I wrote much of “Can I Be Candid?” in a fever dream in the middle of the night when I couldn’t sleep. I turned to poetry when the lights were out and I needed a lantern to guide me back home.
I wrote from grief. I wrote from loss. I wrote from curiosity. I wrote from love. I wrote from wonder in order to find my way back to a place filled with illumination and healing.
When I wrote these poems, some of them filled napkins written quickly when I ran out of paper. I wandered through the corridors of my psyche in order to understand what it means to be candid — to hold space for another in the earnest desire to be vulnerable.
What does it mean to illuminate our shadows and truly witness the aspects of ourselves we fear? What does it mean to raise a lantern at a supposed beast and realize he is the most charming individual you’ve ever seen?
Along the way, I found solace in the myth of Cupid and Psyche, which carried me to this place of understanding I like to call home.
Now, one year later, I think I finally understand why I asked the question which initiated this chapbook. In the quest for understanding imposed in this question, I discovered connection within myself through illuminating my shadows.
Thank you for reading my words and sharing them. “Can I Be Candid?” the post-anniversary edition with seven new poems from the archive will be out October 28th. ✨
Lately, I’ve been contemplating the intention behind our words and how we cultivate and utilize them. To what end are we conscious in conversation is often determined by what the purpose behind our words is. In my personal life, I’ve found that too often people use words from an unconscious state of mind. This is when words become flimsy and slip away, or conversely, become trained as arrows to pierce a heart — to denigrate, to mock, to shame, to humiliate, to vindicate — all in the name of grasping for a sense of power around something, which will always remain malleable. Words will always hold true on the lips of the person who speaks them.
In every form of written expression, words remain powerful based upon the person’s intent to use them. With this in mind, it is important to recognize how the expressed word can be potent upon recitation and recollection. In a thoughtful discussion, I believe words should be used as tools for discovery and understanding.
When a person evades in their words or points their words toward another with the intention of callousness or cruelty, this dissonance will ring true and will be felt intuitively by all who come into contact with this expression. Such is the constant nature of language: it always reveals and discloses. In this way, the physical container of the word embodies truth in the voices of those who speak aloud and express themselves.
At the end of the day, all attempts to evade or invade expression — to divert or diminish — is a distancing, which removes a communicator away from themselves (and others). A listener who is in presence with an absent speaker will always sense it. Accordingly, to view discussion as argument is to view conflict as an attack. To view diplomacy as weakness is to view the nature of service as childish or without use.
To view language as translation is to understand that with each word one speaks, one only scratches at the surface of what they are seeking.
I’m getting old, I tell myself as I peel back the wrapper of a Russel Stover s’mores in the grocery store. It’s funny how just yesterday I was on a walk and could smell roasting marshmallows and immediately the thought came to my mind of how much I wanted s’mores for myself.
Then, today, I’m walking through not one, but two stores, and I spy not one, but two packages of pre-packaged s’mores. Finally, I concede. At Albertson’s, I shell over the two bucks to buy the mini, convenient package for myself. I step outside, take off my mask, and take a bite of the sweet treat.
The first taste feels like a glimmer – a return to my childhood, of roasting marshmallows on the 4th of July, but once the taste envelopes my mouth, I recall it doesn’t taste as sweet as my memories and it tastes ironically just too sweet for my palate now.
I’ve been working with my inner child lately in between establishing a career; to me, these two contrasting endeavors fight for my attention at times. One part of me wants to take extremely long walks — to go farther than I’ve ever journeyed before, while the other part of me turns in yet another job application. A friend mentions the word growing pains to me and I think growing pains. Growing pains.
Is that what it means to grow up?
I’m trying to find the space to remember a job isn’t your identity as much as Americans continue to ask, “What do you do for a living?” I’m trying to grow through these pains, which I’ve found to be of me and not me.
So, today, I bought a sugary treat from the store. And when I got home, I decided to write this post, not sure why. It’s a bit different in style for me, but I’ve decided growing pains can be vulnerable, candid, hard, and soft at the same time.
Some days, it can be heavy, in unwinding an ever-constant process of healing.
Some days, it can be as light and simple as picking up s’mores from the store.
I’ve been thinking about the impermanence of art as marked by its materials, whether it be composed on paper, canvas, or any medium in between.
Sappho, a famous Ancient Greek poet, left us with many fragments as the papyrus used to contain her poetry was torn or damaged in several places, leaving up with pieces of stanzas, forever marking how we as readers interact with her art.
Then, several thousands of years later, we come into contact with writers like Zelda Fitzgerald — a talented writer and a painter, her wide-expansing talents unrecognized even to this day. She was overshadowed by her husband F. Scott Fitzgerald and her first and last novel Save Me The Waltz fell through the cracks, becoming out-of-print as the years passed. There’s so much more to cover on her history, but that’s enough for another post entirely.
What I mean to say is this: most of Zelda’s paintings were destroyed by her jealous sister and others were lost with the advent of time.
I guess I’ve been considering how time fragments memories and art as the materials we utilize to create and transcribe our art are so easily damaged, and then in other cases, artists sometimes ask others to destroy their art for them.
In the case of ignorance, millions of records were damaged in the 2008 Universal Studios Fire. (See post on Art Corner page for more info.)
Yet again, in the case of a decisive will, sometimes writers ask someone they love to burn their words for them so the public will never be able to see them again. Emily Dickinson asked her sister Lavinia to burn a chest full of her fascicles and I still think about how Lavinia did what she asked her to do and burned all those poems to this day.
I still think about what it means to lose art. And I still wonder at the distance between recovery and loss in relation to art. Because those paintings and poems are gone to us now and we will never be able to recover them; they smoldered and all we are left with now is these fragments of memory.
A wife.
A woman.
A painter.
A question.
Will you burn this for me?
A poet.
Some words on a crumbling page.
And a memory of loss sometimes captured on the page or in the paint.
I don’t think I understand the connection between recovery and loss yet.
I think it’s about time we’ve re-navigated the line between the critic and the artist. It’s commonplace today for artists to bemoan the critic and to complain of their lofty ideals and petty taste. In movie after movie, the protagonist often shakes their fist at the nefarious critic, accusing them of derailing their big break — their one crucial moment in the sun.
In Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell, Dermot Hoggins, a man intimately familiar with the thug life, publishes a novel inspired by his experiences called Knuckle Sandwich. At an awards event, Hoggins comes in contact with Felix Finch: a classically renowned critic who pens Mr. Hoggins a harsh critique. Hoggins, then, in a moment of blinding fury picks up Felix and throws him off the side of a high-story building. From this moment forward, Hoggins is revered as the man who “showed it” to the hideous critic and literally put an end to the bane of all artists everywhere.
This is a prime example of the endless war as seen in film and literature against the critic. Here is the one person who derails the success of all artists, writers, and poets. They proclaim, “Not good enough. This is trash.” They are displayed as snobbish drinkers of champagne with long blue scarfs and pointed smirks and blue eyes.
In the Critic as Artist, Oscar Wilde challenges the traditional relationship witnessed between the artist and the critic. During this dialogue, one of the characters, Ernest, proclaims, “Each new school, as it appears, cries out against criticism, but it is to the critical faculty in man that it owes its origin” (Wilde 230). Here, Wilde lays the framework for cultivating a new interpretation of the critic. Through his main character Ernest, Wilde presents the critic as a person central in the creation and later cultivation of the art and the artist as the art and artist appear to be inextricably women to one another; their fate and livelihood is simultaneous in this regard. In this manner, Wilde is cognizant of the nature of the critic and how their image and identity will always be bemoaned and critiqued. Even so, Wilde lays a case for the critic as seen throughout this dialogue.
As Ernest and Gilbert, the two main characters of the dialogue continue their discussion, they both arrive at a new understanding and interpretation of the critic. Dare I say it, they consider the artist as critic, or if you prefer, the critic as artist. (I’ll explain more later). During a pivotal scene, Ernest remarks, “The highest Criticism, then, is more creative than creation, and the primary aim of the critic is to see the object as in itself it really is not; that is your theory, I believe” (Wilde 240). This moment is crucial as Ernest argues here that the role of the critic occupies a critical, creative liminal space. In this manner, there is a kind of creativity, which weighs on the critic as they observe and account for the open space of the artist and their subsequent art. The artist cannot see their work’s shortcomings or even their unconscious contribution to the space of art, but the critic can. A thoughtful critic can. A discerning critic can. A compassionate, fair critic can.
I would argue that Wilde considers the role of the critic to be paramount to the creation, cultivation, and dissemination of art, for it is the critic who uncovers new beauty and “fills the [art] with wonder . . . [in a place] in which the artist may have left void, or not understood, or understood incompletely” (Wilde 240). This, then, solidifies the critic as crucial to the welfare of both the artist and the art. The critic celebrates the art, challenges the art, and disseminates and cultivates dialogue and discussion about the art. Moreover, if done well, the relationship between the critic and artist ought to be symbiotic and not parasitic.
As “the critic will [always] be an interpreter” it is necessary for the artist and critic to make peace with each other and set about forging a healthy, collaborative and cooperative relationship with each other, holding respect for the work each role serves in its place (Wilde 245). There is an air of respect Wilde leaves the reader with when in contemplation of the critic. In the text, through the mouth of Gilbert, he declares, “[The critic] may seek rather to deepen [art’s] mystery, to raise round it, and round its maker, that mist of wonder which is dear to both gods and worshippers alike” (Wilde 244).
In a strange roundabout way, I return to contemplating if the critic and artist will ever find peace within their relationship — if the artist will ever feel strong enough in their ego to accept the critic’s criticisms and if the critic will look upon their role of judgment with a kind of collaborative compassion and wonder. I wonder if the space in which the critic and the artist lie will ever be a peaceful place.
I suppose, then, I’ll leave you with this final point of inquiry.
Is not the work of the artist the same as the work of the critic?
I’ve been thinking about a statement Mary Lennox declares in The Secret Garden. She says to Colin that if he “make[s] them open the door and take [him] in like that it will never be a secret garden again” (Burnett 130).
In the very beginning of The Secret Garden, Mary keeps the abandoned garden she has recovered a secret primarily because she wants to revive it and she witnesses and recalls herself in this piece of earth.
By tending to the garden, she inadvertently tends to herself and becomes less sullen, gloomy, and alone. Mary finds solace in the bit of earth she cares for as she finds solace and a kind of love in herself.
But, I keep returning to this point of the magic in a secret garden or any secret really. I believe Mary didn’t want to share the secret of the garden because she was afraid she would lose herself in being tender and revealing an undisclosed aspect of herself to another — a familiar, a stranger: her first cousin.
When I think of my own life, I often think of the secret smiles I’ve kept to myself — those memories I’ve shared with only another — a memory no one else will be able to recover.
I think that’s what Mary spoke about at the end of the day.
There’s magic in a secret garden. There’s magic in the parts of ourselves we thought were abandoned but then tended to and watched bloom.
And there’s magic in this ancestry and me and you.
Lately, I’ve been contemplating the role nostalgia plays in our lives as we journey forward through all our challenges and respective triumphs.
I honestly believe nostalgia comes from a desire for safety and comfort. Every time I’ve felt nostalgic in the past, I’ve noticed how the feelings I experience aren’t necessarily a desire to return to the exact time I’m reflecting back on. Rather, these scattered feelings bring me to a place of deep and earnest longing for a time when everything felt certain, warm, and comforting.
Now, in light of the pandemic and the fight/flight responses our brains all are naturally working through, it only makes sense to indulge in nostalgia for a time before the pandemic and before masks and this madness.
Every day, it appears that another area of conflict appears on our door side. Another day equals another conflict —another concern, another worry, which appears insurmountable to even us.
Given this, I’ve been reflecting on why we are nostalgic over the course of our lives. What purpose does nostalgia serve? And why do we linger in past memories through tinted rose-colored glasses?
In the end, I consider nostalgia to be laced in a moment, which never truly existed — a moment when everything appeared to be certain, brilliant, and fulfilling.
And so we return to our childhoods. We return to the playgrounds of our youth. We return to the first kisses, which caught us head over heels. And lastly, we return to the moment before everything unfolded before us.
Because even now we desire to trace the elusive “what-if’s.”
What if I had stayed in his/her/or their arms?
What if I lingered another day in a moment of sustained comfort?
I highly doubt nostalgia will ever leave us, but we might reconsider how we utilize this emotion as we face every challenge in our lives.
I’ve crafted a clever series of riddles with Easter eggs in preparation for the release of my first linked collection of short stories: The Council of Amara.
Here’s the second riddle. Follow the journey (with tons of goodies) on my Instagram.
BSYLI Riddle 2 In order to recover my name, turn to page 22 of Goodbye (Hello) and contemplate these words; An Oracle. A Prophet.
I’ve seen a lot of people recounting and reflecting on their story of where they were during 9/11 on that fateful day so I’ve decided to share my story in this space as well. Some of you may not know me well, but I was born in New York, on Long Island, to be precise, and I don’t remember much about the specifics. I was six. I was in elementary school. I remember being confused, sensing my teacher’s apprehension and the fierce whispers and plastered concerned smiles of my teachers. On that day, all the parents rushed to pick us up out of school. The mood was edged in fear, but I didn’t remember why. I can still see those burning towers in my eyes. For hours on end, the towers were projected on my television screen. But I couldn’t understand why. Weeks later, I drew billowing gray clouds on parchment paper with two stark towers to symbolize this moment I had seen — a spectacle of a scene, surely. All my teachers commented on how beautiful my drawing was, but I think in the end, I drew it as a means to understand because I still don’t understand. And these memories — these recollections are a paltry attempt to put meaning to the spectacle, the burning towers crashing down — a love story. How could we not look away? How could I not look away? Years later, I remember the news reel re-runs and the speeches set in constant, regurgitated motion, but I’ll never forget the way it made me feel. I think I’ll keep looking on. Because I’ll never be able to look away. And I don’t think any of us will.
I’ve been contemplating the place the stranger occupies and our relation to it.
Who is the stranger? When does someone cease being the stranger, or the specter, in our eyes?
How did we come to calling the stranger our enemy? I suppose my spirituality predicates many of my views on the stranger as the one who is truly the familiar and it has informed my belief that we are all connected in our uniqueness — all divine expressions of the same source no matter what you want to call it.
In my first poetry collection, I consider the stranger my familiar — my lover, my beloved, and my dearest friend.
Today, my Dad asked me why I sign books for someone I’ve never met and left it there with no clue who may be receiving it.
And as I’ve told you now, I communicated the same message in kind to him.
I believe no one is truly a stranger.
I believe we share this moment and all the ones which came prior.
And if you greeted me on the road, asking for my solace and my embrace, would I not give it?
The Muse of Idle Stars 