tabula rasa

perfection is not achieved when there is nothing more to add,

but when there is nothing left to take away.

antoine de saint-exupery

blank slate.



i've found this fear surfacing in me as i return to class for the first time since my breakthrough/breakout. i think the restlessness has been stirring in me each time i sit across from a student to do homework this week knowing that they witnessed such a part of me. but now it's unavoidable knowing in just seven short hours i will be sitting across from the whole lot of them.

and i don't know how to be.

running greenlake with eden yesterday i had a sudden realization. not sure if it's true or false, but it hit me like truth:

i need to bring to each class the commitment to my truth and my impulses that i displayed in the walking exercise on tuesday. and that's a scary thing. and if i do it, i will grow so fast. and if i do it, i will scare the shit out of many of the students.

which brings me to the antoine de saint-exupery quote and my belief that i am all here. everything i need is here inside me and i just have so much static on the line clouding my instincts and my confidence and my emotional responses. i shouldn't feel this thing or i can't let that out. or i don't deserve to demand their complete presence or i don't deserve to get upset when they don't give it.

when it was just me walking back and forth it was easier, though still a definite journey to that place of release. but it was easier because i didn't have find words and i didn't feel like i relied on another person {even though the audience of the classmates certainly fed me a lot} and there was a freedom in the abstraction of what i did and how i did it.

and yet, it's made so many things possible. i have found myself really vulnerable in the work this week. particularly with one student who i find a lot of safety in their friendship. and this vulnerability has taken me to the acute awareness of the difference between being connected and focused in the space with another person and then being so incredibly attuned to another person you feel like you're reading their mind and they are reading yours. and it's not that you are actually reading their mind, it's just that the awareness has widened and you are taking them in so fully that you mind sees all the little shifts in posture and presence. we can see the person shifting inside their head and we can read all the signs they unconsciously place on their body. and it's so intimately connected it's beyond two people sitting across from each other.

and it's thrilling.

and when it doesn't happen, or i can see someone avoiding me, i get frustrated to the point of anger. but i haven't been able to let that out and i haven't trusted myself when i've seen it happening. but as i get better and better at seeing the distinct difference and the distinct shifts and i just need to be truthful. truthful. truthful.

let. it. out. whatever it may be at the moment.

i officially have given myself permission.



currently listening to: tabula rasa: silentium - arvo pärt {if i could pick another life to live, i would be a dancer who would choreograph a dance to tabula rasa: ludus & tabula rasa: silentium}