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To this life
We bring meaning
Our free will
-安天美
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Think of Agnes Martin's grid paintings - at first glance, they're just lines on canvas. But stay with them. Let your eyes settle. Suddenly you're swimming in light. That's what "To this life" feels like. We're handed this seemingly blank space, these days that look identical from far away. But get closer. There's texture here. There's depth.
Like Martin working in her New Mexico studio, we start with what's given. The light coming through windows. The sound of wind. The weight of being here at all. It's not empty - it's waiting. Not for something specific. Just waiting, the way a studio waits before the day's work begins.
The space between "To" and "life" holds everything. It's where we pause, breathe, realise we're part of something already in motion. Like walking into a room where music's playing and finding your rhythm.
"We bring meaning" hits like Basquiat's crown - a symbol transformed through pure intention. Not because someone decided it meant something, but because someone dared to claim it, spray it, repeat it until it sang. We do this daily. Take ordinary moments and make them sing through how we touch them.
The "we" matters here. Meaning isn't a solo exhibition. It's collaborative, like a city wall where every tag tells a story, where art builds on art until you can't tell where one voice ends and another begins. Your meaning touches my meaning touches their meaning.
This isn't about grand gestures. Sometimes it's as simple as how you arrange flowers in a vase, or the way you remember someone's coffee order, or sending a text that just says "thinking of you." Small moves that ripple.
Free will comes in like Nina Simone at the piano - deliberate, powerful, no apologies. Each note a choice, each choice a note in the song you're writing with your life. The "our" in "Our free will" isn't possessive - it's an invitation to the dance.
Think of how Patti Smith takes a stage. Total presence. Total commitment. That's what free will asks of us. Not perfection. Not even certainty. Just showing up fully for the choices we make, the doors we open or close, the paths we carve or follow.
This freedom isn't theoretical. It's as real as paint on your hands at the end of a day's work. As real as deciding to start over when the canvas isn't working. As real as choosing hope when despair would be easier.
Remember those hand-painted signs you see sometimes, the ones that stop you mid-step? Three lines, nine words, and suddenly you're awake to your own power. This poem works like that. It's not trying to be clever. It's trying to be true.
The rhythm builds like a good DJ set - each line dropping exactly when you need it. First the context, then the action, then the power source. No wasted words. No fancy tricks. Just the beat of human experience broken down to its essentials.
We're all working with the same basic materials - time, consciousness, choice. But like any good artist knows, limitations breed creativity. Within these boundaries, we make our moves. We leave our mark. We tune the signal until it's clear.
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<aside> <img src="/icons/backward_blue.svg" alt="/icons/backward_blue.svg" width="40px" /> Mastering Dreams
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<aside> <img src="/icons/forward_blue.svg" alt="/icons/forward_blue.svg" width="40px" /> Quiet Rebellion
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