In the mornings I always hope for the time to sit for a bit and check in with what's going on in my head. When I take the time to look, I usually have any number of little whirling thoughts raising dust storms in my mind. These dust storms can range in intensity from totally obscuring the distant horizon to a slight haze just below the level of consciousness. When I peer into it, I can pretty quickly see that each storm is powered by some fear or another.
Just naming the fear often brings about a little aha moment and the dust begins to settle enough so that I can see the hope that lies behind the fear. There is always a hope behind the fear. For me, there would be no fear if I didn't have a hope or an idea of how I would like things to turn out. I'd rather focus on the hope than the fear, giving myself the chance to direct my energy towards the positive instead of using it to avoid the negative.
I really think that the exercise of writing things down slows my thoughts enough to let me sort through them. I love the way the pen feels sliding across the paper. I think it is really cool how I have learned these symbols so well that I can combine them in such a way that they become an expression of how my mind works. Not just what it thinks, but how it works. There is something about writing with pen or pencil on paper that actually facilitates the awareness of my thoughts.
No matter how fast I learn to type, I don't think using a keyboard will ever give me the same result. Hitting letters on a keyboard will always skip over the part where I am effortlessly using my mind and my body to create and combine the 26 symbols of the alphabet. It is this dance, in which my hand creates a tangible record of my thoughts, that I think of as a tool in discovering some order behind the whirling thoughts. Each little twister can be tamed and untangled with this simple process. Dreams discovered behind fears.
I just had a strange visual of a tiny little room with a window, and a bed and a dresser. I am carefully tucking the fear-turned-hope into bed, closing the curtain and turning out the light. All this to say that this morning I pretty much ordered all my little fears about going back into the studio. I haven't been able to spend a lot of time there over the last week and now I am looking forward to heading back in and getting some work done! There are three pieces that I have almost finished that I am ready to let go in terms of their process bringing them each to a close. And there is some reluctance involved in finishing a sculpture. I will have to think about that one morning...
