snakes and desire

Today I saw my first rattlesnake of the season. Usually I see them outside my house or on a hike (pictures of yesterday's hike and Sabine), but today the snake was slithering through a residential yard. The home owners had let their grass go wild and meadowlike, and I guess the snake was happy to find something familiar amongst all the manicured lawns nearby. It rattled at my dog and I and then quickly disappeared into the tall grass. I caught just the end of the rattle and its deep diamond coloring, like a desert from an airplane. All the varied shades of brown and gray laid out in overlapping checks.

Unlike a lot of people around here, I'm not afraid of snakes. Cautious, yes, afterall, the first snakes of the season contain the most venom. But, I view seeing them as a call to summer. To heat and desire. They come out only after everything on the surface has warmed up sufficiently. As if spring itself was foreplay. I was wandering around the Boulder Bookstore today and noticed how every book seemed to be about this sense of arousal. Books on the bargain shelf had titles like: Hunger, Desire, Jumping Across the Table, Purple Passion, etc. It got me thinking about intention and creativity. Do we, as artists, create, unconsciously even, what is most needed in the universe? Are we, if we allow ourselves to open enough, conduits to something that is lacking? My full collection is all about desire. As I roamed the shelves I couldn't help but observe the fact that this issue seems to be on everyone's minds at the moment. Maybe it always was and I'm just now aware of it. Like the snake. Waiting in the grass, till I walked by and it rattled at me. "Hello, I'm here, notice."

Return

I've just returned from 3 glorious weeks at the Atlantic Center for the Arts where I spent my days with lizards, carpenter bees, giant spiders, armadillos, and, oh, yeah, over 20 of the coolest visual artists, poets, and musicians I have ever met. Once my website is up and running again (having been down for over a month now), I'll post photos and some poems as well. Let me just say that the experience was heart-bursting, mind-widening and all around amazing for me, both as a poet and as a human being. Whew! I'm still having a bit of depression around all those fantastic poets, visual artists, and musicians not living down the street from me. I can't walk 5 minutes and have a cup of tea with each of them whenever I want? Justice? I think not.

The residency was thick with Southern air, a bit of heat (in the form of early morning chili pasta, the usual weather variety, and smokin' music, poetry, and art) and the sound of creatures greeting spring. I've been writing non-stop since I returned home. Everyone was so incredibly inspiring, both in how they live their lives with such artistic intention and how they create. So many of them have choosen a life where their central focus is their art. My writer and musician friends here in Colorado almost all have full-time jobs and "fit" their art in, but the ACA crew were, by and large, composed of people who do the opposite. Completely fantastic. I'm even thinking of cutting back on my cooking clients a bit, so I can begin to make my own artistic switch.

I'm still a bit raw with the buzz of those 3 magical weeks, but mostly what I feel is hope--for art, for truly seeing other people for the beautiful ones they are, for the ability to create meaning out of the chaotic stew we are all thrown into. I'm hoping I will continue to feed this fire in my chest, to make and make and make and never tire of it.