AFTER a wonderful morning of OM Chanting and creative visualization with Vera Aichinger (I went so deep, I’m not even conscious of what happened after I started down the path that circled the mountain 🙂 …

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FOLLOWED by painting the core of our essence on a small circular canvas ( I couldn’t paint the mountain and line of red-clad pilgrims, so I went back to the spiral with red dots, which satisfactorily represented the essence of my vision),…

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A 3-PART LECTURE by Kuba Ambrose on conditioning, David Hawkin’s map of consciousness (which brought me right back to my 2 years of working with the late photographyer Courtney Milne), and drawing,…

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AND more fun abstract painting with ink and salt on on wet watercolour paper,…

CAME the drawing part of the day … and the tears.  I was able to keep the judgement and frustration at bay during the stream of consciousness drawing time (20 minutes of quickly sketching our first childhood memories on several sheets of paper), but when I looked at my collection and realized that after a month of intensive drawing lessons, my pictures still looked like they would have 10, 20, 30, and even 40 years ago, I was rather disappointed.  Still, I accepted the fact that this was a quick exercise and let go of those non-productive feelings.

Our next task was to take one of those images and transfer it to our abstract ink background.  I instantly felt the stress when Kuba basically said “Once you get the forms down on paper, then decide where the light is coming from and you can do ink crosshatching for the shadows and this white egg tempura to bring out the highlights.”  His demonstration was great, but as expected, I got stuck at the very first step –  “put the forms down on paper” (yes, I know, I fulfilled my expectations – I get the theory!).  I so wanted to represent a beautiful childhood memory of lying in my crib in my room looking at the sun streaming in and being in the company of angels.  My mother told me that I would often wake up singing and sing until they came to get me (I never minded alone time as I believe I knew that I was never really alone…).  Instead of a baby in a crib, however, I drew a baby being crushed by a very small cage.  I smile at that now – and even did yesterday for a while as I asked for drawing guidance, but by the last hour of class, when my attempts to correct what I had drawn in ink led nowhere but the garbage, the emotions came welling up as I was sharing my frustration with Vera.  Luckily, we’re in a very safe and accepting environment and my being off to the side processing my feelings with her didn’t interfere with the class at all.  The thing is, I totally get the theory.  I know that I need to be patient with myself, love myself, and be gentle with myself through the whole learning process.  I even spent part of my lunchtime being the wise and loving one for one of my classmates who had had a rough morning.  But still, not being able to draw basic forms after a month of intensive drawing lessons left me totally discouraged.  We’re basically finished the drawing part of the curriculum and heading into the underpainting/painting phases – how will I cope?  What if I can’t come back after Christmas because of the visa issue and leave here unable to do what I had set out to do when I came here? Again, I know, I know… those are just the fears and frustrations that came welling up.

It’s not that I want to draw realistic human figures (although that would be great, seeing what my classmates can do) – my goal is to understand the realism to then be able to stylize forms that will emerge and reveal themselves in my more intuitive style.  First, however, I need to be able to translate what I see, either in front of me or in my imagination onto paper.  I receive a lot of visions during my painting process, but have been frustrated for years at not being able to do anything with them.  That’s why I’m here!  After 2.5 days of being back into the bliss of free abstract expression, however, I realized that I’m still sooooo far from being capable of doing that and I struggled with that realization.  (Here’s where I would insert a swear word if that were my style – but since I even thought of that, I guess I’m not far off).

This experience reminded me of when I was about 8 years old and quit ballet class after only 2-3 sessions because they weren’t teaching us to fly.  I got bored and frustrated with just changing foot positions on the floor without even moving the rest of my body to the music.  It’s certainly not that I’m lazy – anyone who knows me will attest to that – but I’m not very patient, it’s true.  I want to be a natural at what I want to do.  The fact that I struggle so much with drawing is making me question again if I’m even meant to draw.  Self-doubt and feelings of “not being good enough” are creeping back up.  If you’ve read my other posts this week, you’ll know we used PEAT to deal with that.  This is a good example of when I could have gone back to that energy psychology technique.  I did do one of my paraliminal CDs this morning and will go to class early to get my PEAT instruction sheet to go through another few rounds on my own.  Indeed! I’ll choose to be grateful for this lesson on self-love and for the opportunity to put PEAT into practice again.  That’s certainly much better than continuing to beat myself up for either not being able to draw a scene from my head or for the feelings and tears that materialized from there.

“He who would learn to fly one day must first learn to stand and walk and run and climb and dance; one cannot fly into flying.”          Friedrich Nietzsche

 

As an aside, here are some photos of the 2 churches I visited with a classmate at lunchtime – the Augustinian Church in Josefplatz across from our school and next to the Hofburg Palace (with a sculpture by Antonio Canova – I’ve loved one of his sculptures, “Psyche Revived by Cupid’s Kiss” since I was a child and returned to see it at The Louvres in Paris as a teen and hunted it down again at a temporary exhibition in either Rome or Florence as an adult in 1993 after discovering it had been removed from The Louvres.  If you recall my general lack of enthusiasm for museums and ignorance of other artists’ work, this is significant.)

And Saint Michael’s Church across the square from the palace. This one included a large bronze relief (too dark to photograph with my iPhone) of the crucifixion scene with the founding couple of the church kneeling in front of the cross. We learned in class that this was a common practice in paintings too at the time.

After a challenging yet valuable month of mostly left brain learning about art history, sacred codes, sacred geometry, drawing the figure, perspective, etc., we’ve switched gears.  Every trimester, there’s a 2-week intensive open to outside students, and this one is all about the right brain mode of creating – after only one day, I’m feeling much more comfortable and in the flow.  I knew I would love this, and I already do.

•  David Heskin & Aloria Weaver – ‘In Quest of the Inner Image’
– Evoking Subject Matter for Painting through Visualization, Active Imagination and Visionary Healing Modalities – to clear the path to creative freedom, inspiration and the emergence of inner visions. With special Workshops by Kuba Ambrose & Vera Aichinger.

Day 1:
After a 15-minute OM chanting circle and introductions, we followed the music into a collaborative drawing exercise that was very freeing.  Once we had done 10 minutes of squiggles on a piece of paper with a large stick of granite, we switched papers to look into the other person’s squiggles in order to pull stuff out and draw stuff in.  Fun!  We each got to work on all 11 drawings while also keeping a check on our inner dialogue.  It was actually quite freeing as there were no expectations for a complete piece and I could go from meditative detailed work on one and then try my hand at unifying another.  I liked the variety. The interesting thing (interesting if you know my history with drawing and still very limited skill in that area) is that I sometimes found myself seeing and drawing human figures (or parts thereof), knowing that someone would refine them or transform them down the road – no stress, no attachment, no expectations. Indeed, I experienced being able to use some of what I’ve learned in the past month, but in a more intuitive fashion – perfect!  I just followed the creative flow of my hand to the music and enjoyed seeing things emerge and evolve.  Near the end of the exercise, however, I did have those little voices of “oh, no, it’s so beautiful, I don’t want to ruin it” and “what could I possibly contribute to this one?”.  I would write those thoughts down, let them go and proceed.  Here’s a sample of what we came up with.

After lunch, we were taught PEAT: Primordial Energy Activation and Transcendence, a form of energy psychology.  Based on our morning’s notes, we chose the most common creative block in the group: the feeling of “not being good enough”, or self-doubt.  This was an easy one for me to focus on when it comes to drawing and the method proved to be quite effective; after several rounds of the process, the intensity of charge around this went from a 7 to 0, leaving me feeling quite calm.  I can see myself using this technique when specific blocks come up.  There are lots of websites out there on the subject if you want to learn more.

The last exercise of the day was to repeat our first, but this time on our own. Once again, I had fun and was able to play without expectations or too much negative self-talk (except when I tried to draw a human face) – turning the paper around and around opened up new opportunities and space for creative play.  This is what I came up with (click on slideshow to see all 4 directions).  What a great 1st day!

The new curriculum:

Although the Academy’s original plan was to spend the first 3 months focused on drawing (which I could still use right now as one month made only a little difference in my skills) the new curriculum consists of 1 month drawing (which is now completed), 1 month underpainting, and 1 month painting. This pattern will be repeated each trimester, but for a different theme: this term for the The Humanist Style: The ‘Western’ Canon of Classical Greek & Renaissance Art followed by The Hieratic Style: The ‘Eastern’ Canon of Ancient, Islamic & Hindu-Buddhist Art and then, in the third trimester, Combining Humanist & Hieratic Styles in Contemporary Visionary Art.  It’s still a mystery whether the school will get accredited and whether that will happen on time for me to get a visa to return after Christmas.  I have, however, relaxed and surrendered, knowing that there’s nothing I can do about it now and that if I am meant to be here, I will.  If I’m not, a different path will reveal itself.  In this, I must trust.  The good news is that the Ministry has contacted the school asking for a meeting this week to gather yet more information – so there’s progress.

Time to go to school – I wonder what kind of creative play we’ll do today.

The principle that nothing in life is constant but change itself has long been ingrained in me.  I let go of 5-year plans decades ago, when I realized that my life could be richer and better directed by my Higher Self, my Spirit, my sources of guidance who communicate to me more and more clearly as I learn to listen.

For those of you who have been following my journey, you know how strongly I was guided to move to Vienna to study at the Vienna Academy of Visionary Art.  I am grateful for that guidance every day as I am learning so much. My 6 months of intensive and multifaceted fundraising efforts were definitely worth it. I know I am meant to be here now. If you’ll recall, I had originally planned to be here for a trimester, but when the fundraising efforts exceeded my goal and the school changed its curriculum, I came to the conclusion that I was meant to be here a year.

Since arriving in Vienna a month ago, I have done my best to live in the present, to be here now.  I’ll admit that there has also been an underlying current of stress flowing through my days as I am yet again faced with having to embrace the mystery and put my trust in the Universe (which is strong… it’s my trust in bureaucracy that isn’t).  Many of you perceive me to be a free spirited, go with the flow kind of gal – that’s definitely the big picture me, but not necessarily the day-to-day me. My left brain hyper-planner is more often than not trying to run the show and when it doesn’t succeed, it can be pretty stressful. Learning to balance the two has been my journey and my key to success.

Yesterday was my deadline to commit to my housing reservation for the new year. They were able to extend my current room until February and then move me to another residence a few blocks from here at an equal distance to school as this one is full for the next semester- they even extended their reservation period by a couple of weeks following my request.  Unfortunately, I am not willing to risk losing $1000 by committing to this reservation as I am uncertain if I will legally be able to return to Austria after Christmas when my current visa expires.  There is a 3-month mandatory out-of-the-country period between visas and because the school’s accreditation papers are still being passed around from one ministerial office to another (which they have for the last 6 months), I am not currently able to change my class D visa to a residence visa, which I could do here.  I did buy my next Ottawa-Vienna-Ottawa plane ticket and extend my Blue Cross health insurance so I would have the paperwork ready for whenever I can start the residence permit process, but I am not willing to commit to the international residence housing contract.  Committing to it didn’t feel right.

I like where I’m living and all that is provided by this agency.  One of my classmates made her request closer to the date of arrival and is living at the end of the subway line amongst car dealerships. I just like having things figured out and set up ahead of time so I can relax and know that I’ll be in a nice clean place with all that I need.  Yet again, however, life is asking me to detach from the need to know – to let go of even knowing whether or not I will be returning to Austria after Christmas.  If I don’t, where will I go? What will I do? Oh my God!  Oh yeah… this is supposed to be a post on how I’m learning to let go – detach…  trust that I will be exactly where I am meant to be for my Highest Good.

I’ll admit – there’s a question in the back of my mind.  Am I really meant to be here a year?  Does my Spirit have other plans for me?  Did I misinterpret the signs? I’m committed to my art and know I would benefit from being here for the full year.  I look forward to what’s coming up in the next 2 trimesters and am thoroughly growing as an artist already through all we’re doing in class and all the extra work I’m doing at home to establish a stronger foundation in drawing.  Should I commit and therefore affirm my Faith that this is my plan, my intention?  Or do I remain open – trusting that I’ll be shown what I am meant to do when the time is right?  It’s tough when decisions are necessary in the “real world” of housing, tuition, etc.  I want to know!  But I can’t at this moment – it’s out of my control and out of the school’s control.

So I’m letting go (my intention through writing and sharing this).  I’m exercising non-attachment.  My deadline to decide on housing has passed and so that’s that.  I don’t have any decisions to make right now.  I open myself to guidance and will live day by day until there’s something I can do.  Just like with my lessons on drawing 2-point perspectives yesterday, I can choose to look at this situation from a different angle and know that it is perfect in what it is, even if my grounded left-brain planner self would wish it to be seen from a clear 1-point perspective, straight on and perfectly square…  We live in a world of illusions, so delusion won’t help …. I’m not sure what that means exactly, but I was moved to conclude my post that way 🙂

Enjoy living in the moment this weekend  – I’m off to a huge flea market with a classmate and we’ll see where we go from there.

The first week of my intensive program was also pretty intense – a gamut of information, teachings, emotions, experiences, practice, weather, etc.  I had no time or energy left to blog by the time I got home at night, but here’s a recap of my week based on notes I took along the way to give you an idea of my life as a visionary art student.

Tuesday:

I really connected to Newfoundland during the night with the driving rain against the window.  I enjoyed the concert!

This morning was Day 7 of the online Deva Premal & Miten 21-Day Mantra Meditation Journey, and the focus was on Liberation – that felt right as I began my journey into drawing – into learning new tools for expressing my visions.  The previous 6 days of these online meditations were equally perfect – with themes like The Cosmic Yes, New Beginnings, Inner Peace, and Love.  When a friend sent me the link, I’d thought I had enough on my plate, but I’m so glad I added this to the buffet. Chanting before going to school puts me in the right frame of mind – that and my morning routine of yoga, Spirit Calling Card reading, and paraliminal CDs to eliminate self-sabotaging thoughts, tap into my personal genius, change my beliefs, etc.  I have so much baggage around drawing…  Luckily, school doesn’t start until 10am, so I have lots of time in the mornings, being an early bird.  I even get about an hour of German lessons as I listen to my audio-course while walking to school, sometime detouring into parks or new alleyways and castle courtyards.On my way to school today, I came across bus loads of soldiers standing around in the courtyard next to the palace entrance.  After trying my German with a policewoman, I found out there would be a military parade in 10 minutes for the arrival of the Austrian President along with some international dignitaries coming to town for something big (couldn’t understand that part and wasn’t really interested in it either – never was into politics).  I saw the parade, but when the band put their instruments down, I figured even the President could get caught in traffic jams, plus I was too excited for my first real day of class to wait for him… even if I was still 45 minutes early. That gave me time to go through my bag of art supplies I purchased the day before to familiarize myself with them, as well as to socialize with our group of 7.

Unfortunately, when I got to class, I found out that what we thought I had sold on Saturday had simply been placed in another room – oh well…. I’m still so very abundant!  Every day I wake up thinking “Wow, I’m in Vienna, attending a visionary art academy…. I’m so lucky!”  Indeed, I feel so grateful for it all!I had fun today and learned so much with the first of our teachers, Laurence Caruna, who is also the academy’s director.  Through a PowerPoint presentation, we learned about how artists calculated dimensions for the ideal figure throughout time (Egyptian, Byzantine, Renaissance, etc.) – I finally learned why Da Vinci’s figure was in a circle & square – not that I can repeat it now…  Interestingly, we were encouraged to sketch what we saw while listening – since my left brain was busy listening, I found myself sketching without judgment or emotion (a rare thing) – cool!

 In the afternoon, after applying our new knowledge onto traced human sketches (using a compass to measure dimensions), we worked with a live model in a classic static pose.  It actually worked – his body measured 7.5 heads …. cool!

I’m showing these sketches here for all to see, simply to show my starting point.

You see, I’ve been wanting to draw my whole life, but built so much resistance and negative feelings around it.  I just never liked it (partly because I appeared to have no natural talent or patience for it).  There may be some significant event in my past that added to that baggage, but I can’t remember it.  I tried a drawing class once and started the “Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain” book, but to no avail. All I know is that my art and I both need to grow, and I’ve found myself repeatedly frustrated by my inability to draw the simplest images. I so want to incorporate drawing elements in my art, and so I’m determined to get over all these blocks I’ve created for myself.  I feel worse than a true beginner because of all that baggage – I know that I (and the teachers) will require a lot of patience, acceptance, perseverance, and love  – as well as lots of practice, practice, practice.  Even writing about it now brings tears to my eyes.  Luckily, this is not a competitive school – there’s already a sense of collaboration amongst students, and I’ll definitely benefit from their passion for drawing and their already amazing talent for it.  I’m grateful for all the tips they’ve already shared with me.

Today was a great day!

Wednesday: 

The guidance I received from my Spirit Calling Cards this morning was to: “Stretch peace and rejoice in the pure teachings”.  How appropriate! We spent most of the day working on sacred geometry with a compass and a straight edge (a ruler, but we never use the numbers) and a bit of math/algebra – so detailed, precise and complicated – but very interesting.  We’re working on the foundations this week and will eventually learn how to apply it all. That felt like the “pure teachings” my guiding spirits were talking about this morning in my card reading. The “stretching of peace” was more necessary in the afternoon, however.  We once again worked with a live model, this time in a series of gestural poses – several at 30 seconds, 2 minutes, 5 minutes and a couple at 8 minutes long.  It was fast and free at first, but by the very end, my inner demons started coming out and I wanted to quit, questioning why I thought I could ever learn to draw, or rather why I ever wanted to or would ever need to…. I know – it’s only Day 2 of classes…. but at that point, I couldn’t imagine ever enjoying it – I had to remind myself of my goal and that I was simply tired after a long and full day. My self-limiting beliefs are strong, but I’m working on them. I’m trusting the process and today’s two teachers (David Heskin and Aloria Weaver – a couple from the States) were great.  Each teacher has a very unique teaching style – the three of them together make a very complementary core team for this trimester.

Four of the students (3 who live together and one of the others) were talking about going home to continue drawing and painting all night, but I just couldn’t imagine joining them at this point. Our 7 hours of class time a day are enough for now…  Instead, I so needed a break and so Donnalynne and I raced out of class to get to the Burg Kino in time to see the 6:15pm showing of “The Third Man” – best British movie of the 20th century – a cult film starring Orson Welles, filmed here in Vienna in 1948, when a big part of the city was still in shambles after the bombings of the war.  The ferris wheel was in it, as well as the building right next to our school in Josefplatz.  That’s where Orson Welles lived.  Good movie – not sure if I’ll ever take the guided walk or sewer tour that are offered in town, but the movie was on my wish list.  I grabbed a slice of pizza on my way home – there are no lack of pizzerias around here…. and European pizzas are soooo good – definitely comfort food!

Thursday:

Every once in a while, I’d stop what I was doing in class to say to myself “No wonder it takes some artists years to create a piece” as the planning stage alone seems painstakingly time-consuming… such a different approach from my in-the-flow intuitive abstract painting style that can produce a dozen pieces during a one-week blissfully intensive painting marathon. Could I ever be patient enough to work in this way? I’m certainly not a lazy person, but I do like shorter projects with an end in sight.

I’m getting a lot more comfortable with the ruler and compass – today we looked at how to take our perfect square, created from a circle, to make harmoniously proportionate and balanced rectangles (1:2, 2:3, 3:4). From there, we built rabattements and rectangle armatures to guide the compositions of our paintings.  It’s rather fascinating stuff and much more elaborate a compositional scheme than the golden mean in the law of thirds I’d learned in photography.  Our school’s mini-library has a rare and precious book that shows multiple examples of how it has been used throughout history – I look forward to having more time to glance through it.  At the end of class, we only had 2 minutes to make a quick sketch using our armature – so I reverted to my spiral trees.

Our last class of the day was at the Kunsthistorisches Museum (Art History Museum) – once we’d gotten our gear, headed out, bought our yearly memberships, and made our way through a special entrance (because of our easels) and up into the Greek statuary part of the museum, we had about an hour left to draw our chosen sculpture.  I worked on Aphrodite and was quite happy with the results.  I got the proportions almost right and Laurence helped me with the shading – I haven’t learned to see all the variations of tonal values and am still so very uncertain about the drawing process (where to start, what to do next, how to do it, etc.) … this was equally challenging yesterday when working on drawing a white sphere on a white tablecloth.  Practice, practice, practice and lots of welcome coaching.  I felt good though – I enjoyed my museum experience and was glad I’d done a few extra paraliminals to increase my motivation and enjoyment of the process (Peak Performance).

Friday: 

I woke up at about 4am from a series of disturbing dreams.  After I’d been awake for a few minutes thinking about them, I felt my bed shake … it wasn’t until I got home from school that I remembered that and checked the Internet. There had been an earthquake measuring 4.3 on the Richter scale near Vienna at 4:06am.  From what I could see on this German website, there are earthquakes in Austria almost every day…. interesting.  I should have written my dreams down, however, as my Spirit Calling Card message for the day was: “Your mysterious dream is the beginning of a message”.  Hmmmm….

Today we worked on perspective.  We learned how to build a one point and a two-point perspective picture plane and then built some cube structures on the one-point page (unfortunately, I forgot to take pictures of that).  It sure beat the class I’d had once before that consisted of “Draw this room and look at the lines – that’s perspective”.  We’re learning sooooo much this week – we have to as we only have 3 more weeks of drawing before the 2-week intensive and then we’re into our paintings.  I can’t imagine what I’ll be painting yet as I’m still far from being able to draw anything to paint – but I won’t jump ahead of myself – one day at a time.

In the afternoon, we started with a second attempt at drawing our sphere – I got a lot more coaching from Aloria and one of the students beside me, and I’m glad to say that I can see some definite progress.  Encouraging!  By staring at that ball long enough, the various shades of grey would start to reveal themselves to me….

For our last class, our model was Edgar, our friendly classroom skeleton.  We had a bone anatomy class (Aloria is also a massage therapist and so is very knowledgeable about the human structure).  It makes a lot of sense that the more we know how the body is built, the more we’ll be able to use those structures as our reference points when we’re drawing.  We then spent time drawing Edgar’s hand …. fascinating!

All in all, it was an intensive and intense week – I’m sure I forgot to mention lots of what we’ve covered.  I know I don’t have pictures of all we did this week, but I’m sure this post’s various galleries give you an idea.  I’m glad to say that by Friday, I was looking forward to going back to the museum this weekend to practice some more with my little sketch book.  I gave it an hour and a half this morning (Saturday) and I seem to have regressed, but I’m sure that’s all part of the process.  No judgment today – I just treated myself to a turkey schnitzel for lunch instead.  Tonight, however, with a fridge full of fresh vegetables, I need to get back into home cooking, both for physical and financial health.  I’m glad to report though, that there is a variety of reasonably priced healthy food options when time or energy is lacking to do the home-cooked thing.

I haven’t decided what I’ll be doing tomorrow – no plans or schedules yet.  I needed to take it easy after my first week of school.  Tonight, I might take a look at some “how to” drawing videos or some German TV (I’m understanding more and more and am creating myself some fun opportunities to practice it).

The Vienna Academy of Visionary Art is officially open and what an opening it was!

Crowds and parties aren’t usually my scene (although I love dancing!) and so I woke up a little nervous about the day ahead.  I chose a couple of paraliminal CDs to put me in the right frame of mind and, as usual, got a thoroughly helpful Spirit Calling Card reading.

I’ve been pulling that “Community” card almost every day!  So I spent the morning and the early afternoon on my own, doing my yoga, meditation, laundry, groceries, etc. before heading to school at 2pm to help set up.  I met more of my teachers and the last of my 6 classmates whom I hadn’t met yet, plus others who trickled in closer to the 5pm starting time.  I do like being early at events so that the crowd grows around me instead of my walking into a mass of energy and people.

The evening started in the Figaro Salle where there were paintings on display, live painting, cello music, a sales table (they sold a few of my bookmarks), speeches, and a 20-minute Power Point presentation by our director, Laurence Caruna.  I was in charge of advancing the slides, which forced me to really focus on his speech.  I was pleasantly surprised that I could understand the gist of it, even if it was in German.  Thankfully, he said “next” in English.

Then we moved up one floor for vegan treats at the Fairy Kitchen and the celebrations in the classroom/school.  A few times during the night I thought to myself “this is a really cool classroom!).  There was an exhibition of the teachers’ and some of the students’ work, slide projections of teachers’ work above that, and the doors to the Internationales Phantastenmuseum were open so guests could access the gallery halls through our cassroom.  As I was at the ticket table, I spoke more German on this night than I had in 2 weeks! It was great.  I don’t know how many other times I’ll have the need to say “she has the stamp” and “please take off your shoes there”, but it was fun to practice. Luckily, my partner was Austrian, so she answered people’s more complicated questions.  Plus most people spoke English, so it wouldn’t have been an issue.

At 8pm, I joined the 40 minute meditation – even if I didn’t understand anything, it was great to help create the space and when 100 people sitting in a circle chanted OM together, it was the most beautiful OM ever!  Then, the dancing began and it was great – just like the old days when my friends and I went to punk clubs in Hull, across from Ottawa, because tthat’s where you could just close your eyes, dance, and simply be (vs. the meat market dance clubs everywhere else).  Tonight’s sacred barefoot dance party was put on by Avaloka, and it was just my style.  After about 1.5 hours of dancing, however, I decided to leave while I was still having fun and before I got too exhausted.  It was past 10pm (the party went on until 1am) and I enjoyed the 40-minute walk home – the streets were still full of tourists and locals – I feel very safe walking here at night.

I had a good day and indeed, I feel our community taking shape – it’s a truly beautiful community.  I’m glad I believe in “Feel the fear and do it anyway” – I’m glad I’m here and opening myself up to even more new experiences.  I look forward to the start of classes on Monday.