The Seize the Dazzle Credo
(Here is the video of me reading to you if you feel like being read to instead...)
My Art is for You, deep feelers of emotion--love, anger, frustration, passion, soul-quenching sadness. For those of you that will cry when your spirit says, cry. And experience joy, splitting your seams with celadon or tangerine.
My Art is for You, who are afraid to pick up the pen, the brush, the paper, the canvas.
My Art is for You there, at a crossroads, looking for something to make you alive again, looking for maybe just the right red lip to open to a turquoise sky.
My Art is for You, seeking meaning in a world that you feel you may be disappearing into.
My Art is for You, who want to come alive again, who want to feel, who want to awaken and know that the world is meant to be lived and breathed and walked in!
My Art is for You, the too twinkly, the too loud, the audacious ones, the ones wearing the red scarf, the red lipstick, the red shoes, carrying the red bag.
My Art is for You, waiting there for your life to begin. The pencil is waiting too. The brush. The tube of acrylic, waiting for a good, hard squeeze. Waiting for you.
My Art is for You, remembering the passion of a kiss you thought might change your very life.
My Art is for You, for the underbelly of you, the sacred shadow of you, the part of you that you folded up carefully so no one would think to notice, and buried it like treasure in a backyard, childhood scene.
My Art is for Love. A soon-to-be ex-boyfriend of mine once asked me, Who is Julia when she's not living for love? I am Not. I am Nothing. I am No Thing. That is who. Which is why you will find me nearing empty, rinsing the magenta from my brushes, praying to every passing God, fumbling for the names of my angels. Saying not, "Why have you foresaken me?" but "Thank you for coming back for me. Thank you for remembering my heart. Thank you. My work here is done. Can we go?" Somewhere between forgetting and remembering lives a profound and undying experience of real Love.
When I got married, I stopped writing poetry, afraid that my past might come spilling out in a longing so deep I wouldn't know how to swim back to shore in all that churning, wild unstoppable sea. O, the riptides and the moontides and the sacral tambour of wavecrash, the sacred pull on my moonbones...My Art is for You, who have found yourselves, censored, or worse yet, who have censored yourselves.
My Art, every cerulean slash, each alabaster smear, each burgundy stroke, my sister/brother/god/ phoenix/friend, this rising up, this act of Yes, this daily act of Yes is for You.
I love you.
xo,
Julia
Thank you for coming by.
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