Thursday, June 07, 2007

Sitting in the French Broad

I'm hungover. From my conference, our North Carolina trip, and our decision to become nomads for a few months (Bruce shares more details on this on his blog). The last few weeks have been an amazingly beautiful, rich and transformational time. First I got to immerse myself for five spectacular days in an international expressive arts conference where I could attend workshops lead by the international who's who list of the field. The days were filled with experiences that moved my body, mind and soul. From gentle early morning Qi Gong practice out on the hillside where the morning dew kissed my toes ever so softly to sessions where our bodies trembled and filled with joy and gratitude from vibrational sound therapy or danced and chanted to the haunting beat of a djembe drum the days seemed more like weeks. It was a diving in, head first, to parts of myself that had been sitting and patiently waiting for my attention. I don't have much visual art to show for the days or the process because I was most drawn to attend all the movement and sound/toning workshops I could find. I did do a Touch Drawing workshop with Deborah Koffman Chapin, the creator of Touch Drawing, and I might post some of those later. For now, I'll share with you a brief bit of writing I did while sitting in the French Broad river in North Carolina.

"The river flows through me, over me, past me, under me.
I flow with it to far off places.
Sun on my face I dream of being nowhere but here.
The stream caresses my soul and the bottoms of my feet. The breeze and the current equally strong, kissing my body, tickling my whiskers.
I melt into the rock, the water my bloodstream.
Its constant whispers quiet my chatter, take me from a place within to the place where I end and the river begins. Warm. Soft. So quiet I can't hear a thing."

I think I want to stay in that place for a while and have my whiskers tickled by far off breezes. It became clear to me on this trip that I really don't want to settle down anwhere just now. Of course, eventually we will - maybe even sooner than I think. But for right now, we seem to be pulled by the nomad spirit in us. And I couldn't be more excited.

4 comments:

kenju said...

That sounds like a good conference. Do they have a web-site?

Anonymous said...

Sounds like you are where you need to be at this moment in time...good for you!!!

kunzang said...

Diving into the unknown, drifting with the current, floating in the moment. Sounds like a refreshing, exhilarating promise....good luck!! (but don't drift out of cyberspace altogether!)

MsT said...

Wow, how great is that! Glad you like the prayer flags, they make me very happy to look at :)