Help I Know Nothing & Everything
And I don't think it's getting any better
Welcome New & Returning Readers! This is a personal blog about reading, writing, and coming back to yourself while you seek what’s good about the world. (I call it magick, hence the name.) The first section is media that’s influencing me lately, the meat of the piece is the blog in the middle, and finally I wrap it up with some photos of my life lately and the little magick things I experienced since we last talked. Drop a comment if something resonates!
Book of the Month: Soil by Camille T. Dungy
Song of the Week: Breathe In by Frou Frou
Movie/TV Show of the Day: The Forsyte Saga - Extremely well done period piece you can find through the link or on Netflix
Help I Know Nothing & Everything
I’m sitting on my front porch thinking about all the times I used to be simply entranced by something when I was a child. I’d marvel at fireflies, I’d scour bookstores for that one author who spoke to me. I wanted to know everything not so I could share it and claim accolades for it but so that I could simply know it. And this knowing was a driver for my creativity; for my life and art. I always wanted to be the kind of person who takes care of the unseen, who treasures what others do not, and protects what must be protected otherwise the untrained eye might trash it and never know what they’d lost. I’d wanted all of this so badly and then somehow, it was gone.
If you fast forward a few years you’ll see the degeneration of this curiosity. I put a lot of pressure on myself in high school to do well and I did. I somehow managed to get into a prestigious art school and was way out of my depth but kept pushing. I left that art school not knowing what to do with myself but still scouring bookstore shelves for the answer. Won’t somebody tell me what to do with my life. Won’t somebody somewhere know the answer, I thought. (They didn’t and they don’t.)
In Los Angeles it was easier to hide behind my questioning because it’s a big city with lots to do and it’s hard to question what you know when you’re just trying to get through the day or convince people you’re worth hiring again or convince yourself that you’re not exhausted from keeping up with the facade that you’re fine. During the pandemic I found myself wholly unprepared and ill equipped to deal with all my unknowing. The books I chose then were on magick and self discovery. I was getting closer to the knowledge of my personal power but farther away from the communion I once felt amongst the pages of books I’d loved and that communion was why I sought these stories to begin with.
Move forward to the present and I find myself flashing back in body and soul to the days when I found myself falling into another worlds. I’m feeling the excitement of a mystery in an old house, the tremor of anticipation looking at a deep wood holding many secrets, and the delight of running my fingers through sunlight because I know of a character that has a magical connection to its rays. I find this emotional and spiritual time traveling to be indicative of a coming home. Ironically, coming back to myself and my origins allows me to flourish in my imagination. Who knew that grounding myself to reality was the key to lifting myself up into dreams.
I have and always will feel deeply that my work is not to be sold at a price that simply suits me. I have and always will believe that my work is for that little girl, little boy, little they that is desperately seeking it. It’s easy to wax poetic about this and pretend finances don’t matter. (To solve this I insisted on having some kind of career even if it’s shifting, even if it’s boring.) They do very much matter and the value we put on art, art made from the human experience, is telling of the health of our society. We certainly don’t value that very highly at the moment and contrary to discouraging me, I believe it’s the very thing that makes what I pursue even more important. What I believe much more than the market dictates the success of the book is that the life of the work dictates the success of my soul.
Most of my writing is me talking to me, asking myself to remember who I am. It’s a continual pull back to what I’ve always known, and I hope it’s a continual invitation to you, to remember what you’re made for. If misery loves company, I believe evolution loves a witness and so I present this journey over and over so as to say you are not alone and neither am I. I present this journey over and over because I keep returning to the same places knowing infinitely more than I ever have and understanding more fully how little I actually comprehend despite all this knowledge. I suppose that’s kind of exciting. You might be tempted to become bored in this life otherwise. Isn’t it wonderful that you can return again and again, seeing the old things you love anew.
The more I write the less I know. The more I live the less I care about that. I’m in awe of my ability to return to what’s good. To love the hunt for the perfect book. To adore the vast empty spaces between accomplishments. What a beautiful thing it is to long for something meaningful and have to go searching for it. What a blessing to have found it at last.
*This piece is dedicated to my friend Jameson who told me in 2022 that I should start a Substack. It took me two years to actually do it but I did it. And what a beautiful writing practice it’s been since. Thank you, my friend.
The Magick This Week:
There are many ways to define magick, but I define it as the little glimmers of what makes being alive worth it. Because it’s important to remember these moments, I keep a running list and share them here.
At a free country ballroom lesson I danced with a woman who said she thinks her son is about to propose to his girlfriend and she and her husband want to be ready for their wedding.
On one of my morning walks I found a toy dinosaur sitting on a fence. I gave it a flower.
My casual invite to a couple of new friends to join me at bluegrass night ended up as a big group hang out outside our usual run club.
Whiskey came back for a visit last week. (That’s the neighborhood stray cat for those who don’t know.) We meowed back and forth until she let me pet her and then she went on her way.
A couple Sundays ago I rode my bike to meet my mom for lunch and on the way back, got so soaked my books were nearly ruined. It was worth it though. There’s nothing more fun for running or biking than rain. (Providing you get to go straight home afterwards…)
Follow the magick all the way down:
Instagram: @aka.leahmorris
I don’t even have the words for how your article inspired and reinvigorated me pertaining to art / writing and seeing the magick. Thank you 🥹
I love that you gave a flower to the toy dinasaur. I feel he really needed it as he was stood up by another toy. Also, I still look in wonder at fireflies and rainbows and waves crashing on the shore. Thank you for sharing your life with us.