Tag: #marchensemble

I check the March Ensemble prompt every morning, but some days don’t resonate with me, or I’m too lazy, or I know I won’t have enough time in the day (even to think). This morning I loved one of two prompts given; Exist for Love. THIS RESONATES. I truly believe I exist for love. I wonder what you are doing if you’re NOT existing for love? What else is worth existing for? I had all these thoughts about ways I exist for love, or things I love. Simple, mundane, everyday things are how I exist for love. The first cup of coffee, damn. I walked downstairs to get that cup of coffee, just past 5am, and the moon struck me right through one of the many windows on the south side of my house. Moonstruck. We just had a full super worm moon in Libra, damn. I took a morning walk with my daughters and kept noticing the way the sun hit the moss on the rocks in the woods, damn! This stream of consciousness tiny piece came to me tonight, while my husband put the girls to bed. Like Lady Lamb says, “and if you’re crying by the moon, in the sun you better LIFT UP THAT CHIIIIIIN!”.

first cup of coffee

light on moss

desire

blood on the tracks

laughing

sex

birth

stepping before knowing where your foot will land

choosing love over fear

The moon exists

for love

I thought a lot about the moon while I looked up at it before the sun rose, and I remembered my dream of two moons. What does the moon exist for, besides love?

My first daughter was born when lupines were blooming, June 18. My second daughter was born just as tulips began to come up, May 15. My mother likes to remind me of this, or actually, she’s the one that put this idea into my head. Don’t you wonder how many memories or thoughts are just there because someone else said them once, or one time? My mother likes to remember the girls through what flowers were blooming at the time of their birth. It’s appropriate, I mean, what could be more evocative of birth than a flower opening? Something bursting through the ground, some tight bud changing color and widening overnight, only to keep widening and unfurling until it’s unrecognizable and needs to be cut back for the sake of everyone’s who has to look at it.

Anyway, I’m obviously talking about vaginas and vulvas now, in case you’ve never seen a Georgia O’Keefe painting.

The prompt for today is Tulips, and that’s the first thing I thought of. I’ve never been wild about tulips, but as I get older I’m finding beauty in any living thing. Hostas, for example, a plant I used to hate, astound me now. There’s a little farm close to us called Seek No Further, and they forced tulips for Valentine’s Day. I’ve gotten tulips from them once before, last year, for my mother in law’s 79th birthday on April 11. Amidst a massive snowstorm they had tulips ready in April. My second daughter was born a month four days after my mother in law’s birthday. I pushed through frozen ground, through a previous cesarean, through a pandemic, and had her safely at home in the nest of our bed.

I tore and bled and was sewn up and healed and couldn’t stand straight or walk or go up and down stairs. I was like the tail end of a bunch of tulips. When you look at them, totally busted, and are like “okay, I think it’s time for the compost pile”.

I didn’t know this Joey Bada$$ song before I made this post. I didn’t know any of the lyrics, I was just looking for a song about tulips or two lips.

I feel like a fresh air force’s first step
Like some fresh flesh, first pack, first sex
And then I doze off for a sec
And see the hand of god pick me up like forceps
You told me never to forget and never to force it
To embrace the time and glorious moments
Cus you could die in a second
So open up within, fore I get to dissecting

What’s closer to death than birth? Not that I feared death, but you push through this unknown and wade through the deepest darkest parts of yourself. Open up within, fore I get to dissecting.

I hemorrhaged a bit after my daughter was placed on my stomach (her cord wasn’t really long enough for her to reach higher on my body), and things moved fast. There was pitocin and uterine “massage” and some gentle tugging on the umbilical cord. Everything was fine in the end, and I trusted my birth team wholly, but never forget to embrace the time and glorious moments.

A friend dropped of a bouquet from a local farm to table restaurant. Among many flowers, there were tulips.

My husband was married once before. For over 20 years he’d been with the same woman. They’d been married over a decade. She’d had a boyfriend for over a decade. They had built a house together, gutting and renovating a one room schoolhouse. They’d just finished the house, just gotten married, and then she went to Haystack.

He stayed home, working and tending to gardens and dogs, and when she returned, she told him she’d fallen in love.
“You can’t be in love with two people.” He said. But they were exceptional. They did not say no just because something was difficult or painful or unusual. They would lean into this, work through this, figure it out and accept this new reality. She left for Chicago, and he stayed home making the fence she’d always wanted, so the dogs could run out back. He stopped sleeping, and started taking walks for countless miles. He grew a beard, and saw a therapist. He was on several medications for sleep and depression and anxiety. Panic attacks were common. The trees, especially, made him anxious.

Before she left to visit her boyfriend he asked her, plain and pitifully,

“Are you going to sleep with him?”

She scoffed, “Yes, that’s what adults do.”

There’s this thing called March Ensemble going on. It’s a prompt every day for the month of March (duh). You get 24h to make a piece of art. The organizers are two Finnish women, one of whom I used to know long ago. Some of my friends (or, I don’t know, people I used to be friends with?) are in the “extended ensemble” which is like featured artists I guess? But anyone is welcome to make and join and use the hashtag #marchensemble. On Instagram they have 222 followers which feels auspicious. I had a dream last night about what the prompt would be. I can’t remember exactly, but it was something like

DRINKING COFFEE

DRUNK COFFEE

Groundbreaking, I know. I also dreamed about scraping the dregs of my collagen powder, and killing time with my two daughters, waiting for a friend to make plans with me. I was dressing my baby in a sweater, but also making the sweater. I was cutting it to fit her body perfectly, while she lay on a wooden deck of some restaurant. I was looking up at my friend, nodding and “m-hmm”ing every so often, while dressing my baby and keeping my toddler in my periphery. This is second nature to me now. Keeping all these pieces moving and still at the same time. Trying to give as much attention as I can to the adult I’m dealing with, while making sure nobody wanders off or is hungry or needs to pee or needs a diaper or needs a nap or needs a sweater cut to their form and hemmed up and buttoned.

My friend canceled on me, even though we were together. I had waited and waited with two small children only for her to say we should get together another day. I wanted to cry but I didn’t. I said today was the only day that would work and that this took tremendous effort to put together (I had the sense we were about an hour from home). So I took my children and began to walk down a path to a beach. It was long and felt like California. We got closer to some houses and then it felt like Maine. Goose Rocks Beach. A woman and her son were grilling or doing something outside, and everything was grey and misty. I asked if we could come inside, maybe to use the bathroom, or warm up, or make a phone call, I can’t remember. She was aloof and I could tell she did not trust us, or think us worthy of entering. There were other people inside, maybe other kids, having a party. She said we weren’t pretty enough.

I wake up and check the prompt for March Ensemble.

SICK SAD SONG

I immediately think of the line from a Guns N’ Roses song, “just like every cowboy sings his sad, sad song”, and then I imagine if the line was sick sad song. And then I think of sad songs I know, and Casimir Pulaski Day by Sufjan Stevens is the first one that pops into my head. And then I think of Sibylle Baier and how sad and haunting her music is. I google the lyrics of that Guns N’ Roses song just to be sure, and so that I don’t make a mistake while typing. And then I realize what someone reading this probably already knows; it’s not Guns N’ Roses at all, it’s Poison. To be fair, it’s still Bret Michaels. So then I google Bret Michaels, and realize his birthday is tomorrow, March 15. The Ides of March. He’s a Pisces. My baby will be 10 months old tomorrow. She was born on May 15. She’s a Taurus.

Dee Snider and Mark McGrath also have birthdays March 15. This feels significant.

Do you think Bret Michaels is always warding off the evil eye, or just doing your standard heavy metal hand gesture?

Shut the door baby, don’t say a word.

I make so that I can make more. I write so that I can write more. It’s all an experiment in coincidence. I submitted this to March Ensemble despite feelings of unworthiness. I scrolled through all the wonderful posts and listened to songs. I thought, “I am not an artist, I just like to write and make.” Regardless, I submitted. On the verge of 30 it’s time to take myself less seriously and lean into any creative path that excites me.

A Dream Woman may tell you you are unworthy, not pretty. Do not listen to the Dream Woman.