new terrain

~ extraplorer ~ Leave a comment

stumbling, almost certainly,
dazed and blinded by
new light
the exposure
vast expanse of space
foreboding
joy

steady myself
‘we’re here now’
tend to immediate needs
gentleness, cool water
supplies, details of
beauty

orientate
or fail to
unfamiliarity blurs
vistas to a mist

stay still stay still
come home to yourself
sense on high alert
senses
sensations
sense? sense
stillness reaps,
something moves beneath
the surface
knowing something
knowing nothing

still, longer
tend yourself
attend, wait, let it
grow substance with you
test it
strengthen beyond
an impulse to a
passion

presence of the giants
of fear
ancient guardians
fomenting fury
don’t let go
hold your position
sense
stay still, you are the giant here
let them run
let them hide

a certain
confidence of motion
trust a bedrock
we have been here before
never, often

straighten up, let
your burdens
stabilise your steps
move in

shift, nearer

~ extraplorer ~ Leave a comment

Yes, I went a little bit silent. Despite the sweet encouragements of the wordpress world (‘you’re on a [insert number here] day streak!’ I got absorbed into another direction.

I have been making a rhythm path into my creativity, but also, I notice now, my living.

As my creative practice is continually also an investigation into the nature of existence, the living and the art are closely intertwined. Deep shifts have been going on in my own deep life, old stories have been moving to take up new positions, new stories may or may not be being born, but they will only be able to be born if space is made for them.

Such a work is one of great tenderness and almost perpetual bewilderment, perseverance yes, and perhaps this is why this has been such a focus.

But now the shift has completed, or is completing, and then a new space is opening up. As usual the space comes with a sense of dizzying exposure alongside the delight. What will fill this space, what discoveries will get made, who will arrive to commune with it, how to protect it? It is a space for tiny flutterings and glimmerings yet as with all tender spaces most likely the giants of the land will be waiting to sneak in forbiddingly.

So I go gently and write and try to inhabit peace and trust. And to soak up and reveal in the creativity of a moment of blossoming freedom that comes rarely in life and is a gift of great power and beauty.

goodbye

~ extraplorer ~ Leave a comment

I reached the top of the mountain
all of a sudden, unknowingly,
of us
Suddenly, there was no more climb
beneath me
you were far away
and lost forever
and my diligent everlasting love
and my efforts,
had not saved you.

So I discovered
(or had they; perhaps
I will never know)

But they had saved me
or, it is truer to say
they made me; they made
my bones, they made
my freedom
they made my love
stretch further than
it ever had before,
they made my fire more
ferocious, they made my
passion reach beyond
the bounds of
everyday imagination,

they made the rock,
they made the heights,
they made the view
they made the ‘we’ of friendships
strengthen to a wondrousness
they made a miracle
oh, and you will miss it,
that is sad, but someone
else will live that substance
with me
and, with me, will
revel in its glory.

Thank you.

persevering: happenstance

~ extraplorer ~ Leave a comment

One thing it is so easy to forget in persevering is the existence of happenstance.

Because it takes consistent diligent effort, it is so easy to slip into the mindset that it is only one’s consistent diligent effort that exists.

A kind of siege mentality develops from such a state, making perseverance a kind of ironman-like endurance race, a continual suffering, a loneliness.

Indeed I have been making consistent diligent efforts to develop a studio rhythm such that without a ‘studio outside’ I can still access the studio inside.

But one of the most beautiful aspects of perseverance is that somethings, perhaps often, it meets with the happenstances that no personal efforts can conjure.

Like today, when the very first day of my summer rest, I find that the roadworks outside my home, the metal-on-rock cacophony of which has oppressed every week day for months from 7am in the morning, and from which I have been endlessly escaping to work at the local (also hectic) café, have been completed, dismantled and entirely disappeared. And my home, rather than being uninhabitable, has become a sanctuary.

the studio inside, threshold

~ extraplorer ~ Leave a comment

Persevering with the studio rhythm as a path to the studio inside is starting to pay off I notice.

Something that I did in the real studio rhythm was to record my morning piano playing, and then later to play it to myself. I am not sure what made this idea occur to me, because never before have I listened to my own playing, still with mistakes, hesitations and an overly long pause needed to turn the pages, as a source of joy. It took long years as an adult to recapture any of the delight of playing as a child, so painful was the décalage between my old competence and new ineptitude. And to actually record and listen back to myself was excruciating.

Yet here I am, and there is something in my own music. It’s mysterious to me.

So yesterday for the first time I played my music back to myself in the more ordinary setting of the apartment. I was a bit disconsolate and needed something to soothe the mean fears that had crept in to try to nibble on a new joy. And this playing filled the apartment with fully-human-with-all-her-errors-being. There is something in myself that is trying to tell something, to offer something to myself. What is it? Mystery.

But this, I realise, is part of the perseverance of the studio inside. And the playing of this yesterday made me feel today like I am on a threshold, and that soon I will be able to more fully live my creativity into the summer, even without the much longed for material studio. The elements are nearly all in place.

(I will know I am there when I am able to paint.)