I call her Pearly. She has a fruit/veggie stall walking distance from my spot. I buy produce from her, sometimes pull up a chair, and we discuss our husbands and our aspirations.
Yesterday, I went to buy two heaps of julie mangoes and pressed my first signed author copy of The Animated Universe into her busy hands. My first time giving this gift of a book. Curiously she looked at it, until she saw my name authoritatively splashed across on the cover.
“This YOUR book?” she asked in awe, and the genuine joy that sprung from her was infectious; this gesture of mine moved her to move me so.
For the first time, she was excited to curl up with a book of poetry. Poetry in unexpected places lives on. She kept flipping through it saying, “I’m going to feel this, I know it. I want to feel you.”
Amazingly, earlier that day, I had been ruminating on any trepidations I may have around the release of this debut baby of mine, after 20 years of being in the poetry game. I was examining the ego’s desire/need to be seen, heard and felt—and what I truly desire from this moment.
Because sometimes, I want to be seen and not heard. Sometimes, I want to be heard and not seen. Sometimes, I want neither. Sometimes, I require both.
But felt? What is my relationship to wanting and needing you to feel me, reader? I realize now that I have some protections up around this.
Because I don’t need anyone to feel me to write a single verse. That’s not why I write most things. I don’t write to be seen, heard or felt by anyone. I write to see, hear and feel me, my Self, to traverse my own internal dimensions; the poem is my favorite form in which I choose to process my findings.
Do I want you to feel me? Absolutely. Am I attached to that desire? No.
Pearly helped me to realize that while I don’t write for reasons of external validation, I certainly publish to be seen, heart and felt. I am beautifully struggling into this pivot. I write for myself and publish for the people and the planet. I’ve already reaped my rewards from the journey itself, and if I reap more–cherries on an already delicious sundae!
So in this sense, I’m strangely unattached to the outcome of this book. If the world gets it and gobbles it up, I’ll say: say whaa? Little ole me? And if the world chews it up and spits it out, well, if one person felt changed by it then the publishing effort was worth it, and guess what? I’ve already been changed.