Simulacra

I’m shedding my skin –

like a Band-Aid pulled off

the pain is sharp, but short-lived.

 

Bits of ego on the floor –

layers of skin and experience

for the wind to blow and scatter.

 

A dry pile of remnants remain;

dusty old me’s to be swept away

under a carpet or into a corner.

 

I’m shedding my skin.

 

Sloughing off past habits,

collecting hair from the drain

to make a sculpture.

 

I keep an ear, an eye,

a piece of brain stem.

Teeth and bones

Stitched with sinew –

a simulacra of my self.

 

I resolve to remember.

To preserve in pictures –

recollections flattened

between pages,

preserved in a jar.

 

I’m shedding my skin.

 

But what’s underneath

is not fully ready.

Nerves are raw,

lungs, undersized,

gasping for air

and understanding.

 

I reach out –

but what once was my hand

is now a claw,

a talon –

a sharp tool for piercing.

I cannot hold hands

Or caress my lover’s chest.

 

I’m left with a lizard’s tongue,

split and uncertain,

flitting in and out,

discerning its surroundings.

 

My old covering sits alone

in a chair near the corner.

Empty eyeholes for gazing –

seeing nothing.

An empty shell.

 

What I once was,

or wasn’t,

cannot be pieced together

from skeletal suggestions.

 

Details are lacking –

Contours and movement,

the shape of the lips,

the twinkle in the eye.

the curve of the neck.

 

 

Formless and crawling,

I begin to grow a new outer casing –

a shell-like protection

for my neophyte softness.

 

All I can do is wait.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Creativity & Collage

Creating art is a way of tapping into your soul and your authentic self. I hear so many people say “I’m not artistic” and I simply don’t believe that’s true. I think that everyone has an inner creative spark – we are born to create. It is our birthright.

Many of us have had experiences in our childhood or in our life that have succeeded in shutting us down creatively. All it takes is one critique or the disapproval of someone else to make you feel “less than.”

I stopped drawing for years because of an incident in grade two. I used to love drawing and I did it all the time. So, as you can imagine, I was super stoked when I heard that my school was having an animal art drawing contest. I drew a duck sitting on a post in pencil and coloured it with pencil crayons. I worked on it for a week and I was so proud of it – it was beautifully-done and super-realistic.

It was apparently too good. The teachers who were judging disqualified me from the contest claiming there was no way that I could draw that well. I was devastated. I remember crying and crying until I basically had no tears left.

No matter how much I insisted that I had done the work myself, the teachers would not believe me. How horrible. In hindsight I don’t know why my parents didn’t go in and speak with them…they had seen me drawing the damn duck forever. What was even more insulting was the fact that a friend of mine won with a picture of a bunny that her brother had drawn! Isn’t it incredible how, even as adults, we remember these traumatic experiences with extraordinary clarity?

I struggled a lot with perfectionism, so it was my tendency to work on a picture, and if it wasn’t exactly perfect in my mind, I would crumple up the paper and start over. Suddenly, this perfectionist tendency was my downfall. Go figure.

I dabbled in painting in elementary school, but I didn’t draw or do much else in terms of art until my friend Derrick Denholm (an incredibly talented artist, writer and musician) introduced me to collages in 1995.  He had a bunch of random stuff, paper, paint, ink and glue, and he basically let me do whatever I wanted with it. It was so liberating!

I fell immediately in love with the process and I loved the freedom it provided.

Creativity comes in many forms, and you can express creatively in your life without necessarily making art! Perhaps your creativity shines through in the way you dress, how you cook, how you decorate your home, how you communicate or in how you do your job? Maybe the parameters around creativity need to be expanded.

How do you express your creativity? Have you tried collage as a medium?

 

The Journey Begins

Thanks for joining me on this journey through the realms of creativity, spirituality, and self-exploration. I am a teacher, an artist, a mother, a Kundalini lover, a photographer, a writer, and many other things.

I’m malleable and changeable and I can’t find my crystal ball so I don’t know the future. 

I am a seeker, just like you. I want to connect to others and to a beautiful, more meaningful life, just like you. I want to transcend, just like you.

Currently, I’m off of teaching on disability (I’m waiting for a kidney transplant) and in the midst of writing my best-selling-novel (I’m pulling on the manifestation strings-hee). I look forward to meeting you and thanks for taking a moment to check out my work! All of the writing, art, photos, and images are mine all mine (stamp stamp no erasies). 

~xo Heide

I believe a leaf of grass is no less than the journey-work of the stars. — Walt Whitman