Keep Moving

Getting a big, bad blue door feeling again today, and although it seems far too hot for anything in life to be acting like winter, there seems to be some discrepancy between dreams and reality at the moment - dreams one side of the door (the other), and reality this side. On a good day, narrowing this gap is our joy. On a tired day, not so.

This morning I woke too early from a dream where I was pulling a series of crux moves on a sea-cliff climb. This is wild - I haven't climbed in months but it is one of those dreams that feels hyper-real - physical, emotional, spiritual. The climb is getting steeper, then overhanging, and I am having to move really slowly and carefully so the rock doesn't spit me off, every fibre of my being poised and balanced. All I can do is focus intently on these critical moves, and because of that forget my camera is casually slung over a shoulder. At one point I hear a crash and think I have dropped it. It isn't the camera, thank God.

Keep moving, I coach myself.

Not hard to interpret this one. Yet another hardcore climb was all I was given to do with life for a while. It is all I have to comment on. I was worried about losing my camera. I didn't lose it. I have my story, I have my tools for telling that story, and I have woken up.

Big, bad, blue door feelings seem to happen at the start of most new ventures, just after the first cleanly optimistic stages as reality of what's actually involved kicks in. For artists, writers, musicians, this is familiar ground.

Must remember there's light the other side of the door.

Keep moving, I coach myself.

{Today's Soundtrack: Rue Royale}

Blue Doors

So, winter time, here we are. It's all a bit frozen with nothing coming in and nothing going out, isn't it? At least that's how it feels much of the time. It takes a lot of grit to insist that there really are little streams trickling in–hidden as they are under layers of ice. However, after reading the Jan18th post on this page, I'm reminded that winter time is all about life being very still, necessarily so in preparation for the seasons ahead. And it will always be!

Standing at doorways like these I feel a curiosity about what lies concealed, ahead or around the corner. This is how my winter view feels, but I know there's something special in the waiting and dreaming that is intentionally so. Perhaps this desire is what shapes life when it does come pouring in again.

With this in mind, let's try not to lose heart over a freezing economy, lack of sunlight hours, society in hibernation or seemingly unanswered prayers. Friends, hold your nerve! These times feel hard relatively speaking, but there's nothing happening now that you can't deal with. It's winter, and rightly so before spring presses up its shoots...

...such as a black man elected American president while those looking on remember being disallowed from travelling on a bus in the 1960s because of their colour.

Anything is possible, but Winter has to come before Spring.





{Today's soundtrack: Fleet Foxes}