1. What are the specific perspectives and experiences I bring to my work? What identities do I claim and hold that could help connect populations, support another human in their own self discovery or provide comfort?

2. Am I sharing freely? Am I allowing an audience to find my work? If not, how can I develop the courage to share, knowing it may help someone survive?

3. Do I feel inclined to mentor or teach? What spaces, and what populations, could benefit from my gifts and services? What populations could I also learn from?

4. What am I holding back from sharing? What can I reveal about myself that may open a space for another to reveal a shared experience?

5. What artists have helped me in these ways? Who are my “survival mentors”?

— Caits Meissner

i ask myself these questions or some derivative of them on a daily basis. my constant contemplation of my purpose, of calling, of responsibility strengthens my spirit, but it is through battles with the ego that it does so. i harbor this fixation with home, with spaces, with identity, as many of us do, and my tendencies trickle down to things as seemingly mundane as how my blog or other social networks feel when i arrive at them or sit with them for a while. sometimes, the interest lends itself to my obsessive inclination to edit, to remove, to wonder if something is good enough or being felt deeply enough depending upon how well-received it was or wasn’t.

to have discovered your calling at any point in this lifetime is a feat and a blessing in itself. for a long time, i’ve known my soul purpose and what i’ve come here to do. and while the knowledge of that is what wakes me up daily, and what drives my passion when i feel sick, or weak, or just plain tired, it sometimes feels as if i carry this weight upon my being and that if, once my time here is over, i don’t accomplish what i’ve come here to do, i’ll have failed. that i am a failure as a being, and that it’s all over. that’s definitely not the case, but for one so adamant about the journey, the rise of global consciousness, and making change not only through the arts, but by any gifts and services that implement evolution and healing, it’s difficult to imagine the possibility of not fulfilling what i brought myself here to do.

this time we live in, this age, is something else. the shifts are happening everywhere—biologically, socially, technologically, economically, academically, artistically, and so on and so forth. some of these shifts are positive and led by the people, ourselves. others, those forces implemented by governments worldwide to counter the evolution of the species, are not so positive. it is very easy to go on and on about our own president’s war crimes, and oppression, and the systematic destruction of minorities, and human rights, and freedom, and so forth, but it is much more difficult to take it upon ourselves to be the facilitators of the evolution and the rise in consciousness we speak of, and to commit to the responsibility.

everyday i am discovering ways in which i can be a better being, a better lover, healer, artist, sister, daughter, friend, and though the dynamics of each are sometimes exclusive, sometimes not, always shifting, i remind myself that i am merely dancing upon a web of interconnectivity that is not specific to my own existence, but extends to everyone i encounter, directly or indirectly, whether i am immediately conscious of their presences, or not. i have been reading a version of the bhagavad gita and a particular passage about the three basic states of energy, as described, are tamas (inertia), rajas (activity), and sattva (harmony). our own individual spiritual evolution concerns this transformation from bound, uncontrolled, and harnessed energy, respectively. and this same transformation is what is happening on a global scale. the book also states that matter contains all of these things in different proportions at any one time. we are in the thick of it. all of us at different crossroads on our journeys, at different stages in our personal growth, but we sometimes forget that all of our paths are leading to the same place.

“the goal of evolution is to return to unity; that is, to still the mind. then the soul rests in pure, unitary consciousness, which is a state of permanent joy:”

we are each powerful, magical beings in our own right with significant experiences to both have and share, and destinies to create/fulfill. while it’s important to remain consistent with our work, whatever it may be, we have to remind ourselves that the mistakes we make, obstacles we face, and fallouts we have are all advancements on our path as much as our successes, triumphs, and nurtured connections.

reminders to rise up and keep on. and to not be too hard on yourself.

as much as i’d like to believe i am, i am not invincible. just last evening i was telling my beloved how i feel like i’m slackin’ whenever i’m not doing anything that directly contributes to my practice(s), and he reminds me that we all have to take breaks. that it is okay to rest and to take the time we need to get our energy back. feelings of being “less than” or “not enough” are not only self-destructive, but have no place. in the past, i’ve found myself comparing my successes with that of others and had to be humbled, severely, with the reality that we cannot measure our growth with another’s because it will never match up. it’s not supposed to. that little strain of narcissism that we all possess that wants us to be recognized for our work and what we do fuels these thoughts about gauging the importance of achievements and magnitude of failures and in the grand scheme of it all, it’s futile. there is no such thing as a big or small task, if it is a task, it must be done. just as there is no such thing as a large or small contribution. a contribution is one, no matter the proportion it’s given. a touch is the same whether you touch one soul, or one thousand. universal law demands that the vibe keeps flowin’.

just the other day, when i was wondering how significant my work was to the communities i identify with, and if i was doing enough, a young woman tweeted me telling me that i’d inspired her to create something. the universe sends us signs like that. the fact that i’d been moved by Caits’ words to write, is proof. the fact that someone may be moved to write, or create, or consult their higher self, because of my interpretation, further evidence of this phenomenon of energy exchanges and inspiration and frequencies and all those interesting words for getting back what you put out into the universe.

what these connections magnify is that while we, in essence, make our journeys alone, we are never alone on our journeys.

caitsmeissner:

This January, when my student died of a gun shot to the stomach, writing a poem didn’t seem like an appropriate response. I was stunned, and regardless of the ethics of penning a poem, I was left without the language to sooth this experience through a beautiful-twist of words. In fact, it felt even offensive to transfer this into a poem that I could potentially get accolades for. “Oh, this poem is so affecting.” And then what? Instead of making art out of loss, the urgency of healing those left alive was present- a broken mother and friends, peers who may retaliate.

After the wake, I spoke to my father, standing outside the open mouth of the subway, ready to swallow me in like any ordinary day. “It’s almost amazing,” he reminded me, that more of my students hadn’t fallen to this fate with our current climate. I felt defeated and sad, what would have happened to my student if he hadn’t skipped my poetry class all the time? Could I have, in some small way, helped to save him from this tragedy? It was a selfish thought, a self-aggrandizing thought, but it was an honest thought. The deep grief of experiencing and witnessing loss pushed me to think about what my contribution is to this very broken world. What is my impact? What is the role of art in relationship to all the other dire needs in our communities? Is art ever enough?

At the gang intervention conference. You can’t read my word, but it says “creativity!”

This week I attended the Los Angeles Gang Prevention and Intervention conference. Two days of plenary and break out sessions dedicated to engaging audiences in the work of eradicating interpersonal violence. Connie Rice, who sued the pants off the LAPD, sat in conversation with the Police Chief about creating sustainable efforts to support the safety of young people without racist tactics. We attended sessions on Girls and Gangs, the school-to-prison pipeline and led a panel on media’s role in violence interception. Later in the week, visiting a training of “OG” gang interveners, elder men and women who had renounced the life and now put themselves in the line of fire to break up physical violence, I felt foolish. Sitting in the room, with poems in my back pocket, I thought there was no way my work could ever compare to the work of these men and women, who step into spaces of conflict and affect sincere change in many lives.

As if an answer, the next day I found myself sharing vegan thai with Wayne, who runs a music program in many prisons nationally, as he spoke inspired words around the purpose of his life path. An ex-offender himself, he knows the loneliness of incarceration and considers inmates “his people.” (Also, The Clash wrote a song about him, but that’s another story for another day.) Though I have long thought about the importance of art in these spaces, Wayne framed this experience in a way that cut through me. “Education in prison is all well and good,” he said in so may words, “but with just education, you get an educated criminal. You need to change the heart.”

Note from a student.

Hearing these dialogues all week, I roll the ever-present question around in my mouth. After you take the gun out of the young person’s hand, and put a roof over their heads and a hot meal on the table, what is missing? What methods can be used to connect a person to their soul, their purpose? I start to think about the kind of violence that specifically affects young women. So often the narrative surrounds the young man, and it is real and relevant, but I began to be sparked. There have been ways poetry has saved my spirit, and the spirit of others, women particularly, in very real ways. Years ago I taught a summer school credit recovery course where the lucky students recuperated lost class credit through my spoken word intensive. I had a student, a young woman, who was deeply struggling in school and wore an unbendable attitude. With persistence, and incredible attention paid to lifting up her diminished self esteem, she began to soften, just enough to slip out an entry in her freewrite journal entry revealing an abuse happening in the home. When she asked me to read the pages, we gently walked through a plan to connect her to services. Years ater, another student sat with me and revealed through a poem her struggle with a health issue that caused excessive body hair growth, and the pain of feeling bullied, lonely, confused about sexual identity. She was afraid love might never find her. In this space, we were able to cry, connect and find ways to imagine another, more positive way to view her own body. Here, in two very real spaces, poetry was a safe revealing and it created an authentic moment of connection, and intervention.

Another old student, claiming her fierceness!

We know this, somewhere in our hearts, that there is a deep need to create, and help other’s create whether through direct mentoring, or simply being present in the world (think of when you’ve stumbled upon someone’s work at the right time.) I am kicking myself for not writing down the source of a study I encountered recently that named belonging as necessary to staying alive as food and shelter. We know art helps us belong, process, heal, connect and declare. It is the life force that has changed our minds, turned our hearts, kept us afloat and encouraged survival. So how do we continue creating in the solace of our bedrooms and studios, but move to bring our art and process into a space that directly impacts the world? Through mentoring, formal or informal, teaching, or simply sharing through the internet or in real-time spaces, we give people the chance to connect with us through and beyond our work, and encourage them to find a way to express their own desires, secrets and needs.

So how do we contribute with our art?

Here are some questions to ask yourself…

1. What are the specific perspectives and experiences I bring to my work? What identities do I claim and hold that could help connect populations, support another human in their own self discovery or provide comfort?

2. Am I sharing freely? Am I allowing an audience to find my work? If not, how can I develop the courage to share, knowing it may help someone survive?

3. Do I feel inclined to mentor or teach? What spaces, and what populations, could benefit from my gifts and services? What populations could I also learn from?

4. What am I holding back from sharing? What can I reveal about myself that may open a space for another to reveal a shared experience?

5. What artists have helped me in these ways? Who are my “survival mentors”?

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Transcribing the Journey is a series of journal entries where I reflect on the journey of writing- my trials, tribulations, growth and thought processes- to share in communion with you, dear writer! Follow along here, or on my website, and feel free to share out!

a woman in the process of
falling/growing/rising in love with herself.

love letters from women i love about that between myself and my beloved and am reminded that we should never settle for a love we have to dim our light for. for those who beg us to swim in their shadows because that is hardly love at all. i struggle even, to call that attraction. more like attachment. there are people who will praise you out loud and pray for your demise in the quiet. some have the audacity to try and execute it themselves. sometimes we get sucked in so deep we think it’s too late to run, to pull ourselves out. but, believe me when i tell you that i have been incubated/crushed by the inkiest semblances of darkness and pried my way out.

the sun does not ask the moon to turn off her glow, to glisten a little more subtly, to stop reaching through bedroom windows of young women so they can tell her of their love. he never feels intimidated by her shine because he is a light of his own. and the moon never asks it of him. if she does anything, she reflects his light. acts as a divine channel for his radiance. the wisdom of his knowledge. he rules the day. she, the night. different, yet equal forces. both symbols of guidance, of life. both bearers of light.

following the same path through the sky.