All The Seeds

Last week I confronted a thick cloud of heaviness. It has been sucking the life out of what our culture calls “creative time.” My old laptop hasn’t opened for weeks, anxiety came a knockin’ again, and I did not know how to make time. When has creating ever been something to clock into? And the heaviness? Well, in stillness, it came to me.  I have been dragging unfinished and unmet ideas and goals into the start of each new week since I was in high school. 

It’s a brave and daring feat. But my motivation was a popular culture that says, “you are valuable based on concrete output and well that output matches what are guzzling at the moment.” Everything has to be finished, stamped and slid down the assembly line-disconnected from its creator. Forget sharing it how you want. Your creation belongs to the game now. Ugh! 

I was also carrying shame for fear of being erased with nothing left to show. (A product of a certain religious psychosis) I was also motivated by the thought of “someone might produce similar ideas.” The shame continues  with the damaging idea that I could never create with my limited resources and that others who do have resources are at an advantage over me. Damn Ted, that’s a lot to be carrying. 

I am not a machine. I’m a free being. Inspiration flows constantly. It won’t stop. And I don’t have to finish a project. I can end it altogether. I’m evolving and I am a new iteration of myself now. I release the workhorse with the 3 trapper keepers, 10 flash drives, and thousands of notes, emails and lists. I liberate the dreamer. I create for the dreamer. 

I look at the okra plant and I am reminded that I am not native to pop culture. I’m not native to the ideologies that kept me feeling like I was walking through tar. I look at the okra plant and I see bountiful! I see love. I see a dreamworld being weaved. I see my ancestors innovating what we now know as survival so that I could come forth dream freely.  

Squishy seeds in braided hair so that I could eat. 

Okra means a daring thing

Full of potential and possibility

And I will not be drug under the weight of stagnancy 

It’s a psychotic ploy

I am not some factory for manufacturing joy

I am joy 

A cultivated prayer

A wish

A seed from many seeds

Bursting with possibility

And I will not be bound to another way

May you, they, we “become” peacefully. 

Big Peace & Love,

Teddy the Brave