A Narrow Line

I’ve been battling cold and flu the past few weeks, and have only in the past few days emerged from the haze of illness. Not particularly the way I’d choose to spend my November, but that’s life. It’s a novel experience to have extra energy and motivation after the body takes its share and the rest of the energy gets divided up to keep everything else afloat.

This weekend is about preparation. I’ve been rearranging the studio. Any change to a room causes a big flow change for me, but this one is a challenge because it necessitates that the room be able to quickly convert into a tranquil place for a massage. Can I manage to create a functional and cozy office/studio/treatment space/guest bedroom?

I’ve been told that you can only hold as much as your current emptiness; that if you’re grasping at something there’s no room for anything new to come in. The space in which I live has a similar feeling to me. It’s a big part of the environment I live and work in, and in a real way I am limited by what the space will allow, and it’s important to tend the space and make it ready for the future possibilities as well as present needs.

This incessant formation we cannot stop. We can only make the choice to let it go its own way – directed by genetics, gravity, appetites, habits, the accidentals of our surroundings, and so on – or the choice to let our sensory awareness penetrate its processes, to be personally present in the midst of those processes with the full measure of our subjective, internal observations and responses, and to some degree direct the course of that formation. We do not have the option of remaining passively unchanged, and to believe for a moment in this illusion is to invite distortions and dysfunctions.

— Deane Juhan, Job’s Body