Attending residencies at my Graduate School in Vermont is a lesson in saying goodbye, and yet, a reawakening of the welcome I have been saying to myself for quite some time. This blog post is a witness of myself. Right now. At this most powerful moment. And also remembering someone, who just graduated from Goddard, as she witnessed me to me in May of 2011.
I‘m writing you from nags head north Carolina on top of a bright as
grass green thermarest and sleeping bag and I totally hear ya tiff.
This may not be helpful but I feel like that feeling never goes away.
And why should it? “The world don’t owe me flowers even though I
planted seeds.” I didn’t get my second wind until the WEEKEND before
the thesis draft was due at packet 3. And there’s still an absence in
my mind and I have created the least orthodox of masters thesis here.
I’m taking an extension now to do the bike thing, which felt urgent
and necessary on a conscious level I cant explain. Most of my work has
come out of unexplainable feelings. I also don’t think that the path
there has any indication as to the integrity of your work (so long as
you don’t disrespect others in the process.) Months went by where I
felt completely dazed from my work and legitimized in that somehow
because the work was so so so ridiculously personal to me. To my body.
A lot of people would probably say or thnk its stupid to throw
yourself into a headwind like that but I think its not only important;
its the only way in some senses. This is your life and although Karen
Campbell says, not your lifes work, its the here and now. All I can
suggest is SAVOR every second. Even if it sucks. Especially if it
sucks. Do what terrifies you. Don’t be afraid to stray. Be brave
enough to break your own heart. Keep going. Don’t dismiss silence as
counterintuitive to your work. Something is incubating in there. Wait.
But not impatiently or with expectations. Fall off the bike ten times
and still pick yourself up even if you have no idea where to go next.
Keep standing. And if you can’t stand, do what I do and run. Find
ways to learn outside of your brain and trust yourself. You have what
it takes. This feeling is evidence. We do and will all witness it.
grass green thermarest and sleeping bag and I totally hear ya tiff.
This may not be helpful but I feel like that feeling never goes away.
And why should it? “The world don’t owe me flowers even though I
planted seeds.” I didn’t get my second wind until the WEEKEND before
the thesis draft was due at packet 3. And there’s still an absence in
my mind and I have created the least orthodox of masters thesis here.
I’m taking an extension now to do the bike thing, which felt urgent
and necessary on a conscious level I cant explain. Most of my work has
come out of unexplainable feelings. I also don’t think that the path
there has any indication as to the integrity of your work (so long as
you don’t disrespect others in the process.) Months went by where I
felt completely dazed from my work and legitimized in that somehow
because the work was so so so ridiculously personal to me. To my body.
A lot of people would probably say or thnk its stupid to throw
yourself into a headwind like that but I think its not only important;
its the only way in some senses. This is your life and although Karen
Campbell says, not your lifes work, its the here and now. All I can
suggest is SAVOR every second. Even if it sucks. Especially if it
sucks. Do what terrifies you. Don’t be afraid to stray. Be brave
enough to break your own heart. Keep going. Don’t dismiss silence as
counterintuitive to your work. Something is incubating in there. Wait.
But not impatiently or with expectations. Fall off the bike ten times
and still pick yourself up even if you have no idea where to go next.
Keep standing. And if you can’t stand, do what I do and run. Find
ways to learn outside of your brain and trust yourself. You have what
it takes. This feeling is evidence. We do and will all witness it.
There is so much going on in this place that I have to thank God that He pointed me to it. I just wrote an annotation for Freeing the Natural Voice by Kristin Linklater talked about trusting the uncomfortable. My friend told me to trust this place almost a year before I truly to understand the brilliance of her statement.
“If you can learn to accept dizziness when it occurs, you will not be sick” (33).
I feel this is a strong symbol of attempting something that is new and outside
the realm of comfortably strange. “Though you may feel it, you will not fall down;
you may feel you are about to fall but you will find you can embrace the state
as a useful disorientation out of which you can explore a new use of yourself” (33).
I feel this is a strong symbol of attempting something that is new and outside
the realm of comfortably strange. “Though you may feel it, you will not fall down;
you may feel you are about to fall but you will find you can embrace the state
as a useful disorientation out of which you can explore a new use of yourself” (33).
This is my life right now. It’s my faith in God breaking me open like a planted seed to begin to root and bear fruit. It’s my poetry crying out of me like a hawk flying in the air calling freedom. It’s my new job. It’s my TLA practice becoming a living thing. It’s my faith in people being testing beyond where I know to breathe. It’s losing friends to their most wonderful destinies and having to stand on my own. I knew a lady that was writing a book in 1999, that had the working title, This Life is a Test. There is a “great conjunction” taking place (like I am a Gelfling, lol- yeah nerdle yourself and find that reference). I have to trust, “and stop leaning on my knowledge of things” Proverbs 3:5
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© Consuelo Gamboa – all rights reserved
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I’m all over the place, but it’s coming together as it is needing to. I am realizing that I am not breathing right now. I am realizing that I am in deep, and I am not breathing, but I am not drowning. I was born for this, made wonderfully for this, and I had to let go of my own definition of myself and trust the new.
I understand now, that I am brave enough to break my own heart. I am not breaking it to kill it. I am breaking it so that it can finally be alive.