What’s Wild and Precious?
When trust between human beings is violated, nature is a soft place to land. Embedded in the natural world (and in the process of art-making) is a wisdom for which I am incredibly grateful.
“The trees whisper an old song perpetually anew, wild and precious and true”
Colored pencil on paper. 6 x 4 inches. 2026.
Dearest Doodle Soupsters,
Sometimes, I feel like I need so much space just to make sense of my internal experience. Reactions to seemingly insignificant stimuli, an overheard conversation here, an advertisement poster on the subway there … it adds up.
And then I find myself feeling clogged up, stuck. This usually happens alongside lots of other stuff in my brain, sure. But I think aside from complex PTSD/healing from trauma/etc., there’s also a part of this “overwhelm/stuck/too much/make-time-stop-please-for-a-bit-cuz-I-can’t-think” feeling that’s just me, a sensitive human being that processes information deeply who needs time and space to sort through all sorts of stimuli. And of course, when trauma and sensitivity mix together, wooof … it’s a whole lot of MAKE IT STOP, please!
Alrighty, sure. I can accept that. I can accept that I don’t always know precisely the percentage points for each reason I feel overwhelmed. I can move toward taking care of myself first instead of needing to figure it out before I do that.
Because when it comes to taking care of myself, I think I often overestimate how much I need to know the reason. I think I’m scared to simply give myself what I need and take that seriously without proving why I need it first. And that’s okay too. I have my reasons why this is scary, why I haven’t learned (yet) that it’s okay to simply acknowledge what’s going on internally and treat that as real, as worthy of my attention, no reasoning necessary.
I still respond to my environment sometimes like it’s made up of the people who hurt me — I adapted to those old systems and there’s no quick, easy fix to rid myself of these behaviors and beliefs I don’t need anymore. At the same time, I am capable of change. I am capable of teaching myself, with the support of people around me, that I’m allowed to be human too.
The people in my life now — they don’t need or want me to pretend, to “perform” for them. They want me to communicate. They want me to take care of myself. They want me to feel healthy and happy and loved.
And I’m working on that. And it takes as long as it takes. That can be infuriating, how long it takes to learn … I can feel mad and sad and confused and scared and whatever else about that. And I can do this.
I can feel something clicking, puzzle pieces scattered, rearranged moving into their place, building something new. Yet, it’s also something I’ve been gently (and not so gently) building for some time …
A few days ago, I made two lists “I’ve been considering …” and “I’ve been …”
I’ve been considering:
the details in the fabric and how they co-exist with what you see when you step back, look from a greater distance
how the magic of being alive co-exists with the reality of being a person on this earth every day (as opposed to a theoretical orb floating somewhere between worlds, between breaths, between lives)
I’ve been:
letting myself find out
listening, not just to the gorgeous tune of wind rustling leaves and branches but also to the cantankerous chorus clashing, thrashing in my brain telling me to stay guarded, stay afraid AND in listening, in facing this, I see it differently and I can feel myself changing slowly but surely … it is scary AND good
learning to let myself be human, realizing that I already am
letting myself see my limitations, so I can release myself from the weighty shame and dullness of despair dampening, gray-ifying everything … I let myself be and I let myself learn and I release myself from expecting myself to know things before I know them and I pause, if I feel shame or fear or sadness or anger — okay, I can let this be what it is … my emotions are information, I take a step back, I let it be that simple and complicated too
drawing trees and woodland fairies … I love trees. So much.
I wrote and submitted a grant proposal this week for my Whispers Among the Trees tapestries and installation project. The organization asked applicants to include their personal reasons for applying. I don’t know if I did a “suitable” job on the proposal or not — this kind of application is new to me and I’m still figuring it out. But I ended up just writing from the heart and as I continue to learn, I’ll get better at these applications. I know I will. And it’s okay to take it one step at a time, to experiment, to simply try and let myself find out as I go …
Anyway, this is part of what I wrote —
This project means so much to me both as an artist and as a human being. I have survived years of sexual abuse both as a child and young adult. It took a long time before I finally found the safety and support to be able to address my trauma and heal. When trust between human beings is violated, especially in the severe ways I’ve experienced, nature is a soft place to land. Embedded in the natural world (and in the process of art-making) is a wisdom for which I am incredibly grateful. The honesty and trust I’ve been able to develop with people close to me now — I owe this in part to the connection I found in nature first. I told the trees first. I sang to the trees just like the strange human (sweet child of the universe) character does in the Whispers Among the Trees story.
My story is an old one, one that keeps repeating. I don’t have an answer for so many questions: Why do people do bad things? Why does sexual abuse (or abuse and oppression of any kind) exist? How do we stop bad things from happening? Why do bad things happen?
As the strange human character of Whisper Among the Trees sings to the woodland fairy named Existence, “How can it be that the truest answers are I don’t know and how? and why?” Yet, I can do one thing well and that’s make multidisciplinary art that offers a salve for the wounds that come with being human and living in this bittersweet world. My art is a salve that doesn’t erase what’s painful, hard, and confusing nor what’s blissful, whimsical, and awe-inspiring. I embrace the dualities of existence through my art, and I wrestle with them too. What can be more human? To love something and fear it and hate it and be completely perplexed by it, all at once?
Often, when I share my art, people share their stories with me. No matter the form of the trauma, so many of us are struggling to heal and make sense of what we’ve experienced. My art isn’t prescriptive — I don’t tell people what they should do. This project, for example, tells the story of a human bonding with a woodland fairy (who also represents our broader existence and the fabric of the universe). By the end of the story, the woodland fairy, who had been offering wisdom and reassurance to the human throughout, realizes that she doesn’t really know how it feels to be human. In being everything, the fairy named Existence is also nothing. This is how I see the world: a beautiful, mystifying, heart-breaking paradox. When this paradox is further unraveled at the end of the Whispers Among the Trees text, the human offers to sing to her and these are the words …
Oh Existence, now even you have found a what if to wrestle with. Well, I’ll just tell you what you told me, reflect your wisdom on back to you, right? Remember my song about not knowing? I’ll sing for you:
I started feeling so mixed up, turned around and confused,
lost in this uncertainty that oh I just couldn’t lose
So I called out to you, I asked you:
Who am I? What are we? What is anything?
And why does it always seem the truest answers are I don’t know and the questions themselves?
You just replied,
We don’t know
We just are
What’s more beautiful than a question?
An open space of curiosity, possibility?
Just be you, you called to me
Simple and true, sweet child
And whenever you feel lost,
Just call out to the sky, call out to me,
Scream, I don’t know!
It’s okay, I’ll be there for you
I’ll whisper windy kisses into the forest
I’ll find you and there you’ll be
Singing to the trees
If you’ve been a doodle soupster for a while, you might remember there’s a poem by Mary Oliver that keeps coming back over and over. It’s a puzzle piece. It holds something important for me … It’s like as I sort through all that stimuli that comes my way and ones that I seek out, there are things I need to throw out or give away and things that I keep in a treasure chest, tucked inside my soul … a clue, a treasure map, a key, something like that. Sometimes, they are phrases that come to mind or come up frequently in my art/music/writing (like start somewhere, x marks the spot, the only way is through, whispers among the trees, i don’t know, written/inscribed on my soul, I know it in my bones, etc.). Other times, it’s a lyric or line from a poem or a certain book I read over and over again (like Anna Karenina).
Anyway! Back to Mary Oliver … these words of hers belong here too —
Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean—
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down—
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
With your one wild and precious life?
Oh my dearest doodle soupster, would you tell me, who made the world? And what else should I do, other than keep on living, keep on learning? Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon? Isn’t our world bittersweet and as heartbreaking as it can be, isn’t that precisely what makes life feel special? Tell me, doodle soupster, when your heart calls, do you pick up the phone? And, when you do, what does your heart say? Tell me, how do you want to live your one wild and precious life?
Just one sensitive, messy, artsy, passionate, tired, and loving human being still learning, still healing, still living my one wild and precious life,
Nicole Sylvia Javorsky