Opening the Channel
I made a little zine! I haven’t made one in years. Not since college, I think. I used a piece of construction paper from my kids art drawer and colored pencils. It was so fun!
The prompts for each page came from Kening as part of labyrinth library season 3, which has been so nourishing and inspiring. Within labyrinth we Kening guides our group through two week creative “treks” where we embark on separate journeys, together.
Before we began this trek I had wanted to focus on making progress with Poetry & Prompts. I thought I’d center that as the project, set some goals, and hopefully come to a culminating completion, ready to be shared with the world. But, I realized pretty quickly that if I were to set out on a linear path toward a specific goal driven outcome, I’d be setting myself up for a lot of unnecessary discomfort and a likely “failure”, because I am someone who’s creativity is nurtured through intuitive flow and spaciousness, not forced linear consistency. So I decided to simply, and dare I say profoundly, focus my attention on “Opening the Channel.”
We are about half way through the two week creative trek. I’ve been writing short reflections at the end of each day and I thought I’d share some of them from this in between point.
Day 2 • While working on my trek zine today I felt so much creative excitement and inspiration flowing through as the form for my trek took shape. Noticing how much I'm loving creating the shape of this creative experiment. How much joy I'm feeling simply in the forming of the structure and the focusing of the intention. It feels so good! To allow even the creation of the container to feel like a creative practice is such magic. It's like eating cake out of a bowl made of chocolate. Every bit gets to be enjoyed! I'm wondering: how could I infuse this kind of sweetness into other aspects of my creative practice, business, life, days, etc? What else can I construct out of delicious, luxurious, rich chocolate? I think this circles back to my trek intention, to open the channel. It's really hard for me to feel any kind of enjoyment when I’m leaking so much energy through over efforting, or when I lose sight of the magic, and fall out of touch with the sacred.
Day 3 • Feeling feelings... a swirl of excitement fizz, shivery worry shadows, what if prickles... and also what if not prickles. Mostly just noticing and still putting the pencil to paper. So far my time has been solely devoted to forming the container for my creative trek via creating my zine for the trek, which I finished today. This feels like a mini completion and I'm noticing an inkling of discomfort now that my attention will turn to actually practicing the practices I've outlined... questions creep in like, will I even do any of this? will i enjoy it? will this fall between the cracks of my desk/mind to collect dust like so many other creative experiments...? will this be logged as another "failure"? and yet, and yet, when I read my intention, lovingly inscribed in my magical little zine, I can see that the very essence of the container I've constructed is such that the fear of failure has been accounted for and has no where to breed or spread...
Day 4 • A gushing waterfall in the thawing of spring. I feel saturated with it all (the inspiration, the desire to do everything at once, the fear that the river will dry up when the warm weather shifts, the excitement of possibility, the utter elation and joy at having this feeling return after the cocoon phase of the cycle). Today I went from shaping the container, to trying on the practice. I went for a walk on the river front and did ten minutes of writing for guidance.
Day 5 • well, the channel definitely feels open. ideas are dropping in and i can't write them down fast enough. i want to do everything, more than one person can do in a day, and so the practice has been to just do something without really thinking too much about it, which is actually really hard 🫠
channel open, energy flowing, i let it carry me to the river again this morning. i walked and felt the depth of gratitude for the ability to follow the flow. to have found my way to this version of living. the goodness of it hurts. and i let it hurt and i let the grief, sister of gratitude and joy, seep from the corners of my eyes and i let myself feel the warmth of the sun through the cloudy day. a poem arrive as i stood watching the river. later in the evening while watching toy story with my kids i sketched a little pink moth in my sketchbook. small things that felt like sweet elixir tinctures of creative healing magic.
Day 6 • The day was full with kids soccer games and driving them around town. So much peopling made me tired and I didn’t have much of anything to give to my creative practice. Nothing was made/created/produced today. Except maybe a little space. Acknowledging the space as part of the creation and worthy of the same small moment of reflection that the other more fruitful days received. Curious if this small thread of acknowledgment will make it easier to re-engage tomorrow…
