kiss the moment
how to create something: a guide (part 1)
how to create something: a guide
Before answering this obnoxious yet necessary question, let me give you some context.
I first wrote and published this resource guide titled how to create something, in early 2024. It was a 40-page PDF released as part of a multidisciplinary online platform that only existed briefly, called Matter Lent. In spite of that project’s notably short lifespan, I held on to the guide dearly—revisiting it like a low-maintenance long-distance friend you don’t talk to very often, but when you do, nothing’s changed, and you pick up right where you left off.
One day, for a reason I am still not grasping fully, something had changed: it (the guide) asked me (yes it speaks) to rewrite it. So I did. That second version came out earlier this year as a stand-alone digital piece (another PDF). Then more time passed. You know. As it does.
Cut to right now, and it turns out, the guide—originally conceived as a fixed and reliable entity—is in fact a living, breathing creature, shape-shifting as you and I do, asking yet again for a new container to live in. What a diva! But I have pledged to be her servant and use my words to pass on her message, so here we are. Let’s find out if the third time *is*, in fact, the charm, or if we’ve all been lied to this whole time. I really hope not because I’d like to finally break the spell and move on with my life.
I’m re-introducing how to create something in its third and final iteration—this time as an open-access, four-part-Substack-guide. Originally written as a single long form piece made up of five chapters, one chapter died in the battle and I’ve decided to publish the four remaining (but also kinda new, I really rewrote most of it) ones individually, in an effort to give every part of the reflection a little more room to stretch.
This is the first one, titled kiss the moment.
For real, though. Kiss it.
— Yasuna
1 kiss the moment
You will die. Don’t think about it too much, though. You can even forget about it for a moment. But still. You will. You might get startled when the thought arises. And when it does, it will strike as the day unfolds and anticlimactically follows its course. Then you’ll forget again. You’ll get lost in the most living place—as you should, and feel like none of this ever ends. Until you do. You’re at the party, everyone’s there. It’s all indistinct chatter and music so loud it’s not even for your ears anymore; the bass pulses in your thighs and stomach and heart. You make your way to a bar you can barely see, brushing up against the sweat on the backs of strangers who just giggle because they don’t mind. Neither do you. This is the moment of all moments, bursting at the seams with aliveness but then, a glass spills and breaks. A scream. A brief silence broken by the laugh of an invisible someone, and suddenly you remember that you will die tomorrow. And all this life of the party will come die with you too. Feel the discomfort of knowing that? Good. Notice it, and it softens. When uncomfortable, you adjust. You sit better in that chair, you seek a different vantage point. A fresh perspective is like a blank page, eager for an idea to make a mark. This idea—your idea is the opening scene of the creative act, and it feeds off of your mortality, which is the same place you draw breath.
So you will die. It is life’s inherent transience that forever keeps us in a state of becoming, perpetually sliding between our past form, and the next one. I like the word forever, I love the way it feels in the mouth. Say it. Now say it again. Let your tongue circle the sweetness of it. Stay there for a bit. Don’t sink your teeth into forever though, or you’ll bite your tongue. It is easy and tempting to hold on to things, places, people; assuming they’ll remain, stable and unchanged, but this kind of forever is an illusion. You know this. Permanence is a skillful sleight of hand. Pay attention and you’ll see the trick as it plays out. You’ll gasp and wonder how you missed it the first time around, when it’s so obvious. But we’re simply passing. There will be others after us, and others after them. We’re bound to the wheel as it turns, held atop and crushed under. Up and down it goes, you know—”forever”.
The awareness of your mortality is a subtle yet sincere invitation to reflect on the life which is yours and pick the color of the moments you’d like to paint it with. It doesn’t have to be some grandiose endeavour for all to see. You get to live an inconspicuous life. You also get to die an uneventful death. It is likely. Thing is, if you know how it is you want to live, you’ll also know when you’re not quite doing that. You’ll hear your own lies; the ones you tell aloud and the quieter ones you hide in the ways of someone who isn’t you, but who you pretend to be. Doing this will not take you very far, but it’s part of the deal. You know what? I’ll take that back—it might take you somewhere: cosplaying a life that isn’t yours, could sketch the outline of the one that is. You’ll die either way, but in one of those instances, you’ll do so lovingly, you’ll do it honestly. Dishonesty doesn’t let love in. It says: I’m unsure how to love you and even though I want you to, you can’t quite love me either.
Life and death are true lovers, faithfully desiring one another. To create something is to step into life and death’s loop of a dance. The one who grants life through his creation knows that what he made, just like him, is bound to disappear eventually. And in the space it leaves behind, something else is born. This is why flowers bloom on graves. Death is life’s lover, and strangely, also its mother. Weird I know, but bear with me—my words may meander but I actually have a point, I promise. Creation comes and goes, and on its way out, it leaves the door open for something else to walk in. This pure creative energy also happens to be yours. That’s all I wanted to say.
In the cemetery near my home, there’s this gravestone. A plain, rectangular, white stone. No farewell, no wish for a safe journey into the afterlife. All it reads is ‘Ursula, 1937–2017.’ Resting forever beneath a standing stone, Ursula has no last name, no story, nothing binding her to whatever came before she lay down underground. Whose life did she touch? What life did she live? Whose life did she leave behind when she left her own? A step closer, and I notice the faint silhouette of letters once carved, now dissolving into the stone. What remains reads: ‘It is what it is.’ I laugh out loud in the cemetery, because it’s true. Ursula is dead but she’s right: there is no meaning to pull from anywhere, no mystery to solve, and all my questions need no answers. This is the point. Our lives mean as much as they mean nothing. All this is as big of a deal as it isn’t. So kiss the moment. Let it kiss you back and let it go. Remember your own insignificance, and revel in the open space.
Nuance is in everything, it’s absolutely everywhere if you look close enough. Immaculate bliss and deep sorrow are inseparable. We go through all this with hearts as full as they ache, celebrating love and life while sitting with heartbreak and loss. Can you always tell the difference between that hollow pit inside your stomach and a congregation of raging butterflies? They’re basically the same, and that is the deal you made upon arrival: it’s because we part eventually that crossing paths and coming together is so sweet in the first place.
PRACTICE: THE MOST LIVING PLACE
In the tangible realm in which you read these words, for better or for worse, you have a body. This body is not just a vessel but a gateway, a conduit for life force itself. It is the moving station through which information—feelings, sensations, impulses, and ideas—comes and goes, often without you realizing it. Your body is your first canvas, and before creating anything in your external reality, you’re making art with your every move. Skin and blood and flesh and bone make the masterpiece you get to live in.
Your body knows things your mind doesn’t. It speaks in the language of tension and release, hunger and fullness, rhythm and fatigue. Tend to it. Find out what it wants, give it, and see what happens. Remember. Repeat.
Use your body as the playground it is. Play often. Explore sensations like you would a new terrain. Get comfortable with the feeling of being alive, anchored in your flesh, moving through space and time. Your body is not separate from your experience of life—it is life, living and creating itself.