Whizzing + contemplation

The color change is slower than usual. I have been thinking about things, nearly getting big thoughts together and in line, only to lose them again while running around, either via mind distractions or my legs.

I was so happy to see Melissa on Friday and get some hang out/set up time before her CBA class started. She gave me brilliant gifts of paper and tools; it's such a treat to not be asked, "What do you want?" and simply be given exactly what it is I need.

I feel like my admin head and studio head and writing head and relationship head are all not quite cooperating. There is so much to figure out and shift, about the impossibility of constant balance, about the reality of constant change, and about how to live while friendly with death. So, all of those heads have been over the moon while reading these past few days. Terry Tempest Williams is an amazing gift to us. I wanted to share so much from Refuge, but why don't you just re/read it instead? To get bits like this:

The site adjacent to ours has already been excavated. Larry informed us that they had uncovered a burial: an Anasazi woman, approximate date A.D. 1050-1200.

"But what was unusual about this site were the objects we found buried with her--three ollas, corrugated vessels used for carrying water, and several large balls of clay. You could still see the palm prints of the person who had made them." He paused. "She was wearing a turquoise pendant. We believe she was a potter."

"And where is she now?" I asked.

"We reburied her."

I feel like a potter trying to shape my life with the materials at hand. But my creation is internal. My vessel is my body, where I hold a space of healing for those I love. Each day becomes a firing, a further refinement of the potter's process.

I must also learn to hold a space for myself, to not give everything away. It reminds me of the Indian teachings of Samkhya:

If you consciously hold within yourself three quarters of your power and use only one quarter to respond to any communication coming from others, you can stop the automatic, immediate and thoughtless movement outwards, which leaves you with a feeling of emptiness, of having been consumed by life. This stopping of the movement outwards is not self-defense, but rather an effort to have the response come from within, from the deepest part of one's being.

--Terry Tempest Williams, Refuge: An Unnatural History of Family and Place