Artist Series: Heart Lake
On Writing: Prose + poetry by Megan Jorgenson
Every month I’m publishing a piece from an artist I admire. This month, I am honored to share a poem and piece of prose by Megan Jorgenson. “Heart Lake” challenges the notion of time and focuses in on how grief can blur the line where the past meets the present. It shows us how there is belonging in remembering, how letting go is often not the end but the beginning, and how there’s never a right way to say goodbye to the ones we love. Trust me when I say this piece had me in tears. It is as beautiful as it is true, and it’s the truth of it that made my heart ache with the kind of resonance that connects those who’ve lost someone, and themselves in the process.
Megan is one of the most intentional artists I’ve ever known. Her beautiful spirit + art have been part of the two great loves of my life—my partner and my son. She painted the stunning floral arrangement on the fringed suede jacket I wore at my wedding (and still wear) and she painted the rainbow artwork that hangs as the centerpiece in my son’s room. She used pigments + paints that she created from the earth itself, forging from the landscape—some from the very desert where I was raised. I love the connection and intimacy to nature that comes through her work. My next commission from her will be part of my third great love—writing. I plan to hang the art over my writing desk as a comfort, an inspiration, a guide for when I need a little extra help to keep going, to find the right words for the page.
Meg Jorgenson is an abstract-impressionist painter living in Los Angeles.
Her work is visceral in meditative storytelling and explores the ways in which our external and internal worlds mirror one another through the spiritual presence of nature. Jorgenson’s practice of gathering; creating pigments, paints, and dyes from the landscape is rooted in connectivity to the earth and our ancestral origins. The work she does is strongly energized by forging, and is an ongoing exploration in the evolution of her art. The ingenuity of Jorgenson’s techniques is playful and met with intentional direction that is deeply balanced. In a nuanced sense, she invites the viewer not so much to discern, as to absorb through the beauty of attention.
“Art is a language of wonder and transformation where I’ve become raised by the stones.”
Before we get into her work, let’s start with three questions.
What are you reading right now?
Currently too many. I’m not sure if anyone else does this but I truly find that each book has a mood to be read like records. I’ll list three and spare myself my inner embarrassment of the slow burn that tilts from my headboard. The Wayfinders by Wade Davis. I’m extremely fascinated by ancestral storylines. The Hour of the Star by Clarice Lispector is such a rambly and creative read. How Bluegrass Music Destroyed My Life by John Fahey. Which I find to be a bit of a swampy prose.
What do you do when you’re coming up against resistance and you can’t seem to get to the center of the thing—the writing, the living, the task at hand? How do you get to where you want to go?
Sometimes I envision myself as a river stone, how the cool water feels and how it repeatedly washes over me. I think either visualizing nature or actually being in nature has such a calming kind of reset. It holds me in a place of the present and eases the grip to be in the moment rather than trying to force whatever might be at hand.
Tell me about this piece. Where did it come from?
This piece came from last September during a trip to Minnesota, for an artist residency. Which happens to also be where I grew up. I spent two weeks working on a 7’ painting in a childhood friend's home. The time in between I sat digging up memories in overgrown grasses and catching up with good friends and family. It was the longest I had been home since my Mothers passing in 2014.
Prose
by Megan Jorgenson
Heart Lake
There are moments when the present feels so seamless with where we think the past remains; almost as if time was a forgotten variable that had separated the two.
Rain taps at the window, tears of a broken heart fall for the same reason, and suddenly I remembered what it was like to be unconditionally loved. While waiting to board the flight back to my hometown, I sat at the airport bar drinking a bloody mary for her. Lost in a stare with my empty journal. I restlessly waited for some kind of quest guideline to appear on the pages, or a sign to ease the anxiety I thought I stashed with old photographs underneath my bed. I wanted to fast forward, I wanted to believe that what had been left behind stayed where it was.
The next few days back were like someone tugging on my sweater. My accent was annoyingly stronger than before. I imagined the Artist Residency to be a new growth chapter, but the pain continued to seep in without asking. “Unattended grief is a dormant seed that hides between rock shadows. Preserved for the right time.” A line I had written but had forgotten. I suppose that's why each time I come back I say it will be the last.
Unraveling in the debris of the past. I felt like a stone tossed into someone else's garden. The neighborhood cat spiraled at my feet while I picked the last of the summer flowers. I could see myself drifting in the sunset that appeared flawlessly in the lake's reflection. Alongside the memories that had made their way through, I had an aching feeling that what I was carrying was finally too heavy to bear. There was nothing I could do. The only way was to allow myself to fall back in.
How my heart lives is profoundly anchored to the love my mom gave me and the freedom I had to roam and express myself as a child. Like vignettes dipped in glitter, the suburbs of Minnesota is where I was brought up to live a creative life. It’s where I was given a paintbrush and taught how to let my soul shine. Woven in moments of colored pancake dinners, lake floats, singing out of tune, and chasing fireflies. There was a type of living in our family that was playful. We had meal themes, camped on the weekends, and flipped coins whenever we couldn't decide. It really was the little things she did that gave the spark. Being encouraged to be myself was something that just came to my mom easily. Whatever I made, she kept, whatever wacky outfit I dressed myself in, she let me, whatever I wished to try she gave me a big thumbs up. On the outside, she was stoic, strong, hardworking, and wise. I would best describe her as part magic, and part viking. Despite the rugged terrain of her past, the stresses of being a single parent, and money being tight, she always managed to scatter the good light. Containing the spark just right.
In a free fall, there's a deep belonging in remembering.
In 2013 what I thought was just a brief time without a sunrise was only the prologue of how our family light began to fade. My Mom was diagnosed with stage 4 lung cancer that spread to her brain. It broke us into unrecognizable fragments of ourselves. Things felt loosely threaded. I was a 26-year-old caregiver alone in a nightmare I couldn't wake from. Teetering between realms of uncertainty and more uncertainty. It’s all I had, I suppose it’s all we all have, we just pretend it doesn't exist. The way life was, swiftly had to fit next to oxygen tanks and medicine boxes. I had a hard time navigating my pain, I didn’t know what I needed, I had abandoned myself and most days felt foreign. I began to sob at random; public benches, doing the dishes, gas pumps, grocery aisles, and friends' bathrooms. No place was safe from the reality of what was to come. In the last of her days, I never did see her leaving through her sunshine. She sat peacefully in her chair, her skin sunken into her bones at the unfair age of 62. Still, she smiled and winked at me from across the room. I had six months with her before I knew I would never hear her low pitched laugh or feel her tender hugs again. The thought of it made my chest knot into deadly cliff dives. Here I was back home again and the feeling still haunts me. I think it’s fair to say that there's never a good enough way to say goodbye to the ones you love. There's never enough time and It’s always harder to accept that someone is gone than the actual loss of their physical life. It becomes something that is missing from you rather than the sum of their presence on earth.
The Buddhist believe that death is a notion. That it’s only an illusion because nothing cannot exist without something. The attachment is what causes suffering. What I’ve noticed is that a person, an experience, a song or season has the possibility to shift you. It can become a ripple that makes you feel alive. The word death I’ve decided just means rebirth as it's transformative and diverse. I think it’s viable to see beauty in what has decayed. Barren depths don’t have to be wastelands. Deep connections can exist without deep attachments because everything changes and we are ever changing. This I believe is the magic we get to hold onto and re-gift to ourselves and others. There's a joining of power and spark that happens when we can see that what is loved is never lost.
On my final day of the artist residency, after the snow fell briefly, a cardinal and her babies appeared in the melted underbrush of a pine tree. As I watched the Cardinal family, my heart filled with warmth. I felt my mom next to me. There are no words to describe how I know the presence of my mom’s energy except for that it’s unmistakable. The uncomfortable tensions of my suffering seemed to disperse. A matchbook souvenir fell from my pocket as I closed the door behind me. Her song came on in the car radio as I left the house driveway and I chuckled thinking about how it took me eight years to get here. Perhaps part of the journey is that we are just looking for the right reasons to let go, and to find what gives us light.
This is not the end but another story of beginning.
A poem
by Megan Jorgenson
Matchbook Souvenir
In residence
with a lonesome dawn
herded into light
colored in a rumination of where the canvas meets the living room wall
leaving the backs of my notebook pages blank
picking flowers in someone else's garden
as the light falls, we end up living like dandelion seeds
waiting to be carried into the wind
what remained on the other end of heart lake
the moon fixed above the clearing
in the backyard covered in a feeling of dusty peach neon
dear shallow reflecting waters
does the sun feel different on the other side
the story weaves its way back to the beginning
the red cardinal shows me the way
the panicled aster dresses the wound in the last of the summer's bloom
part magic and part viking
on this side of heart lake
Where to find Megan:
This was the message I didn’t know I was looking for this season. Beautiful.
Fresh tears over morning coffee. Thank you so much both of you.