Life Reveals Itself!
CEREMONY, Community Connections
Response to an interview with Zoe Imani Sharpe
May 2024 Newsletter
When we are scared we want to control, and I am often scared yet I do not want to control. Poetry defies control to some extent, maybe because it takes time and memory and image and collapses all three. Skirting away from a surfaced truth to uncover a real one. Like Zoe shares, it doesn’t move quickly – it thickens time, it extends a rapid shot into several minutes of movement. I am so often scared but I also want to see, so I remove the guesswork and build routine. I began leisurely walking many years ago to practice walking my dog before I adopted him. It’s so silly, as if walking needed practice. Was I stripping my life of poeticism? I left my house and started down different side streets in my neighborhood over and over again, moving slowly, marking my favorite front gardens. Watching them die and bloom, wondering which ones my future dog would want to piss on. Here I am, a snail leaving a slime trail as sidewalk memory so future me could remember where I’d been. The same thing over and over again feels good sometimes. An invitation for peace through practice. Here is my dog, wondering why I keep pausing our gait when all he wants to do is run.
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