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Undeniably Mine, Infinitely Present

Marquez Woods

Marquez T Woods Feb 9th, 2021

I’ve been searching for something to hold on to in these gale-force winds. Something that grounds me when the trees are shaking. Something I can turn to when the world spits in my face or when I spit in the wind.


My mind was a raging thunderstorm, striking any object that might reconnect it with the earth.

I scratched at every corner of my existence. I tinkered with every experience I enjoyed. I found that almost everything is fleeting. And if not the volatile placeholder, my mentality toward it.


It manifested it self in dozens of ways.


Most recently, statically charging interactions with an overly magnetized love.


But before that, within myself.


With buzzing anxiety.


I needed a lightning rod to channel it.


This constant search, longing, yearning...


It became a vacuum that sucked the joy out of any situation. It made every lightning strike seem like the one that would pull the electricity out of the air. But all I touched would disintegrate from the pressure of being the only outlet to an infinite sky.


I analyzed what made me feel whole. What made me feel empty. What was consistent. What often came up missing.


I knew I became anxious when I was being untrue to my nature. When I was mentally stagnant. That lead to a worthless feeling, a depression.


I began to rely on my career. I was lucky to have it. I could bury my mind in it. It helped when my father passed. I could lose sight of the world and I really wanted that.


But it came with no shortage of obstacles. I had to court the gatekeepers for the creative work I needed to eat this electricity. And those social interactions had a charge of their own. Though I always played it cool, they amplified the hum in my anxious brain.


Another wooden lightning rod that burned out when I tried to give it everything.

But there was something here. Not in the job but in that creative process. I could ground myself with it.


I began to make my own work. Dump my brain onto my own pages.


My electric charge could finally be channeled. It was the lightning rod I was searching for.


I came to realize that the creative process was the only thing that mattered.


It is an extension of myself. It is my true purpose. Undeniably mine. Infinitely present.


But the more I meditated on this, turned to it, the more it opened up. I learned that it is all-encompassing.


It is the only thing that exists.

It gives the worst parts of life purpose. It is a continuous and dynamic cycle to which all actions can be applied. It is the perspective that contextualizes every piece of life that makes no fucking sense. Even writer's block. Even heartbreak. It was all a part of the story I was writing.


It had always been about the process, never about the product.


I have to live inside that process. Learn to love it because it lasts forever. It is the only piece of this life I can rely on.

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2023 by Marquez Woods

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