Year of Yin: Letting go

January is that moment when the rope swings out over the clear blue water, inviting in it’s efferescent cool stillness, just as gravity grabs hold of the pit of your stomach and squeezes that knot of fear held too tightly, for too long, while your fingernails instinctively dig deep when you have to decide to grip tighter to that rough rope tearing your tender flesh red, or let go into the unknown space between you now and then.

Allowing for simple solutions, accepting things as they are, finding the easiest path, open to be vulnerable in the waiting, surrender to the currant, yielding to hidden strengths in times of struggle.

Imperfectly ingrained into the interconnected web of life. 

I am learning to accept with grace mistakes as they are made without sacrificing my integrity. Securing sense of self against the inevitable onslaught of insidious illusions. 

It takes a lifetime to live a moment.

Farewell Victoria bridge

Sick to my stomach the whole house shook; brutally violated by the aggressively passing sands of time. A new chapter forced into my hands, the reverberation of over ten decades collapsing in my skull. History is being eradicated and we’re all going down with it. Day breaks on new scar tissue in the heart of Saskatoon.

photo by Bryn Giroux

Morning offering

  

May I develop complete acceptance and openness to all situations and emotions, and to all people.

May I experience everything nakedly, completely without mental reservations or blockages.

May I never withdraw from life, or centralize onto myself.

May my heart be laid bare and open to the fire of all that is.

– taken from the Art Monestary Project Lectio Devina originally from Dharma Ocean

2016 resolve

2015: I broke open my heart, and a million tiny pieces fell out. The winds scattered these pieces to Montreal, Calgary, Ottawa, Ness Creek, Vancouver, Victoria, and Banff . It tasted like old books, sweaty bodies, frozen lemonade, and bloody knuckles. My heart returned to me emptied of ambition and full of longing to start fresh.

With a clean slate I seek to invite a year of yin; yielding, receiving, relaxing, and reflecting. May this renew my strength and courage to travel to new heights in the coming months/years.

My 2016 resolutions in no particular order:

~ practice saying no more in order to create space for yes

~ spend more time feeling, making room to acknowledge these feelings, work with them instead of against them, so they can be desolved and let go

~ listen more closely, notice more detailedly, open more deeply

~ fuel my life with millions of tiny acts of radical self love

~ take more time away from the city, in nature, in parks, in forests, and the beach

~ restart my meditation practice, my life drawing practice, my yoga practice, my tea practice, my journal practice, my life when no one is watching 

~ remember how to forgive and be kind, not everything is going to hurt forever 

~ read more biographies, memoirs, and life works of and by women

~ embrace the finality of life in order to fill every drop of it, die when ready or not here I come

~ take time to deepen relationships and forge new collaborations with people who inspire me

~  live boldly, gently, curiously, gloriously, bravely, intentionally

January 2nd edit: New bonus resolution stolen from the incomparable Alexandra Roxo of the beloved Be Here Nowish (make it your resolution to watch it here) 

~ no more arguements or heavy conversations over text, let’s talk it out in person or in beautiful snail mail, I love you too much 

my year in review: Montreal street art, moving home with my brother, Ghost River Theatre intensive, Magnetic North in Ottawa, sculpture at Vancouver Museum, Finn and I rocking Vampire Beat, new headshots/haircut, Dinner Tables first meeting, home tours with Mammilian Diving Reflex and Swallow a Bicycle Theatre in Banff