Thoughts on Triangles
Radical permission to just say hello, relay some updates, and share some thoughts.
Hello at the start of another year, reader. I am not one for the Gregorian calendar, personally, but I do appreciate the reflective and resetting quality it can imbue into the collective.
The essay I’ve been editing to send to you wants to stay in the private room of my practice for just a few more weeks, so instead, I’m just here with some loose thoughts and a few updates. This type of muse-hello requires radical permission on my part—that I can meet the new moon and this platform of communication without a culmination of thoughts, and still press send.
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I’ve been thinking about triangles—a lot. I spent the better part of last year in vocational introspection, focusing entirely on writing and teaching yoga, in search of the steady base that will support these lifelong practices while staying in alignment and keeping kibble in my cats’ bowls. After months and months of searching, one conversation on the beach with my beloved friend turned the cosmic lightbulb on in me. And then it all happened very fast. I just started school for mental health counseling, which will be a long but important process to create the base of my vocational triangle—the foundation where my practices in poetics and somatics will meet. I am abundantly grateful to be a beginner again.
Within this whirl of transition energy, I’ve also been in a three month experience I’ve been calling my Devotion Portal—channeling my writing time toward a particular book (prose!!) on the poetics of Devotion. It’s a * fuckin’ mess * right now, y’all. But it’s pouring from me, and I love this book. This private orientation of Devotion has rearranged my guts in a life-altering way. I’m working to ground in the inspiration that’s swept through me while finding this book, continually reminding myself of my belief that our art-work is love-work, is liberation-work, and amidst the harrowing collective conditions—we still need art. We need whatever grounds us in our strong, present iterations of self so that we can use our extremely specific gifts to help others, to be for what we are for with courage. We all have our part in this, and it looks different for everyone.
The triangle’s sturdy base allows it to strive up. In the architecture of creative practice, we need that base—an awareness of the body, a presence of mind—to reach into the swirling flux that provides us with our inspiration. In the architecture of a yoga pose, we need our feet planted firmly to reach the fingertips strong and high. In the architecture of greater work, we need our own rendition of alignment to reach toward others with a persistence of openness, curiosity, and love.
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However the conditions at the start of this year have found you, what do you need to feel steady right now? How can you grant yourself radical permission to wobble, to greet that wobble as necessary and good? What orients you toward the direction that feels right for your life, and what gives you the courage to turn in that direction again and again?
Wobble when you need to. Find your feet. Keep turning. You’ve got it.
In the Orbit…
Poetry / music show by Cas & Tay ~ 2/5, The Traveling Goat, 7p.
Unpoetry ~ 2/6, the palace (DM curator Eric for address), 8p.
Other People’s Poems ~ 2/7, Open Books, 7p.
Improv Wall Hanging Quilting Class by Patchwork Creative ~ 2/22, studio space off Rainier, 11a-5p.
The Poetry Séance is resting for the winter. We’re waiting on our status for a major grant, we’re conjuring up a new vision for this series, and we’re so excited to see you again when the crocuses begin to bloom. Stay tuned.
‘Til the next moon ~ catch some winter light when you can.
Love this - thank you ❤️