Winter
Adrienne' s Thread Labyrinth, laid on Abenaki land in what is now known as Plainfield, VT.
Journal Excerpt from Winter Solstice
December 21st, 2021,
... today is the Winter Solstice! It will be the longest night of the year. I'm hoping to witness the sunset and sunrise. Especially tomorrow morning because we will be waking up early and driving down to VA (we currently live in Boston)... I feel I drift between rest and overstimulation during this time of year. I felt that last night when we went out to try to get some last-minute shopping done for the overcommercialization of this holiday season.
I wonder why we push so much at this time of year. One that asks us to really just slow down... This season I want to try to check myself when I lean toward the overindulgent or over-consuming. Instead, I want to remain with being fully present with the people so near and dear to us... I want us to do this time well with the people we love, to be present and grateful... that's my hope for the Holiday time, and for today I hope to celebrate Alban Arthan well!
The passage of time up until the Winter Solstice signifies the darkest time of the year. But with the Solstice, the cycle immediately begins to shift to the rebirth of the Sun as it gets brighter and brighter. There are a lot of religious connotations to this time of year around what the light represents.
"Winter solstice is very significant in the Wheel as it is the first of four solar festivals. The time of the shortest day and the longest night. And from the darkness comes the birth of summer Sun. From this point, the days begin to get longer and life will eventually return to the land. Although we are no longer a culture that relies on the land the way we did in the past, this returning of the light is still as important to us, both mentally and physically" (Cross 42).
I moved forward with this recognition and celebrated this time by looking inward. Trying to rest in the bustle of the Holiday season, a time of getting comfortable with the darkness and slowing down. It's also a time of tuning into your inner child, the stories you were told when you were young, and identifying the gifts you have to give the world.
It's a time of dreaming! I noticed my dreams were more vivid during this time of year. The ones I woke up from and the ones I began to dream about, the performance piece that I was envisioning.
Winter Dreams
While energetically this was a time of turning inward, there was a lot that occurred on this project during the winter season. I began opening the project up, which I noticed I was hesitant about, but I knew I needed to ease some of the organizationally closed limits I had previously placed on it.
Jan 4th, 2022
My friend Hebe (Sarah Morrisette) offered to dream about this project with me.
My mind immediately seized when Hebe offered, because this piece still seems so fragile. Like its purpose hasn't been engraved quite yet. But isn't that also the purpose of this graduate journey? To ease up on my reigns of control! Hasn't that been the purpose of my learning these last couple of years? To ease up! To loosen my hold with my hands and my legs. To ride and trust the path I am on. I got lost in a little rabbit hole yesterday with Social Presencing Theater, Empathetic Listening, Newspaper Theater, and this new thing I have never heard of called Dragon Dreaming. It's a way to project plan.
DREAM. PLAN. DO. CELEBRATE.
With the last step being an exceedingly important part of it all!
Little did I know that these four words also mirrored the Wheel of the Year processes and I was currently in the Dreaming phase.
I began speaking about this project with friends, family, and potential collaborators and allowed them to dream with me. Hebe became one of these collaborators that I couldn't have done this work without. We began dream sessions together and envisioned what facilitated exercises could hold space for this community performance. At one point, I even had a conversation with my brother, Drew, which led to renaming the performance. He gave me space to share about what I am doing at school. I explained the science part with living systems, chaos, and now quantum physics theory (which the last theory he has more knowledge of than I do) and how it connects to my ideas of shifting the type of theatre I wanted to produce. After sharing for a while, he said, "Oh so you want to make a living production." Yes, yes, Drew, that's the best summation I have heard so far! I said Yes! And... to my brother and I knew it would be called a Living Performance.
To see the catalog of dreaming throughout the process, here is the Mind Map of Laying Labyrinths: A Living Performance.
A young Eva.
An Exchange: Dream with your Inner Child
If it's Winter for you...
As you participate in this exchange, I encourage you to find a medium that you find most enjoyable to reflect in, or maybe one you used as a child.
Freewrite, paint, draw, whatever feels good to you.
Put on some good music and begin.
Ask yourself, what did you enjoy doing as a child:
A game you played, with yourself, siblings, or the adults in your life.
What's a pretend story you've always told or were told?
Was there any particular imaginative play you engaged in?
What did you dream about?
Take some time to sit with this childlike energy and the memories you are holding.
Now, in this season of life, what are you dreaming of? It can be any size of dream(s).
Envision it!
Sense it, what does it:
Feel like,
Smell like,
Taste like,
Sound like,
Look like?
What qualities does it hold?
What desire would this dream honor that is within you?
Does it share any semblance of your childhood dreams?
Take some time with this dream!
...
When you are ready to come out of this dreaming session.
Reflect!
Feel free to share anything you would like in the comment section below.
Laying Labyrinths: An Update
My dreams of this Living Performance quickly turned into workshops that I tried out during the graduate school residency I was attending at Goddard College in January of 2022. Here are some quick excerpts from my reflections on the workshops and my journal from that residency:
Reflection
The general information shared about labyrinths and how to draw them in the first workshop laid the foundation for the second one. I used the second workshop as an opportunity to share about the collaborations I entered into with the land while laying labyrinths throughout my practicum. I spoke about the ethical impacts of laying temporary structures on public lands and how research, reverence, and deep listening guided my process. I began to experiment with exercises to use within this performance project. I started by asking people to grab slips of paper and on one pile impulsively write things they would like to release themselves from. I encouraged the impulse to arise just like I encourage my students when they're improvising. We honor the first thoughts that come up and trust ourselves by writing them down and flying on to the next thought. After we had a pile of things to release, I asked them to make a new pile of things they would like to receive. Again, impulsively curating these slips of paper. With these two piles in tow, I shared directions with our online folks through this PDF and a quick explanation of what we all were about to do. I then sent our online folks off, encouraging them to have their own experiences in the world, and turned my attention to fully being present with the people in the room!
Journal January 22nd, 2022
I think I have a gift for gathering people, of bringing them together. Of encouraging the small voice that pops up and listening to it! It is still there for me. My deepest impulse is to congregate people together to do what they do best, be in a community, and make together. And to reconnect us to communities that are already inherently here, no matter how invisible they may seem.
The pictures below are from the virtual folks and the labyrinths they laid with their children, dogs, bird friends, and quiet. I quickly noticed through these workshops how easy it was to spread the labyrinth by showing others how to draw classical labyrinths from the seed pattern. The seeds were already being sown as we moved from Winter toward Spring and as the nights began getting brighter.
Labyrinth and Photo by Julie Frazier-Smith
Labyrinth and Photo by Arshan Gailus
Cross, Emma-Jane. Walking The Wheel of The Year. Green Magic Publishing, 2020.