us as a nation or a species. What I do know is that we have to make the choice to stand up for ourselves and others, for what is right, even if the cost feels too high. Maybe my personal struggles right now are a reflection of the larger struggle of humanity, as we work to evolve. It’s a thought.

Advertisements

Sister in Love, a poem

1. Sister in love,
   Though you claim to despise
   There is now
   Such a deep connection
   Between us two.
   And I, who formerly
   Had claim to his
   Constancy
   Now find myself
   Wooing you
   In his name.
   I should forget
   And would,
   If I knew how,
   But the sweetness
   Of days gone by
   And my shame
   In being not what I
   Appear to be
   And knowing
   All that I have
   Sacrificed…
   The price is too dear.
2. Sister in love,
   For such we are,
   Through no fault of mine,
   I would remove
   All hurt
   If I only could.
   Bathe your wounds
   In my tears
   And cleanse you anew.
   For love has only caused
   Me sorrow.
   I live with
   As little hope as you
   To ever gain
   My own dear one again.
   Perhaps to truly
   And deeply love
   Is not a kindness
   To our sex
   For there is no contentment
   In the flames of passion.
   Only pain,
   Even in success.

Copyright 2018, Kat Micari

This poem is inspired from Shakespeare’s Two Gentlemen of Verona.

I Wrote a Thing!

I wrote a short story that is going to be included in a children’s story collection about Kindness! I used this illustration I made years ago as inspiration.

As soon as I get more details, I will share with you.

It felt really good to write the story, to have a solid deadline of when it had to be finished, and to get it out into the world. My hope going forward is to get one short story written a month in addition to continuing on with my novel, because it makes me feel accomplished to “finish” something regularly, and maybe after I get enough done, I’ll make a print collection out of them along with Penumbra. We’ll have to see.

 

Jack and Jill, a poem

Jack and Jill

Went up the hill

Needles clutched in hand

They both got high

Jill gave a sigh

As the euphoria began

 

They sank deep down

Dropped to the ground

While inside they touched the sky

Not a worry, not a care

No deep despair

No need to ever ask why

 

Jack once had dreamed

How good life seemed

When hope was in his heart

But the dream was dead

The noise grew in his head

And escape was easy to start

 

Jack passed out

Jill flailed about

And wondered what to do

She needed on hit more

So she still could soar

And when the needle bit, she flew

 

Jack faded, then died

Jill finally tried

But she couldn’t stand to stay

One more wasted life

Couldn’t handle the strife

So now it’s thrown away

 

Copyright 2018, Kat Micari

 

This poem was inspired by an incident in the parking lot at work yesterday – 4 teens were shooting heroin in their car. A client told me about it, and I called the police, but I’m not sure what happened afterward. It’s such a huge problem in our area now, as it is everywhere else in the country. Very easily avoidable too… just stop the shipments coming in. But someone somewhere is making lots of money off of it, pretty high up the food chain, so that’s not likely to happen.

I grieve for the wasted potential, for the dimming of their possibilities, for all the lives affected. It’s so sad.

The Fires Burning Within

I have been feeling this increasing need to create for several months now. I’ve laid a lot of groundwork, have my pieces all laid out on the game board, but things keep getting in the way, not least of which is my refusal to ever work myself sick again. Not excuses, just frustration at the delay.

My goal is for all my creative endeavors to be fueling each other, for the art and writing to flow back and forth, to use them as inspiration for both my music and my costuming. My husband and I are talking about starting to sell homemade bath and beauty products which we did as an offshoot of our Fairy Magik label years ago but at the tail end, so we didn’t give it a very good go. To do all of that while taking in freelance sewing work and spending more time with the children. But to do more than chip away at that requires me first and foremost getting out of this stressful and physically exhausting job I’m currently in, which we’re working on.

I’ve been posting older work on Instagram to inspire me to continue chipping away, but honestly, by the time I sit down and have a few minutes to work, it’s so late at night that I’m spent and can’t tap the space I need to be in. Everything comes in it’s own time, and I feel the “soon, the time isn’t right just yet, but soon”, but patience has never been one of my strongest points. So the fires within continue to burn, to grow, threatening to overwhelm me.

When I finally unleash the fire, it will be a sight to behold.

Breaking the Cycles Collectively

Let’s have a bit of a philosophical discussion! I have noticed that more and more people are making an attempt to break free of the programming that binds them, in essence trying to cease the constant loop of life and give more meaning and freedom to their existence. I see more conscious parents actually making an effort to raise their children in ways that break through generational cycles of abuse, neglect, or lack of consciousness. People actually trying to reason and think and doing it alongside of caring passionately for others. All this happening, though, while society as a whole seems to be getting worse.

So I have been thinking lately, is it possible to break the bigger cycles? If enough individuals break their personal ones, process past traumas, take control of their lives, stop playing the game and feeding into the mess, can society as a whole do the same? Do civilizations always have to follow a similar script in their rise and fall, or can we actually create something entirely new and step aside? What are your thoughts?

Tempest in a Teapot – A Poem

Little Boy Blue poetry reading

I did another poetry reading on Youtube. It kind of speaks for itself, though again, I felt really awkward doing it, and I also think it’s funny I wore a black and white striped shirt when I recorded this as it’s a poem about police violence. Also, I happened to be wearing a different striped shirt when I recorded the first one. Weird, right?

Processing the Bad in Life So I Can Enjoy the Good

I successfully opened my first show since the fiasco of working myself sick and getting fired late 2016. It felt good to design again, and to work with new people. But leading up to the week before opening, I was having a lot of trouble internally. My brain was constantly switching into “fight or flight” mode, and I was experiencing intense moments of anxiety that nearly crippled me. In fact, there was a day or two in the beginning when there was a delay in our being able to sign the contract that I almost decided to back out of doing the show all together.

It took until the week before the show opened for me to realize that I was experiencing all of these feelings because I was flashing back to my bad experience at my last job. At first I was angry and annoyed that it still was having such an affect on me, but realizing that it was from that past experience made all the difference in the world because I was able to finally work through a lot of crap that I had been repressing for over a year. It was a huge weight off of my shoulders, I was able to fully enjoy the final stage of the process, and the patch of psoriasis I had on my back since getting fired has since completely cleared up (though my hands are still horrible… we shall see if they improve as the cold weather wanes). And I feel ready to go down either direction in the fork that life has for me coming up because I know my own strength and fortitude.

Our bodies and minds are truly remarkable. They take a trauma and will hold it until we are strong enough to cope with it. The problem is that many of us never actually feel strong enough to cope with it. We get that first “danger danger” signal from our brain and rather than access whether we actually are in danger or not, we bury those feelings deeper and find outside means of hiding those feelings. And then we start experiencing the mental anguish in physical form and we do what we have to in order to ignore that too. But if we trust in the process, and we are willing to engage our dark sides, we have truly remarkable self-healing powers. It has to be done in stages and it is intensely difficult work, but it is so worth it.

Anyway, it’s been a couple of weeks since that has happened, and I’ve been playing catch up on life and my regular work (it’s our busy time), ironically my entire fee for the design went toward a car repair instead of getting us ahead like I wanted to (but thank goodness that fee was on hand for that) and the last of my daughter’s 1 year molars are finally almost through, but I want to be doing more here and with my creative work so I’m working towards that. All part of the healing process, right?

Let the Young Lead You

I know personally so many great teens and pre-teens right now. I see videos of more circulating online. These are young people who care, young people who are tech-savvy while still connecting with each other, young people who are articulate and well-read, young people who value truth and knowledge and are willing to take action with what they learn. The post-9/11 babies who didn’t have that trauma (and let’s face it, many of us never actually dealt with any of that so it still lingers), a generation that lacks the cynicism that my generation has because we all actually bought into the lies society fed us and felt betrayed.

You have seen the shit the world can throw at you already at a young age, and you still stand firm in yourselves. You keep your mind and your heart open but are ready to fight for truth. You are in a remarkable position of being grossly underestimated by the current power structure, and I hope you use it to your advantage. They will continue to attempt to infantilize you, for as long as they can. They will continue to try to lay insecurities on you, and stress, and fear, and blame you for everything they can, as they have done on the generations before you, but I think there are enough of you that will see through all that, which is so exciting to me.

Thank you, all of you, for giving me real hope for the future, for allowing me to feel like the fight has not been in vain and that my children may have a chance to take part in a monumental shift for humanity. For giving me the bright spot I need to continue chipping away where I can. Thank you also to the parents of these kids because you learned enough to plant the seeds and break generational cycles to allow those seeds to bear fruit. It is a collective effort to improve society, even as we each individually do what we can, and it is so refreshing to realize so many are attempting to make that shift.