The fertile void
The day before the winter solstice, I ended the somatic therapy I'd been doing weekly for the past two years. It was time, a knowing that had grown in me over the fall. As I walked out of my last session, I felt free, floating, suspended in a leap through midair. I felt terrified, too, releasing a support I've relied on throughout this era of change.
I've tried to hold myself lightly since getting back from Europe, through and after all the travels of October and November and into the end of the year. I'd hoped that doing so would bring me new energy and spark in 2024.
Last year I crossed into the new year with my parents in Santa Fe, and as I walked the snow dusted desert hills, I received revelation after revelation—felt the call to start this newsletter, had the idea to host a recurring “full moon creative salon”.
I'd hoped this new year's threshold would bring a similar stroke of inspiration. That I'd be blessed with a sense of purpose, direction, renewed marching orders.
So I waited for some insight to come, over the holidays that I hosted in my condo, fresh tree filling the room with the breath of pine. I waited as lover came back home from two weeks in Texas. I waited as we went dancing with friends on New Years Eve eve and curled up on the couch with French 75s to (forget to) kiss as the clock struck twelve.
I waited to feel new.
Instead, nothing.
I decided to lay on the couch and keep waiting.
And then at some point this month, as I fell sick and took to bed to watch movies and recover, I realized: it's not coming.
I told myself: a part of you wants the rush of the novel, to be liberated from your own heavy self. But, that's not where you are now, is it?
And I realized that where I am is the fertile void.
And that perhaps I will remain here awhile, at least through the rest of winter. I thought: maybe come the equinox, I will be renewed. But for now, I must lay down and dream, rest and be still, and tend to my own bones and soil so that come spring I may birth new sprouts of my Self.
One way I am watering this empty ground is by joining a monthly creative practice group. And when I walked into this group last Friday, I nearly laughed at the synchronicity—the topic of our first month together was Not Knowing.
Not knowing is most intimate. The group's facilitator offered up this Zen koan as a point of departure for our exploration together, inviting us into embodied discovery of its meaning.
We used contact improv to explore the simultaneous push and pull of surrender and curiosity, letting our bodies follow the path of least resistance while our partner acted upon us, moving our physicality through space. We discussed what we know, what we don't know, what we can't know. We explored how the mind grasps after answers instead of relaxing into mystery. We journaled and shared about what dancing with Not Knowing was awakening in us, reveling in the richness emerging.
I left the workshop full. Full of energy, full of wonder. I left carrying the pearl of wisdom that all of creation comes from the unknown, that the creative act is itself the act of surrendering into the fertile void, following our curiosity, and emerging with some fresh thought, expression, creation.
In the days since the workshop, I have asked myself how I might bring more rest and surrender, to my life and creative practice both. How I might soften around the voice that urges me to Know, to do, the one that wants perfect New Years resolutions, the one that thinks I'm taking too long finishing my painting series, the one uneasy at the edge of the Unknown, peering into the void and already wanting answers before diving in.
One thing I Know (and often forget) is that I am right on time. The Earth is wintering and so am I. It is a time of emptiness, stillness, rest. And while I never know what will emerge when I enter the void, it is always exactly what I need.