Yearning

Yearning is a deep longing: a strong, persistent craving or desire accompanied by tenderness or sadness for something unattainable or distant. Thinking about how to represent yearning, I thought about how the other abstract nouns I’ve explored this month are entangled with yearning: Ambition, Goals, Ideas, Needs and Hopes can induce yearning; people yearn for Beauty, a certain Quality of life, Respect, Success, to have Value, Wisdom, a Xanadu, and of course Thrills. It takes Patience to live with and through our yearning.

I looked back over all these different aspects of yearning that I’ve represented through abstracts, and listed the filters and techniques I’ve tried. I took in what a big month of discovery it has been for me, and yet, I yearn for more.

Today, I wanted to create even more depth than the mirrorworld provides, so I opened the curtains across the room, strung lights over the glass door and tried taking pictures from outside into the mirrorworld–didn’t work. However, the trees reflected in the mirrorworld looked interesting, so I focused on that. I also thought black and white represented yearning better than all the neons of yesterday.

The Prompts

NaPoWriMo

Today’s prompt is to write a poem in which you muse on the gifts you received at birth, both positive and negative.

Poem A Day

Today’s prompt is to write a poem with The Last (Blank) as the title.

The Poem

The Last Gift

I was born
at the magic hour
of midnight on
the day Picasso died.

I remember
feeling elated when
reading the date
in beautiful Barcelona
at the museum
and I thought,
that explains a lot.

Could it be his energy
newly sent to roam
came right back
home unknown
to a screaming baby,

Lurking in wait
silently guiding my
choices and my hands
toward abstract thought
and art and places hard
to understand, exploding
color and shape and line
to find a truth behind
the surface?

It would explain
the internal dual
of masculine and feminine
of flamboyant performer
who hides in her room
of wild rogue who
follows the rules
of artist-scientist
practical poet
yearning to fit in

Labeled creative as long
as I’ve lived, but also
weird and strange and
bullied by my peers
for being different. Is
he to blame, dead
pompous artist who
paid his checks
with a scribble
and his name?

I wouldn’t mind
having that gift
if he’s in here
and he’s to blame.