​
WRITING THE MOMENT
Extracts taken from pieces of reflective writing:
​
Spring 2020
During lockdown I felt some parts of me moving into a slower experiencing of time, slowing down to the pace of the old Spanish women in my village as they go about their daily lives, their whole world happily contained within the village.
Often I experience different rhythms of time unfolding simultaneously. Some modes lend themselves to depth and staying-with, like Post Present Future and some of my earlier artworks which stretched over ten years, weaving through many relationships, job and homes. Or early memories of staring out of the school window, in rapture of sunbeams and autumn leaves, in a state of presence I now long to reach so quickly, to be abruptly 'awoken' with the sting of being told off for not concentrating. And the times where, leaning into the rhythm of my body/mind alertness, I dance for 20 minutes and write the moment in 5 present minutes rather than fumbling through distraction and fog in the attempt to write 'something good'.
Seeing anew through subtle transitions and seismic shifts, the patterns of my relatively tiny life, I have a desire to be held amongst giant trees that will out live me ten fold. I feel the pluralities of time rhythms playing out within me in strange ways in the reintegration into 'normal' life or post-lockdown life. These days I've had disproportionate waves of anxiety in response to a build up of short-time-frame-deadlines of 'urgent' tasks which sumise to nothing compared to what I used to be able to deal with. I imagine it also has to do with being knocked over by hate of otherness, race crimes, and weeping at stories of resilience. My deep-time rhythm doesn't seem to manage multiple layers of distracted work. It will be a process of re-integration. I'm holding to bringing 'softness to the frantic'.
All this to say, let's take our time, and play with time. I would far prefer to go slow and far than for a short burst. We can reimagine again and again what serves us best in this configuration, over the many years as we grow together. Not that this can be forced, but perhaps, can be held as an intention. A desire from my side at least.
With love from an old wrinkly village woman and simultaneously a fast paced complex-responsive project manager, an occasional somatic practitioner and frequent day-dreamer.
Early Summer 2020
​
I moved from our group call, out of the house to walk through the narrow Spanish village street. The bright sunny enveloping me and softening my desire to remember all details, relaxing into the knowing that what remains is what is needed. I turn left and am met by a welcome shade cooling my bare legs. Jumping into the van and heading to the office in the next village, I feel full of possibilities and light of heart. Our natural state, which feels somewhat 'too' blissful in the face of injustice, confusion, fear and anxiety. There is a new reassurance, I feel now, in the metaphor of creative life-energy rising from inside a growing shoot, with no doubt it's becoming a tree, no matter the obstacles or containment, there is growth. In my experience, when I meet containment, and, what seems to be shared human experience, at first there is a going inward - a resourcing, and simultaneously a preparation of life-force itself to surge, bursting to overcome, expand beyond the containment. This image that I feel in the seeds I plant on the land, supports me to trust in my, and others, natural state to overcome injustice, confusion, fear and anxiety, and to seek life, to be life in its fullest expression. It gives me permission to feel joy in being aware and enlivened, without compressing or reducing or suppressing with guilt because others have that freedom taken away from them.
I am in the La Bolina office now. Music on my headphones entering into emails to potential funders, designing flyers to promote our eco veg and later on shared lunch in the garden on the heavy long wooden table with the whole community.
I opened my work emails, then had such a swelling of heart bursting connection, such a feeling of belonging in my own skin and of the love that radiated through you both as you spoke at the end of the call - that I was moved to write to you both to share this appreciation, so alive and in movement through my body.
When you were speaking at the end of today's call, I changed to speaker view, and closed all other 'boxes of faces'. I felt in Towerlands with you both. Your love shining for, and with, each of us.
As my fingers write these words, light and fresh, I hope to capture some of this very somatic enlivened experience. With such deep gratitude for the way you both choose to live, and through sharing yourselves, guides that way in others; in me.