Ah, so amazing. My mind was expanded, my booty was shaken, and my heart was doing flips. It was a roller coaster this year. Some things that shook me up were learning that the rate of breast cancer has gone from 1 in 25 some 50 or so years ago to 1 in 7 now and is predicted to be 1 in 3 in the next decade or so. WHAT ARE WE DOING TO OURSELVES AND OUR EARTH THAT THIS IS SO?
Also shaken up by John Todd and his INCREDIBLE working examples of living machines turning municipal sewage into economic opportunities, gardens, and beauty. Omar (can't remember his last name) shared success stories in the South Bronx about sending urban construction waste and other resources back into the use stream (and creating jobs for inner city folks). Jeremy Narby spoke about Western Science finally catching up to the indigenous notion of the sentient nature of non-human life (with wit and wile and charm). Andy Lipkis of Tree People (an L.A. organization) rocked the world of city planners by creating a demonstration site that showed wise ways to use rain rather than diverting it into the ocean and spending millions to get water from resentful rivers all over the west. There was so much more! My very favorite part was dancing on Saturday night and spying a beautiful creature playing a drum and hoping to catch his eye then later spinning in his arms until we were twisted close together and came to a perfect stop. It was a perfect evening and fit beautifully into the expansion that had already occurred.
The decompression part comes with fitting the bigger, more radiant, more inspired, more insistent and committed me into the same life I left on Thursday. I'm tired of using my hands for typing and steering my car. My hands were meant to caress my lover, to hold my babies, to craft beautiful food for myself and my community, to nurture and grow succulent produce and fruits for my people, to weave and knit and make things that have never before existed with fabric and fibers, to hold my body and balance myself and connect to the earth in rituals and yoga. I mourn that missing in my life. I mourn clean air and oceans with dying whales. I mourn children around the planet who suffer and have no childhood. I mourn how ineffective I feel in the face of it all. I mourn that none of my normal fixes seem to be working. I anticipate a powerful movement of energy and flow in my life - my own levy breaking so to speak.