pretty little things from 05.04.25
i collected all these bits—the pollen, the poetry, the doubt, the dashes—and called them my weekend
the air this weekend was thick with pollen and the stubborn scent of things insisting on blooming. everywhere, the desert flared to life—desperate little bursts of green pushing through the dusty beige, wildflowers swaying like they just remembered they had a body. i walked through it sniffling, sneezing, alive
wanted to share a few pretty little things that inspired me this weekend :)
in between the wildness of spring, i kept finding stillness in words. Dickinson again, always—did you know she only published 10 poems during her lifetime, out of nearly 1,800 that she wrote?? she was also an early punctuation anarchist, like myself
her original manuscripts are littered with em dashes, random capitalization, and unconventional grammar. she used punctuation as rhythm, breath, and emphasis—not according to rules but according to feel (samesies). editors erased all of this posthumously to make her more “professional”
“I felt a Funeral, in my Brain,” (Excerpt)
I felt a Funeral, in my Brain,
And Mourners to and fro
Kept treading—treading—till it seemed
That Sense was breaking through—
And when they all were seated,
A Service, like a Drum—
Kept beating—beating—till I thought
My Mind was going numb—
her dashes feel like someone whispering and gasping all at once. like a heartbeat skipped and noticed. i read her lines the way you’d read a diary someone meant to keep hidden—messy, rhythmic, not worried about being neat, only about being real
and here we have yet another reason i will never quit you, dear em dash
thank you, Emily! (or should i say Em-ily dash… just kidding, i won’t say that)
i’ve also been on quite the Van Gogh kick lately. a few weeks ago, i started reading a book about his life and was captivated by how tragic it was—and short! he died at only 37… after shooting himself in the chest! the worst part, he survived for 2 days before finally passing. i actually wrote a bit about him last week since he’s been heavy on my mind.
there’s a loneliness in him that sits behind your eyes even after you close the book. i keep thinking about the two days he lingered after the shot. two days of half-being, of waiting. of ache. how can someone hold that much sorrow and still paint such beautiful, colorful scenes?
he painted this from life, looking out onto the hospital garden during his stay at the asylum—his confined world at the time. you can almost feel the restless beauty in it: everything blooming too brightly, too urgently, like it’s trying to outrun something unseen. a kind of painted prayer for healing
some F. Scott Fitzgerald, just because—he always reminds me that even melancholy can sparkle
and then came the spiral of self-doubt, quiet and all too familiar. that little voice—“this is the best it’ll ever be”—always arriving too early, always overstaying
i think of artists like Brandon Flowers from The Killers, wondering if they’d peaked while standing in the middle of what would become their next triumph. he once said in an interview something to the effect of feeling like he’d never make another great album again after Hot Fuss. he later talked about how his music evolved as he evolved… and of course he went on to make many more great songs and albums
it’s just interesting to me that self-doubt scales, just like everything else. you can be the biggest musician or artist in the world and still hit that wall of “welp, i guess this is where i peak”
but then you peak again. and again. and again.
isn’t that just the human trick? we’re always wrong about the end of our magic. it keeps coming back in new shapes and takes on new form—just like us
so anyway… i collected all these bits—the pollen, the poetry, the doubt, the dashes—and called them my weekend. they made something bloom in me too, i think, and so i’ll pass them on to you. xo
