Memoirtistry

I sit in the backyard with the birds, reflecting on my 43rd birthday. I read from Ember & Flame by Rasaja Wolfe, my soul sister, and consider my next July ritual to celebrate my 6th year divorced.

annnnnd we just get right into it.

Quincy Schmidt is a Mental Health & Relationship Coach and friend. We have been engaging these kinds of discussions for years and only recently decided to record them with the intent to share; we like learning most through conversations with people.

Quincy delivers the concepts and I spin story. The religious trauma I have experienced surfaces and we engage in a memory of high school together.

We follow a thread of thought: The Space of Co-Creation > The Discomfort of Being Uncertain > Nervous Energy & The Holy Spirit.

Quincy Schmidt and I have known each other for 28 years; we began orbiting one another in high school. He has a lovely voice, is over 6-feet tall, and is [partially] responsible for the title of my second memoir, I'm Not Wearing Any Pants. Time and distance has only deepened our desire to relate our lives.

Quincy is a Mental Health [Relationship] Coach out of Austin, TX. He's not a therapist, as you'll hear him say, but he engages in active listening--he is curious, empathetic, and open--and he asks consent before he responds with the offer of another perspective. He is passionate about communication and enjoys relating.

I am honored he said yes to being my first guest! We follow many trains of thought in this first conversation, as outlined below.

Trigger Warning We discuss [my] healing from rape and the frequent verbal, and vulgar, body objectification I experience when I leave the house.

I haven't been painting as much so I thought I'd work on a piece and verbally ventilate story, as I do.

I changed the name of the piece from love, a question to love, defined after I recorded this. You can see it on Instagram. I am painting while engaging the symbol of The Phoenix; this is a work of transformation. The passages I share come from ⁠Love⁠ by Leo Buscaglia--the book I cut up. And you can listen to my Love, 2021 Playlist if you want. This piece also reflects "as above, so below" which I speak of in my work differently, "as with, so with>out<".

Thoughts:

It's raining, and I like the sound it makes on the roof of my car.

In this one you get extended commentary on my relationship with my hair. I have found estrangement exacerbates my trauma in a way I can see it to heal it. So I'm looking closely.

I am the Transition Queen... because

"I really like myself a lot."

You also get more of the story about Plan B.

And I mention this Art Critique of Pleiades, 1983 // James Turrell that I finished writing and realized is part of the first chapter of my book. Enjoy!

There is some talk of magic, but my notes aren't clear to me and I'm ready to put my laptop away so that's all you get.

Thanks for listening!

Yes, I drive a manual transmission.

I'm teaching a writing workshop in May and find myself processing the outline while also reflecting on the book I am writing.

I also introduce my new business cards: mini introductions [of myself] with 100 unique writing prompts that I share during Open Mic performances.

How do you talk about yourself? If you are an artist or writer and could use support, contact me at memoirtistry.com/contact

I suffer the consequence of spontaneity. I push myself to discomfort; walking is my wrestling. I use my body to warm my body. I remind myself it is okay to turn around, to opt out.

I engage the absolute of "never coming back". Coming back implies failure, doesn't it?

What if I woke up in a day from last year and had to start over from there? What if I am only dreaming all that has followed?

How deliberate are you in communication? I find myself taking the defense when I don't understand. It is scary not to understand. And I don't want to be too scared to be impacted, and changed.

The anxiety of surprise to see someone else's interpretation of my work was a delight inside my body. This experience literally stunned me.

I felt connected to Tom because his method of approaching the blankness [of a canvas] is very similar to how I approach the blankness. I was able to give him more insight into who I am based on his illustration that he made based off something I wrote. Magical, and eerie. There are some very obvious things about me inside this illustration, and Tom and I only met one time before this. We don't know each other. We spoke the artist language between us; a language we are familiar with because of our work with the blankness. We related.

The benefit of this experience was genuine connection with another human. Our art allowed us to connect on a deeper level, because art does that. And it was lovely.

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If I am "living the dream", am I dissociated?

My thoughts wander to the dream state I feel myself living inside of... the dream that is currently unfolding my reality.

What if I could wake from this dream to a moment in my past with all of the information I've collected? I imagine May 25, 2023; the day I awoke, alone in a tent, in Roswell, New Mexico. Engaging life as a Choose Your Own Adventure novel, would I opt for an alternative path to the one that got me here? And if I went a different route, would I end up where I am at all?

I finish climbing the hill at 3:46. I dare you to stay with me through the breathing.

A string of thought inside my reflection of S3-E5:

I can hear my contradicting statements in the midst of my flow.

Maybe it's not so much about manifesting what you want, but anticipating what you want--and when you're anticipating, your intuition kicks in and you can intuit what is to come.

I'm not homeless.

The pizza was good.

I wound up walking to a cemetery and singing a few songs to the bodies buried and the bodies hidden in the houses around the headstones and the bodies in the cars driving by. And no body seemed to notice my body at all.