Just like that, I go growing. Old me speaks loud, tuned to her cans and cannots, she does not hear outside of her own walls. New me thinks the world is loud, only able to take screaming colors like yellow and watermelon pink.

Somewhere between the two I have stopped being an artist. And then, as soon as those words fall off my fingers I think, it’s just beginning.

No, you have begun.

In the past few weeks I have had lots of time to sit with myself. When I think of me I think of hands and eyes, so that’s what I sat with. No where did I see the artist girl I have grown to own. She seems so far away, so past gone.

And I am fine. Okay with letting her pale and blue in the distance.

I’m not sure how it works with other people, but I find that I discover truth most directly and earnestly when I am first able to find out what it is not. That is the thing with me; I can better recognize what I am not than what I am. Contrary is loud and demands rooting out.

I am a word painter. I want words. To eat them and ground them into Shea butter and soothe my eye skin that sees the world and sometimes shrinks, sometimes scream, sometimes cry. In my world there are letters floating around the air, some land around my feet, others settle and wrap themselves into my locs, while the rest wait.

It matters most to me that I stretch out my palms and catch.

I have fallen in love. Like falling for E.

One day the thought of living without him felt undoable. It could never be. We would fall asleep in my studio apartment, and when I closed my eyes and drifted off, sort of into him, I could not tell where he ended and I begun. We, Us felt like one continuous loop of breath, of life. With him as safe as alone with me.

That is what the cloud of letters feel like to me. My greatest companion, my continuous loop of breath, life. I feel safe in my own writing hands, even if the words, I, or all of us fall.

I want this little space that I have carved out in the clouds to reflect that. In truth, it has to or else I cannot move forward. When I started this blog I wanted so very much for it to be right from the start. It was painful to realize I had grown out of quejimenez and to be honest, I did not know what that meant or looked like. Comfort came in thinking that now, this time, things would fit. Perhaps, always.

I realize now that wanting and expecting 'perfect' from the beginning does not allow me to grow and expand. To move and push out in areas I need to before settling in for a good long haul.

You can never fully know or understand something until it ceases living or being, only then it is complete and we can see it for what all it is. Until then, we are always only seeing parts of a whole. Even when looking at ourselves.

I’ve thought the best way to balance things is to continue to catalog recipes, a sort of running recipe blog (which will stay here, under Food), but then to create separate spaces for writing and then, perhaps life (Links forthcoming). I hesitate to say three blogs in one, perhaps divisions is better.

This way, if you’ve come for vegan food, you can get that. But, if you’d like some insight on writing, living a writing life, and sustaining a writing practice, you can get that too. And just because I am a writer concerned with my life, its care and keeping, a little space for that too.

There are times where I am not cooking anything different because all of my energy is going into writing or living. Those times need space and words.

I’m looking forward to sharing who I am, the hungry word painter.

Peace and Love,

kiandra