Graffiti Of The Heart

I did not permit it to scratch or scribble its way onto my heart. Illicitly, it stained the walls with permanency. It took up residence and I can’t clean it off no matter how hard I try.

A dream…

Of beauty and art

Of delicious emotions

With intense yearning
Of creative expression

I can’t travel without stopping the car if I see a beautiful sunset, a turtle crossing the street, or a picturesque flower. I've stopped in the middle of the street, breaks screeching, slamming the passenger into the dashboard all for the sake of a photograph. (Sorry Brandon)

Suddenly an image will come into my mind. I grab a pen, pencil, or white out pen, whatever I can find and begin to draw. I will pull out my pink bed sheet, a work of art within itself, stained with paint of every color imaginable. I will pull out my sheet and spread it across the dining room table, grab a canvas and paint brush and begin to use my mind to direct my hand.

I can be in the middle of listening to a song on the radio and my mind spews forth words that must be written. I don’t feel as if I can breathe properly until I type the last punctuation mark.

This dream to be creatively free and unafraid comes from a place deep within that no matter how hard I try to suppress it; be it weeks, months or even years…it springs back to life and becomes uncontrollable. Ever since I got my first diary over 25 years ago, ever since I wrote my first book of poems that sits in my closet on the top shelf, dusty; this dream of living a life of artistic expression waxes and wanes through my being.

This year, this week, this day..it is spilling over.

Here are some recent photographs and drawings of mine. I hope you enjoy.
(If the image is blurry, tap it to open)

Wildly Without Shame

I open the dusty book and wipe off its pages. The smell hits me before I can even bring it close enough to read the words. Ink; etched onto paper as deep and permanent as a first tattoo. I read the words carefully. Who was she back then? How did she feel?

She was I. She was a girl with feelings too strong to contain. She was like a bird wanting to take flight and free herself from herself. Words and emotions far beyond her years would bear down wildly as an old pen and a fresh sheet of paper met for the first time. This was how she would escape, with a passionate sense of relief without discernment. Not containing her voice, her feelings or her heart.

She is the girl I long for again; the girl who expresses herself without fear of judgment and an innocence that can only come from that of a young girl who sees the world as a safe and unshaking place. To share and create what I know deep within myself, for I am no one else but me. I have no reason to compare who I am to anyone, as I am unique and talented in my own special way. This sense of belonging to me and only me does not come from a place of conceit or arrogance. Rather, it comes from a place deep within that knows we are all important. We all have something to gift to others and to ourselves; a gift that is simply and yet elaborately bestowed to us by God.

I will wildly write what is on my heart. I have always been an open book disillusioned by the idea that somehow I could contain my emotions by not giving them a voice. By trying to create strength from building up walls that I am now finding difficult to tear down, realizing now that strength comes from vulnerability. I never have been able to contain my sensitivity as it burns through my demeanor, my stance, my stare.  So I will not prohibit my emotions or my passions any longer from flowing through my hands from my heart onto paper. I will no longer silence myself while believing that I am being protective of my heart. 

I open the dusty book and wipe off its pages. The journal that began with a 9 year old is still light and now musky. This book is also me, I too have sat untouched for too long. I dust myself off of guilt and shame and will etch onto my heart my words that have a voice. I will give no regard to the judgments that come my way; from others or from myself.  I will once again fly.

Where Do I Put This Fire?

I have this deep and intense need to create. To breathe life into something that is of utter importance. I have this urge to connect with myself and others in a romantic, creative, intense way. I want to write words that spill forth from my heart with ease. I want to paint beauty that captures hearts and makes souls cry. I want to share the intensity within my core that shouts exactly how I am feeling through photography. I want to create a dish of the most intense flavor that it explodes passion and cools desire within the mouth of the receiver.

I want to feed my sensitivity with strength that is found only through being vulnerable, open, artistic, and real.