clown 9 – bye bye 2021
cleaning, re-arranging and organizing
One of the messages I remember receiving from Pop Corn when I began to have contact with my clown was “Organize your books. Let’s pull them all off the shelves, dust them, look them all over, love them, and then re-arrange them in a way that suits your life now. What needs to be close to hand?”
Well, actually, the only part I received two years ago was “Organize your books.” It has taken me another two years to discern the full message. Clarity can hit fast or drip in little by little, have you ever noticed?
So finally I have started the task and I am becoming reacquainted with many friends as that’s how I tend to think of authors, don’t you? Writers whose books take you in without you even noticing you’re completely losing yourself in a new world or to new ideas.
One of these people is Edward T. Hall, an anthropologist, back in the day when anthropology was just becoming a thing, and a pioneer in what would become intercultural communications. I opened his autobiography “An Anthropology of Everyday Life” and the first lines I read were:
This book is a record of one of the several stories of my life. There are other stories and I hope that someday they will be written also. I wanted to be sure this one got told because at age seventy-six I find that my life goes faster with every year and I know that one of these days I will reach a velocity sufficient to overcome the pull of the earth and fly off into the unknown.
Wow, I know exactly what he means even though I am not in my 70s. Have you had that feeling too, that as you age, life moves faster? I think it’s because we have more responsibilities and know more people and know how to do more things.
Also since the pandemia, I simply feel that my social muscles have atrophied. I am more easily overstimulated and tired by outings, activities and seeing people. What about you?
new year, new lens for seeing world
This book organizing project I think is a good idea, and I can see how I can use it to help me also re-organize my life. It will complement a re-organization of priorities and clean out worn-out goals and set new ones, which is something I recently discovered I need to do.
Already I have started with my end of year review and reflection and I was feeling pretty smug about how much I have accomplished and simply done during the course of another year living with covid restrictions.
meditation
I have had a meditation-full year. I am proud of that, and honestly I don’t know if it would have been possible without the pandemic. I began meditating eight years ago and for years I struggled to maintain a constant practice, by which I mean never miss two days in a row and try to meditate 5-7 times per week. I sit between 30 minutes and an hour, depending on how much time I have.
For years when I got busy, I would drop my practice, (just when I needed it most) or for some reason or another. And some weeks would go by without a daily practice. But I never dropped it completely. I know first-hand the power of having a daily practice, so I was always picked up the practice again.
In 2019, I did well in terms of consistency and felt good about that. I had had help. I took a very good mindfulness and art course and taught a mindfulness and nature course that year, so as a student and a teacher I really tried to anchor myself in a daily practice. Then came the pandemia, social life restricted and with fewer distractions, social activities and evenings out, I have slept better and meditated more. Hurrah!
I will carry on with my meditation and other morning practices into 2022. They anchor me in my day-to-day and are essential to my self-care and they are hard-won. I have been years developing a consistent practice.
one wild and precious life
I also have reviewed this blog, specifically looking at other end or beginning of year posts and January 2019 made my jaw drop. I wrote:
For some months now I have been wondering … what am I doing with my life, what is important to me and what must I do before I go? I am seeking my true calling, my vocation and passion. I am seeking what makes me really come alive. I sense it is something to do with education and training for social change, but what, where, how and with whom?
And as you may (or not know) nine months later, in September in my first ever clown class at the Escuela de los hijos y las hijas de Augusto I met my clown, Pop Corn and from there it’s been a journey to finding our way to how we collaborate as artists, teachers and beings concerned about humanity and nature.
Noticing and pausing to connect with my body’s response, the dropped jaw, the wonder, I felt the bewilderment and joy that I had been looking for something for a while, and I had found it.
The fact that it felt like new information, made me ask: do I know-know that? Am I acting like a full-time clown? Am I acting like an everyday person fully occupying and using all the clown energy I have available to me?
I think I am holding myself back some how.
Reading 2019 and beyond I realized that I am caught between identities, between everything I’ve been before and bringing and keeping Pop Corn in the center of my life.
This calls for ritual and magic spells, re-arranging my books and some plain of habit-changing and priority-shifting.
I can’t wait to see where it takes me. I will tell you more as soon as I discover more. And meanwhile, I ask you,
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
With your one wild and precious life?
act, believe, change 