DoaD #28 - Petals and Shadows
Oh, my, that was so beautiful. A man just squatted down, ripped off a flower from the floor, handed it to the girl he was walking with, and then she put it back in his pocket. So beautiful.
Wow. Yeah, patience.
Wow. What a day. I put so much mentally on this day. I don't know why. The first Foucan festival was three hours of complete organized chaos. Yeah, just wow.
Now, I’m sat here in between Richmond, on my cycle home, taking it all in. I don't know. This is so nice. This is such a blessing that I get to cycle through here. Wow, doing that stuff fills me with so much empty space and trust in this confusing process. It makes sense. I see the smiles on those kids and their parents, and I know that I've in some way affected the direction of someone's path through Play and movement, allowing them the space to express themselves. Doing it through games and not being so serious, for my earthy nature I need that so much because I can be a little weirdo and silly but a lot of the time I am quite serious. It comes in its helpful moments. It's very practical! But we have a bit too much of that and sometimes it's a bit too much for myself and the people around me. I never really recognized that until recently. So doing this playful stuff allows me to let loose, even though I'm a lot more loosey-goosey than most people, within myself it allows me to let go and trust this higher purpose. It has a greater plan at play that I can see being orchestrated. I can't quite hear the end of the song, but there's a rhythm, and I'm going with it.
No story would be good unless it had its fucking hardship that'd be boring. No one wants to watch a film if it’s only lalala lalala lalala lalala sunshine sunshine all good. We crave that tragedy, that fucking bullshit the main characters have to go through, to come out the other side. That's what makes this whole thing, I guess, human and makes sense. It's the understanding that to have this beautiful moment right here. I had to go through some darkness. Without the light how can you have these beautiful shadows coming off the trees? Without the dark how can you know how beautiful it is to see the light again after so long in darkness? Being asleep for a lot of my life, I didn't know how much of the darkness I had let myself fall into.
I’m allowing myself to get to know people who have been in my proximity, but I haven't allowed myself to try and understand and have been judgmental. Recently allowing myself to open up my joy of sharing things that have helped me find more balance in my life with people I maybe would have just closed off from before has opened up a whole new door of understanding and love for all. Seeing that there's so much more beneath the surface than people might want to admit. It's so easy to look at my shit or look at other people's shit and be like, Fuck, I had it bad. Oh, they had it bad. But this person, nah they're just a cunt. There's so much more to the stuff people do than I even realize. The second I judge someone, I lose that love for myself. Second I allow myself to see that person as only being that way because “that's just who they are”, and not seeing it as a root to everything.
All these trees here have their roots, and they've grown that way because of the earth that the roots were in. If that seedlings started in some fucking poison soil. What do you think it's gonna grow into?
It’s been a beautiful…
Oh yeah I did a poetry reading, completely forgot about that. That was a weird night feeling, doing that without my…the love of my life, it's hard. It felt very alone. I guess because I haven't done anything like that without her, it was, it felt weird. It didn't feel like it felt before because I've always had her there to check that I’m being the best writer, poet and performer I can be. Now it's up to me to know that I'm doing the right thing and I'm on the path of growing and trying to better myself and my craft and not being ignorant. Experimented with drumming during the performance and that made me feel very vulnerable [which is good]. I like making those environments very intimate, close and homely. To me, performance has never felt like it had to be. I am here! You must worship me! I'm on a stage! I am better than you! Listen to me! For me, it’s simply another form of conversation, in a different way. It's got to have some switch of context so that you can understand what's going on. But it can't feel so separated from just human conversation. But it didn't. It felt great. It worked perfectly. I'm pushing myself to be more spontaneous and adaptable, it's already within my nature but if I don't grow that [spontaneity] I can't grow. I've really got to a point where, if anything happens, I can adapt within an instant. I don't have to even think about it. I can just do.
I'm so proud of myself for becoming the person I am and giving myself the chance to grow and doing it for me so that I can be a better person for the wider world and community around me.
I'm doing this for other people, but first of all, I'm doing it for me. This is for me to be more courageous within myself, more confident within myself. Create a deeper chasm within myself that I can explore. So I've got more to share with people in small interactions I have. Those are the moments that matter to me now. I think that’s what counts, is those very subtle butterfly-wing flutters that come from even the shortest of conversations that could change a whole path.
It's never a conscious “I'm talking to this person because I want to make their life better, or me”, by me becoming more of myself, that's what I have to offer. Simple conversation. The more of ourselves, I think we can be, the more love we can have for the person we're talking to, and love for ourselves and willingness to share the deeper parts of ourselves because we're not trying to hide who we are. Until there are less and less fire and air surface-level conversations, and we're actually nourishing deeper parts of ourselves and the people around us.
I mean, isn’t that how shit grows. You water a little plant. You get your hands in, you get dirty, you get moving the soil, about clean the roots of any shit that's tried to grab onto there, put it back in some nice new soil water it again and then let the wind and the sun do its work.
So simple, when you break it down into the elements, I can’t even remember when I started learning about this, not long ago, but it's always been inherent in my life. It's so simple. No need to make it complicated. I have… a… tendency… to do that, but from the Daoist words I've read through my own experience and practice,
“This is the way for me”
Simple,
simplify,
patience,
137
That's the code.
.
…
…….
