New forms

The emptiness among us

Self Portrait, This Morning

This morning at the top of my journal I wrote Things I Can Teach and couldn’t think of one thing to put on the piece of paper. I don’t think this is imposter syndrome or running out of ideas. It feels more like marketing fatigue, burnout, and not having the full space and time to map out what wants to come out of me. Not giving myself the space to map it all out.

I turn toward my work while I sit at the picnic table. In my hobbies, my creative practice, my parasocial relationships, my commitments to self and others, I have failed this week. I am experiencing the emotion that comes when you disappoint people you care about. It is a potion of its own. An ounce of embarrassment, a pinch of humiliation, a tablespoon of regret, a splash of urgency.

There is a reason I do my morning pages before I write my newsletter and this is so that my newsletter doesn’t sound like a diary or my teenage live journal. Though you may scoff to say Dear Cody it does sort of sound like that, just wait til you read my journals. What is filtered through is important to the protection of myself and others.

I don’t always get this right though. Sometimes I skip the part where I need to integrate on my own, where I need to let something wash over me and through me before it becomes public. I think I have done a seamless job at this with much practice, so to hit a bump in the road is a humbling detour.

I turn back to the paper, things I could teach. I have taught less this year than any other year since 2017 and in turn have made much less money that I am used to. I have had to radically adjust my spending and travel, how I relate to income, and really ask myself what my goals for working and earning are. I stopped trying to just go go go and make more more more. I find that I have more time to beach, but also less money for savings and taxes and even some day to day needs are falling by the wayside.

I see where my distractions fall in to place, even the distraction of failure. Where can I spin out about how I have had to adjust my capacity and disappoint people in the meantime? Where have I had to get more honest about my health and my body and what I can and cannot do? Where has my nervous system caught on fire and I have had to put boundaries in place that aren’t as graceful as I aimed for? I’m mapping, I’m mapping.

My heart has felt broken all week. For the world, for everyone and everything I’ve ever loved. For every house I’ve lived in, for every fleeting feeling. Just broken. For the Earth, for my neighbors, for my family. I bring my small sapphic grief to the lake and listen to the same song on repeat on the drive so that I can finally cry.

The emptiness among us fills with something new. Something beyond failure or mistake. It fills with the hope that things can shift, that things can find new forms. I want new forms. I want new forms for our broken systems, I want new forms for corrupt institutions, I want new forms for voting, I want a new form for Palestine, I want a new form for the houseless in The Pines, I want new forms for drinking water, I want new forms for access to land and history.

I want a new form to come into my own form I want my own form to be formless but forming. I want to make mistakes and crumble into emptiness so that I can begin again. It always comes back to this. Resume prayer.

Website

info@codycookparrott.com

PO Box 252 Cedar, MI 49621

Landscapes : A writing group for all genres
- We meet this Tuesday and Thursday for two hours each day to write
- Saturday August 17 is CAVE DAY where we do admin tasks and then write for four hours
- BIPOC Writers Circle recording with

Brandi Cheyenne Harper

is now available