suffering into art…
The bed is so warm. My heart feels so chill. Not a single bone wants to rise and meet this day. Eventually I drag my butt onto pillow, set timer, sit upright. A meditation habit cultivated over decades. I watch my mind auto-pilot to my overly familiar friend: déjà vu despair. Once. Persistently twice. Desperately thrice. And then, out of left field, a clear voice pulses the refrain: “We turn our suffering into art.” Murmurs from the raven queen, my teacher Gabrielle, gone from this mortal plane a dozen years now. Still she talks to me and what she says is so obvious. “We turn our suffering into art.”
I make art on dance floors but I’m barely awake and I prefer to create dance craft in the hug of community. And that will happen soon enough. But I make art right here. Write here. I close my eyes, acknowledge utter exhaustion, reminiscent of that movie Groundhog’s Day. Remember that film? Every 24 hours Bill Murray wakes up to the same reality.
Mercifully this recurrent gloom is on a four year cycle. I felt this anguish in 1968 when Nixon was elected. Reagan in 1980, George H in ‘88. The Gore/George W debacle in 2000. And now this. The Trump relapse of 2016/24. One truth ties all these events together: the current situation ALWAYS feels like, for sure, the worst possible scenario.
So I breathe. I let the weak morning sun glint through the redwood branches, a student of November perfection. I nestle cold feet snug into smoky blue slipper felt wool. Bitter black coffee reminds me of my perfect capability to digest even the most caustic episodes. And the newspaper, already thrown aside, softly insists that time passes, that healing is possible, that the human spirit is resilient. And that light can seem elusive and obvious all at once.
And for today I will take pleasure in making dinner, the sweet balm of friendship, a hearty walk in sunshine. And knowing how blessed I am. We are. Because I believe in us. And that has not changed.
This week I hold space for us to make art Friday, Saturday, Sunday morning & Sunday afternoon. I have been here before. Seemingly stuck in the relentless spokes of an unforgiving wheel. A wheel that incessantly rolls on. Each time these current events blow to mind, I doubt my ability to lift up, find inspiration, go out there and do it again. Yet my feet have yet to fail me. And already I feel spirit stirring. I was made for moments like this. The rest of this Roth quote is moving me:
“Mine is the art of inspiring people to turn themselves inside out,
transform their suffering into art,
their art into awareness and their awareness into action.”
Come be with me this week. I believe in us.
❤️Bella