EXPRESS YOURSELF
We Need Both Restraints and Abundance
What two bouquets and a book taught me about creativity
“yellow + restraint = light.”
This journal observation/bit of philosophy is lifted from the first edition of my friend Alejandro’s generous and lovely newsletter.
I’m thinking about this little meditation now, but it wasn’t at the front of my mind when I stumbled into the local flower shop on Monday to detox from a whirlwind weekend.
Nor was I thinking about having recently texted Alejandro a quote from our shared fave Maggie Nelson, interviewed in The Creative Independent:
I think restraint is an undervalued form of freedom. It kind of relates to what we were saying before about impulse, in that, a lack of impulse control, whether it be addiction to substance or fossil fuels, is a certain kind of freedom, but it can often actually be a compulsion that doesn’t actually lead to the state that we desire or the state that would cause less suffering and make us feel more free.
It wasn’t in my conscious train of thought that a few days earlier I had run into Alejandro on the street, where we discussed his recent mantra — restraint — in an array of contexts including how to be social post-pandemic, and how to pace out the big feels of a new crush.
So on Monday when Daniela’s Flower Shop had a limited selection of flowers in a rather uninspired yellow pallet—half the shop emptied and awaiting delivery—I didn’t immediately think of “restraint” while gathering up all the left over textures to make the best of it.
After I did my thing, feeling quite proud of the result, I texted Alejandro a few snaps, bragging off about my third, and latest, sunburst of a bouquet:
In reply he wrote, “You know how I feel about yellow.”
Ah ha! Alejandro, you sneaky cat. I see you and your philosophy soaking into my bones. I was living into the freakin’ mantra! I get it. Boundaries as a counterintuitive path to liberation, as a pair of hands that force a more elastic approach to creativity. I see it now, that dang sunburst of a centerpiece I get to live with all week is not a mistake but a direct result of my perceived lack!
Or. OR. oRrRr. Orrrrrr: It was not lack at all. It was constrained abundance. I was seeing the beauty in what is, what remains. What is inherently there.
I then got to thinking about a moment in recent summer when a bird pooped square on Alejandro’s hand. The warm shit had made itself known just as I was asking how he felt about his new book’s arrival into the world. I took it as a sign that my own bubbling energy has its own secret ingredient: the too-much. The big-ass scoop.
Isn’t it the flip of same concept? Restraint as a lens or a frame through which to magnify what already is, what is radiant and giving without needing to add more (that endless echo of moremoremore).
Restraint and abundance: two seemingly opposing forces that share the same wisdom at its root, that rely on one another to tame and re-wild. A thin balance, which—when one can sift through their own defenses, and listen openly and with interest to another’s perspective—can be the give and take of great friendships.
For the past season I have been thinking about what to make my friend Alejandro that is worthy of honoring his precise and gorgeous prose and the heart-knocking stories contained in this skinny and perfect volume. And with those little breadcrumbs leading the way, I came up with this wild and seemingly unrestrained bouquet—and only seemingly because it’s totally restrained in the sense that it uses the very color palette of his book.
And so: To restraint! To abundance! To Alejandro and his mind, his sullied hand, his clean, clean heart! May it all be blessed with piles and piles of luck (though hopefully not in the form of more aerial poop. Let’s be precise with our own words, yeah?)
Unrelated, but worth capturing to New York memory (just a reminder that we’re lovely, but we’re keeping it real)… speaking of light and yellow and excrement… what in the fresh hell is this?! Some recently procured piss photographed outside my apartment building this morning. Damn:
