Introducing quickening flow
A birthday for this new creative container following my own birthday
I've been holding the seeds of this newsletter for longer than I care to admit.
Ok, it's been years. The closest I got to publishing it (before now, of course) was this January. Just before the new year, I was struck by the clear calling to do two things—first, host a full moon creative salon to incubate artist community in Denver (which I promptly did, it was magical), and second, launch this newsletter that I'd been dreaming up for so long.
As for the newsletter, my fear stalled most progress. Stories spun in my mind, whispering that my voice wasn't strong enough, my vision not clear enough, all of them just different flavors of self-censoring and swirling feelings of not-good-enough-ness. All of them ways to protect my self from being vulnerable and to hold back the new unknown paths wanting to emerge.
So instead of beginning this after the start of the calendar year, I'm beginning after the start of my solar year, just after my 34th birthday, fresh from a week of stargazing and river running and soaking up the red rock canyon walls of the San Juan river in southeastern Utah.
Originally I wanted to name this project enrapture and write about the intersections of creativity, sexuality, and spirituality. I wanted to weave stories of pleasure and joy and the vibrant quality of embodied aliveness, the pursuit of turning toward the intuitive juiciness.
But then, the last year happened (really, the last couple of years happened). My life clouded over with loss and grief and endings. All of them self-selected, but no less difficult. The end of my marriage, the end of my relationship with my best friend and creative partner, the end of my tenure leading the dance company I'd cofounded, the end of splitting time in Telluride, the end of my role as leader in my work’s union, the end of so many parts of my life.
And in the darkness and unknown of so much shedding, my connection to those ideas—delight, creativity, the erotic impulse—grew intermittent and abstract. Sometimes I could find it, but often I felt bereft of access to much of what made life feel magical.
Now it's spring in the mountains and I'm planning and planting gardens. Sneaking bulbs and flowering perennials into the ground every weekend as the weather warms. Browsing the labels of heirloom tomato starts in the nursery, searching for varieties that are both flavorful and quick-growing enough to avoid the cool frosts that set in early here on the front range of the Rockies.
I'm learning that mixed among the decay and compost are the seeds and shoots of the new.
I'm learning patience. This weekend I shrieked with surprised joy over hostas, which I'd planted last year, that had suddenly emerged after a week of rain. They were in a patch of my lover's garden that I was certain hadn't survived the scorch of last summer's sun.
This year has taught me that aliveness is sometimes as much about death and grief and release as it is about the joys of new growth. And in this newsletter I want to explore and express the totality of aliveness, of embodiment, of a whole creative life. And that totality includes both death and rebirth, sorrow and joy.
I thought this newsletter wanted to be an answer to the question: What are joy and pleasure, and how do we cultivate them? And likely, it will be. But perhaps what this newsletter also wants to ask is: how can we be with all of it? How can we flow with the experience of life, collaborating with our selves, our bodies, our communities, our world and the sacred. Flowing with all of what wants to be born.
I've spent so long eddying around the perfect name and direction and description and container for this newsletter. (And and and and, a word that keeps me from hitting send.) But at some point, I have to get on with planting the seeds and hope for the best. I need to let it unfold and evolve, on its own, as it wants.
I promise it'll be a surprising, rich, creative ride. An art project. A space of growth and connection. An experiment—one that I hope nurtures our collective joy.
A poem (prayer) for publishing the first newsletter
May it be okay to be a work in progress. May it be okay to make mistakes. May it be okay to find the path as you go. May it be okay to change course. May it be okay to share the mess. May it be okay. May it be.
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