Trapped in Space, Free in Time

A photo of me at the end of May, 2020, after 3 months of quarantine

Dear Beloved, 

In March, my outer world constricted and my inner world opened. My calendar lay barren and I returned to cycles of childhood loafing and time-scarce anxiety. Over the months since I've been tripping over artifacts of quick, sharp, potent, unprocessed times in journals and mementos, expanding and integrating the texture of them in the spaciousness of an open schedule. Breathing life into soft corners of me which have only arisen once or twice, I itch away dead skin, I quietly gather piles of trash as my body slowly settles into permission to enter fires of grief and release to smoke and ash.

In my own time with quarantine, I've carried with me a small idea from Augusto Boal, founder of Theater of the Oppressed. As I understand from my limited knowedge, he was arrested for  the practice using street theater to give voice to the voiceless. He reflected that in prison he became trapped in space, but free in time.

After months of feeling kept into a jar, the Oregon Wildfire Air arrived. Portland has filled with some of the worst air quality in the world. Even with sealed windows and doors, the main floor of our house filled with unhealthy air, sequestering the communal spaces and grounding me to my room as if I ought to think about what I've done. So I am called deeper into restricted space and abundant time for solitude and reckoning with The Void.

An air filter fan for the smoke in our house

In my own experience, I've been imagining the hive of bees called Portland being lulled to sedation by the last shout of a vast forest and can't help but imagine the natural effects of climate change, which we call storms, will be both terrible and gentle. Perhaps we will be too late to save ourselves and each other from the supreme discomfort of a changing climate, but I believe each of us will discover clarity in our own right time, and balance will always come and go in cycles. The belief I carry in my heart says there is room at the table for all. Everything will be okay. There is Enough.

Feeling some tough feelings on Saturday, September 12, 2020

 

There resides in me a deep care which does not trust the world. I do not want to give what I do not feel is seen by the receiver. I do not know who to help and I am afraid to know. I haven't begun to really consider those who have lost everything they knew. The grief, the constant grief, the holding-on, the frustrations, the projections, the listening and the not-listening, I am distressed to know this is all here, that I want to fix the world and the fixing can only happen in me. I remind myself everyone's path is their own and mine is mine. I can't help who it is I can help. I can help. I delight in my helpfulness when it comes from my heart and I feel seen in my wholeness.

With all lost to the fire I can't help but feel hopeful to see this as an opportunity to build back in alignment with the visions of pressure-cooker quarantine. All the thought and visioning we've collectively had with new ways of being already, new ways we could be, I can't help but see chance to rebuild differently.

Some flowers from times with cleaner air

With the destruction of land comes the opening of land. With the release of the past comes space for the present. Destruction and creation are stories told relative to the narrative of humanity. Where we create cities, we destroy habitat, and perhaps where cities are destroyed, new habitat is created. What opportunities are there to work with these massive energies outside of us? I consider this practice is already at work with the stock market. People arrive to the market and "earn" money by putting money in the right place at the right time. Can we ride climate change in this same way?

The ending of some diversity comes empty space for new diversity to fill. A blank canvas invites creative expression. I carefully tend this vision of walking into change within me. I gently hold the parts of me who refuse to grieve because they refuse to let go of what was, who are holding so tightly to a return to what was, so I can walk lightly into what can be, which begins with myself.

/// "What's that?" /// "...a circle." ///
A latest sketch on top of 15 years of journals

 

This sketch above most completely expresses my understanding of how I form the narrative of who I am and who I think I should be. Certainly the language from the outside has helped me begin to navigate who i am in relation to others, a keystone in any relationship, but it is up to me to step into and actually explore the Truth of who I really am. Each day I revisit the scribbles with only the word "circle" in hand, and each day I learn new words like arc, spiral, swoop, slorp, swoosh to explore and express the nuances of me. I understand I am constantly changing and as soon as I master one word, a void appears which none of my vocabulary can completely master.

 

I stepped into my 27th birthday with the intention to find new perspective which would help refine the intentions I have for my life. I offer my gratitude for all who made time to send me a note or a call or a gift, I sincerely dwelt in a nest of diverse offerings.

The fruit of the love I received is expressed below in the form of an intention-writing exercise an acquaintance of mine shared. Each intention is written in the present tense as if I am already doing it, with a strongly emotive adverb. I offer this to everyone as an invitation to take on what feels resonant, leave the rest, and perhaps as a seed to one day play with an intention-writing game, too.

I begin like this:

I am joyfully committed to the knowingness within me which begets the intentions I must set to serve my highest good and greatest growth.

• I am courageously stepping into discomfort to be known by myself and others in my wholeness.
• I am enthusiastically crafting space for my lover each day so she knows she is found both as a projection within me and a complex and perfect sovereign being outside of me.
• Each day I generously release my pride and ambition as an offering for the sake of knowing grace and inspiration.
• I am nimbly aware of and respond to energies which open and close within me. Gentleness and slowness for the opening, and patience for the closing. I know when to be with energy like anxiety, restlessness. frustration, despair, fear, excitement, activation, joyfulness, and whimsy and when to let go.
• I am thoughtfully and generously creating the world I live in with how I direct my attention and resources.
• Each day I lovingly create time for that which my heart desires. I trust my heart's knowing to guide me to a more full life.
  
• I lovingly and intentionally revisit the past for perspective and awareness of my trajectory. I am lovingly releasing my attachments with gratitude and trust they and their memory will return at the right time. 
• I whimsically adjust the knobs of myself (visions, attention, feelings about feelings, thoughts about thoughts) in pursuit of playing with the song of each changing moment.
• I thoughtfully permit what I judge to be "messes" as opportunities for self-study and opportunities to move or work with stuck energy.
• I am skillfully navigating all the transitions of the departures and arrivals of my life. I understand grief as a mirror image of love and disappointment as a reflection of agreements, assumptions, and desires of each individual person.
• I am whimsically concocting treasure hunts each day in pursuit of manifesting my heart's desires, which I trust to make for a fulfilling life.
• I am eagerly speaking to and unpacking words of resonance in pursuit of inspiration.
• Each day I generously offer my energy (attention, time, resources) to space-building in reverence to the void, which I perceive to be a vast, ineffable, and unconditional Love.
• Each day, with my words and the spaces I hold with my attention, I joyfully weave trust into my social network, that it may ripple out into the greater resiliency of my community as well as my own personal well-being.
• I am passionately in pursuit of knowing the wholeness of others as well as revealing the wholeness of me through vulnerably expressing direct requests, boundaries, and brave curiosity.
• I am aware of and lovingly bringing abundant nourishment to the parts of me which are holding on to incomplete ideas which helped me navigate connection in the past and can now be filled with the knowledge of the present awareness.
• I am carefully tuned into the wisdom of my body which asks for nourishment and I am serving them each day with gladness of heart.
• I am passionately attuning my awareness of circumstance to the vision of my most authentic, diverse, and whole self each day.
• I am joyfully noticing the pathways in which love is given and received within myself and others I am connected to.
• I am diligently aware of the ways I engage in numbing behavior to regulate my difficult feelings.
• I am wholly awake to and am lovingly dismantling the patriarchal and white supremacy culture structures within me through relational activism and listening. This dismantling is meaningful and inherently rewarding work, nourishing me and those I am connected to.
• I am lovingly opening my awareness to the ease of life's inherent beauty. I understand my circumstances are only manifestations of how my attention navigates the conditions I perceive to be my reality and there are larger forces at work than my will, that nothing is certain, and each breath is a gift.
• I am lovingly bringing light to all the shadowy corners which I am called to walk down in each unique season of life.

And I end this way:

 

I am joyfully committed to the need to understand and receive the knowingness within me which begets the intentions I must set to serve my highest good and greatest growth.

 

Till next time,

Riley

 

Cleaner air is coming, reach out, friends, reach out