TNT reimagined

this is my rotten heart, exploding

This is an image of a rotten heart.

This is a stick of dynamite, exploding it.

The exploding heart is sacred—see the dynamite fizzling at the top? See the rays coming out? I like it like that, because we are all mystics-in-waiting. Just writing those words gives me an electric pulse on the left side of my body, two o’clock—the cavern of my heart.

See how the edges of the heart aren’t straight, but wavy? It’s so human, so tender. The colors are a little girlish and irreverent; like maybe this heart smokes cigarettes in the prep school alley, then licks a Charms Cherry lollipop to hide the smell. She wears saddle shoes, for sure. She’s three years old and eighty-seven years old, simultaneously. 

I want to explore how our hearts are the instruments of our noblest communication. I want to use my piston pump the way Cynthia Bourgeault describes in her book The Eye of the Heart as: “a deeply attuned mystical heart anchored in a fierce conscious presence.” This new TNT image is how I picture soul-meets-body. I want to use my material experience—the joys, the frustrations, the aches—to get a teeny taste of the transcendent. Thank you to the inimitable Happy Menocal who turned this process into an image. 

And I’ve got so much exploding to do in the year ahead.

I’ll write about how my father broke my heart; about how I broke his. I want to tell you about how he got soft just before he died and how, now that he has no body, the love passes between us like liquid gold. 

I’ll try to explain what it was like to be a little girl and watch my mother walk down a red carpet, a thousand flashing lights between us, and to feel her gone—unreachable. I want to lovingly explore the way her worldly success made my rotten, little heart throb with longing and grief. Can I square that bottomless ache for my mother with my grown-up feminism; my own ambitions? This is the work of a lifetime. I’ll start this year.

These pieces will be meaty and nuanced like beef bourguignon on the first cold night of fall. And in that cozy season, I’ll serve ‘em up.  

But right now, it’s summer. We want watermelon juice with muddled mint over cubes of cracking ice. We want plunges into cool water, where we pretend to be mermaids. In these warmer months, TNT will be the kind of place you want to visit while sitting in the shade of a maple tree. 

I’ll write about skinnydipping as meditation. I’ll write about how I birthed a baby in a power squat on our bathroom floor. I’ll write about the day I realized, with a wince—fuuuuuck this is a mom blog! Then my psyche went DING DING DING—yes, it sure is, but not because of the children.

As always, the deepest work will always be for the folks behind the paywall. 

Also, during this warm season, I’ll take more breaks and let emptiness breathe life into this work. They call it Ma. 

Ma (間, lit. 'gap, space, pause') is a Japanese reading of a Sino-Japanese character, which is often used to refer to what is claimed to be a specific Japanese concept of negative space. In modern interpretations of traditional Japanese arts and culture, ma is taken to refer to an artistic interpretation of an empty space, often holding as much importance as the rest of an artwork and focusing the viewer on the intention of negative space in an art piece. – Wikipedia

Think of the quiet weeks as the afterimage of the smoke from the firework. Imagine its ash, drifting down to the delayed BOOM. Then, no sound. That silence is the life behind the art. That absence is me, doing somersaults in cool water, smoking cigs in the alley, licking lollipops. You need oxygen to make gunpowder burn.

To the folks who pay me: I was able to commission this image because of your financial support. Your money—the material energy of your belief in this space—traveled straight to my left side, ten o’clock and the little organ there went 💥. 

And then Happy made its spirit appear, in ink. Heart to heart, art to art. My deepest thanks.

All love to you—

Isabel