The business-minded part of me wants to write a first sentence about shop updates or to invite you to my studio—1889 Franklin Ave—for a group show on July 1st from 3-6pm that I’ll be tabling my new ceramic work at. That part also wants to tell you to keep an eye out for another shop drop sometime in the next two weeks.
But the real me (which is also the business-minded me) wants to try and make sense of an experience that I had recently while dating that’s been horrifying, insight-producing, and truly fascinating. As a dear friend often says, it’s all grist for the mill.
I met someone on tinder who seemed interesting, open, and, in stark contrast to most of the people that I’ve developed crushes on lately—communicative, emotionally present and kinda available. I range the gamut from being romantically hopeful and curious, to snapping into the shape of a no as soon as something feels off. I’ve learned to trust my gut when it comes to people, while at the same time doing the deep work of trusting the world and my own discernment. Discernment that comes as a welcome result of trauma healing work, spiritual work, and time spent on this earth in this body. I’m not perfect, I probably misjudge and err on the side of no a bit more often than not, and sometimes say yes when I ought to say no, but I feel ok with all that. I know that I’m not for everyone and that not everyone is for me, and that part of being here means trying things out.
Lately, I tend to trust what I feel, see and absorb, though a more embodied approach in contrast to trusting what I hear. Words are great, but you know what makes me wet-as-fuck?
Doing it.
I don’t mean having sex, you perv.
I mean living!
I mean showing up, I mean being honest about your capacity, I mean being vulnerable in ways that are deeper than constant self-disclosure. I mean extending that shitty beat up olive branch whenever you can, making jokes, going to therapy, learning to love and care for yourself and the people around you the best you can. I mean showing up as best you can and self-reflecting as often as possible. I mean living, not talking about living.
There are some pieces of crossing paths with a predator that really have confirmed a few things. Caution is yet another form of grace. I need to keep hearing the deeper layers underneath what is said. My gut is always in my corner, even if I don’t always understand the message. Most of all, though, it’s given me insight into how deeply lonely I feel; how hungry I am for relational nourishment.
I allowed someone to fool me into an unsafe energetic, emotional and physical connection—a romantic scam—because I wanted so badly to experience more of the grace of generative, good quality companionship. I don’t care if the companion wants to fuck me or thinks I’m beautiful, or wants to go grocery shopping together, or likes hamburgers. I don’t care if the companion is much like me in the ways I once thought were important—age, gender, sexuality, race, politics. I have long ago forgone the hankering for perfection or for the vision of others as needs-meeting machines. I don’t want an object or a pet, I want to walk alongside another person and share time, effort and energy. In short, I want to feel less alone.
I long for depth, nuance, thinking and living beyond the 3D material world, time spent, shared curiosity, shared creativity, fun, jokes, spiritual complexity, and willingness. I’m met like this in some of my relationships, but not most.
That was a hard thing for me to write and send off into a bunch of inboxes, but it’s the truth.
I have a deeper and deeper desire for friends that are taking the 300 level courses on life, I want elders that are working on doctorates in being spiritual beings having a human experience.
I’d wager that the past two years have stripped us down to relational sinew and bone. A lot of us are starving.
I’m starving.
Everyone I know is raw and ragged. I’d welcome more of that good fulfilling connective juice in any corporeal form: lover, friend, whatever. I’ll literally take anything at this point, and that’s kinda how we arrived here, at a moment where an experience of deep longing functioned as a pair of blinders to toxicity, manipulation, and very real emotional, spiritual and physical danger.
There are real predators out there.
Stay safe, go slow, and keep anchored.
PS. My studio is haunted and I wonder if anyone reading this has a heathy abundant rosemary bush that I can take some big branches from. I’m planning to do some work at Duplex to clear out the energy so that we don’t have to make art while feeling like there is a set of yellow teeth leering in the corner of the room, or that someone is upstairs when there’s no one else there, or that something is hiding under the stairs crying.
yeesh.
You can always reply to this email if you want to get in touch to say anything!
Love and hope for us all,
deeply pointing to life even when I feel scared and lonely and a bit shut down,
Ada
Spending 9 hours a day in a haunted house, longing for companionship