Work!

We have been doing lots of homework lately. It is really good for me. I have a hard time balancing hanging out with my friends and getting all my work done, and this weekend is the first time I have been really social besides meals and class and dance in awhile.

Last Sunday I did an all-day dance workshop called "Satisfying Anger" that was about working with the 5 rhythms to express and work through feelings of anger. It was taught by my teacher for creativity class, and there were 20 community members there, along with me and Charlotte and some people from Inverness. In the morning we worked on feeling the difference between tightness and openness in our movements and bodies, and did this fun fun fun exercise where we all lined up in 2 lines facing one another across a line, and we danced our anger dances to each other without crossing the line (it was like creating a safe space, while allowing for expressions of anger in front of another person). Everyone was screaming and yelling and jumping around and punching the air and I did this incredibly fun dance where the woman I was partnered with and I danced our annoyance, I guess you could say. It was so useful to dance all our emotions at another person and have them dance theirs to us while knowing that it meant nothing personal. Then in the afternoon we danced a wave with all this angry music and did a lot of partner dancing and my chaos was so so so intense. I thought I was going to throw up, but I feel that most times I dance the 5 rhythms. When we ended we all partnered up and gave each other massages and oh man it was just the best way possible to spend a day. And SO useful, it has made my dance practice better already.

This past week has been full of assessments and big projects, and it has been stressful but also really fun, because we have had all these presentations that have been so full of beautiful, authentic sharing. On Monday we all talked about this Joanna Macy article in a colloquium-style class, and on Tuesday we presented our Art of Fascination projects with the class. I presented my slow eating endeavor with Sarah and Nicole, and other people presented what they learned about batiking, making food (we all made some food together...and subsequently turned into a big class of kindergarteners, it was ridiculously fun), campfire building and cooking food over campfires, (Ashley had made muffins with Amy inside of orange peels on a campfire and brought them in, and also built a sample campfire our of dried bananas, raisins, and coconut flakes), guitar (people who had never played guitar before coming here getting up and played and sang and it was so beautiful and inspiring), tai chi, bike carts, massage, bookmaking, and knitting. Then in the afternoon we started planning our big presentation at the end of the semester. Then Thursday we had a big paper due in Group Dynamics class and we spent the first half of the morning doing a forum, which is a type of check-in or attunement used at a community called Zegg. It differs from a lot of traditional check-ins in that people can give and receive feedback as part of their sharing. And also the person who is speaking stands in the middle and walks around, sometimes even on a stage, instead of sharing from their place in the circle. It was really intense, a lot of people cried and a lot of other people just expressed how big their love was for everyone in the program. At the end of forum everyone also sings a song together, and so we did that, and I don't really have the words for how much I loved it all.

Also all week there were two ladies here from America who were making a documentary. About us! Well, partly about us. I was never totally sure on what it was about in the end, but they filmed all our classes and asked me if they could interview me. They are in some way connected to the Living Routes program or founder, and they did interviews with some of the FCS people before the semester even started, and they came here to fill it all out. But anyway, I think it is about sustainability education and young people who are into this kind of work. In my interview I talked about anthropocentrism and how what I'm doing here connects to the anti-racism and anti-oppression work I have been doing for the past 5 years. So someday I might be in a documentary. Acting nerdy and talking about how I cry sometimes when I read things about sustainability and how young people are gonna change the world. You know.

The other night Dana and I were walking to Lollipop (my house) to watch a movie and on the way there we saw these three girls carrying a mattress and at intervals they would throw it down on the ground and jump up and down for a minute and then pick it up and walk a few more feet and do it all over again. I love Findhorn.

But yesterday Sarah, Dana, Charlotte and I went for an afternoon walk through the dunes and we came to this road that goes to the dunes from Findhorn village. And on the road there was a gang of 15-20 children. At first we thought they were being nice, because they were giving us peace signs, but then we realized that we are in the UK and the kind of peace sign they were giving us meant something very different than peace. And then they started yelling "FINDIE FOUNDIES! FINDIES!" at us. And then they mooned us! And then they ran away. I guess Findhorn is still seen as strange and thus provokes the hatred/mocking of small children.

But we all love each other. After our public humiliation we jumped on the trampoline at Shambala, the Buddhist center, and then we all lay together on the lawn outside the CC with all our friends as we waited for dinner. And after dinner we danced a beautiful wave together to the loudest music while the rain pounded down outside. And after that we lay in a big pile all on top of each other on the floor and told each other about our days.

The end.

Love,
Nora