Vulnerability Challenge
How personal is too personal?
I took a month off writing these updates, because life has been really hard lately. On top of the onslaught of daily horror news, I am going through a breakup. We have agreed to take things one step at a time, decoupling and taking time apart before attempting to remain friends at some point. But as I’m sure you know about this phase in a break up, it has not been easy getting past that first step of fully separating while trying to heal. It’s a relief that the pain of trying to hold the relationship together is gone, but I haven’t gotten to process it all yet.
Part of my goal with these posts is to be as vulnerable and honest as I want to be, because I need to write whatever feels right. Full stop. But also because maybe hearing about my queer, polyamorous life can help someone out there feel less alone.
I have been polyamorous for around seven years, and I am very open to sharing my stories about deciding on this relationship style, my various partnerships since then, and the lessons I’ve learned along the way (there have been lots and lots of lessons lately!). As long as the questions are respectful and I trust the person to be kind, I will go into conversations that can generally be summarized by the question, “So, how does that work??”. Curious people are the best, and I like sharing my experiences.
I firmly believe that, no matter what relationship style you currently practice, you should -as long as you are safely able- do the research and soul searching it takes to learn what’s possible, explore it if you’re interested, and actively decide what’s right for you. Like all other aspects of life, don’t just default to what society expects of you. A few content creators and resources I like are Polyphilia, Chill Polyamory, and the Multiamory podcast. I have tried to find Substack writers who cover the topic, or are at least non-monogamous people writing about their lives; I’m positive they’re out there, but in my opinion the platform makes it hard to find specific niches. Please let me know if you follow any writers I should know about!
Being vulnerable in my art
While I love basic foodstuffs, I am much more drawn to writing and emotional processing through art recently. Given what I’m thinking about and going through, polyamory and queerness are taking a front seat in my art practice. I recently applied for the fall/winter MacDowell residency in New Hampshire, which, like many residency applications, requires a project proposal. The application helped me create a thesis for an artistic desire that feels broad enough to encompass my explorations: combine my (relatively) separate practices of poetry writing and intuitive visual art creation to tell vulnerable stories that comment on identity and society.
Around this application time I was asked if I had anything to submit for The Fishbowl’s February heartbreak-themed show, Bittersweet. It lit a fire to begin a “vulnerability challenge”, which is what I’ve been calling this framework that involves accessing emotion and experiences through writing and creating pieces in response. As a first step and a way of processing my recent breakup, I tracked down all the poems I’ve written over the last year and chose a handful to make art with.
I ended up with a document full of date-stamped poems. When I lamented not knowing what the heck to do with them, Rya suggested I display them printed on receipt paper or as a scroll. I got a thermal printer and made several copies of each poem, but looking at them pinned neatly on the wall felt far too dangerously vulnerable to share.
I didn’t end up submitting anything to the show, but I continued to work with the printed poems, gessoing a copy of each and the scrap receipt paper onto a canvas. It dried in a way that obscured a lot of the words, which felt safe enough to continue with. I added paint and embroidery thread, creating shapes, testing out imagery, and stitching poem phrases into the canvas.
Its current form highlights my poems about chronic pain and women’s roles that I believe create a relatable and vulnerable (but not too revealing) narrative. I might keep adding to this piece, but for now it has inspired other directions.
They only take about 4% of applicants to the MacDowell residency, because it is a fully-funded and rather well-known program. I won’t hear back for a couple months, but whatever happens I am grateful for the shift in direction that only comes from focused and thoughtful contemplation of what I truly want to make. For me, this often requires some sort of themed show or project proposal with a deadline (in this case both!); otherwise, I float around in the leftover ideas from my last brainstorm session, trying not to overheat my heart and mind. I guess this is just how I operate, which I think is demonstrated in a portion of one of my poems:
I try not to face that time is limited
My heart can’t spend all its life at max brightness
Hurtling its way past responsibilities to
Spend every moment in FULL THROTTLE LOVE
What else I have been up to
In mid-December I came up with a list of goals: in my estimation achievable things that I could take one step at a time, celebrating little wins along the way. Then my relationship broke in the new year. However, the list is still relevant:
Get my struggling relationship to a stable place where it’s not causing so much pain.
Be physically active every day.
Make moves towards figuring out the chronic pain I’ve been experiencing one thing at a time (doctor’s appt, new treatment, massage, etc).
Make and stick to a schedule every week.
Do at least one painting from life every week.
I had three pieces in Base Camp’s January show, “Bones N’ Flowers”. I will do better about updating these posts/socials when I have shows in the future, I promise. Heartbreak is hard.
I “chicken sat” for a couple weeks while my friends Claire and Caleb were in the UK. This meant waking up to let them out with the sun and putting them away at dusk every day, which was honestly great for getting me through the initial breakup phase of not wanting to get out of bed. Plus, chickens are cool. Check out Claire’s chicken tarot deck!
Last month in my queer book club we discussed Hi Honey, I’m Homo: Sitcoms, Specials, and the Queering of American Culture by Matt Baume, an awesome book by a Seattle author. I enjoyed it and learned a lot, despite the embarrassing fact that I haven’t seen most of the media referenced. It inspired Yev and I to start watching Modern Family, which I’ve never seen, and I’m loving it so far. In my other club, the poetry book we just discussed was Calling a Wolf a Wolf by Kaveh Akbar. Just… !!! I finished it a couple weeks ago, and I’m seriously tearing up right now about how amazing it was. I love poetry, but this book reminded me that I LOOOOVE poetry. Up next is Tomboy Survival Guide and A Fortune for Your Disaster.
Yev and I went to Berkeley, CA for the wedding of one of my childhood friends. Lauren is the first person I made friends with when I switched schools in 4th grade, and I don’t know what I would have done without such a seriously amazing person in my life for those formative years. Along with several other girls we formed the Musketeers, and Lauren published several editions of a magazine about us and the world at the time. No, we were not cool; yes, I am proud of it.
As a final note, here’s a couple pieces I did from observation in the last two months.
website: alainaarts.com
email: alainaarts@gmail.com
insta: @gobbeldigook