late night love letter to the goofy? the fool? (to myself)

hi bestie!

i was just passing through, doing the bi-annual housekeeping of my blog (aka when i feel moved every six months to make slight tweaks and update things and dust off the shelves, vacuum the floors, polish the silver, etc. etc. etc.)

as i was rummaging through my digital wares this evening– summer sweat slowly pooling around my thighs, wind whipping through my windows to make my toes just a little too cold to make any sense for the middle of july– i felt moved to say hello, since it’s been so long. so many lovely, beautiful, embarrassing versions of me live on this site, and i wanted to take a little snapshot of this moment to add to the collage.

ever since i divorced myself from the practice of publicly sharing stuff i’m processing on the upswing from my emotional downturns… i noticed that i now… struggle… very much so… to suspend myself in any form of written stoicism… does that make sense? i spent the evening reading through some of the more beautiful and difficult pieces i committed myself to sharing in the past few years, and i found that i no longer (currently) have it in me to withhold goofiness when it comes to sharing myself, my life, and its stories.

i feel like some version of me wouldn’t like this, some part of me inside wants to lock myself up and lock my answers in- stake my claims and shroud myself in the mysteries of recovery and healing only to emerge in nonspecific joy on the other side. let the gritty stuff be peculiar, let the levity be vague. leave people guessing and write about heavy things to keep me from floating away. give words some weight, strap them to my ankles, and wade through the lake. perhaps a piece of me wishes i could take myself and my “craft” more seriously, wondering if i undermine my credibility by carrying myself without any sort of convention nor caution.

all of that said, i don’t believe my goofiness– my cosmic commitment to disfunction and bumbling around– to be any less sincere than anything i could ever give anyone that is more polished. i think about this in regards to things i create, to things i say, to things i do, to things i write, to texts i send, to conversations i have, to the ways i hold my body. i will shit the bed with inappropriate punctuation, speak absurdities, flail my body around like a pixar character, and it will never undermine the love nor tenderness i intend to hold and express in spaces i navigate. my joy is specific, my humor is intentional, my light is truthful.

as i navigate the workplace (at my New Full-Time Job… more on that some time later eventually i guess…….) and simultaneously seek to connect further and stretch out my roots and branches throughout the world as a Growing Thing– rather than a mere polyp of my youth, riding the waves of the primordial waters in which i bloomed and stewed as an adolescent– i am stumbling into myself every day. specifically, understanding which parts of myself i would never compromise– not out of rebellion, but rather out of becoming and returning. becoming and returning to the same silly little person who started this blog because she wanted to write love letters to herself and everything she touched as a tool to understand the world. becoming and returning to the same silly little bumblebee who collects nectar from flower to flower– spitting and kissing and sharing with friends until it turns to honey– to be nourished and sheltered by the fruit of their labor.

thus, i will continue to allow my haphazard creative practices guide me every which way. i will continue to write and write and write absolute nonsense about astrology in my instagram captions with no reprieve. i will pick up movement practices for 6 months at a time and never touch them again. i will continue to sing in moments meant to disappear– like showers and bonfires and bedrooms and that karaoke bar in the heart of the castro, and hopefully catch it on camera every once in a while. i’ll be unabashed in my interests and affections, and give myself room to fluctuate. i will Never type with correct formatting and convention again (unless i have to :/) i will honor my mutability, my enthusiasm, my irreverence in the ways i know how.

living, collaborating, interacting, loving– these are all creative acts, just as much as art making is. i am learning to treat them as such.

there’s no right or wrong way~ let’s get silly!!

love you. talk soon.

izzy, *22

lmk how you’re doing in this box here 🙂