old soul
i used to write wise & wondrous words weighty with a sense of their sagacity fraught and fretted by Life and Meaning i thought i could catch truth-beauty-goodness in a web of mental silk, sure of my mind’s stickiness—an old soul, they said, and i believed them. i believed many things. now i stutter and don’t capitalize correctly and wake up in the middle of the night hungry but unwilling to feed myself if i had to pray one prayer, i would say i want to be made new renewed undone re- somethinged just new better stronger older wiser please i am too tired too soon i miss how i met you as a child at night, how i believed, how i wrestled i miss you. actually this would be my prayer: re-child me, o poet who teases time.
I wrote this in February. I was shaking off the mental stupor that finishing an undergrad can give you and trying to use my newfound time and mental space to create, and it all felt like sludge. Just like a slushy street corner in February. I read things I had written as a teen and wondered if I had peaked then, if I would ever write anything good again. I wanted to go back to when I was young and whimsical and creative and imaginative and unfettered. Now here I am with rent payments and bills and HR questions and I don't know, is it a hopeless cause to try to stay wide-eyed and wonder-filled in days like these?
So I deemed this my “year of whimsy” and told myself—and, crucially, my friends—that I would make an extra effort to do fun things this year. To choose activities that don’t feel productive or profitable, to do things that are a little scary or a little silly. To cultivate the dreamer and artist in me. So far I've read my poetry at three open mic nights and walked to a McDonald’s late at night for National French Fry Day and dressed up for Galaxy’s Edge at Disneyland and tried ballet classes again and gone to free summer park concerts and brainstormed fantasy stories with my little sisters. It’s been pretty great.
I was always praised for being so mature. And to be honest, I still like being mature. I like having my stuff together, I like serious conversations, I like feeling responsible and competent and discerning. I don’t really enjoy a ton of spontaneous excursions or crazy parties (I know! Boring! What can I say?). Being “mature” has kept me from a lot of pain and heartache. But not from all of it. And there’s a peculiar and countering ache that I felt as I wrote this, an ache of missing being lighthearted and carefree.
Once a pastor was talking about the beatitude “blessed are the pure in heart,” and he said something I've never forgotten: “Purity is not something you lose. It's something you can gain, something always gloriously ahead.” I think a lot of people, for many reasons and with different levels of severity, feel like they missed out on childhood. Or at the least, they just miss it.
I think one way of thinking about the gospel, of redemption, is that we can be children again. Isn't that where Jesus says, that to enter the kingdom of us become like little children? Isn’t that the image he uses with Nicodemus: being born again? The lighthearted delight in the world, the carefree trust in those we love, and so much more—with Jesus, we can become children, in the best senses of that, again.
I realized I’ve strayed a little bit from talking about the whimsy required for art and creativity to the childlike spirit required for faith and abundant living but the same God who can make my whole being new can certainly re-animate my creative impulses. The Spirit, the Creator, the Muse, the Audience of One, He is the inspiration for and in all beautiful things, works of art and human lives alike.
Also I feel like I need to say that all these musings after my poems, they're not the sum of what each poem is about. For one thing, there's a lot going on in every poem. Poems have themes but not theses. And for another, the power of poetry is that it says what linear, didactic thoughts cannot. I’d hate to reduce poetry to a vehicle for a lesson. So I don't want to undercut everything I'm trying to do with poetry by including these notes afterward. I hope they can be helpful or interesting additions to the poem, with the poem acting as a springboard into a more in-depth discussion of one particular element of the poem. But they’re not, or they shouldn't be, an interchangeable substitute. Someday I want to explore more why I think this matters but for now I just had to get that off my chest.
In Other Words…
No new goodreads or letterboxd reviews today, so instead I leave you with a song that captures all of this well:
And it hurts so bad
But it's so good to be young
And I don't want to go back
I just want to go on and on and on
here’s to staying awake ~
Aberdeen
I love both the poem and the thoughts after!