A dance party every day

On Thursday we had "Service Learning: Exploring Self and Community through the Arts" class. That is a ridiculous name. It's really just Creativity class. We already have a lot to be thinking about, lots of projects and activities. Some of the things we are going to be doing are dancing the 5 rhythms, a workshop on clowning and physical theater as activism, pottery, weaving, sharing creative skills with one another (I'm sharing knitting, and I hope that my friend Matt will teach me guitar), creative writing, making big portfolios that connect all our learning here from all our classes and experiences, and a big group exhibition and presentation for the whole Findhorn community at the end. I'm thinking about doing a bunch of artistic identity mapping work for my portfolio, either just on myself or on our group as a whole, on assumptions and identities and how they manifest in groups and group behaviors. It's all a lot clearer in my mind, I'm sure I'll show you pictures as I get further along. It's really fabulous for me to be in a creative, artistic class and not feel so much fear and anxiety. I'm still nervous, because I haven't ever really felt like I was an artistic person, but this class is more about exploring our own creativity and working through the creative blocks that we all have and developing trust in ourselves and knowledge that all of the art we create is valid and beautiful.

Then Friday we had Worldviews and Consciousness (WC). I mostly wasn't excited about it because we had to read this book I have a really hard time with, A Brief History of Everything by Ken Wilber. Ken Wilber, who I affectionately renamed Man-Face (do you see why? Now no one here refers to the book as anything but Man-Face), is absurd and says most things with a lot of unnecessarily difficult and confusing and academic words. It's a very inaccessible book, and he has weird weird ideas about gender equality but I like some of the other concepts. It takes me 5 minutes to read a page though. I feel most times like the whole thing is just so pretentious. But the class was alright, the teacher is the most formal, but the assignments are still very much about personal development and learning and far removed from traditional school. The best thing about WC class is that our biggest assigment is developing a daily practice and journaling about it. My daily practice is working on creative exploration, I got a few books and am very excited about it all. Other people are doing things like yoga, mindfulness meditation, T'ai Chi, and dream interpretation. School is kind of fun here.

The castle I mentioned we were going to in my last entry was beautiful, I put up pictures on my flickr website. You can read about it here. We climbed on it and then had teatime and a Bard told us the story of Tristan and Isolde. Apparently we are going to be doing restoration and planting trees in the forest that Tristan and Isolde ran away to, the Caledonian Forest. The Caledonian Forest is also where Merlin lived, in the Legends of King Arthur. This place is wild.

Yesterday at lunch Sarah found a caterpillar crawling on her plate under her salad. Kirk then ate it, without a dare or anything. It reminded me of my Dad, and when he made us go to a bug-eating festival. I think Kirk ate the bug because he misses eating meat. I just miss sugar. I ate some apple crisp the other day, because it was a special occasion, and it didn't make me feel bad or anything, I just felt so happy because it tasted like granola and home.

Today Page, Dana, Sarah and I all went to Forres for the day. All there is in Forres is thrift stores and pharmacies. It's very strange. We were so overwhelmed, because there was so much stuff there! (There wasn't really. There was one main street and it was 3 blocks long.) We also had a really hard time crossing the street because in Findhorn everyone just walks wherever they want and cars just wait. Also driving on the other side of the road is really hard to get used to. There is a free bus between Forres and the Park (because part of Findhorn, Cluny, is in Forres) every day at 5 or so different times, but by the time we wanted to leave, we had to take the public bus, which is bright blue and neon orange on the inside. I Love Scotland.

Tonight is the full moon, and a big lunar eclipse, so we are having a dance party on the beach. I hope you can all see the lunar eclipse too. When I am seeing it you might be eating dinner, or washing the dishes afterwards, or maybe watching a movie, or walking your dog, and when you see it, I will be dancing around a big bonfire with people in mittens and hats and long underwear and rosy cheeks. And maybe some cold skinnydippers warming by the fire. You should all go outside and watch is so we can both be looking at the same thing at the same time. Wouldn't that be nice?

Love,
Nora

P.S. My mom's birthday is tomorrow. If you know her you should call her up and tell her you love her, because I know you do.