"re-"

I’ve always been obsessed with time - how it moves, changes. Having enough. Not having enough. Time feels so real. Time is not real. Time folds over itself like a layer within and over space. Incarnation. Re-incarnation. Seasons. Tides. Cycles. Circles. (Cue to me crying and watching The Fountain for pretty much the whole decade of my twenties). Every dance I make is trying to touch this space that we can experience as finite and forever.

As I spend more time in the garden, contemplating growth and regeneration (an absolutely necessary transition the human race needs to make in order to survive as a species) - I’ve been  thinking about  how so much of our disordered thinking comes from this linear perception of time. We’ve been taught to be view it as: 

Beginning → Middle → End. 

Think → Do → Done.

And, I believe so many of our dis-eases come from this disconnection from the way the Earth teaches us how to be and what is true. This has been coming up in my heart a lot lately, especially when I got my cycle during that Taurus New Moon. I got so knocked out of life for a few days, in my own underworld; but then I re-emerged (like I always do) with a whole new energy, sensation, hormones at the end, again, after the end.. And it happens over and over again, same and different.

When I fell in love.. really really fell into reciprocal, I-believe-in-multiple-lifetimes kind of love, it  was such an embodied experience of “before, before, now, then, next, now, will be, already, again, soon, now, yesterday, forever” all happening at the same time. I also love my astrology practice because it is yet another tool, another map for viewing life, the life, as something that goes around. Every body practice I engage with teaches the same - just because you did it  yesterday doesn’t mean you don’t do it again. And this does not have to be stuck or cursed, this can just be process. 

Really, the truth of circles is all around us, and when we stop engaging with circular systems, when we only think to the “end” (i.e. when we feel done with something), we end up with islands of plastic trash, epidemics of unprecedented chronic illness, depleted soil, disconnected from land and ancestry. When we stop engaging with circular systems/thinking, we make choices that serve convenience, this moment, which is no time, instead of serving all time.

And I bring it up now  because I think there is profound hope in it - to think that we could re-birth, re-new, re-generate. And I think it’s important.  There is undoing in it. I bring it up because it embodies trust. Because if we, as humans, can begin to engage with life differently and start  putting  “re-” at the beginning of our words and action, the world may also “re” herself, thinking as she already does. 

There is an equanimity demonstrated in the circle that is not seen in the line -- where the death process is just as important as the birth and the life processes. There is no superior position in a circle. One is not more favored than the other. They are all equidistant to the center. It’s not something we are trying to get to the end of; it’s something we are trying to connect to the middle of. In a circle, intersection is more important than achieving distance or accomplishing an end. All the reminders of nature and our bodies and planets and oceans and seasons that teach us to think about time differently--- they all go around, away, back again, in, out.

Get interested regenerative agriculture. Your life, and human life on Earth depends on it. (  https://kisstheground.com/  , https://farmersfootprint.us/ LIterally just go to YouTube and type in “regenerative agriculture” and have a good cry. )

What other things need can we imagine into regeneration? Education, economies, relationships?

“re-generate” / to re-create, reconstitute, or make over, especially in a better form or condition.

Appreciate that ending where you began can be a good thing. Go for walks. 

You can feel and be many different things at once. This is not a shortcoming. Embrace paradox.

Something are at their end while others are at their beginning. Simultaneously. All the time. How can we train ourselves to look for life?

Think past the ends of things instead of stopping at the end. What life does it/could it necessitate? And if it makes life impossible or cripples life or breaks the possibility of re-birth, why are we generating it? This applies to ideas as well.

Spend time with plants, stones, trees -- beings who embody seasonal wisdom, experience and resilience. Things change. They take the time they take. 

Anything can become something else. Alchemy.

Energy is neither created nor destroyed. First Law of Thermodynamics.

“re-” /a prefix, occurring originally in loanwords from Latin, used with the meaning “again” or “again and again” to indicate repetition, or with the meaning “back” or “backward” to indicate withdrawal or backward motion:

Going down and going up are the same. They need each other. Listen to trees.

Make things that can be made again, even without you.

Trash is not an end. Trash is a problem. 

You don’t always have to overflow to change the world. Volcanoes.

If you miss them, sing to them. Sound travels as a wave. Whales sing knowing that someone who is 3,000km away hears them. What you miss is not that far away.

it can take forever for things to happen suddenly. Big bangs. Spontaneous combustions.

Energy becomes matter. Pay attention. Attend.

Storms are happening and not happening -- everywhere.