Embracing Displacement

I love singing. I left four band projects when I left Arizona. I’ve done a few things here in New York, but it’s been touch and go. People are still suffering from the pandemic, everyone is at different levels of comfortability, and the ease in which I isolate is a little – well – too easy.

The city as a collective, is suffering PTSD I think, – people are processing the lockdown – empty streets and refrigerator truck morgues were not that long ago.

I keep accidentally calling the pandemic 9/11 – I lived in the city back then, it’s the same vibe (on so many levels).

I moved back to the east coast in 2021 to help with Mom, but quickly realized/remembered why I moved out of the house at sixteen years old – and why I lived out west for fifteen years.

I don’t live on the property with my mom anymore to save my own life, but I am near enough that I visit every week, actually now, every few weeks, because I am shredded to bits emotionally every time I go. Visiting less is how it has to be, to save my own life – and also – to get some traction on my own schedule, my own work, and to just have clarity of heart and mind.

Maybe the (collective) PTSD is my own.

My soul is somewhere between singing a mournful harmony, gliding along on single track in the San Francisco Peaks, and leading folks in a group OM. Outdoors, fresh air, and sunshine have not been big on my reality since coming east. 

In short, I don’t know if I will stay here. It’s been an incredibly lonely year/going on years, even as I make new friends and connect in a fellowship every day. Even though somebody at Creatives Rebuild New York also agreed I am an artist and I gift me $1000 a month (until 2024) to be an artist. I am so thankful for that – besides a cat sitting gig and tarot readings now and then, it’s pretty much what keeps me paying my credit card bills and rent as I rebuild my art/ rebuild my life.

And yet, and yet – does that make me a New Yorker? New York was my home for twenty years before I moved out west in 2007. I was so happy to be here at first, but I haven’t had traction. I can’t even get a good haircut, or doctor’s appointment for a simple physical without having to wait a year.

Maybe I will find my groove here, or maybe I won’t. I will likely stay til Mom passes, but I also gave myself permission that I don’t have to stay.  Maybe I go back out west? (Maybe there is a reason my acoustic guitar and my amp and my bicycles are still out there). Maybe I go to Europe – I’ve never been! Or maybe I just stay put and trudge along – I understand going in a new (old) place takes time, I’ve done it plenty of times before. 

I do know feeling like an alien has got to stop. 

For now, I will move my car to the other side of the street, sweep the floor where soot came in through an open window, stretch my body, and then — paint (and paint and paint).

And always, no matter what, gratitude. And a Happy Dance. They are the best things I have in my tool box of tricks to enjoy life – anywhere, anytime.

This Happy Dance happened during Covid in Flagstaff. 

~ ~ ~ ~ 

I posted this a few days ago and some folks reached out saying it helped, and it’s a variation on this theme of alienation, grief, and making art anyway.

I posted on May 5, 2023 – and so much feels different / is different from April 2, 2023, though much is the same.

But for:

* I am much further on in the long-term / massive project;
* I made a cardboard piece called Seed of Consciousness that sold the minute it was dry;
* I set up a gofundme to help pay for an emergency dental surgery, check it out at – https://gofund.me/dc46d507
* I spent a week dog sitting in Albany;
* I think I’ve created a schedule that will allow me to go back and forth between long-term projects and short-term projects – and still make headway on both
* I got rubber pads to stand on for working out, my painting studio, and the kitchen – my feet, back, and energy levels feel much better;
* I am going to try not visiting my family for three weeks – just so I can get momentum on my creative projects . . .

Take good care!

Thanks for reading. 

~ ~ ~ ~

May 9, 2023
Sun conjunct Uranus 18º55′ Taurus
Brooklyn, New York