I’m waiting
warm and silent
the pain of the split is over
new shoots of life
wriggle through the cracks in me
reaching slowly
gently
carefully
into my surroundings
selectively seeking
that which will nourish
and protect
not needing the sun just yet
held in the comfortable darkness
the world above
a whispering future
I am ready but not anxious for
the sun
a reward
for the struggle behind me
a promise
of the days before me
but for now
I’m waiting
open and ready
patient and free
warm and silent
#artistry
Catharsis and the Captive Soul
Some of us are captives. We are imprisoned by the world and even the very bodies in which we live. We have a terrible and insatiable desire for freedom from all that is and all that we are. We express ourselves in a myriad of passions in an effort to exude our existence and find release from our thoughts and emotions. We breathe ourselves out, making heat marks on the windows of the world, and we constantly daydream about how to break the glass and the adventures of escape beyond. Resisting our instincts leaves deep wells of insecurity and knots of anxiety that trap us in a maze of discontentment and indecision. Our minds are busy, our hearts are raw, and we seek, above all things, catharsis.
I was not particularly familiar with the word “catharsis” until recently when I smashed the foggy glass of my most inner prison. Led by a reconnection with my art, I had to relocate my inner voice. I had no idea where I would find it, as it had been so long since I’d listened… Perhaps, I never truly had at all. My search brought me to a point of introspection and eventually self-dismemberment. Anyone who has ever screwed up an assembly can tell that, at some point, the best idea becomes to just take the whole damn thing apart and start over.
As I listened, I honed in on its location and followed the sounds. Soon, I found myself headlong down the rabbit hole called Me. I’m not sure if I jumped. Maybe I tripped and fell. My leading suspicion, however, is that Fate pushed me. Whatever the circumstances of the plunge, they are irrelevant as I tumble to the depths of my soul, through the menagerie of images both lovely and terrifying. I have no idea where the bottom is or what I will find when I get there but, truth be told, it doesn’t much matter because the drop is cathartic.
There is something about being at odds with yourself that forces you to change your paradigm. The path to a new definition is literally mapped by emotional conflict – each one ending, as all conflict does, with resolution. Without said ending, the conflict would simply continue. In order to move forward, one must pass through, first, peril then release. So, like a ragdoll down the hallway stairs, I list as I fall, feeling pain only when I tense against the inevitable impacts. The greater my resistance, the greater the pain, and the greater my peril, the greater the release. Thus leading me to the conclusion that the less I resist and the more I welcome the discomfort of self-evolution, the less painful and more cathartic the experience becomes.
The question one would ask is, of course, what is at the bottom? Just another paradigm, I suppose; another set of windows to breathe upon and tap at while I build up the courage and that which I will free myself of in the next plummet. An endless series of falls, each one a search for weightlessness, for split seconds of perfect freedom, for the enrapturing moments of catharsis… Such is the journey of the captive soul.
In many ways, writing helps this process because it gives me a chance to deepen my experience by forcing me to put my thoughts and feelings into words. It makes me look at the central issues of each conflict and expand them with focus and meaning. If I can transfer what I am feeling into a set of words, I am naming the parts that contribute to the whole, breaking down the pieces, and examining how they interact with one another. I am essentially explaining it to myself. What I discover about myself and the conflict are not always what I wish to be the case and it often tightens the knot of peril, but when I consider the heightened release I find it is usually a worthwhile exchange – even if it is less than comfortable.
The interesting thing about being among these captive souls, about catharsis in general, and about living this experience as an artist is the inescapable nature of these circumstances. Play as I might at suburban housewife, at mother and baker of kindergarten party treats, I understand that at the core of me, I am indeed this first. I can take on duties, titles, and responsibilities of all types, but at the end of the day the thing I desire most is to sit and write and breathe against the glass… tap, tap, tapping away and dreaming of how the shards will fly as I break through to the next drop – free and cathartic.
Some Prisons
Some prisons have walls
That reach to sky
Cells, fences, and gates
That roll powerfully by
Closing in prisoners
Cutting them off
From people and places
They’d formerly been caught.
Some prions have barriers
Invisible to see
That hold us in places
We’d rather not be
With or without
Fear, tear, or pout
They keep us from growing
They dry us right out.
Some prisons are lovely
Set on a hill
That overlooks freedom
But overthrows will
Or captures our hearts
Our spirits
Or minds
And trap us with things
Once wanton, divine.
Some prisons have names
Or titles attached
That hold us to standards
Or rumors
Or traps
Otherwise fine
To all but who know
Of the shackles they bear
Of the duty bestowed.
All prisons hold someone
Like you or like me
From being the person
We wanted to be.
So be it a fortress
Of crime or of fortune
Be it a choice
Or by nature’s contortion
Cometh by parentage
Or cast down as doom
We each find ourselves
Alone in that room
Under shadows that hang
Or with clasping cuff cuts
That slice like a knife
Through our throats
Or our guts
Our souls or our spirit
Our hopes and our dreams
And leave us to ponder
What life would’ve been
If not for the prisons
That capture us all
One way or another
Before that last call.
19 Words To Make You Sweat
WARNING: Explicit Content
The following is a collection of nineteen word statements crafted as part of a personal exercise in skill-building. Though I plan to expand on this concept and create other topics of nineteen word sets, this introductory piece focuses on the wildly popular and forever taboo topic of physical intimacy, to put it politely. I encourage other writers to get in on the fun by posting their own nineteen word statements on the topic. Please be sure to use the hashtag: #19wordstomakeyousweat.
Needing
Folding
Rolling over
Like dough
But flesh
Raising and falling
Hot
Against
The softness of my bed sheets.
Coast across my skin
Your tongue
Wide
Flat
In perfect spoils
That chill my flesh
And burn my soul.
The depth at which
You come to be
Within
Is
The depth at which
I need you
To be.
Peel me back
Clenching fists
Arms and legs
Around you
List
When you let go
Trembling
For your return.
Long fingers
Stronger fingers
Wide cool palms
My sides
The path on which you ride
Into my very being.
Lay your body into me
Caress me deep
And soulfully
Do not wait
Or hesitate –
Inside
Each bit
Trembles.
Let us live forever
Immortal
In this space
Our own heaven
That exists
In every place our skin touches.
With a richness
In color
In shape
In depth
I welcome the drowning
Breathlessness
And desperation
Of this submission.
Growth Through Limitations
I’m not one for writing prompts in their most traditional sense. Personally, I never found it worthwhile for me to spend any amount of time writing on my character being in some situation beyond the reality I’ve constructed for them. I have never sent my heroine into a coffee shop only to discover she’d lost her wallet on the bus because there isn’t anything I can learn about my character participating in a scenario that exists entirely outside of her world. Making a list of penetrating questions and developing a solid dossier always seemed far more productive.
While writing prompts have never appealed to me, I have a respect for and understanding of the necessity to build agility, impact, and overall skillfulness regarding literary devices. My difficulty has always been finding exercises that develop these strengths without dragging my out-of-the-ordinary characters through everyday mediocrity as part of their practice.
Like all writers, I presume, I tend to experience what I refer to as drips: standalone sentences, two-minute long dialogue exchanges, and simple statements that spill out of my brain and onto paper. Sometimes they are junk, but other times they are brilliant and not to be ignored. After all, just because I’m not writing a larger piece that would include a particular sentence doesn’t mean the sentence itself is not worth being shared.
As writers, we take those random thoughts and squirrel them away, leaving them in piles of other scrapes, a treasure trove of future inspiration or a pile of garbage we only peruse when we are drunk and feeling the pressure of writer’s block and its accompanying self-pity. But what if we could use them as building blocks with which we can develop the aforementioned skillset?
Much the way a visual artist might doodle as a means of playing with ideas and practicing techniques, creating parameters in which to manage these drips gives us the chance to develop our skills. It is a realization that I had while rock climbing, of all things. In climbing, I am learning that by limiting options along the route, I am forced to see my situation with a greater sense of creativity, to take bigger risks, and to balance style with learned technique. Why not manage these writing drips in the same way?
Thus, I have designed for myself a limitation… Use exactly 19 words to make a single statement with as much skill and impact as I can conjure. Why 19? Because 18 didn’t seem like enough, and 20 was overkill. What an odd number, 19. It never gets any play.
Over the next several months, I will be posting to Instagram and Twitter hashtags that use this 19 word format. The first to be rolled out is #19wordstomakeyousweat, and it focuses on the erotic. Writing, much like speaking and reading, about sex is something that many enjoy but few share. (My, what would so many be reading if not for those of us willing to put the words together and let others read them?) My hope is that others will join in and use the hashtag to share their 19 words… both in this introductory exercise and in those still forthcoming. I’ll be posting my own collections here on the blog, and sharing some of them via Instagram and Twitter. If you’d like to play along, please feel free to post in the comments on my blog, or to use the hashtag across social media.
Enjoy. Have fun. Let go. As artists, our best work is the product we get when we combine both our creativity and our courage. Take the chain off and run with it.
Linen Lies
A curtain hangs between us,
a fabric of deception,
a grainy, textured falsehood
almost undetected.
Your words have been selected
so carefully, I find
this linen-like expression
of neatly woven lines.
A closeness you surrender
every time you move.
Your touch is soft and tender
but my skin remains unsmoothed.
Flimsy and thin,
they’re easily told
and easier wrinkled.
I see them unfold…
The truth comes not between us.
The truth I never know.
Just linen lies that keep us
from feeling what we show.
April 20, 2001
The Mountain
Photo courtesy of pro-climber Brady Hogan. See more on Instagram @summersnowproductions
I am obsessed with you
With everything about you
The way you look
The way you feel
To me
As my body
Moves over you
The sounds around you
The way you preside over everything
Everything
It’s true
You have brought me pain
Defeat
Injury
But every time
That I return
To stand at your feet
And look upon you
In all your majesty
I feel none of those things
They are gone from me
From my memory
From my body
And all I feel is courage
And hope
And fire
To go forward
To push upwards
To make myself worthy of the view from your shoulders
Because I want you
Under my feet
Under my belt
And crossed off my list
Because you
You are the mountain
And I
I was born to summit
Native Affair
All my life, I’ve been having a love affair with native America. I have always found the culture, people, customs, and landscapes to be among the world’s most beautiful. I perceive the demolition of North America’s pre-Western society and the loss of its culture as being among history’s most disturbing genocides. Suffice it to say, I have a deep sense of compassion and respect for our indigenous people.
Since initial conception, I knew that my novel would have to have Native American characters and that much of the storyline would take place in a world dominated by native culture. Being a “white woman” raised in East Coast urban chaos, I, like my characters, was walking into a world I knew nothing about.
I have the advantage that I’m writing speculative fiction, a genre crafted by masters like Vonnegut, Huxley, and Orwell, a genre as layered with imagination as it is with serious research and defendable theory. Because I am writing a possible future, I am given the flexibility of projecting reality with curvature. I can apply any inconsistency to present day knowledge as long as I can justify it with the series of events that caused it to veer from “the way it is.” I can not, however – under any circumstances, allow this flexibility to make shallow, cheapen, or stereotype my native characters.
Using a mix of scientific theories on how various social and environmental disasters would affect our natural world, I was able to create a projection of how our society would be forced to change over time. Since there is, of course, more than one possible outcome, I juxtaposed the two most likely and most contrary scenarios. Blending historically documented accounts of tribal living and natural resources with the theorized changes in the environment, I designed a future in which a much altered version of our American history is playing out, an ecotopia marred by the nightmarish consequences of present disregard for our human habitat, a place where survival has triumphed because of native wisdom.
Living deep within this world are strong, beautiful native characters who come to the forefront as well as line the background of the story. Paying homage to what was through factual study, I needed to also pay homage to what is and what could be by paying attention to the subtleties that could not be explored through traditional research. So, I reached out to the tribes.
I am so glad I did this.
Three tribes are represented in my book, and I have made contact with elder members of all three. A native language professor, a chief, and a cultural expert – respectively. I have spoken with other tribal members in my efforts to reach the individuals best suited to answer my questions, and each conversation was helpful in some way. Discussing my story with people who happily and immediately shared my ambition for cultural accuracy was beautiful and inspiring.
My sincerest wish is that when they received the copies I promised to send, they will be happy with what I have done. I’m not sure how I would live with myself if I dropped this ball… No pressure, though, right?
Is it hot in here? I feel like it just got really… uh, whew…
Satyr
I see you there –
Dancing
Wild in the life you’ve created
And kissed by the gods
Who designed you
To reflect the beauty
Of their loves
And in their dreams,
A vision brought forth
From a womb of creativity,
Cradled in perfect imagery,
And careening unchained through the earthly fantasies
Of Olympian kings.
Robust and on fire,
Dionysian kin
Compelling me
In life, and art, and sin.
Warm in the sun
And hot on my skin
You give rise to the restlessness within.
An Ampelos to my divining,
A promise of miracle
And intoxication,
A seduction so complete
It lifts the souls
Off their feet –
They go stumbling helpless toward your gaze.
A gift unto me –
A river that flows
Melodically,
Flutes and horns
Of wine and songs,
An orgy of the senses
That plays on my defenses,
Pulling me down to kneel
On my pedestal
Which you have provided.
And so I raise you up,
Like Krotos to the stars.
This muse mused by you –
A king
Crowned in vine
And thrown in skin,
A whisper of the way things might have been
If you and I
Were “you and I” –
But sadly, we are naught,
As you have yet
To come
To me.
“Get Back To Writing”
Lots of successful writers cash in big on memoirs and collections of writing tips, many of which a truly inspired writer wouldn’t want to follow. In fact, most of them I’m fairly certain were only ever printed on paper so that they could be ceremoniously burned on the pyre of creative license. But if they are carefully gleaned after taken with a grain of salt, one might be able to garner a few pearls of wisdom that help push projects forward. I gained a couple from Steven King in his On Writing, the only King book I’ve read. The most significant of the few gems encapsulated in things I couldn’t agree less with was the advice to “get back to writing.”
King tells a story about being hit by a car and how he eventually came around to the place and time when he sat before his work again. I have had no such physical peril, but life being what it is has given me my fair share of delays and setbacks. Nonetheless, I heed the advice of the esteemed master of guts and gore, not because I owe him anything (other than my longstanding fear of clowns and street corner sewer drains) but because it just makes sense.
My page, like my life, is undergoing some major transitions. Nothing says change like… well, change; and if there is one talent I could claim to have mastered it would be the art of reinvention. So, here I am, re-emerging from the chrysalis of chaos and ready to accept the fiscally dangerous and potentially woeful reality of my truest form: a writer. Fortunately for my ego, I have already realized that whether or not anyone reads any of this is largely inconsequential to me embracing my true designation. A writer writes. That is what I do. I make no claims beyond that.
Presently, my first novel is near completion. I’ll be querying shortly – a process that makes me shudder, and they say I should have this thing called social media in check. Apparently, if people care about you on Twitter, they care about you in real life… Well, they care enough to buy your book, anyway. So, here I am – a technologically impaired wordsmith toying with 140 characters and an Instagram account, swimming in an ocean of artists connected on a rather counter-characteristic network, and quickly realizing that – for me – it isn’t so much about how many people are following me as much as it is about me connecting with whomever should glance my way… because aside from how good it feels to notice another artist smiling at your work, it’s healthy. Artists need each other, like chains of coral clinging together in a stunning display of symbiosis, like restless gypsies in a slow-moving caravan. The life we live is most beautiful when populated by others of our kind, by those who appreciate our weirdness and originality, by those who admire us like the sun admires a flower – making us grow, and by those that contribute to the collective glow.
So, I’m getting my “platform” organized and pumped full of creative juices, sending out 1,000 colorful tentacles to poke around a world of artists and writers, simultaneously collaborative and competitive. I walk a line between reality and dreams – both invented and aspirational. I goal-set and go-get, and it is changing me. Therein lies the connection between my personal and media evolutions.
As I reach out and stretch myself into this world of aspiring and thriving artists (yes, the worlds are one – believe it or not), I find an endless stream of art and literature to gape at, to learn, to feel, to expand upon or grow from… and I begin to create more. This place itself is a muse to me. The others here, on this digital plain of modern creative connectivity, are inspiring me to new heights. They give me new vision, fan my flame, and reinforce a clear reality: the world of art is limitless, that a person can make a living here, and that I can hang with the best of them. Knowing that about yourself does something to you. Confidence is a crazy thing. You see, once you understand your full potential, it becomes impossible not to fulfill it.
So, after a long hiatus from my humble public view, I’m back; and it’s good to be back – but even better to be tasting the creative stew of the artists’ digital network.
Look for me with the handle “JillArcangela” on Twitter and Instagram, and on Facebook as Jill-Arcangela M. Kopp. I’ll see you out there.
Jill-Arcangela Mancuso 
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