Drowning in Bliss

Madelene Przybysz

Madelene Przybysz has received an Associate of Fine Arts from the College of DuPage and is transferring to Northern Illinois University in pursuit of a degree in Art and Design Education. Aside from being an aspiring educator, Madelene is also an interdisciplinary artist and writer, creating work through means of documentation, experimentation, and observation. Through personal and cultural observations of the everyday, she looks to create works that are inviting and playful but can also introduce different levels of discussion and understanding.

Abstract

Apathy can create a subconscious need to escape. Unknowingly we run away in search of a want to change and reinvent ourselves—yet through that longing, we are consistently pulled back into the same undertow of a routine and habit. Sometimes, the more we care, the less we try—hoping that things will lay out on their own. And other times the more we try, the less we end up caring—ultimately becoming fed up and our new ideas are overgrown.

“Drowning in Bliss” is a poem written at the beginning of the 2020 lockdown. It became a consistent, reoccurring feeling of wanting to reinvent myself, to change what was the same and to dissociate. In this state of being, I found that old vices to cope, old routines, and things of comfort didn't provide the relief like they used to and so a new trapped feeling appeared in places where I used to relax. Maybe, I relieved some of that tension by turning to nature and going for consistent long walks to leave behind social media and certain people—certain human connections.

Though there is beauty in something new, this poem also expresses the danger of finding solace in the wrong places and how, when we try to change, we can ultimately return to a similar cycle that pulls us away to drown ourselves in what we thought was bliss.

Drowning in Bliss

I went for a walk to find a new devotion

Looking down empty streets and corridors

Stepping on squeaky floorboards

I lost all kinds of emotion

My feet hit the pavement stumbling barefoot

Finding sanctuary among the open windows and locked doors I came to a body

So vast and long

It gazed at me.

I tried to wrap my arms around the ocean

So sweet and so blue

But my wingspan would not reach

Kissing my feet upon the sand

It calls me closer

Grasping my ankles

And then my waist as I began to wade

Further and further

Away from the shore of lost human connection

I am swept under by its embrace.

Currents rush past me as I was caught by its loving gaze

Pulling me closer in the undertow

Closer to its heart in the deep blue