For years, I’ve worn the bracelet that my sister, who travels often around the world for work and fun, brought me back from Korea. Wooden beads on a cloth string, it came from a Buddhist monastery. I wore it while flying, which I hate, and for important events that made me nervous, like giving presentations or going to jury duty.
The string has been a little loose for a while, and last week, while attending a lecture, I wore it under a dress with big voluminous sleeves that came down over the wrists. I’ve never won the dress before, and I think the bracelet got flung off when I was wrestling with all that fabric somehow.
I’m not as superstitious as some people I know, including a former roommate who swore he would never write again if his special mug was broken. He always wore a faded kimono when he wrote, like a variation on Michael Douglas’s Grady Tripp in the film adaptation of Wonder Boys.
Preciousness doesn’t have a place in art making for me. There simply hasn’t been time or space for it. I’ve never had an office with a door that locked (or had heat). I’ve never had a desk that’s lasted, that wasn’t some repurposed, scratched and split old table. Or had a fancy pen. Or had writing time that wasn’t stolen time, time clawed back from something else—like work or parenting or housework or a relationship—that usually comes to hurt me in the end.
But I have worn the bracelet.
In a disordered world, it’s hard not to look for order and meaning, not to search for something more. Does everything really not happen for a reason? Are things truly not meant to work out purposefully? Is it all just random? Can’t we control anything?
I could wear this bracelet, I thought. I guess I believed by wearing it, I was announcing to myself: I am doing a thing that matters. This event is important to me. I will seize the luck I can, any way I can, for this day at least.
How do I get my luck back?
Maybe it won’t be found in a bracelet this time, but in a place. Or a favorite tree. Or a well-made fire. Or a library corner. Or the perfect drink I had a few weeks ago at the tea shop in my parents’ town: frothy and rich creme brulee boba tea (except without the boba because I don’t like gelatinous things). Maybe it’s found in me.
It’s been a long time since I believed in signs. My friend Sarah used to say it’s when we’re most shattered that we look for a way to make the world make sense, for meaning to make things whole again.
Maybe it’s a sign that I lost my good luck bracelet. But I don’t think it means that my luck has run out. I think it’s time to make new luck, to stop relying on traditions that no longer serve in the same way. The past might be holding me back. The present might be too.
Next year is going to bring a lot of changes. My YA novel will be published. I’m moving, though I’m not exactly sure where yet. Earlier this year, I accepted a promotion at work, and when I was mulling over the position, I sought advice from an older female friend who said, “Girl, it’s time to batten down the hatches!”
But I also think it’s time to release the secret weapons—the kraken, the friendly dragon—to roll down the drawbridge, and throw open the castle doors.
If I just take a minute to listen to myself, songs come back to me.
Art doesn’t go away, though, even if you ignore it.
Music is something I haven’t written in years. But I think it’s only because I haven’t allowed myself to be still enough. I haven’t opened myself up to it again, because really, who has time for songs? Songs don’t make me money. They never did, even though they used to draw a few crowds. And neither does visual art, even though it used to be the reason I got up in the morning, some mornings.
Art doesn’t go away, though, even if you ignore it. It’s the most patient lover or ghost. It waits. It only grows stronger.
I think it’s very hard but I also think it’s necessary to do things that aren’t for selling, that aren’t maybe for anyone to even know about but yourself. Other people saw my bracelet. I once exchanged a long, meaningful exchange with a Buddhist monk on my flight—yes, one of those flights I dread so much.
But maybe I wear my luck on the inside now. Maybe it fell off because I don’t need it anymore. And someone else does. Someone else will find and wear the luck they need while I instead just need a little sunshine, a little time, a little silence to listen better to the songs, paintings, and stories swirling around me. Be right back. I need to let them in.
The Magic of My Friend’s Poetry
Thinking about how to get my good luck back reminded me of this poem by my old and dear friend Maggie Glover “On Finally Blaming Myself a Little Finally.” The poem begins: “My porch upon the cliff, my house upon the mountain— / I push my sneaker between the roots of the maple.”
And it only gets more magic from there. Read it here.