my faded self

Image from the multidisciplinary dance collaboration I'm working on. There are other things happening at the same time, but this is a part of it. Next week I'll take photos and show more.

Five days ago I went to the city feeling like a wolf, taking up space, moving freely. Leaving this morning, I felt withdrawn, like my self had holed up deep inside somewhere.

There's so many people and so much noise in the city that I find it difficult to have a long thought, or a calm thought, or an empty mind. So all the deeper stuff that makes me "me" is faded away a bit. I wonder if that holds true for other people in the city.

Maybe individuality needs silence and time and space and a bit of a void to create itself in. Maybe it's just me.

...

A highlight of the week was sitting on the cliffs that overlook Wreck Beach - Vancouver's nude beach, and a bit of an oasis from the city. (You used to have to jump a fence to get to the cliffs - now you have to jump two, and the paths are overgrown.)

When I was going to University at UBC, this is where I'd go to find some quiet time under the trees, and feel calm and grounded. That was when I started to re-learn how important solitary time in the outdoors was to me. I knew it when I was a child, but I forgot it during my late teens.

It was a beautiful sunny evening, with the familiar light wind from the southwest that is so common to Vancouver on summer evenings. Later, when the sun dropped below the horizon, the air quickly cooled and the breeze picked up and blew hard and steady.

Fifteen minutes later, the temperatures had equalized again, the spring air was perfectly calm, and I sat under the totem poles behind the Museum of Antropology.

Powerful old spirits carved from cedar, staring out into the stillness and the warm night.