Life is both a linear and an open end game
stories from a sticky summer
Hi friend,
The heat wave finally cracked. I listen to the heavy raindrops hitting tin roofs outside with a bang, while I sit in my boyfriends’ sister’s flat in Vienna with windows wide open. I still feel overheated, but a chill runs down my tanned legs and I wish I’d pack for a 10°C temperature drop. Summer energy is so intense.
During the day, I’m strolling down the paved streets with my sandals going “tap, tap” from one friends’ flat to another, belly full of pizza and white wine, sighing and sweating. Staring in a haze at my illustrations on cards and calendars on their walls, only just remembering that it’s “what I do”, feeling both surprised and seen. My past projects are a blur, like another life I forgot I had. At night, I toss and turn on a small couch in a hot apartment, my mind hosting strange dreams. I partially blame summer for this, for being both full of “go go go” energy and the heat rendering me unable to move a limb. But I’m also in a particularly sticky era in my life in general. Undecided what I want to do next, with a weird anxiety that hits me unannounced just as I try to relax, constantly raging a war with my creative resistance, feeling like I’m floating above the world desperately trying to throw my anchor down. I am desperate to write myself out of this mud, terrified I will sink even deeper otherwise. So I write about it in emails to myself from the car, in between Shazaam-ing curious Hungarian songs that radio signal picks as we drive nearby various borders.
I have these two sides to me, and perhaps you can relate? One half of me is anxious to no avail without structure and stability, while the other is bored beyond bearable with predictability and adulting. I’ve been trying to tend to both of them at the same time, and it’s been odd. Like applying for full time jobs nearby, as well as working on a frivolous idea to send to a beloved creator on the other side of the world. Tracking to a minute all the activities I do over one week, as well as making a future mood board full of vague imagery like gouache painted cut-outs and reading newsletters in an Italian cafe. Lying in bed with a panic attack, as well as spending solstice tiptoeing around a field munching on wild cherries. Because whenever I beg my instinctual self for guidance on how to continue, she replies stubbornly with "we don't know". We just don’t!
Playing a linear game in life (like applying for jobs in your field) means seeing movement immediately, but you can only move from where you already are. Playing an open end game (like working on a really odd dream) requires more emotional tenancy, creativity and courage. And once you go for it, you usually also don’t see any reality change, so that’s tough. It is somewhere farfetched, reaching out for you, but that can can also feel hopeful and expansive, even though it’s out of reach. I think playing both ways could compliment each other, while leaning too hard on one or other side is equally delulu. So I figured what one always needs in situations like this when there’s no magic around, is to buckle up and get to work. Be practical, while holding a vague sparkle of an idea close to one’s heart. And maybe by autumn, we will find some balance.