I love to you, Storyfield
It is 4:30 AM here in Honolulu and I am on Colorado time. I like that I am awake this early. I have time to reflect, now that my feet have touched land and water in Honolulu. I am here-my heart, mind, and spirt expanded. And I have allowed myself a few days to allow things to integrate.
My bags have not been fully unpacked. Partly, because I will be on the road again soon. But I have begun to unfold the moments of the storyfield experience and I have begun to take in the deep conversations that have changed my life immeasurably.
When I first accepted the invitation to go to storyfield, as you recall, from my earlier entries, truly-I had no idea what I was getting into. The notion of invoking a new world through an interdisciplinary gathering of storytellers, artists, and experts sounded alluring enough. Yet, the container or the way the energies and conversations would be shared was experimental. And while I appreciate loose structures, I wondered if we as a collective entity of strangers were going to be able to hold the pain that accompanies birthing new narratives. I had my doubts initially about how diverse this exploration would be. After all, how deep could it go if not all voices were at the table?
While my doubts were confirmed when I arrived ( Less than a 15% of the 85 participants were people of color or came from blended heritage of occupied and colonized peoples), I realized very quickly that if my week was to be fruitful that it was I who had to go deep and work with the resentment and pain that comes with the old stories of invisibility and marginalization and its polar opposite stories of tokenization and fetishism. I had thought in so many ways, that I was over it and the whole enchilada of identity politics and comparative shopping around oppressions. But the familiar wounding resurfaced again through familiar well intended acts that resulted in sometimes, unintended hurtful impacts. In the past, I have learned to be well defended and well masked against these blind spots. This week, I vowed to create and embody a new story. The Buddha at Shambala's stupa gave me one of my first clues, his eyes were blue and wide open.
By the end of my week, my heart had opened wide to those I had, perhaps othered and judged. And allowed myself the opportunity to rest and cry in the arms of those in the past, I might have witheld from or distrusted. My own presencing to my own transformation and others blew my mind.
I truly felt like I underwent an initiation of what I am calling the path of the bridge builder. I became more of who I want to be-the healer who learns to deftly and responsibly move across worlds, travels lightly on broken places, and artfully conducts the alchemy of crossing and holding differences to birth something beautiful and entirely new. In the words of one amazing storyfield participant, "Here is the new meaning of unconditional love--Holy shit."
Holy, indeed.
Earlier this summer, my academic/spiritual ninang of sorts (Filipino for godmother), Leny Strobel, who couldn't be at Storyfield, shared on her blog, Luce Irigaray's words from her text, I Love to You. They were powerful for me, then, as I was in dialogue with her and others at the time about the responsible use of eros (not meant here as exclusively sexual, but more as creative love power or aloha) to change the world.
But now, because of embodying the initial chaos and tears, and staying in the fire, I can say to all the storyfield participants, I love to you. May the below enrich our field and co-evolution:
I love to you. "To" as the space for thought, for thought of you, of me, of us, of what brings us together and distances us, of the distance that enables us to become, of the spacing necessary for coming together, of the transubstantiation of energy, of the oeuvre.
To you: spacing in order to pass from affectivity to the spiritual, from interiority to exteriority. I see you, I hear you, I perceive you, I listen to you, I watch you, I am moved by you, astonished by you, I leave to breathe outside, I reflect with earth, water, stars. I think of you. Think of us, of two, of all men, all women. I begin to love, love to you, I return towards you. I try to speak, to tell to you: a feeling, a will, an intention, for now, for tomorrow, for a long time. I ask of you a place and time for today, for soon, for life, mine, yours, for the life of many.
The to you comes through breath trying to make itself speech. It seeks help from the outside, from thought, from History.
The to you enables expectation. It is not merely a present third term but a space of memory and birth. The to you is where we hold our own, engender, suspend already actualized action or truth. The to you reminder of the mediations necessary for the construction of History.
Belonging to a gender seems to guarantee a dialectic of alterity and inter subjectivity. Such fidelity enables us to withdraw from each other and to meet each other... The other, the irreducible, the one who remains without, forever unknown.
We try to hail ourselves, to give ourselves a sign. The one who touches brings joy. And how much must we love then to remain two? but isn’t this love at last/ love in the ideal? The bridge between the past and the future? The safeguard of life and time. The concentration and diffusion of an energy at work. Already formed but not accomplished, without final completion.
Beauty helps us discover a measure and direct the growth of relations between us. The dimension of love helps us to overcome immediate affect or attraction. It dwells while becoming, attracts while maintaining distance, allows for respect and contemplation. A sort of sun that illuminates in us and between us. Sometimes appearing in a gesture, a smile, a voice, a word, marks of a presence which approaches while distancing.
Without a doubt, we approached, maybe even passed by, one another. Your retreat reveals my existence, as my withdrawal is dedicated to you. May we come to recognize the intention here as a pathway leading indirectly to us.
I love to you, Storyfield.
My bags have not been fully unpacked. Partly, because I will be on the road again soon. But I have begun to unfold the moments of the storyfield experience and I have begun to take in the deep conversations that have changed my life immeasurably.
When I first accepted the invitation to go to storyfield, as you recall, from my earlier entries, truly-I had no idea what I was getting into. The notion of invoking a new world through an interdisciplinary gathering of storytellers, artists, and experts sounded alluring enough. Yet, the container or the way the energies and conversations would be shared was experimental. And while I appreciate loose structures, I wondered if we as a collective entity of strangers were going to be able to hold the pain that accompanies birthing new narratives. I had my doubts initially about how diverse this exploration would be. After all, how deep could it go if not all voices were at the table?
While my doubts were confirmed when I arrived ( Less than a 15% of the 85 participants were people of color or came from blended heritage of occupied and colonized peoples), I realized very quickly that if my week was to be fruitful that it was I who had to go deep and work with the resentment and pain that comes with the old stories of invisibility and marginalization and its polar opposite stories of tokenization and fetishism. I had thought in so many ways, that I was over it and the whole enchilada of identity politics and comparative shopping around oppressions. But the familiar wounding resurfaced again through familiar well intended acts that resulted in sometimes, unintended hurtful impacts. In the past, I have learned to be well defended and well masked against these blind spots. This week, I vowed to create and embody a new story. The Buddha at Shambala's stupa gave me one of my first clues, his eyes were blue and wide open.
By the end of my week, my heart had opened wide to those I had, perhaps othered and judged. And allowed myself the opportunity to rest and cry in the arms of those in the past, I might have witheld from or distrusted. My own presencing to my own transformation and others blew my mind.
I truly felt like I underwent an initiation of what I am calling the path of the bridge builder. I became more of who I want to be-the healer who learns to deftly and responsibly move across worlds, travels lightly on broken places, and artfully conducts the alchemy of crossing and holding differences to birth something beautiful and entirely new. In the words of one amazing storyfield participant, "Here is the new meaning of unconditional love--Holy shit."
Holy, indeed.
Earlier this summer, my academic/spiritual ninang of sorts (Filipino for godmother), Leny Strobel, who couldn't be at Storyfield, shared on her blog, Luce Irigaray's words from her text, I Love to You. They were powerful for me, then, as I was in dialogue with her and others at the time about the responsible use of eros (not meant here as exclusively sexual, but more as creative love power or aloha) to change the world.
But now, because of embodying the initial chaos and tears, and staying in the fire, I can say to all the storyfield participants, I love to you. May the below enrich our field and co-evolution:
I love to you. "To" as the space for thought, for thought of you, of me, of us, of what brings us together and distances us, of the distance that enables us to become, of the spacing necessary for coming together, of the transubstantiation of energy, of the oeuvre.
To you: spacing in order to pass from affectivity to the spiritual, from interiority to exteriority. I see you, I hear you, I perceive you, I listen to you, I watch you, I am moved by you, astonished by you, I leave to breathe outside, I reflect with earth, water, stars. I think of you. Think of us, of two, of all men, all women. I begin to love, love to you, I return towards you. I try to speak, to tell to you: a feeling, a will, an intention, for now, for tomorrow, for a long time. I ask of you a place and time for today, for soon, for life, mine, yours, for the life of many.
The to you comes through breath trying to make itself speech. It seeks help from the outside, from thought, from History.
The to you enables expectation. It is not merely a present third term but a space of memory and birth. The to you is where we hold our own, engender, suspend already actualized action or truth. The to you reminder of the mediations necessary for the construction of History.
Belonging to a gender seems to guarantee a dialectic of alterity and inter subjectivity. Such fidelity enables us to withdraw from each other and to meet each other... The other, the irreducible, the one who remains without, forever unknown.
We try to hail ourselves, to give ourselves a sign. The one who touches brings joy. And how much must we love then to remain two? but isn’t this love at last/ love in the ideal? The bridge between the past and the future? The safeguard of life and time. The concentration and diffusion of an energy at work. Already formed but not accomplished, without final completion.
Beauty helps us discover a measure and direct the growth of relations between us. The dimension of love helps us to overcome immediate affect or attraction. It dwells while becoming, attracts while maintaining distance, allows for respect and contemplation. A sort of sun that illuminates in us and between us. Sometimes appearing in a gesture, a smile, a voice, a word, marks of a presence which approaches while distancing.
Without a doubt, we approached, maybe even passed by, one another. Your retreat reveals my existence, as my withdrawal is dedicated to you. May we come to recognize the intention here as a pathway leading indirectly to us.
I love to you, Storyfield.
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