Sent: Tuesday, September 27, 2011 10:38 PM
Subject: Steps forth...
Dear all,Subject: Steps forth...
So it has been about 3 months since i sent out the Dignity and Grace missive. i really need to just accept the idea of linear time as a tool to be used when appropriate.
Some of you have been bumping into me and jostling me through this period. i am very greatful for that. More of that would be welcome (and other things too) because it continues the process of helping me locate myself in these very new senses of self and place.
Presently i am sitting in back of Sandi Ford's house in
i have so far made it to
Along the way i have been testing the language i am using to describe the next year's work. It has been..... good.
You all have been witness to much (in bits and pieces) of the challenges i have faced this past year.
As i figure out how to honor this past year and move forward i hope to be more engaging and hopeful!
So here is my current vision for the next year or so. The three project in many ways are meant to balance each other and create some synergy.
i would appreciate your thoughts and insights, comments and concerns, etc.
Andy, who lives up in Ontario, where i spent a month this summer, probably has the best (? a better?) feel for these projects because it was through his efforts i managed to make it through some serious junk during my time up there. i hope he gets the gumption up to click REPLY ALL to share his perspective.
So the three projects for this next year more or less are:
Family Healthcare Crisis Conversations-
Using the notes, handouts, forms and other detritus from my Dad's initial illness, surgery, rehabilitations, dying process and ultimate death as fodder, i want to facilitate conversations to identify potential tools for people who find themselves and their families in the midst of Healthcare Crisis. There are quite of few resources for planning a Major Healthcare Event (crisis) and others for recovering/healing from Healthcare Crisis but surprisingly few for when one is thrust into it without preparation.
Starting with the people (this includes you all) who have been aware and supportive during this period because you are familiar with my particulars and then slowly increasing the circle of participants, i hope to mark a trail that others can follow and create guidance points and directions through the mass of info. Andy pointed out that i was making myself sick in chewing over this cud and that by inviting others to browse through that they might be better able to digest it and extract the good stuff. i created several tools in the midst of this all, that the Professional Healthcare Providers recognized as powerful and lacking. There are probably many more to be found. At some point my anger will transmute and then i will be able to engage the Professional Healthcare Providers and involve them in honing the identified tools and finding ways to put them into practice.
When i was up in
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Puzzlement-
Creating a participatory, collaborative puzzle making methodology, sort of a multi-layered, intention filled Exquisite Corpse Puzzle. Guiding a group of people or members of an organization through a series of creative exercises to find a collective experiential visual vocabulary that gets worked into a finished product (puzzle). The puzzle then can be used as a way to share the group's or organization's mission and purpose and also be used as a fundraising product.
Andy shared with me that he is tired of my surviving off of odd jobs and that i need to create a way to sustain myself well by what i do well. Puzzlement draws upon my traveling workshop experiences and weaves it with my Mental Health Handicraft skills. We see this taking 2 or 3 years of fostering before it will be able to fully support me.
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Having My Cake and Sharing It Too-
Baking a cake everyday for a year. Having had little control over my food intake this last year, i want to engage others in the act of food preparing, daily celebration of life, negotiating emotional and nutritional needs, the food scarcity/abundance discussion, transformative power of intentional food love and more. Part blog, part documentation of consumption/celebration, part act of discipline, part whimsy and mostly a way to reach beyond the comfort of comfort food and challenge myself to complete each step of the next year.
i have over the years, baked many many cakes, often as part of public events. From time to time i have made them into participatory events by offering the cakes (usually Character shaped Cakes) to be decorated with various instructions. FX: at Queeruption 99 in NYC i baked 4 or 5 cakes and then instructed the hungry mob to decorate them as their favorite Intergalactic Transgender Warrior. Fun Mayhem Ensued; at Maynooth Pride (Canada's smallest Pride Celebration) in July, i baked a Barbie Cake and explained that Barbie was actually an Inter-dimensional Being who came here sometime ago and had been captured and enslaved by the hetero-normative, gender binary Powers That Be to do their nefarious bidding but that she longs to be free and we must help her by embuing her image with all our most Wonderful Super Powers so that she can break free from her bonds and come and play with us. That was fun. i have started again to collect Character and fun shaped pans. These and my baking skills will be a starting point for a very interesting adventure.
In addition, there is this idea floating, dangling, teasing of doing a kick-off marathon baking event for Day of the Dead through All Saints' Day. 48 hrs of baking cakes for the dead. Besides my Dad's death i have had 8 other deaths, excluding the pets in the last 10 months. This could be REALLY cathartic for me and others. So if you have any ideas about where and any interest or know of any others who would like to join in the baking let me know.
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