Insist on yourself

Someday, the words will come back to me—they always do. This is my profession, my life-love. My movement. It will not abandon me. I must keep the faith tucked away inside me, lean back a little more, breathe, know that my destiny is already written, that I have little control. The control I do have is to keep heart, to continue growing my passion and to stay true to my love—dedicate my body and its pulse to words, to faith in the muse, that my brain is always working.

And so I read. And what sort of selfishness must I have to demand my production be swift, shining, and many? I live my words, without speaking them. I step forward into them, gather words around me. I must not pressure myself to produce for audience, for the tiniest of recognitions. The words are their own bodies, despite never being spoken. They do not thrive on applause and neither should I.

If I could sit back and allow myself to sit in silence, in faith, then maybe my words will ring truer, as I will have allowed moments to pass through me.

If I can relax in the knowledge that what has come will return, then the confidence will begin to grow—not overbearing and insolent, but humble and nestled in its place.

To have faith in the wholly other—as my works are said to be, risen out of a dirt, a soil that is not my ground, not my making.

And why not communicate with others? Would I always keep my words from them? No. My works are just as much theirs.

Why can’t I trust this? Why so anxious?

“Insist on yourself. Your own gift you can present every moment with the cumulative force of a whole life’s cultivation; but of the adopted talent of another you have only an extemporaneous half possession. That which each can do best, none but his Maker can teach him. What is the master that could have taught Shakespeare? Franklin or Washington, or Bacon or Newton? Do that which is assigned to you, and you cannot hope too much or dare too much. There is at this moment for you an utterance brave and grand as that of the colossal pen of Moses or Dante, but different….
Abide in the simple and noble regions of thy life, obey thy heart…
Nothing can bring you peace but yourself.” –Emerson

Also, why would I want to constantly dig my way through days, always demanding product? Why immerse myself in the stress of demanding each day a perfection?

So my soul longs to break out, so I desire to speak and commune, throw my words out like long strands of gold, but how I need a pause, a hold. To digest, to being into me newness, gestation.

If I daily wait and kiss works, I may overwhelm and not gain perspective.

Like new lovers who want to stay bound to each other’s side, but how much sweeter the memory from a distance. How time apart brings the gift of contemplation, of breathing ones own light around the body, of waking into the self again and then to sing as singular and true. Then, when the lover returns, how much stronger each touch, force, independent and stable—a sure-footed stance from which to leap that much higher in the atmosphere of Bliss!

So I, too, should accept the departing of my muse, the long breath of Silence, thank my incapable hand as I would thank a soft flow of assured words and perspective.