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These are simply my thoughts as I meander around my mind
Funny how life can actually roll sometimes...
I mean I look back at this year for me and say "Whoo, talk about roller coaster ride"!
Since January, I written about new beginnings, making changes, walking on air and having a feeling about moving on to something else. But I now ask myself knowing then what I know now would I have proceeded?
Yes.
Not that I could have stopped much of anything since much that happened was things out of my control. I would have simply been stuck in a place that would have aggravated things, paralyzing me more. The difference for me is to really get that there are things that I absolutely have no control over, but I surely can manage when tossed at me. There have been lots of revelatory dips in seeing people that I had been blinded to for who they were and what they could or would do.
This is not to say these are bad, wicked or evil people but very flawed human beings and not knowing what they may have been going through themselves (or even if they were not) does not condone their actions, but at least for me gives me a certain measure of peace knowing that I could give myself permission to invite them out of my figurative house.
I am being really quiet in my new studio in the woods quieting myself, looking around to reconfigure how I want my new world managed and you know what? I am not sure yet what that will be but I do not have to rush headlong into anything.
There has been a wealth of emotions that are coming to the surface the last few days because I've been still and I am not trying to suppress any of the feelings nor do I have to act on anything. And all the feelings are not necessarily negative, victim minded, or to be pitied or needing to cast myself in a role of helpless or hopeless.
I don't see myself as any of those things. If I had to pick something it would be more of feeling overwhelmed (and that is dissipating) as I have worked on sorting out all the things that have been thrown at me with nary a moment in between to just breathe.
But now I have in this studio in the woods have gotten a few moments to inhale & exhale, to be still (and can you believe this) a moment to be alone. This is a bit disconcerting as one of my biggest gripes this time last year and the earlier part of 2008 of how cut off & disconnected and isolated I had been in NC.
But this is different because this time I get to chose rather then something was being imposed.
There is a certain level of refreshment coming from anonymity though even saying that gives me a certain bemusement as I really standout here. I mean in a small city of 135,000 where African Americans make up maybe 3,000, I am going to stand out without any attempts on my part. In the 3 weeks I've been here I have seen maybe 20 black people on the street. Plus I am a tall, blond older on a cane lagniappe black woman too so I am going to be.
Okay I've wandered off I hadn't wanted to write much lately in my essays as I felt frozen like a deer in the headlights same thing with any other creative ventures outside of photographing what I've been seeing the last few months. But looking back at the pictures has allowed me to have a visual of what I have seen and it has not been all bad. That despite all of the challenges, I have seen beauty and awesome moments that kept me upright and breathing.
Perhaps some of the support and the encouragement takes a form we would least expect. I've criss cross the country twice over the last 5 months and that in itself is a feat that some people never got to do.
And despite the fact that it feels like my body plus everything else has completely fallen apart over this year, it has now put me in a position to take care of what was not done. And though I wanted to go home to New Orleans that perhaps I needed to be here instead for awhile, a minute, a moment, of a stage...
I read this from someone who name now escapes me but it was the questions asked that caught my attention when someone is redirecting things.
Ask yourself the questions:
“What did the old me used to do”?
Then ask:
“What will the new me do differently”?
And there lies the challenge.
I think we all know how we’ve done things and if we keep going there without a more positive result then we need to recognize on a cellular level that it ain’t working! So now, what can be done differently? And make no mistake though I know you are brilliant enough to have figured it out, that doing it differently will be met with resistance whether external or internal. Lots of things will crop up in either new shapes or a regurgitated old one to slow you down or to distract you, but as I found out this year, that happening told me I was on my way otherwise there would have not been any agitation as the status quo would remain the same with another year passing.
I've got a lot to do over the next year as I slim down everything around me and then getting used to the new slimmer me (I am not necessarily talking about weight here) to boot. It still feels foreign and new, because it is foreign and new.
Bemoaning the fact this year how I felt like I had lost me while in NC, but then this morning I got to thinking maybe that "me" wasn't me all that time. Or was no longer me and I had to shed it. Or become more of me & enhanced.
I like the latter rather then the former.
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