I went to a poetry reading at Cafe Mayapan, in El Paso Texas.

A poetry scene exists here. But I’ve been slunking around the city, caught still in emotional hangover after another emotional hangover. Honestly, once I feel I am about to thin out the troubles… other troubles appear.

I know that there is poetry to be had and heard in this city.

I went to festivities at the Library where the community celebrated availability.

I know that there is space to add my voice.

I am well aware that El Paso BWOMS, Barbed Wire Open Mic Series, hosts an open mic at a bar, really only a 30 minute stroll from my home. They do this every other Tuesday.

I know.

I know.

And somehow, but also as always, I find myself frozen.

Staring at a blank page with accumulating ideas, first passively suggesting it be allowed to claim that space… and then becoming tempest, dragging its hefty self along the curvature of my skull, scampering with temperment against a parietal plate that to my understanding took no damage on impact.

Honestly, if my poetry lived in zygomatic space I would understand the panicked frustration and pain. That part of my skull is numb and buzzy all the time.

But to be so hard headed, that I still struggle to write?

I know I am not so hard headed, because I attended a class with Greenfield and I was fine. I was writing. I was not so brain injured that I could not write. I was brain injured in a way that my Voice had changed but I was still writing.

I think, to a strongly settled understanding, that I liked New Naomi’s voice better. By far.

I did something foolish. After a successful semester of writing, I did the most foolish thing.

I put myself to work. I set aside my beloved things, always with the promise to dedicate my spare time to hold beloved things. Time and again, I have busied myself. It’s not the first time I have done this to myself.

I did this in college. If I wasn’t taking a creative writing course, I wasn’t writing. I was stressing about failing my single science class requirement… for the third time. Or organizing a non-profit fundraiser. Or monologuing about vaginal orgasms on a stage (also in a fundraising capacity, btw).

I did this after college. I didn’t land a job in education and rather than write… I drowned my frustration in Abita, Dark and Stormy’s and dancing in the streets.

Not that it was a bad way of dealing with things… But for crying out loud, I could have been writing. I could have been writing in New Orleans! I could have been writing down to the bottom of a bottle, with at least the beginnings of wine inspired creative frustration. And I could have whittled at them in the morning over chicory laced coffee.

The discovery that New Naomi had a more loved poetry Voice than Old Naomi *should* have set me straight. *Should* have set my direction.

The fact that I wasn’t working yet, and trying to figure out what to do with the rest of a brain injured life, *should* have given me all of the flags I needed to tell myself, “Don’t pick anything up. Don’t. Hold only Beloved Things. For now at least, just hold Beloved Things.”

They’d been waiting, you see.

Instead I resumed wearing the yoke of guilt, the English Major harness of panic…

WHAT AM I EVEN GOING TO DO WITH THIS DEGREE?!?! NOTHING??? I need to work. And if education work, poetry work, creative work, community work is not in your path... it doesn't matter. GET. TO. WORK.

But I could have made an abode in my brain for my poetry. I could have set myself a routine of daily, or at least weekly, visitation to attend to Beloved Things.

In any case, I went to a poetry reading tonight.

And of course, I’m inspired.

Because honestly--

I have a supportive partner that doesn’t want me grabbing just any job if it’s going to make me unhappy. So, months into my move, I still haven’t found placement. I have time to do the things that bring me joy.

I stuck with, for the most part, my Rosh Hashanah resolution to study more Torah.

And I have the typical NYE resolution to shed the depression weight.

As well as challenging myself to figure out my space as a yoga teacher.

Also… you know… get that drivers license.

Aside from all that… I am inspired. To make my writing a habit. To spend time with a Beloved that I know will have me… if I could just fucking sit still.

So delayed reaction New Years Even resolution.

Write more.

Dive into that pile of Old Naomi poetry that you know New Naomi wants to edit.

Go to a coffee shop, turn your phone off, and fuck around with some writing prompts.

Go to a bar, TURN. YOUR. PHONE. OFF, read an issue of Poetry Foundation and then scribble on each poem what you liked, what you hated and which style you’re gonna try to bite. Discover that some styles can’t be bitten, they’re already what you’re doing.

And fucking work on more Papel Picado designs.

For fucks sake.

A huge thank you to Yaccaira Salvatierra, Marisol Baca, Xochitl-Julisa Bermejo, and Vanessa Angélica Villarreal.

Peregrinas, you inspired me to travel to a place, revist a space,  that I already knew I had to go.